Cléante

Cléante is the obscure military lover at the center of the play’s intertwined romance and identity plot. A cavalry captain without accessible wealth or even the freedom to use his father’s name, he disguises himself as a secretary in Arlequin’s household so that he can remain near Nisida. His deception is ethically compromised, but it is also governed by restraint: he seeks proximity, service, and eventual esteem rather than secretly declaring himself to Nisida. When his concealed identity and love are finally exposed, the revelation transforms him from a dependent household servant into the rightful heir of the fortune that sustains the family, while his refusal to exploit that legal advantage confirms the play’s ideal of honorable conduct.

Identity and Background

Cléante is introduced as Nisida’s lover, but his social position makes the attachment appear unequal. Nisida is young, beautiful, wealthy, and Arlequin’s only daughter, whereas Cléante describes himself as an obscure military man, nearly without a name or fortune. He expects either to grow old in a regiment or to die in war, and he regards his military career as the only possession that gives his life substance. His poverty is not merely an inconvenience in courtship: it makes any declaration of love vulnerable to the suspicion that he seeks Nisida’s money.

His family history explains why he cannot simply claim the status to which he was born. He says that he is the son of a man of quality who abandoned him in the first days of his life. His mother dissipated the fortune left for him, leaving him without property, guidance, or support. The result is a double deprivation: he possesses noble ancestry but no practical inheritance, and he has a father’s name but does not dare to bear it. The later identification of that father as the comte de Valcourt gives a precise form to the hidden history that has governed his entire life.

Love and the Secretary’s Disguise

Cléante’s love begins with a single sight of Nisida during a promenade. He presents that moment as the instant in which his heart was given to her, after which repeated efforts to enter Arlequin’s household failed. Nérine alone took pity on him, protected the love she considered tender and pure, disguised him, and introduced him to Arlequin as a secretary. Through this arrangement Cléante spends six months living and breathing near the woman he adores, seeing her every day and occasionally speaking with her, while she remains unaware that he loves her and that he considers himself worthy of her love.

The disguise gives Cléante access but also places him in a humiliating position. He has to exchange the public identity of a cavalry captain for that of a secretary and, as he bluntly puts it, a domestic servant. The role is therefore both a social mask and a sacrifice of the one recognized achievement he possesses. His entrance into the household depends on concealment, yet his conduct within it is marked by caution. He does not tell Nisida of his feelings, because he fears that she might believe he loves her fortune rather than herself.

Nérine’s assessment complicates his self-image. She agrees that Nisida is admirable, but insists that Cléante is not far beneath her in qualities and attractions. She also points out that Arlequin himself is only a simple bourgeois from a small town in Italy whose wealth came through an extraordinary accident. Against Cléante’s belief that poverty makes him unworthy, she sets his character, his military rank, his reputation, and the esteem of those who know him. His answer is modest to the point of severity: poverty, he suggests, leaves a person no resource except wisdom.

Duty, Separation, and the Cost of Concealment

The pressure to abandon the household arrives through a letter from Cléante’s colonel. He has already received orders three months earlier to return to his regiment, but has been unable to obey. The colonel discovers that he is living in Arlequin’s house under the appearance of a secretary or servant and that he is neglecting his duties for a love that cannot be fulfilled. He warns that, unless Cléante rejoins the regiment within eight days, another officer will be appointed to his company.

Nérine tries to treat the military command as a problem that can be postponed. She undertakes to arrange an explanation between Cléante and Nisida and urges him to request a month’s delay from the colonel. This intervention reveals how much of Cléante’s romantic existence depends on Nérine’s emotional and practical labor: she enabled his entrance, understands his secret, and attempts to manage the collision between military duty and private desire. Cléante, however, remains suspended between the command to return and the hope of being recognized within the household.

The separation becomes harsher when Arlequin orders him to leave. Arlequin insists that the command is not a judgment of Cléante’s character. He praises him as gentle, helpful, always ready to oblige, and so considerate that he quarrels only to spare another person trouble. Precisely because everyone esteems and cherishes him, Arlequin says, Cléante must go. The scene turns affection into an instrument of expulsion: Arlequin embraces him while weeping, calls him his good friend, promises enduring support, and nevertheless orders him never to return. Cléante experiences this as cruel irony. Respect and tenderness, he argues, did not deserve such treatment, and affection makes the dismissal more painful rather than less.

