ARMANDE: Yes, there was nothing keeping...

ARMANDE: Yes, there was nothing keeping her mind in balance.
She made a show of her obedience.
She barely waited to get his order before her heart,
Right in front of me, leapt to him;
She seemed less to follow the will of a father
Than showing her defiance of the will of a mother.

PHILAMINTE: I’ll show her whose laws respond to the wishes
Handed down by the court of reason,
And who should govern, her mother or her father,
The spirit or the body, form or matter.

ARMANDE: You were owed at least a visit.
That little nobody is quite presumptuous
To want to be your son-in-law despite you.

PHILAMINTE: He hasn’t yet achieved his goal.
I once admired him, when he was courting you,
But by his actions he soon lost my favor.
He knew that, God be thanked, I enjoyed writing,
But never once did he ask to hear my work.

ARMANDE: I wouldn’t stand for it, if I were you,
That Henriette would ever be his bride.
Of course it would be wrong to think that I
Am speaking here as a girl with a personal interest,
Or that the dirty trick he played on me
Created a secret spite deep inside my soul.
The heart is fortified against such blows
Through the solid succor of philosophy,
Which raises us above it all;
But treating you like that, that goes the limit.
It does you honor to deny his wishes,
As he’s the kind of man you should detest
To my own knowledge, just between us two,
He never showed the least respect for you.

PHILAMINTE: The little dolt!

ARMANDE: Whatever fame your merit earned
His tongue was frozen: not a word of praise.

PHILAMINTE: The brute!

ARMANDE: And twenty times I read him new poems,
Fresh from your pen, which he never liked one bit.

PHILAMINTE: The snot-nosed brat!

ARMANDE: Sometimes we’d fight about your writing,
And you wouldn’t believe the foolish things he said…

CLITANDRE: Whoa! Easy now, I beg you. A bit of charity,
Madame, or at least a bit of honesty.
What harm have I done to you? And what is my offense
To fire against me all your eloquence?
To try to destroy me, and take such pains
To make me hateful to people I need?
Come on, speak, why this awful rage?
I’d like Madame to be the judge.

ARMANDE: If I’m enraged, as has been charged,
I’d have no lack of motives.
You’d have deserved it, as first love
Creates such sacred rights on souls
To warrant loss of fortune, and even life
For making love to someone else.
There’s no horror equal to changing vows;
The faithless heart is a moral monster.

CLITANDRE: Madame, do you call it infidelity
To do what you yourself so cruelly demanded?
All I did was obey the rules you set down
And if I offended you, you’re the only cause.
From the first, your charms had all my heart.
Two years it burned with constant heat;
I spared no pains, duties, tributes, services,
All by way of loving sacrifice.
All my ardor, all my care, got me nowhere with you;
I found you opposed to my sweetest entreaties.
What you refused I offered to another.
You see: Madame, is it my fault or yours?
Did my heart run away, or is it you who pushed it?
Did I leave you, or did you send me away?

ARMANDE: Monsieur, do you call it opposing your wishes
To strip them of the parts that are vulgar
And to try to distill them to the purity
In which perfect love consists of beauty alone?
You couldn’t keep your thoughts of me
Free and clear of the commerce of the senses.
And you had no taste for the sweetest appeal
Of the union of hearts without bodies.
You could only pine with a love that was gross;
With all the appurtenances of the union of matter;
And, to feed the fires ignited in you,
We’d need a marriage, and all that ensues.
Ah! What strange love! And how far the beautiful spirits
Are from burning with these earthly fires!
The senses have no part in all their loves,
And their loving fire wants to marry only their hearts;
It skips all the rest as a shameful thing.
It’s a flame pure and simple, like celestial fire;
The sighs it creates are all chaste,
And there’s no inclination to dirty desires.
Nothing impure is mixed in its conduct;
You love out of love, and nothing else.
The ecstasy is in and of the mind,
And you never even notice that you have a body.

CLITANDRE: I’ve noticed that, madame, unfortunately,
I have, you’ll pardon the expression, a body as well as a soul,
I feel it hanging on so, I can’t just let it go;
I can’t get the hang of that sort of detachment;
Heaven has denied me your philosophy,
So my body and soul are always walking hand in hand.
There’s nothing more lovely, as you have said,
Than those purified vows that hitch up two minds,
Those weddings of hearts and those sweet tender thoughts
So thoroughly stripped of all truck with the senses;
But that sort of love is too subtle for me;
I am a bit gross, as you have accused me;
I love with my whole self, and when it is returned
I want, I do confess, the entire person.
It’s nothing to be ashamed of;
And, no offense to your noble sentiments,
I see in the world people fit in my pattern,
And that marriage is still in fashion.
And passes for a relationship that’s decent and pleasant.
I wanted to be your husband,
But the liberty of harboring such a thought
Shouldn’t have given you leave to act offended.

ARMANDE: Well, monsieur, well, since without listening to me
Your bestial feelings must be satisfied;
Since, to bind you to faithful love
You must have ties of flesh, carnal chains,
If my mother agrees, I’ve made up my mind
To consent to give you the thing in question.

CLITANDRE: It’s too late, madame, another has taken the position;
It would be very bad form to repay her this way,
To abuse the safe harbor and wound the goodness
Where I fled to escape from your cruelty.

PHILAMINTE: Really, monsieur, did you count on my vote
When you pledged yourself to this other marriage?
And amidst your imaginings, do you know, if you please,
That I have another groom in mind for Henriette?

CLITANDRE: Oh! Madame, have a look at your choice, I beg you;
Expose me to less ignominy,
And don’t condemn me to the shameful fate
Of becoming the rival of Trippeldolt.
The love of great minds, which in your book leaves me out,
Couldn’t set me up against a less worthy adversary.
There are some (well, I’d say many) whom the wretched taste of today
Has given credit for being superior minds;
But Monsieur Trippeldolt hasn’t managed to fool anyone;
They all see through the scribbling he bestows on us.
Outside these walls he’s valued at his true worth.
What never fails to floor me is seeing you
Going in ecstasies over balderdash
That you’d deny was yours if you’d written it yourself.

PHILAMINTE: If you judge him so differently from us,
It’s because we see him with different eyes than you.

Citation: Moliere, Translated by Jonathan Marks, The Learned Women, Public domain.
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