MADELEINE B1JART The formal and academic education of Moliere was now com plete, and he was presumably expected to devote himself hence forth to his father's business. The question when exactly Moliere first met Madeleine Bejart, a meeting which was decisive for his career, has been much disputed. The likeliest hypothesis is that he met her in Paris immediately on leaving college. The Bejarts were near neighbours of the Poquelins in the Rue St. Honore. Madeleine was already perhaps an actress, and certainly a sub ject of lively interest to her neighbours. She was 24 years of age. Four years previously she had been the mistress of the brilliant and adventurous Comte de Modene, and she was the mother of a child formally acknowledged by the count. She was clearly in no respect a safe companion for the inheritor of a respectable middle-class tradition ; and, if Moliere were already acquainted with her in 1642, Jean Poquelin would be glad of the very suitable opportunity which soon occurred of sending him away from Paris for a time. In 1642 Louis XIII. went to Nar bonne, and, according to Grimarest, Jean Poquelin arranged for his son to accompany the royal household as valet tapissier and thus fulfil the duties which had been so carefully reserved for him by the arrangement made in 1637. There is no good reason to doubt the statement of Grimarest, and we may, therefore, as sume that Moliere had on this occasion his first view of the provinces where he afterwards wandered as an actor for 13 years. The precautions of Jean Poquelin were in vain. Moliere re turned to Paris probably in the late summer of 1642, where he almost immediately abandoned his father's business, and adopted a theatrical career. On Jan. 6, 1643, he signed a document sur rendering his right to the reversion of the post of valet tapissier secured to him six years previously, and acknowledging the receipt from his father of 63o livres. The money was to be spent for a purpose which for the moment was unspecified, but which was revealed six months later in the celebrated contract signed in the house of the Marts on June 30, 1643, by the founders of the Illustre Theatre, a document which the Comedic Francaise regards as the first of its charters.
The enterprise with which Moliere thus became identified was due to the initiative of the family of which Moliere may hence forth be regarded as an adopted member, and particularly of Madeleine who was the leading spirit in the new company. Her father, Joseph Bejart, an official in the Department of Forestry, had died earlier in the year, leaving a widow with five children and a number of debts. Three of his children, Joseph, Madeleine and Genevieve, joined the new company, and the other members of the troupe were of a similar standing, persons of small degree in the estimation of Jean Poquelin and of a Bohemian inclina tion. Madeleine, who was to be the friend and adviser of Moliere for 3o years, and always the business man of the company, was of an amiable and free disposition—generous, affectionate, loyal in her friendships, able and prudent in the management of her affairs. There is no proof that she was at any time his mistress,
and it is clear, despite everything that has been written to the contrary, that she never attached any importance to that aspect of their relationship—if, indeed, it ever existed. Her affection for Moliere was from the first maternal rather than passionate. This brings us to the most obscure of the many problems which confront the biographer of Moliere, and it may be well to dispose of it as briefly as possible before following him into his theatrical career. On Feb. zo, 1662, nearly 20 years after Moliere first made the acquaintance of Madeleine Bejart, he married a young girl of 19, who subsequently became one of the most celebrated members of his company. The girl, known to her contemporaries as Armande Bejart, was generally said to be the daughter of Madeleine. His enemies went further than that. The anonymous biographer who in 1688 published a life of Armande under the title of La Fameuse Comedienne, insinuates that Madeleine, at the time when Armande was born, was too promiscuous in her loves to be sure of the paternity of the child, and Boulanger de Chalussay, author of Elomire Hypocondre, a libellous comedy on Moliere published in 1669, is still more ex plicit. He definitely suggests that Moliere was the father of Armande. A third witness is Montfleury, a rival actor of the Hotel de Bourgogne, who wrote to Louis XIV. in 1663 and ac cused Moliere of marrying the daughter of his mistress, leaving the king to draw his own conclusions. The king's answer was clear and immediate. The libellous Elomire Hypocondre was sup pressed, and Louis stood godfather to the first child of Moliere and his young wife. No one of credit believed in 1662 that Armande was the daughter of Moliere, but it is equally true that no one, so far as we know, disputed the allegation that she was the daughter of Madeleine. His enemies wished to believe it and his friends did not trouble to deny it. The sequel is all the more surprising. A hundred and fifty-nine years later, in 1821, Beffara, an ex-commissioner of police, searching among the registers of Paris, discovered the marriage certificate of Mo liere in the parish of St. Germain l'Auxerrois. In this certificate Armande is given not as the daughter, but as the sister, of Mad eleine, by Joseph Bejart and Marie Herve. This discovery seemed to dispose once for all of any doubt as to the parentage of Ar mande, and it was reinforced in 1863 by the discovery of a legal document dated March T 0, 1643, in which Marie Herve, the widow of Joseph Bejart, renounced for herself and her children an inheritance which, as we have seen, consisted mostly of liabil ities. In this document reference is made to four children of Joseph and to an "infant not yet baptised," the infant, of course, being Armande, who was thus, in a legal document signed and witnessed 19 years before her marriage, stated to be the sister and not the daughter of Madeleine.