furnished him, will last as long as it shall endure.

Though an habitual valetudinarian, Molière relied almost wholly on the
temperance of his diet for the reestablishment of his health. "What use
do you make of your physician?" said the king to him one day. "We chat
together, Sire," said the poet. "He gives me his prescriptions; I never
follow them; and so I get well."

In Molière's time, the profession of a comedian was but lightly esteemed
in France at this period. Molière experienced the inconveniences
resulting from this circumstance, even after his splendid literary career
had given him undoubted claims to consideration. Most of our readers no
doubt, are acquainted with the anecdote of Belloc, an agreeable poet of
the court, who, on hearing one of the servants in the royal household
refuse to aid the author of the _Tartuffe_ in making the king's bed,
courteously requested "the poet to accept his services for that purpose."
Madame Campan's anecdote of a similar courtesy, on the part of Louis the
Fourteenth, is also well known; who, when several of these functionaries
refused to sit at table with the comedian, kindly invited him to sit down
with him, and, calling in some of his principal courtiers, remarked that
"he had requested the pleasure of Molière's company at his own table, as
it was not thought quite good enough for his officers." This rebuke had
the desired effect.

Molière died in 1673, he had been long affected by a pulmonary complaint,
and it was only by severe temperance that he was enabled to preserve even
a moderate degree of health. At the commencement of the year, his malady
sensibly increased. At this very season, he composed his _Malade
Imaginaire_; the most whimsical, and perhaps the most amusing of the
compositions, in which he has indulged his raillery against the faculty.