mysteries. Useful professions are clearly meant for the public, but those whose utility is more dubious can only justify their existence by assuming that the public is meant for them: now, this is just the illusion that lies at the root of solemnity. Almost everything comic in Molière's doctors comes from this source. They treat the patient as though he had been made for the doctors, and nature herself as an appendage to medicine.
Another form of this comic rigidity is what may be called professional callousness. The comic character is so tightly jammed into the rigid frame of his functions that he has no room to move or to be moved like other men. Only call to mind the answer Isabelle receives from Perrin Dandin, the judge, when she asks him how he can bear to look on when the poor wretches are being tortured:
Bah ! cela fait toujours passer une heure ou deux.[1]
Does not Tartuffe also manifest a sort of professional callousness when he says—it is true, by the mouth of Orgon:
- ↑ Bah! it always helps to while away an hour or two.
