But great as were the dramatic talents of Armande Béjart, they count for comparatively little in the curiosity which her name arouses. It is her moral character, her private life, her relations with her famous husband, which have exercised the minds of the biographers of Molière for upwards of two centuries. On these matters even more ink has been expended than on the vexed question of her birth, and with far less satisfactory results. To the great majority of writers Armande was an unworthy wife, who repaid the kindness and affection lavished upon her by the great man whose name she bore with ingratitude and contumely; while there are not wanting those who go so far as to accuse her of the grossest infidelity, and to assert that her misconduct was in some measure responsible for the dramatist's untimely death. When, however, we come to sift the evidence against her, we shall find that these extreme views are based on very insufficient or very suspicious testimony, and that one thing only has been clearly established, namely, that she rendered Molière's later years very unhappy. But what was the true cause of his unhappiness, whether occasioned by actual misconduct on the part of Armande, or merely by an ever present dread that such must be the inevitable termination of one or other of the very imprudent flirtations in which she appears to have been continually indulging, is very difficult, nay, well-nigh impossible, to determine. It has always been a favourite practice with biographers of Molière and historians of the French theatre to affect to discover more or less direct allusions to the dramatist's relations with his wife in several of his plays: the _École des femmes_, the _Impromptu de Versailles_, the _Mariage forcé_, _George Dandin_, and, of course, the _Misanthrope_. That this is true of the last-named play cannot, we think, be disputed; but in regard to the others, we are inclined to believe that the significance of the passages and episodes on which their contention rests have been a good deal exaggerated.