MADAME PERNELLE. I can never believe, my son, that he would commit
so base an action.

ORG. What?

PER. Good people are always subject to envy.

ORG. What do you mean, mother?

PER. That you live after a strange sort here, and that I am but too
well aware of the ill will they all bear him.

ORG. What has this ill will to do with what I have just told you?

PER. I have told it you a hundred times when you were young, that
in this world virtue is ever liable to persecution, and that,
although the envious die, envy never dies.

ORG. But what has this to do with what has happened to-day?

PER. They have concocted a hundred foolish stories against him.

ORG. I have already told you that I saw it all myself.

PER. The malice of evil-disposed persons is very great.

ORG. You would make me swear, mother! I tell you that I saw his
audacious attempt with my own eyes.

PER. Evil tongues have always some venom to pour forth; and here
below, there is nothing proof against them.

ORG. You are maintaining a very senseless argument. I saw it, I
tell you,--saw it with my own eyes! what you can call s-a-w, saw!
Must I din it over and over into your ears, and shout as loud as
half a dozen people?

PER. Gracious goodness! appearances often deceive us! We must not
always judge by what we see.

ORG. I shall go mad!

PER. We are by nature prone to judge wrongly, and good is often
mistaken for evil.

ORG. I ought to look upon his desire of seducing my wife as
charitable?

PER. You ought to have good reasons before you accuse another, and
you should have waited till you were quite sure of the fact.

ORG. Heaven save the mark! how could I be more sure? I suppose,
mother, I ought to have waited till--you will make me say something
foolish.

PER. In short, his soul is possessed with too pure a zeal; and I
cannot possibly conceive that he would think of attempting what you
accuse him of.

ORG. If you were not my mother, I really don't know what I might
now say to you, you make me so savage.

The short remainder of the scene has for its important idea, the
suggestion that under the existing circumstances some sort of peace
ought to be patched up between Orgon and Tartuffe. Meantime one LOYAL is
observed coming, whereupon the four