Ampere.' Accordingly Ampere read it to us
after dinner.
'The tradition of the stage,' he said, 'is that Celimene was Moliere's
wife.'
'She is made too young,' said Minnie. 'A girl of twenty has not her wit,
or her knowledge of the world.'
'The change of a word,' said Ampere, 'in two or three places would alter
that. The feeblest characters are as usual the good ones. Philinte and
Eliante.
'Alceste is a grand mixture, perhaps the only one on the French stage, of
the comic and the tragic; for in many of the scenes he rises far above
comedy. His love is real impetuous passion. Talma delighted in playing
him.'
'The desert,' I said, 'into which he retires, was, I suppose, a distant
country-house. Just such a place as Tocqueville.'
'As Tocqueville,' said Beaumont, 'fifty years ago, without roads, ten
days' journey from Paris, and depending for society on Valognes.'
'As Tocqueville,' said Madame de Tocqueville, 'when my mother-in-law
first married. She spent in it a month and could never be induced to see
it again.'
'Whom,' I asked, 'did Celimene marry?'
'Of course,' said Ampere, 'Alceste. Probably five years afterwards.
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