five acts, was
played in November in presence of the great Conde. In 1665 Moliere's
company was named the servants of the King; two years later a verbal
permission was granted for the public performance of the play. It
appeared under the title of _L'Imposteur_; the victory seemed won,
when again, and without delay, the blow fell; by order of the President,
M. de Lamoignon, the theatre was closed. Moliere bore up courageously.
The King was besieging Lille; Moliere despatched two of his comrades
to the camp, declaring that if the Tartufes of France should carry
all before them he must cease to write. The King was friendly, but
the Archbishop fulminated threats of excommunication against any one
who should even read the play. At length in 1669, when circumstances
were more favourable, Louis XIV. granted the desired permission; in
its proper name Moliere's play obtained complete freedom. Bourdaloue
might still pronounce condemnation; Bossuet might draw terrible
morals from the author's sudden death; an actor, armed with the sword
of the comic spirit, had proved victorious. And yet the theologians
were not wholly wrong; the tendency of Moliere's teaching, like that
of Rabelais and like that of Montaigne, is to detach morals from
religion, to vindicate whatever is natural, to regard good sense and
good feeling as sufficient guides of conduct.

There is an accent of indignation in the play; the follies of men
and women may be subjects of sport; base egoism assuming the garb
of religion deserves a lash that draws the blood. Is it no act of
natural piety to defend the household against the designs of greedy
and sensual imposture; no service to society to quicken the
penetration of those who may be made the dupes of selfish craft? While
Organ and his mother are besotted by the gross pretensions of the
hypocrite, while the young people contend for the honest joy of life,
the voice of philosophic wisdom is heard through the sagacious Cleante,
and that of frank good sense through the waiting-maid, Dorine.
Suddenly a providence, not divine but human, intervenes in the
representative of the monarch and the law, and the criminal at the
moment of triumph is captured in his own snare.

When the affair of _Tartufe_ was in its first tangle, Moliere produced
a kind of dramatic counterpart--_Don Juan, ou le Festin de Pierre_
(1665). In Don Juan--whose valet Sganarelle is the faithful critic
of his master--the dramatist presented one whose