By appreciating him she practically confesses her
faultiness, and she is better disposed to meet him half .way than he is
to bend an inch: only she is une ame de vingt ans, the world is pleasant,
and if the gilded flies of the Court are silly, uncompromising fanatics
have their ridiculous features as well. Can she abandon the life they
make agreeable to her, for a man who will not be guided by the common
sense of his class; and who insists on plunging into one extreme--equal
to suicide in her eyes--to avoid another? That is the comic question of
the Misanthrope. Why will he not continue to mix with the world smoothly,
appeased by the flattery of her secret and really sincere preference of
him, and taking his revenge in satire of it, as she does from her own not
very lofty standard, and will by and by do from his more exalted one?
Celimene is worldliness: Alceste is unworldliness. It does not quite
imply unselfishness; and that is perceived by her shrewd head. Still he
is a very uncommon figure in her circle, and she esteems him, l'homme aux
rubans verts, 'who sometimes diverts but more often horribly vexes her,'
as she can say of him when her satirical tongue is on the run.
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