Revelation of Love and Lineage

After his removal is demanded, Cléante finally explains the secret that has shaped his conduct. He confesses that a violent and profound passion for Nisida has possessed him for more than a year. Unable to find another way into Arlequin’s household, he presented himself as a secretary and asks to be punished for these actions. The confession clarifies both the motive and the limits of his deception: he entered the house under false pretenses, but the purpose was to remain near Nisida, not to compromise her.

Nérine confirms that he never spoke to Nisida about love. Arlequin nevertheless fears that the arrangement has endangered her reputation. If it becomes known that Cléante spent six months in the house with the freedom to see and speak with Nisida at any hour, outsiders may refuse to believe that he respected her. In this logic, her reputation can be damaged by the mere fact of access, even without an amorous conversation. Cléante’s private restraint therefore cannot fully protect Nisida from public suspicion; the concealed relationship creates a risk that extends beyond the intentions of the two lovers.

Cléante explains that his hope had been gradual and relational rather than calculated. He wanted to please Arlequin, earn his esteem and kindness, and let continued respect and tenderness persuade him that Cléante was worthy of affection. Only after gaining some friendship would he have revealed his feelings, trusting that Arlequin’s sensitive nature might hear the confession not merely as Nisida’s father but as the friend of an unfortunate man. The plan depends on moral recognition preceding social negotiation, though the disguise prevents that recognition from beginning on fully honest terms.

When Arlequin asks who he really is, Cléante discloses that he is the son of the comte de Valcourt. The revelation reclassifies every earlier fact: the apparently nameless soldier has a distinguished father, the poor lover is connected to a fortune, and the servant in Arlequin’s house is the heir of the benefactor whose wealth made the family prosperous. Cléante’s identity is thus not an ornamental surprise but the mechanism that joins romance, inheritance, and the household’s moral crisis.

Fortune, Law, and Moral Choice

Arlequin recognizes Cléante as the son of the man who left the family its fortune and tells Nisida that everything they possess belongs to him. The change is immediate and devastating. The family was rich that morning and will now become poor, but Arlequin accepts the loss as necessary: without returning what is morally owed, they would no longer be honest people. Cléante initially rejects the inheritance, saying that he has no claim because his father’s marriage was never declared and the law does not support the demand.

His response distinguishes legal entitlement from moral ownership. Even after Arlequin urges him to take back the fortune, Cléante refuses to let the legal position turn his benefactor into a poor man. He agrees to resume the inheritance only so that he can place it at Nisida’s feet, and he asks that Arlequin be assured a means of living. His argument is grounded in gratitude: Arlequin is willing to strip himself of his property rather than see Cléante suffer, and Cléante would be miserable for life if that sacrifice were accepted while he was refused Nisida.

The final arrangement therefore does not simply reward hidden nobility with wealth. Cléante’s decisive act is to subordinate possession to relationship. He accepts the fortune only as a means of securing Nisida’s future and preserving Arlequin from destitution. The moral resolution depends on a shared refusal to treat property as an isolated right: Arlequin gives it back because honesty requires it, while Cléante receives it without allowing inheritance to destroy the gratitude and affection that bind the household.

Relationships and Ending

Cléante’s relationship with Nisida is defined by love, distance, and mutual sacrifice. He spends six months close to her while she does not know his feelings; later, Nisida asks Arlequin to delay the proposed marriage and send her to a convent, intending to overcome her passion for Cléante and eventually marry the marquis d’Yrville for her father’s sake. Her willingness to immolate her love for Arlequin’s old age mirrors Cléante’s readiness to surrender his military position, dignity, and eventual fortune for Nisida’s happiness.

His relationship with Arlequin moves through an especially sharp reversal. Arlequin first treats him as a beloved secretary and friend, then expels him in order to protect Nisida, and finally discovers that the dismissed dependent is the heir of his benefactor. The revelation does not erase the earlier intimacy; instead, it tests whether affection can survive a change in rank and property. Cléante’s plea that Arlequin accept him as a son-in-law completes that test, while Arlequin’s final blessing joins their private bond to his duty as a father.

At the close, Cléante and Nisida are to be united, and Nérine remains with the family as its good friend after Arlequin doubles the dowry originally intended for her. Cléante’s ending is consequently a restoration rather than a simple triumph. He recovers a name and fortune that had been denied to him, but the resolution gives moral priority to gratitude, honesty, and family obligation. Arlequin’s concluding principle is that no pleasure equals the pleasure of doing one’s duty as an honest man and a good father; Cléante’s conduct makes that principle credible by ensuring that inheritance becomes an instrument of care rather than domination.