Note 173 — Chapter II · 1635 to 1642.

If it is true, as several contemporaries assure us, and among others, Segrais, that Montausier had served as a model for the Misanthrope, it was because Molière, who did not search things closely, has taken a difficult virtue for reality. But Molière told his secret to no one, and probably there is no secret here except that of genius. The Misanthrope is not the copy of any original. Many originals have been before the great observer, and furnished him with a thousand particular traits; but the entire and complete character of the Misanthrope is his own creation.