Tartuffe Or, the Hypocrite

Excerpt: ... puts his hand on her knee.)   ELMIRE   What's your hand doing there?   TARTUFFE   Feeling your gown; the stuff is very soft.   ELMIRE   Let be, I beg you; I am very ticklish. (She moves her chair away, and Tartuffe brings his nearer.)   TARTUFFE (handling the lace yoke of Elmire's dress)   Dear me how wonderful in workmanship   This lace is! They do marvels, nowadays;   Things of all kinds were never better made.   ELMIRE   Yes, very true. But let us come to business.   They say my husband means to break his word.   And marry Mariane to you. Is't so?   TARTUFFE   He did hint some such thing; but truly, madam,   That's not the happiness I'm yearning after;   I see elsewhere the sweet compelling charms   Of such a joy as fills my every wish.   ELMIRE   You mean you cannot love terrestrial things.   TARTUFFE   The heart within my bosom is not stone.   ELMIRE   I well believe your sighs all tend to Heaven,   And nothing here below can stay your thoughts.   TARTUFFE   Love for the beauty of eternal things   Cannot destroy our love for earthly beauty;   Our mortal senses well may be entranced   By perfect works that Heaven has fashioned here.   Its charms reflected shine in such as you,   And in yourself, its rarest miracles;   It has displayed such marvels in your face,   That eyes are dazed, and hearts are rapt away;   I could not look on you, the perfect creature,   Without admiring Nature's great Creator,   And feeling all my heart inflamed with love   For you, His fairest image of Himself.   At first I trembled lest this secret love   Might be the Evil Spirit's artful snare;   I even schooled my heart to flee your beauty,   Thinking it was a bar to my salvation.   But soon, enlightened, O all lovely one,   I saw how this my passion may be blameless,   How I may make it fit with modesty,   And thus completely yield my heart to it.   'Tis I must own, a great...