Less than a year afterwards, Armande was the victim of another scandal, even more painful than the one recorded above. The scoundrelly Guichard, the attempted poisoner of Lulli, of whom we have already spoken, did not confine his attack upon the widow of Molière to repeating the hideous accusation of Montfleury: he calumniated her in the most shameful manner. "The Molière," he wrote, "is infamous both in law (_i.e._ by profession) and in deed. Previous to her marriage, she lived continually in wholesale prostitution; during her married life, continually in public adultery. In short, the Molière is the most infamous of all infamous women." The obvious extravagance of these charges, and the fact that Guichard assailed with equal violence the characters of most of the other witnesses for the prosecution, no doubt robbed them of much of their sting.[38] Nevertheless, they can hardly have failed to occasion the unfortunate woman great annoyance, and, following as they did so closely upon the _affaire_ Lescot, had probably not a little influence upon a step which she took some months later. In May 1677, Armande exchanged the glorious name of Molière for that of Guérin d'Estriché, one of her colleagues of the Théâtre Guénégaud, and, in earlier years, a member of the now defunct Théâtre du Marais. For this second marriage she was severely blamed by her contemporaries,[39] while it is the fashion among modern writers to refer to it as if it had been a species of sacrilege. In this, we are inclined to think, an injustice had been done Armande. Molière, as one of his recent biographers reminds us, was not, during the years which followed his death, regarded as the mighty genius which he is now admitted to have been. Save to a few, like Boileau, who fully comprehended the extent of the loss which literature had sustained, he was merely an amusing actor and an excellent author, whose premature death they deplored, but whom they never dreamed of apotheosizing.[40] As for Armande, she was still young and retained all her fascination; she had not been happy in her first marriage, and may very well have felt that life owed her some compensation. Besides, a second marriage would free her from the attentions of unwelcome admirers, of whom, we may be sure, the luckless Président Lescot was only one among many, and would provide her with a counsellor in business matters whose interests would be identical with her own, and of whom she must have long felt the need.