_Tar._ Your abuse has no power to disturb me, and I know how to suffer
every thing for the sake of heaven.
_Cle._ Your moderation is really great, we must acknowledge.
_Da._ How impudently the infamous wretch sports with heaven!
_Tar._ Your anger cannot move me. I have no other wish but to fulfill
my duty.
_Marianne._ You may claim great glory from the performance of this
duty: it is a very honorable employment for you.
_Tar._ The employment cannot be otherwise than glorious, when it comes
from the power that sends me here.
_Org._ But do you remember that my charitable hand, ungrateful
scoundrel, raised you from a state of misery?
_Tar._ Yes, I know what help I have received from you; but the
interest of my king is my first duty. The just obligation of this
sacred duty stifles in my heart all other claims; and I would
sacrifice to it friend, wife, relations, and myself with them.
_Elmire._ The impostor!
_Dor._ With what treacherous cunning he makes a cloak of all that men
revere!...
_Tar. (to the Officer)._ I beg of you, sir, to deliver me from all
this noise, and to act according to the orders you have received.
_Officer._ I have certainly put off too long the discharge of my duty,
and you very rightly remind me of it. To execute my order, follow me
immediately to the prison in which a place is assigned to you.
_Tar._ Who? I, sir?
_Officer._ Yes, you.
_Tar._ Why to prison?
_Officer._ To you I have no account to render. (_To Orgon._) Pray,
sir, recover from your great alarm. We live under a king [Louis XIV.]
who is an enemy to fraud--a king who can read the heart, and whom all
the arts of impostors cannot deceive. His great mind, endowed with
delicate discernment, at all times sees things in their true light....
He annuls, by his sovereign will, the terms of the contract by which
you gave him [Tartuffe] your property. He moreover forgives you this
secret offense in which you were involved by the flight of your
friend. This to reward the zeal which you once showed for him in
maintaining his rights, and to prove that his heart, when it is least
expected, knows how to recompense a good action. Merit with him is
never lost, and he remembers good better than evil.
_Dor._ Heaven be thanked!
_Per._ Ah! I breathe again.
_El._ What a favorable end to our troubles!
_Mar._ Who would have foretold it?
_Org. (to Tartuffe as the Officer leads him off)._ Ah, wretch! now you
are--
Tartuffe thus disposed of, the play promptly ends with a vanishing
glimpse afforded us of a happy marriage in prospect for Valere with the
daughter.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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