All that I
have to say to you is, that I want a gentleman for a son-in-law.
MADAME JOURDAIN: It's necessary for your daughter to have a husband
who is worthy of her, and it's better for her to have an honest
rich man who is well made than an impoverished gentleman who is
badly built.
NICOLE: That's true. We have the son of a gentleman in our village
who is the most ill formed and the greatest fool I have ever seen.
MONSIEUR JOURDAIN: Hold your impertinent tongue! You always butt
into the conversation. I have enough money for my daughter, I need
only honor, and I want to make her a marchioness.
MADAME JOURDAIN: A marchioness?
MONSIEUR JOURDAIN: Yes, marchioness.
MADAME JOURDAIN: Alas! God save me from it!
MONSIEUR JOURDAIN: It's a thing I have resolved.
MADAME JOURDAIN: As for me, it's a thing I'll never consent to.
Marriages above one's station are always subject to great
inconveniences. I have absolutely no wish for a son-in-law who can
reproach her parents to my daughter, and I don't want her to have
children who will be ashamed to call me their grandmother. If she
arrives to visit me in the equipage of a great lady and if she
fails, by mischance, to greet someone of the neighborhood, they
wouldn't fail immediately to say a hundred stupidities. "Do you
see," they would say, "this madam marchioness who gives herself
such glorious airs? It's the daughter of Monsieur Jourdain, who was
all too glad, when she was little, to play house with us; she's not
always been so haughty as she now is; and her two grandfathers sold
cloth near St.
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