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Orgon, Cléante. |
| Cléante |
Brother, she ridicules you to your face;
And I, though I don’t want to make you angry,
Must tell you candidly that she’s quite right.
Was such infatuation ever heard of?
And can a man today have charms to make you
Forget all else, relieve his poverty,
Give him a home, and then … ?
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| Orgon |
Stop there, good brother,
You do not know the man you’re speaking of.
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| Cléante |
Since you will have it so, I do not know him;
But after all, to tell what sort of man
He is …
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| Orgon |
Dear brother, you’d be charmed to know him;
Your raptures over him would have no end.
He is a man … who … ah! … in fact … a man
Whoever does his will, knows perfect peace,
And counts the whole world else, as so much dung.
His converse has transformed me quite; he weans
My heart from every friendship, teaches me
To have no love for anything on earth;
And I could see my brother, children, mother,
And wife, all die, and never care—a snap.
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| Cléante |
Your feelings are humane, I must say, brother!
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| Orgon |
Ah! If you’d seen him, as I saw him first,
You would have loved him just as much as I.
He came to church each day, with contrite mien,
Kneeled, on both knees, right opposite my place,
And drew the eyes of all the congregation,
To watch the fervour of his prayers to heaven;
With deep-drawn sighs and great ejaculations,
He humbly kissed the earth at every moment;
And when I left the church, he ran before me
To give me holy water at the door.
I learned his poverty, and who he was,
By questioning his servant, who is like him,
And gave him gifts; but in his modesty
He always wanted to return a part.
“It is too much,” he’d say, “too much by half;
I am not worthy of your pity.” Then,
When I refused to take it back, he’d go,
Before my eyes, and give it to the poor.
At length heaven bade me take him to my home,
And since that day, all seems to prosper here.
He censures everything, and for my sake
He even takes great interest in my wife;
He lets me know who ogles her, and seems
Six times as jealous as I am myself.
You’d not believe how far his zeal can go:
He calls himself a sinner just for trifles;
The merest nothing is enough to shock him;
So much so, that the other day I heard him
Accuse himself for having, while at prayer,
In too much anger caught and killed a flea.
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| Cléante |
Zounds, brother, you are mad, I think! Or else
You’re making sport of me, with such a speech.
What are you driving at with all this nonsense … ?
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| Orgon |
Brother, your language smacks of atheism;
And I suspect your soul’s a little tainted
Therewith. I’ve preached to you a score of times
That you’ll draw down some judgment on your head.
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| Cléante |
That is the usual strain of all your kind;
They must have everyone as blind as they.
They call you atheist if you have good eyes;
And if you don’t adore their vain grimaces,
You’ve neither faith nor care for sacred things.
No, no; such talk can’t frighten me; I know
What I am saying; heaven sees my heart.
We’re not the dupes of all your canting mummers;
There are false heroes—and false devotees;
And as true heroes never are the ones
Who make much noise about their deeds of honour,
Just so true devotees, whom we should follow,
Are not the ones who make so much vain show.
What! Will you find no difference between
Hypocrisy and genuine devoutness?
And will you treat them both alike, and pay
The selfsame honour both to masks and faces
Set artifice beside sincerity,
Confuse the semblance with reality,
Esteem a phantom like a living person,
And counterfeit as good as honest coin?
Men, for the most part, are strange creatures, truly!
You never find them keep the golden mean;
The limits of good sense, too narrow for them,
Must always be passed by, in each direction;
They often spoil the noblest things, because
They go too far, and push them to extremes.
I merely say this by the way, good brother.
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| Orgon |
You are the sole expounder of the doctrine;
Wisdom shall die with you, no doubt, good brother,
You are the only wise, the sole enlightened,
The oracle, the Cato, of our age.
All men, compared to you, are downright fools.
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| Cléante |
I’m not the sole expounder of the doctrine,
And wisdom shall not die with me, good brother.
But this I know, though it be all my knowledge,
That there’s a difference ’twixt false and true.
And as I find no kind of hero more
To be admired than men of true religion,
Nothing more noble or more beautiful
Than is the holy zeal of true devoutness;
Just so
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