y clever," he said, when he returned it;
"how odd it is that it should be so totally unknown."'

'Let us read it to-night,' I said.

'By all means,' said Madame de Tocqueville; 'though we know it by heart
it will be new when read by M. Ampere.' Accordingly Ampere read it to us
after dinner.

'The tradition of the stage,' he said, 'is that Celimene was Moliere's
wife.'

'She is made too young,' said Minnie. 'A girl of twenty has not her wit,
or her knowledge of the world.'

'The change of a word,' said Ampere, 'in two or three places would alter
that. The feeblest characters are as usual the good ones. Philinte and
Eliante.

'Alceste is a grand mixture, perhaps the only one on the French stage, of
the comic and the tragic; for in many of the scenes he rises far above
comedy. His love is real impetuous passion. Talma delighted in playing
him.'

'The desert,' I said, 'into which he retires, was, I suppose, a distant
country-house. Just such a place as Tocqueville.'

'As Tocqueville,' said Beaumont, 'fifty years ago, without roads, ten
days' journey from Paris, and depending for society on Valognes.'

'As Tocqueville,' said Madame de Tocqueville, 'when my mother-in-law
first married. She spent in it a month and could never be induced to see
it again.'

'Whom,' I asked, 'did Celimene marry?'

'Of course,' said Ampere, 'Alceste. Probably five years afterwards. By
that time he must have got tired of his desert and she of her coquetry.'

'We know,' I said, 'that Moliere was always in love with his wife,
notwithstanding her _legerete_. What makes me think the tradition that
Celimene was Mademoiselle[1] Moliere true, is that Moliere was certainly
in love with Celimene. She is made as engaging as possible, and her worst
faults do not rise above foibles. Her satire is good-natured. Arsinoe is
her foil, introduced to show what real evil-speaking is.'

'All the women,' said Ampere, 'are in love with Alceste, and they care
about no one else. Celimene's satire of the others is scarcely
good-natured. It is clear, at least, that they did not think so.'

'If Celimene,' said Minnie, 'became Madame Alceste, he probably made her
life a burthen with his jealousy.'

'Of course he was jealous,' said Madame de Beaumont, 'for he was
violently in love. There can scarcely be violent love without jealousy.'

'At least,' said Madame de Tocqueville, 'till people are married.

'If a lover is cool enough to be without jealousy, he o