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.