Millamant side by side with Celimene is an example of how far the realistic painting of a character can be carried to win our favour; and of where it falls short.  Celimene is a woman’s mind in movement, armed with an ungovernable wit; with perspicacious clear eyes for the world, and a very distinct knowledge that she belongs to the world, and is most at home in it.  She is attracted to Alceste by her esteem for his honesty; she cannot avoid seeing where the good sense of the man is diseased.

Rousseau, in his letter to D’Alembert on the subject of the Misanthrope, discusses the character of Alceste, as though Moliere had put him forth for an absolute example of misanthropy; whereas Alceste is only a misanthrope of the circle he finds himself placed in:  he has a touching faith in the virtue residing in the country, and a critical love of sweet simpleness.  Nor is he the principal person of the comedy to which he gives a name.  He is only passively comic.  Celimene is the active spirit.  While he is denouncing and railing, the trial is imposed upon her to make the best of him, and control herself, as much as a witty woman, eagerly courted, can do.  By appreciating him she practically confesses her faultiness, and she is better disposed to meet him half-way than he is to bend an inch:  only she is une ame de vingt ans, the world is pleasant, and if the gilded flies of the Court are silly, uncompromising fanatics have their ridiculous features as well.  Can she abandon the life they make agreeable to her, for a man who will not be guided by the common sense of his class; and who insists on plunging into one extreme—­equal to suicide in her eyes—­to avoid another?  That is the comic question of the Misanthrope.  Why will he not continue to mix with the world smoothly, appeased by the flattery of her secret and really sincere preference of him, and taking his revenge in satire of it, as she does from her own not very lofty standard, and will by and by do from his more exalted one?

Celimene is worldliness:  Alceste is unworldliness.  It does not quite imply unselfishness; and that is perceived by her shrewd head.  Still he is a very uncommon figure in her circle, and she esteems him, l’homme aux rubans verts, ’who sometimes diverts but more often horribly vexes her,’ as she can say of him when her satirical tongue is on the run.  Unhappily the soul of truth in him, which wins her esteem, refuses to be tamed, or silent, or unsuspicious, and is the perpetual obstacle to their good accord.  He is that melancholy person, the critic of everybody save himself; intensely sensitive to the faults of others, wounded by them; in love with his own indubitable honesty, and with his ideal of the simpler form of life befitting it:  qualities which constitute the satirist.  He is a Jean Jacques of the Court.  His proposal to Celimene when he pardons her, that she should follow him in flying humankind, and his frenzy of detestation of her at her refusal, are thoroughly in the mood of Jean Jacques.  He is an impracticable creature of a priceless virtue; but Celimene may feel that to fly with him to the desert:  that is from the Court to the country