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"No more of Sganarelle speeches," he went on; "you will disgorge two hundred thousand francs, or be packed off to Algiers." "But, Monsieur le Ministre, you do not know my wife. She has spent it all. Monsieur le Baron asked six persons to dinner every evening. Fifty thousand francs a year are spent in my house."
In this extraordinary play of all Molière's works the farthest removed from the classical ideal the conventional rules of religion and morality are exposed to a withering scorn; Don Juan, the very embodiment of the arrogance of intellect, and his servant Sganarelle, the futile and superstitious supporter of decency and law, come before us as the only alternatives for our choice; the antithesis is never resolved; and, though in the end the cynic is destroyed by a coup de théâtre, the fool in all his foolishness still confronts us when the curtain falls.
There are husbands, it is certain; and when we see a man tumble down, even if he knocks his brains out, our first impulse it to burst out laughing. Hence the great and eternal mirth that greets Sganarelle.
His reasoning seems to be borrowed from Destutt de Tracy. He commences with this definition of property, worthy of Sganarelle: "Property is the right by which a thing is one's own." Literally translated: Property is the right of property.
It is said that she has written to him, but that he has returned her letter unopened. She came some days ago to see my son, and to request him not to oppose a reconciliation between herself and her husband. My son laughed and said, "I will not interfere in it; for have I not learned from Sganarelle that it is not wise to put one's finger between the bark and the tree?"
The "rat" might take what she pleased; she was to be watched like a dangerous animal, and she brought an element of liveliness into life, like Scapin, Sganarelle, and Frontin in old-fashioned comedy.
The concluding phrase seemed meant to convey the idea that here was an open cashbox full of coin at the service of the noble d'Esgrignon family. So strong was the impression that Victurnien, like Sganarelle or Mascarille in the play, like everybody else who feels a twinge of conscience at his finger-tips, made an involuntary gesture.
With all respect he put it aside till the evening. But the second letter he read with unspeakable pleasure. In Ciceronian phrases, du Croisier groveled before him, like a Sganarelle before a Geronte, begging the young Count in future to spare him the affront of first depositing the amount of the bills which he should condescend to draw.
We may call to mind the answer Sganarelle gave Geronte when the latter remarked that the heart was on the left side and the liver on the right: "Yes, it was so formerly, but we have altered all that; now, we practise medicine in quite a new way."
The genius of Sganarelle, Mascarille, and Scapin combined would not have sufficed to invent three hundred and sixty-five pieces of mischief a year.
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