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I told him I did not understand the purport of his jest. "I will tell you," said he; "Tartuffe is going to be acted in the cabinets, and there is the part of a police officer, which only consists of a few lines. Prevail upon Madame de Pompadour to assign me that part, and the command is yours." I promised nothing, but I related the history to Madame, who said she would arrange it for me.
The Cardinal de Bissi is as ugly and clumsy as a peasant, proud, false and wicked, and yet a most fulsome flatterer; his falsehood may be seen in his very eyes; his talent he turns to mischievous purposes. In short, he has all the exterior of a Tartuffe. These Cardinals could, if they chose, sell the Cardinal de Noailles in a sack, for they are all much more cunning than he is.
The Tartuffe hove into view as an enemy's vessel; it offended, not Dieu mais les devots, as the Prince de Conde explained the cabal raised against it to the King. The Femmes Savantes is a capital instance of the uses of comedy in teaching the world to understand what ails it.
In Vendemiaire, the military Tartuffe, he threw aside the Revolution's natural heirs, and made her, as it were, ALTER HER WILL; on the 18th of Brumaire he strangled her, and on the 19th seized on her property, and kept it until force deprived him of it. In the Prince's eyes, then, his uncle is a god; of all monarchs, the most wise, upright, and merciful.
He may find adorers in all directions in our uncultivated society among people of stronger character than himself, not one of whom, if they had been artistically educated, would have had anything to learn from him or regarded him as in any way extraordinary apart from his actual achievements as an artist. Tartuffe is not always a priest.
The improviser disdains economy, as much as the artist cherishes it. Coquelin has some half-dozen complete variations of the face he has composed for Tartuffe; no more than that, with no insignificances of expression thrown away; but each variation is a new point of view, from which we see the whole character.
Soon after we sat down I saw a plump abbe coming in with measured steps. He looked to me a regular Tartuffe, after nothing but Therese. He came up to her as soon as he saw her, and going on one knee in the Portuguese fashion, kissed her hand tenderly and respectfully. Therese received him with smiling courtesy and put him at her right hand; I was at their left.
The Cardinal de Bissi is as ugly and clumsy as a peasant, proud, false and wicked, and yet a most fulsome flatterer; his falsehood may be seen in his very eyes; his talent he turns to mischievous purposes. In short, he has all the exterior of a Tartuffe. These Cardinals could, if they chose, sell the Cardinal de Noailles in a sack, for they are all much more cunning than he is.
Selfish ambition, dishonesty, duplicity; a fierce, coarse, hypocritical Tartuffe; turning all that noble Struggle for constitutional Liberty into a sorry farce played for his own benefit: this and worse is the character they give of Cromwell.
At length, in August, 1667, "Le Tartuffe," so long suppressed, appeared on the stage, and in the depth and power of its composition left all authors of comedy far behind. The art with which the "Impostor" is made to develop his real character, without any of the usual soliloquies or addresses to a confidant, for the benefit of the audience, has been always admired as inimitable.
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