Cléante reprend sa fortune pour épouser Nisida

Cléante reprises his fortune to marry Nisida at the decisive convergence of inheritance, love, and filial duty. Once Cléante is identified as the son of the comte de Valcourt, Arlequin rejects the comfort of legal possession, resolves to return the wealth, and asks only that Cléante secure Nisida’s future. Cléante then accepts the fortune on the condition that it become an offering to Nisida and the basis of a marriage that also restores the paternal bond he has lost.

The Inheritance and the Revelation

Cléante’s claim emerges from a buried family history. He explains that an old friend of his father had been preparing to obtain permission for him to visit his father in Italie, which would have been the first time in his life that he could embrace him. Before that meeting became possible, however, news arrived that his father had died and had left his entire fortune to a stranger. When Arlequin asks the father’s name, Cléante identifies him as the comte de Valcourt and states that he possesses proofs of his identity.

The revelation changes the meaning of the household’s wealth. Arlequin recognizes Cléante as the son of the benefactor who had left the fortune to him and his family. He therefore tells Nisida that they had been rich that morning but would now become poor, because retaining the property would violate their honesty. The inheritance is presented not merely as a legal asset but as a moral burden: its rightful heir is alive, known, and facing poverty while the beneficiaries enjoy comfort.

Arlequin’s Moral Return of the Fortune

Cléante initially denies that he has anything to claim. He points out that his father’s marriage had never been declared and that the law therefore gives him no straightforward right to demand the estate. This distinction between legal entitlement and moral ownership makes the scene’s central conflict explicit. Arlequin answers that the law cannot silence his heart: he cannot remain rich while the son of his benefactor is poor. He announces that he will return everything, asking only that Cléante provide Nisida with the means to live, since he would die of grief if he left his daughter in indigence.

Arlequin’s decision is also a test of the ethical ideal of the honnête homme. He does not surrender the fortune because a court has compelled him to do so; he surrenders it because gratitude, justice, and conscience make continued possession intolerable. The action reverses the apparent direction of generosity. What had seemed to be an inheritance bestowed on Arlequin becomes a debt that must be repaid, while Arlequin’s willingness to impoverish himself confirms the virtue that the play places above wealth.

Cléante’s Reappropriation as a Marriage Gesture

Cléante’s response prevents the return of the estate from becoming a simple act of restitution. He agrees to take back his fortune, but expressly does so in order to lay it at Nisida’s feet. Wealth is thus detached from individual accumulation and converted into a declaration of love. The inheritance that once separated the lovers by class and fortune becomes the material means through which Cléante can marry Nisida without making her seem to have chosen him for his money.

His acceptance also answers Arlequin’s sacrifice with a reciprocal pledge. Cléante praises Arlequin as a worthy and virtuous man who did not hesitate to strip himself of his possessions rather than see Cléante suffer. In return, Cléante declares that he would remain unhappy for life if Arlequin refused him Nisida. The requested marriage is therefore not a bargain in which wealth purchases a bride. It is a moral exchange: Arlequin returns what he believes he never truly owned, and Cléante accepts it only so that it can protect the woman he loves and honor the man who has acted as his benefactor.

Cléante frames the request in filial as well as erotic terms. He says that he wants to find his father, and that Arlequin alone can replace him. Reclaiming the fortune therefore restores more than economic security. It gives Cléante a family relationship that his father’s death and the long concealment of his identity had denied him. Marriage to Nisida becomes inseparable from recognition by Arlequin, who must consent not only as her father but as the substitute father whom Cléante has chosen.

Nisida’s Sacrifice and the Resolution

The action gains force from Nisida’s earlier attempt to renounce Cléante. When Arlequin presses her toward another marriage, she asks that the proposed marriage be delayed and that she be sent to a convent. She insists that she will do her duty and find the strength to obey, declaring that the more her father commands, the more she wishes to submit. Later, believing that her love threatens her father’s happiness, she offers to overcome and sacrifice her passion, asks to be separated from Cléante, and says that she will marry the marquis d’Yrville.

Cléante’s recovery of the fortune answers this attempted self-denial with a form of resolution that preserves both love and duty. Arlequin refuses the marriage with the marquis d’Yrville and instead acknowledges the emotional truth that had been concealed from Cléante: he had initially driven him away because Nisida had confessed that she was passionately in love with him. The fortune can consequently be restored without sacrificing Nisida’s future, while the marriage can be approved without reducing Arlequin’s paternal authority to defeat.

At the conclusion, Arlequin tells Nérine that he can no longer give her Cléante according to his earlier plans, but offers to double the dowry he had intended for her and asks her to remain with the family as its good friend. He then declares that Cléante and Nisida will be united and will probably be happy. The final moral emphasis falls not on the amount of the recovered wealth but on the conduct that made the union possible: no pleasure is worth more than fulfilling the duty of an honnête homme and a good father. Cléante’s reprise of the inheritance thus ends as an act of love legitimized by restitution, gratitude, and family consent.