ymen even went so far as to write treatises which they
hoped would counteract the effects of the dramatist's works. For their
own sakes we may hope that they did not succeed. The King was not strong
enough to withstand the influence of the clergy, and did not venture at
once to remove the interdict. The relaxation did not take place until
five years later. But it was at this time that Louis XIV bestowed on
Moliere's company the name of "Comediens du Roi"; and the troop was
subsidied by a yearly pension of seven thousand livres.

_Don Juan ou le Festin de Pierre_, a piece in which a nobleman--who is a
libertine as well as a sceptic and a hypocrite--is brought upon the
stage, was first acted in February, 1665, and raised such an outcry that
it was also forbidden to be played. In spite of failing health and
serious depression of spirits, Moliere continued to produce play after
play; and some of his best and most admired were the fruits of his most
unhappy moments.

Early in 1662 he had married Armande Bejart, the youngest sister of
Madeleine Bejart, who was about twenty years younger than her husband.
It was apparently a marriage of mutual affection, but it can hardly be
said to have been a fortunate one for either. Armande loved admiration
from whatever source, and indulged in pleasures which her husband could
not share. The breach between them gradually widened, and it was not
till 1671 that their friends brought about a better understanding
between them. Meanwhile, in September, 1665, appeared _L'Amour Medecin_,
a comedy in three acts, in which a lover appears disguised as a
physician, to cure the object of his love, pretends to be dumb, and in
which Moliere makes his first serious attack against the doctors.

It was acted only a few times when the theatre had to be closed on
account of the author's illness; and the death of Anne of Austria, in
the spring of 1666, delayed its reopening until June of that year. It
was then that the _Misanthrope_ was introduced to the public--a play
which has been ranked as high in comedy as _Athalie_ is ranked in French
tragedy. The circumstances under which it was written were such as might
almost warrant us in calling it a tragedy; for the great satirist, who
had spent his life in copying the eccentricities of others, had now
employed the season of his illness to commit to paper a drama in which
he was himself the principal actor. The misanthrope Alceste loves the
coquette Celimene,