MONSIEUR JOURDAIN: Quiet, wife, I see what you are up to. MADAME JOURDAIN: Aren't we both descended from good bourgeois families? MONSIEUR JOURDAIN: There's that hateful word! MADAME JOURDAIN: And wasn't your father a merchant just like mine? MONSIEUR JOURDAIN: Plague take the woman! She never fails to do this! If your father was a merchant, so much the worse for him! But, as for mine, those who say that are misinformed. All that I have to say to you is, that I want a gentleman for a son-in-law. MADAME JOURDAIN: It's necessary for your daughter to have a husband who is worthy of her, and it's better for her to have an honest rich man who is well made than an impoverished gentleman who is badly built. NICOLE: That's true. We have the son of a gentleman in our village who is the most ill formed and the greatest fool I have ever seen. MONSIEUR JOURDAIN: Hold your impertinent tongue! You always butt into the conversation. I have enough money for my daughter, I need only honor, and I want to make her a marchioness. MADAME JOURDAIN: A marchioness? MONSIEUR JOURDAIN: Yes, marchioness. MADAME JOURDAIN: Alas! God save me from it! MONSIEUR JOURDAIN: It's a thing I have resolved. MADAME JOURDAIN: As for me, it's a thing I'll never consent to. Marriages above one's station are always subject to great inconveniences. I have absolutely no wish for a son-in-law who can reproach her parents to my daughter, and I don't want her to have children who will be ashamed to call me their grandmother. If she arrives to visit me in the equipage of a great lady and if she fails, by mischance, to greet someone of the neighborhood, they wouldn't fail immediately to say a hundred stupidities. "Do you see," they would say, "this madam marchioness who gives herself such glorious airs? It's the daughter of Monsieur Jourdain, who was all too glad, when she was little, to play house with us; she's not always been so haughty as she now is; and her two grandfathers sold cloth near St. Innocent's Gate. They amassed wealth for their children, they're paying dearly perhaps for it now in the other world, and one can scarcely get that rich by being honest." I certainly don't want all that gossip, and I want, in a word, a man who will be obliged to me for my daughter and to whom I can say, "Sit down there, my son-in-law, and have dinner with me." MONSIEUR JOURDAIN: Surely those are the sentiments of a little spirit, to want to remain always in a base condition. Don't talk back to me: my daughter will be a marchioness in spite of everyone. And, if you make me angrier, I'll make a duchess of her. MADAME JOURDAIN: Cleonte, don't lose courage yet. Follow me, my daughter, and tell your father resolutely that, if you can't have him, you don't want to marry anyone. ACT THREE SCENE XIII (Cleonte, Covielle) COVIELLE: You've made a fine business, with your pretty sentiments. CLEONTE: What do you want? I have a scruple about that which precedent cannot conquer.