Molière’s recent plays had raised him to the height of his fame. He suffered from the usual gnat-bites and little stings of jealousy inseparable from literary success. The critics did their spitefullest. The critics, said Molière, were like the children who can whip horses, but cannot drive them. Molière’s life, apart from its work, was more than incomplete; it was a cruel one. The wife he had chosen, Madeleine Béjârt, the daughter of an actress of his company, was a silly, ignorant little coquette, in no way worthy of him, and constantly giving him cause for jealousy. On the production of _Tartufe_, the plaudits rang again and again from floor to ceiling. _Veluti in speculum._ The cap fitted many heads so admirably, so entirely, that the comedy created the author a host of enemies among the bigots and the hypocrites whom his satire so vigorously lashed. Orgon, who has seen at church a young man who conducts himself with such a devout air that he believes in its genuineness, and receives him into his own family, which he neglects in his great admiration for Tartufe. He is on the point even of proposing to give him his daughter in marriage, when, hidden under a table, concealed by a deep, trailing tablecloth, he overhears his protégé’s declaration of passion for Elmire, his own wife. “_Mais, madame, après tout, je ne suis pas un ange_,” says Tartufe. The scene is inimitable, with its crowning picture of Orgon’s face of mingled rage and smiling satisfaction, peering up from the folds of the tablecloth at the discomfited scoundrel, whom he forthwith turns out of the house. Tartufe’s endeavour to circumvent Orgon only brings condign punishment on the impostor, who is sent to expiate his misdeeds in prison. Shallow pretence and profession of piety, shibboleths the world has always with it; and the truth of the picture struck home with such a shock, that the piece ran in perilous risk of being condemned. The king, however, commanded a representation of it at Versailles. “_Le roi le veut_, and unfading laurels crown _Tartufe_.”