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Updated: June 4, 2025
But if they send me, I'll go WITH A GOOD 'EART" The phrase which ought to be immortalized on every grave in Flanders and France and Gallipoli and Mesopotamia. So, you see, I looked at this rather silly malade imaginaire of an old lady with whom I was taking tea, and suddenly conceived for her a vast respect even veneration. I say "rather silly."
Moliere told the King that he had just sketched out the plot of his "Malade Imaginaire," and assured us that hypochondriacs themselves would find something to laugh at when it was played. He spoke very little about himself, but at great length, and with evident admiration, about the young poet Racine.
Old M. de Balzac was as placid as an Egyptian pyramid and perennially cheerful; but the restless Madame de Balzac was now following in the footsteps of her nervous mother and becoming a malade imaginaire. This did not add to the comfort of her family, while the small excitements she roused perpetually were peculiarly trying to her eldest son, who was himself not of a placid nature.
Five or six months after this interview, poor Moliere broke a blood-vessel in his chest, while playing with too great fervour the title part in his "Malade Imaginaire." When they brought the news to the King, he turned pale, and clasping his hands together, well-nigh burst into tears. "France has lost her greatest genius," he said before all the nobles present.
"You are only bound to treat people according to form," says Doctor Diafoirus in the "Malade imaginaire". Again, says Doctor Bahis, in "L'Amour medecin": "It is better to die through following the rules than to recover through violating them." In the same play, Desfonandres had previously said: "We must always observe the formalities of professional etiquette, whatever may happen."
With what fervour the poet feels her neglect! with what eagerness he defends her from the animadversions of the friend who would have dissolved the spell! The poet was doomed to endure more poignant sorrows than slights. Mademoiselle had the art of persuading Molière that he was only his own "cocu imaginaire;" but these domestic embarrassments multiplied.
In the 'Malade Imaginaire, for example, Thomas Diafoirius is always provided with an absurdly high child's chair, apparently the property of Louison; and in the 'Avare, after the miser has blown out a candle twice and finally pocketed it, the custom is for his servant to sneak behind him and to light the candle once again as it sticks out of his coat.
Molière was disguising his real and, as it proved, his dying agonies, in order to give utterance and interest to the feigned or fancied complaints of Le Malade Imaginaire, and repressing the voice of mortal sufferance to affect that of an imaginary hypochondriac.
Perhaps I cannot better bring this account of our long voyage from Valparaiso to a conclusion than by a quotation from a charming book, given to me at Rio, which I have lately been reading Baron de Hubner's 'Promenade autour du Monde: 'Les jours se suivent et se ressemblent. Sauf le court épisode du mauvais temps, ces trois semaines me font l'effet d'un charmant rêve, d'un conte de fée, d'une promenade imaginaire
This and several others of the same period, as Monsieur de Pourceaugnac, La Comtesse d'Escarbagnas, and even his last, the Malade Imaginaire, sufficiently prove that the maturity of his mind as an artist did not keep pace with the progress of years, otherwise he would have been disgusted with such loose productions.
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