Yet more: men who, in their turn, write letters to the descendant of Louis XIV., in order to stop the heretics, corrupters of morals, abominable men of the nineteenth century from having their works played, grovel on their knees before the illustrious dead; they search his works for the slenderest motives he might have had or did not have, in writing them; they poke about to discover what he could have meant by such and such a thing, when he was merely giving to the world the fruits of such inspiration as only genius possesses; they even indulge in profound researches concerning the man who furnished the type for _Tartuffe_ and into the circumstances which gave him the name of _Tartuffe_ (so admirably appropriate to that personage, that it has become not only the name of a man, but the name of _men._) "We have pointed out where Molière got his model; it now remains to us to discuss the origin of the title of his play. To trace the derivation of a word might seem going into unnecessary detail in any other case; _but nothing which concerns the masterpiece of our stage should be devoid of interest._ Several commentators, among others Bret, have contended that Molière, busy over the work he was meditating, one day happened to be at the house of the Papal Nuncio where many saintly persons were gathered. A truffle-seller came to the door and the smell of his wares wafted in, whereupon the sanctimonious contrite expression on the faces of the courtiers of the ambassador of Rome lit up with animation, 'TARTUFOLI, _Signor Nunzio!_ TARTUFOLI!' they exclaimed, pointing out the best to him. According to this version, it was the word _tartufoli_, pronounced with earthly sensuality by the lips of mystics, which suggested to Molière the name of his impostor. We were the first to dispute that fable and we quote below the opinion of one of the most distinguished of literary men, who did us the honour of adopting our opinion. "In the time of Molière, the word _truffer_ was generally used for tromper (_i.e._ to deceive), from which the word _truffe_ was taken, a word eminently suitable to the kind of eatable it describes, because of the difficulty there is in finding it. Now, it is quite certain that, formerly, people used the words _truffe_ and _tartuffe_ indiscriminately, for we find it in an old French translation of the treatise by Platina, entitled _De konestâ voluptate_, printed in Paris in 1505, and quoted by le Duchat, in his edition of Méntage's _Dictionnaire Étymologique._ One of the chapters in Book IX. of this treatise is entitled, _Des truffes ou tartuffes_, and as le Duchat and other etymologists look upon the word _truffe_ as derived from _truffer_, it is probable that people said _tartuffe_ for _truffe_ in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, just as they could equally say _tartuffer_ for _truffer_."