[Footnote 39: The king often danced in these ballets, till struck by some lines in the "Britannicus" of Racine, in allusion to Nero's public exhibitions of himself, he entirely gave up the practice; and soon after the appearing in them fell into such discredit, that, when Lulli took a part in that appended to the "Bourgeois Gentilhomme," the secretaries of the king refused to receive him among them on this account, and the king was obliged to interpose to bring them to reason.] [Footnote 40: The following is the story of Ninon de l'Enclos and the "Tartuffe":--When Gourville, the vicissitudes of whose life were many and great, was, in 1661, in danger of being hanged, and was indeed hanged in effigy, he left two caskets full of money, one with Ninon, the other with a priest of his acquaintance, who affected great devotion. On his return, Ninon restored him his casket, and the value of money being increased, he was richer than before. He offered this surplus to his friend; but she replied by threatening to throw the money out of window, if he said a word more on the subject. The priest acted in a different way: he said he had employed the sum deposited with him in pious works, having preferred the good of Gourville's soul to pelf, which might have occasioned his perdition. This story Ninon used to tell with such clever mimicry of the false devotee, that Molière declared he owed his best inspiration to her.] [Footnote 41: Preface to "Tartuffe."] [Footnote 42: Schlegel.] [Footnote 43: There are some excellent observations on the moral of the "Tartuffe" in Sir Walter Scott's article on Molière, published in the seventeenth vol. of his prose works, in answer to Bourdaloue's violent philippic against this play. Scott argues with force and justice on the propriety of affixing the stigma of ridicule to the most hateful vice ever nurtured in the human heart--the assumption of the appearance of religion for worldly and wicked purposes; and he represents also the utility of the picture drawn to arrest in his course one in danger of incurring the sin of spiritual pride, by showing him that the fairest professions and strictest observances may be consistent with the foulest purposes. "The case of the 'Tartuffe,'" Sir Walter Scott thus sums up in his argument, "is that of a vilely wicked man, rendering the profession of religion hateful by abusing it for the worst purposes: and if such characters occurred, as there is little reason to doubt, in the time and court of Louis XIV., we can see no reason against their being gibbeted in effigy. The poet himself is at pains to show that he draws the true line of distinction between the hypocrite and the truly religious man. When the duped _Orgon_, astonished at the discovery of _Tartuffe_'s villainy, expresses himself doubtful of the existence of real worth _Cléante_ replies to him, with his usual sense and moderation: