LISETTE. 
He bien!  Mademoiselle, etes-vous instruite?  A qui vous marie-t-on?

ANGELIQUE. 
A lui, ma chere Lisette, a lui-meme, et je l’attends.

LISETTE. 
A lui, dites-vous?  Et quel est donc cet homme qui s’appelle lui par
excellence?  Est-ce qu’il est ici?

A charming bit of dialogue, and but another proof of Marivaux’s insight into a young girl’s heart.  What is her chagrin, therefore, when he presents his valet, Frontin, disguised as the rich Parisian!  She refuses his offer, and in desperation is about to consent to marry the peasant farmer Blaise, who had long sighed for the five thousand livres which are her marriage portion.  This character is the amusing factor of the play, Lucidor urges him to win her hand, but offers, as a compensation, if he loses, twelve thousand livres.  This, of course, is sufficient to turn the tide and to enlist the interest of Blaise to fail, if possible, in his forced suit of Angelique.  The trial proves Angelique superior to money considerations, and love triumphs.

Why does the money question occupy so important a place in the works of Marivaux?  Is it not, as some one has suggested, because in his own life he constantly felt the lack of it?  Lesage’s Turcaret and Sedaine’s le Philosophe sans le savoir indicate, likewise, the new importance of wealth in the eighteenth century, which Marivaux could not have failed to notice or to incorporate in his works.

I cannot pass over in silence la Mere confidente, which, as Sainte-Beuve claims, is of an “ordre a part” among his comedies, and in which “il a touche des cordes plus franches, plus sensibles et d’une nature meilleure."[122] Like so many of his best plays, it was first presented at the Comedie-Italienne, May 9, 1735.  This too was one of the plays, the reception of which was favorable.  The lesson that it intended to teach, for it has a lesson, was one that we have already seen emphasized, by Marivaux, the rights of children, the duty of parents to respect them, and the advisability of gaining their love and confidence.

In Madame Argante of la Mere confidente we have the counterpart of the arrogant mother of the same name of les Fausses Confidences, indifferent to her daughter’s real welfare, but powerless to control her will.  Madame Argante of la Mere confidente believes in gentle government by love.  Her daughter Angelique is a charming girl, anxious to do the right, but deeply in love with, a young man, Dorante, unknown to her mother, and without fortune.  Madame Argante has already made her choice of an older man, Ergaste, for whose wealth and respectability she has a natural admiration, but, with her characteristic kindliness, determines not to force her choice upon her daughter.  “Vous ne l’epouserez pas malgre vous, ma chere enfant,” she says, meeting the objection of Angelique, and then, seeing that there is some secret trouble, she seeks in the most graceful, tactful way to learn the truth.