MOLIERE. _Les Precieuses Ridicules._


It would be a little hard to blame the rector of Pennicote that in the
course of looking at things from every point of view, he looked at
Gwendolen as a girl likely to make a brilliant marriage. Why should he be
expected to differ from his contemporaries in this matter, and wish his
niece a worse end of her charming maidenhood than they would approve as
the best possible? It is rather to be set down to his credit that his
feelings on the subject were entirely good-natured. And in considering the
relation of means to ends, it would have been mere folly to have been
guided by the exceptional and idyllic--to have recommended that Gwendolen
should wear a gown as shabby as Griselda's in order that a marquis might
fall in love with her, or to have insisted that since a fair maiden was to
be sought, she should keep herself out of the way. Mr. Gascoigne's
calculations were of the kind called rational, and he did not even think
of getting a too frisky horse in order that Gwendolen might be threatened
with an accident and be rescued by a man of property. He wished his niece
well, and he meant her to be seen to advantage in the best society of the
neighborhood.

Her uncle's intention fell in perfectly with Gwendolen's own wishes. But
let no one suppose that she also contemplated a brilliant marriage as the
direct end of her witching the world with her grace on horseback, or with
any other accomplishment. That she was to be married some time or other
she would have felt obliged to admit; and that her marriage would not be
of a middling kind, such as most girls were contented with, she felt
quietly, unargumentatively sure. But her thoughts never dwelt on marriage
as the fulfillment of her ambition; the dramas in which she imagined
herself a heroine were not wrought up to that close. To be very much sued