Armande's death certificate naturally contained no mention of the great man whose name she had once borne and whose works she had both inspired and interpreted. Nevertheless, posterity has decided to ignore her connection with the worthy Guérin, and, for us, she must always remain the "Wife of Molière." II MARIE DE CHAMPMESLÉ "The name of the Champmeslé is inseparable from both the immortality and the frailties of the life of Racine."[42] Marie Desmares, the actress of whom these words were written, was born at Rouen, the birthplace of the two Corneilles and other prominent figures in the dramatic history of the seventeenth century, in February 1642. Her father, Guillaume Desmares, though not, as several biographical dictionaries and works of reference state, the son of a President of the Parliament of Normandy, appears to have been a person of some social position, as his name is preceded by a _Monsieur_, a title which in those days was generally confined to the _noblesse_ and professional classes, while her mother, Marie Marc, was also respectably connected, one of her brothers being an official of the Parliament. Of Marie's childhood and youth we know scarcely anything. In 1653 she lost her father, very probably in an epidemic which broke out at Rouen that year; and, not long afterwards, her mother married again, her second husband being one Antoine La Guérault or Laguérault, a well-to-do landed proprietor in the neighbourhood. The girl and her brother Nicolas, who was also to achieve distinction on the boards, seem to have received a fair education; but, either because she was unhappy in the home of her stepfather, or because she saw but little chance of the indispensable _dot_ being forthcoming, at the age of twenty-three, Marie decided to tempt fortune on the stage. At this period, there was no regular theatre at Rouen; indeed, buildings reserved exclusively for dramatic performances were hardly known outside the capital. There were, however, two large tennis-courts, one situated in the Rue des Charrettes, the other in the Rue Saint-Éloi, the proprietors of which were always ready, at a few hours' notice, to convert them into temples of Thespis for the accommodation of any travelling company which happened to be visiting the town. M. Noury, the lady's latest biographer, thinks that it was in the second of these, called the _Feu de Paume des Braques_, where Molière's troupe had played in 1643, and again in 1658, that Marie Desmares made her _début_.