que je suis un bel esprit; mais si on m’apprenait que mes ecrits eussent corrige quelques vices, ou seulement quelque vicieux, je serais vraiment sensible a cet eloge."[78] However, he was tolerant, as one who knows the weaknesses that flesh is heir to, and, whether his attack was aimed at the petty foibles or graver weaknesses of the individual, coquetry, ambition, avarice, hypocrisy, vanity, and the like, or at certain social evils, the reprimand was always given with a tone of moderation.

Throughout his writings Marivaux showed himself heartily opposed to the loose ideas then prevalent upon the marriage relation, and, as though to emphasize his convictions in this matter, his comedies all end with “the triumph of love in marriage.”  In certain ones, as for example le Petit Maitre corrige (acte I, scene XII) and l’Heritier de Village (scene II), this social evil is more directly attacked, as it is also in several portions of the Spectateur francais, and particularly in the sixteenth feuille.

He was likewise an opponent of the strained relations that existed in most families between parents and children.  Instead of the deplorable custom of making of each household a miniature court, in which the parents reigned over timid but unwilling subjects, he advocated intimate and loving relations.  “Voulez-vous faire d’honnetes gens de vos enfants?  Ne soyez que leur pere, et non pas leur juge et leur tyran.  Et qu’est-ce que c’est qu’etre leur pere? c’est leur persuader que vous les aimez.  Cette persuasion-la commence par vous gagner leur coeur.  Nous aimons toujours ceux dont nous sommes surs d’etre aimes."[79]

Was it not Mme. de Lambert, from whom Marivaux gained many of his ideas, who had said:  “Les enfants aiment a etre traites en personnes raisonnables.  Il faut entretenir en eux cette espece de fierte, et s’en servir comme d’un moyen pour les conduire ou l’on veut”?  Where is there a more charming character than that of la Mere confidente, willing to sacrifice the dreaded name of mother in order to become her daughter’s friend and confidante, or than the indulgent father of le Jeu de l’Amour et du Hasard?  Such examples indicate the kindly philosophy that permeates his writings.

Marivaux has been said to have held revolutionary ideas, and, in some degree, to have forecast the terrible rending of society of 1789.  While the unqualified statement may give rise to a false conception, and tend to exaggerate the part that he played in the progress of social emancipation, it is not difficult to discover in him the sentiments, if not of a revolutionist,[80] at least of a reformer.  The prejudice of birth is attacked in the comedies les Fausses Confidences, le Prejuge vaincu, la Double Inconstance (acte III, scene IV), and in many a passage in other plays, le Denoument imprevu, l’Heritier de Village, etc., as well as in his novels and other writings, while the comedy l’Ile des Esclaves is a social satire on the abuses of the day.  The increasing importance and the social elevation of servants in his drama is but another tendency along the same line.