It was, we may presume, these cumulative misfortunes that drove him into the pessimistic mood out of which _Le Misanthrope_ was born. He had now written three masterpieces for the purpose of entertaining his fellows, and he was being treated, not as a public benefactor, but as a public enemy. One of the three had been calumniated; one was prohibited; the third had to be withdrawn. And, in addition to being at odds with the world, he was at odds with his wife. He had married her, a girl under twenty, when he himself was forty, and she apparently remained a coquette after marriage. One could not ask for clearer evidence of the sanity of Molière’s genius than the fact that he was able to make of his bitter private and public quarrels one of the most delightful comedies in literature. Alceste, it is true, with his desire to quit the insincere and fashionable world and to retire into the simple and secluded life, is said to be a study, not of Molière himself, but of a misanthropic nobleman. But, though Molière may have borrowed a few features of the nobleman’s story, he undoubtedly lent the nobleman the soul of Molière. He had the comic vision of himself as well as of the rest of humanity. He might mock the vices of the world, but he could also mock himself for hating the world, in the spirit of a superior person, on account of its vices. He could even, as a poet, see his wife’s point of view, though he might quarrel with her as a husband. Célimène, that witty and beautiful lady who refuses to retire with Alceste into his misanthropic solitude, has had all the world in love with her ever since. Molière, we may be sure, sympathised with her when she protested: La solitude effraye une âme de vingt ans.