High as three apples, but already solid on his legs, Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, who has been wearing breeches and doublet since he was five years old, trots behind his grandfather towards the Pont-Neuf where there is always great press.
In the midst of elixir vendors, flowergirls and tooth-pullers, open-air acrobats harangue the crowd by indulging in a thousand antics.
So that he can see the jugglers better, Louis Cressé perches his grandson on his shoulders and laughs heartily when the little fellow, at the sight of a floured face, with delight, pulls his ears.
To discover
Discover the “Best of the Goncourt Prize” collection
Read alsoMichel De Jaeghere: “
Tartuffe is still with us
”
On the way back, Jean-Baptiste strives to imitate the grimaces of pranksters and when he finds himself in rue Saint-Honoré in front of the corner post of his father's house, he never fails to make some reverence to the seven sculpted monkeys which decorate it.
It is also called the Monkey Pavilion.
Jean-Baptiste was born there and was baptized in the Saint-Eustache church on January 15, 1622.
The whole family had gathered for the ceremony.
Upholsterers from father to son, the Poquelins and the Cressés live around the same parish between the hubbub of Les Halles and the Palais Royal.
At the Louvre, Louis XIII decided to reign after relegating his mother to the Château de Blois.
Armand du Plessis, who collaborated with Concini, the favorite of Marie de Medici who was assassinated in 1617, is still in disgrace, but the king has obtained the cardinal's hat for him.
Which makes the whole Court cackle about his possible return to grace.
But the Poquelins, like the Cressés, were careful not to get involved in the intrigues.
They have better things to do.
Including conducting their business.
Those of Jean Poquelin began under the best auspices.
In 1620, he rented the Pavillon des Singes which had housed a deceased upholsterer and he took over his stock of goods as well as his practice.
It has many great lords.
In 1621, he married Marie Cressé, whose dowry amounted to two thousand two hundred pounds, which allowed him to settle all his debts.
Marie's father, who does not disdain to sign Louis de Cressé, now leaves it to his sons to make his own workshop as an interior designer and decorator prosper.
He even thinks of buying a country house to go and breathe air purer than that of Paris.
Once a week, he goes to the Hôtel de Bourgogne because he is obsessed with the theater.
Soon he will take his favorite grandson there, who will see the most famous trio of pranksters of the time, Turlupin, Gaultier-Garguille and Gros-Guillaume, before he breaks up.
Jean-Baptiste's father doubts that this habit of going to fairs and trestles is very reasonable, he sometimes argues with his stepfather, but, too busy, lets it go.
In 1631, Jean Poquelin bought from his brother Nicolas, who could no longer honor his debts, the position of ordinary upholsterer to the king.
The service consists in coming, one quarter a year, at His Majesty's rising to adorn his bed.
It makes it possible to wear the title of squire and offers a privilege on royal orders.
Jean Poquelin would consider himself the happiest of men if his wife's health did not leave much to be desired.
Marie bore him six children, two of whom died in infancy.
Pale, languid, it declines as a candle goes out little by little.
In 1632, the doctors admit they are powerless to save her.
Jean-Baptiste has just turned ten.
Having become the surrogate guardian of the children of his deceased daughter, Louis Cressé will never desert the Pavillon des Singes.
And even when his son-in-law remarried in 1633 with the daughter of a saddler, he continued to take care of his grandchildren, especially Jean-Baptiste, whose quick-wittedness and taste for books, no doubt inherited from his mother, and the inclinations for study flatter his vanity.
He begins to dream of seeing Jean-Baptiste rise above his bourgeois condition.
Doesn't the youngster already have the stuff and bearing of a gentleman?
In 1635, Louis Cressé succeeded in convincing Jean Poquelin to entrust his eldest to the Jesuits of the College of Clermont who provided a solid Latin education there to a large number of offspring of the nobility.
They are separated from the common only by a golden grid.
The cover of
Figaro Hors-Série
What's New?
Moliere!
CCO Paris/Carnavalet Museum
"
What's up?"
Moliere!
», 114 pages, €8.90, available on newsstands and Figaro Store.