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In his naive diction, which is curiously out of harmony with the complex plot in sensational French style, the author pictures the life of an obscure Lithuanian townlet: the Kahal bosses who hide their misdeeds beneath the cloak of piety; the fanatical rabbis, the Tartuffes of the Pale of Settlement, who persecute the champions of enlightenment.
They, too, maintain themselves by Terror; only, like so many Tartuffes, they are not disposed to act openly as executioners. The Directory, heir to the Convention, affects to repudiate its inheritance: "Woe," says Boulay de la Meurthe, "to whoever would re-establish scaffolds."
"It struck me," continued the King, "that some such thing was indispensable as a counterbalance in the vast machinery of my government, and I shall ever be the friend and supporter, not of Tartuffes, but of the 'Tartuffe, as long as I live." "And Boileau, Sire?" I continued; "what place among your favourites does he fill?"
I, for one, would not blame the old gentleman who should pick up a stone and hurl it at one of these Tartuffes and Chadbands of the street-corner with their chubby, gilded hands reposing on their prosperous stomachs, sleek and smug and ultra-respectable, but unconscionable liars for all that. They are not content with their own success in cheating, they throw discredit upon honest folk.
"It struck me," continued the King, "that some such thing was indispensable as a counterbalance in the vast machinery of my government, and I shall ever be the friend and supporter, not of Tartuffes, but of the 'Tartuffe, as long as I live." "And Boileau, Sire?" I continued; "what place among your favourites does he fill?"
But that doesn't matter to me! it is we who talk of justice, of respect, and sympathy from man to man, and then we go and blacken the men who don't agree with us whole classes, that is to say, of our fellow-countrymen, not in the old honest slashing style, Tartuffes that we are! but with all the delicate methods of a new art of slander, pursued almost for its own sake.
"It struck me," continued the King, "that some such thing was indispensable as a counterbalance in the vast machinery of my government, and I shall ever be the friend and supporter, not of Tartuffes, but of the 'Tartuffe, as long as I live." "And Boileau, Sire?" I continued; "what place among your favourites does he fill?"
In doing this, he added an immortal character to the world's literature. "Such and such a man is a Rudin," has been a common expression for over fifty years, as we speak of the Tartuffes and the Pecksniffs.
It is only the Tartuffes and the Holy Willies who, whilst they persist in their guilt, talk of leaving the issue to the Divine Providence of God. Doble has also pointed out to me in the first edition of the Spectator the following passage at the end of No. 14: 'On the first of April will be performed at the Play-house in the Hay-market an opera call'd The Cruelty of Atreus.
All types of all characters march through all fables: tremblers and boasters; victims and bullies; dupes and knaves; long-eared Neddies, giving themselves leonine airs; Tartuffes wearing virtuous clothing; lovers and their trials, their blindness, their folly and constancy. With the very first page of the human story do not love and lies too begin?
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