Sacrifice and Self-Remission in Love

The renunciation and self-restraint of love is one of the story’s decisive ethical patterns. Love is not treated as a simple claim to happiness: Nisida is prepared to sacrifice Cléante for Arlequin’s old age, Cléante accepts expulsion rather than defy the man who sheltered him, and Arlequin finally sacrifices wealth so that the lovers can be united without dishonesty. The plot therefore tests whether love can remain honorable when it must pass through obedience, gratitude, and moral duty.

Love Concealed and Sustained

Cléante’s love begins with the first sight of Nisida during a promenade and becomes the motive for every subsequent disguise and risk. He tells Nérine that he could not have seen Nisida again without her help: his attempts to enter Arlequin’s household had failed until Nérine disguised him and presented him as a secretary. For six months he has lived close to Nisida, seeing her daily and speaking with her occasionally, while she remains unaware both of his love and of his true worth. His happiness depends on concealment, but that happiness is already fragile because a letter from his colonel threatens to recall him to his regiment.

Nérine’s counsel gives the conflict its clearest formulation. She tells Cléante that he must either return to military service and recover his lost position through merit, or remain near Nisida and tell her who he is if life without her has become impossible. Her principle is that the heart should prevail whenever it is stronger than reason, but she does not leave that principle at the level of sentiment. She instructs him to write to his colonel and request a month’s delay, promising to arrange an explanation between him and Nisida. Her intervention makes self-restraint active rather than passive: desire is acknowledged, but it is organized through patience, timing, and responsibility.

Nisida’s Sacrifice for Her Father

Nisida’s renunciation emerges when Arlequin proposes marriage between her and the marquis d’Yrville. Arlequin does not simply impose the match; he says that he strongly wishes to see her marry the marquis, while also inviting her to give reasons if the arrangement displeases her. Nisida answers with gratitude and love for her father, yet asks to speak without witnesses. Her private response reveals that the conflict is not merely between two suitors but between her own passion and the emotional bond that governs her life.

She asks Arlequin to postpone the marriage and place her in a convent because she needs solitude and reflection. The proposed retreat is an act of self-separation: rather than pursue Cléante, she seeks distance from the desire she cannot master. Arlequin rejects the idea, insisting that a convent may suit daughters whose fathers have no time to love them and asking whether her heart belongs to someone. Concealing her face, Nisida admits that it does.

Nisida then describes her love as a passion she has repeatedly tried to hide from herself, only for it to return with greater violence. Once Arlequin understands that Cléante is the object of this love, the daughter turns restraint into sacrifice. She declares that the more Arlequin does for her, the more she must do for him; she will overcome and immolate her passion for the happiness of his old age. She asks him to remove her from Cléante, give her time, and she will marry the marquis d’Yrville. This is not presented as a lack of feeling. Its force comes precisely from the intensity of the love she agrees to abandon.

Cléante’s Obedience and Disclosure

Cléante’s self-restraint takes a different form. After Arlequin decides that he must leave the household, Cléante receives the order as a command to depart immediately. Arlequin is described as returning in tears, embracing him, swearing eternal friendship, and at the same time forbidding him ever to reappear. The tenderness of the farewell makes obedience more painful: Cléante is not expelled by an indifferent guardian but separated from a man whose affection he has deliberately sought.

Cléante tells Nérine that he will obey even though he believes he will not survive the separation. His request is not for rescue but for remembrance. He asks Nérine to speak of him to Nisida, to tell her that no one will ever love her as he does, and to recount what he has done, thought, and suffered for her. He accepts physical departure while preserving a hope that his devotion may still reach Nisida through another person’s testimony. Nérine, weeping, promises to remain his ally for life, extending the emotional labor that has sustained the lovers from the beginning.

When Nérine presses Arlequin to explain the reason for his decision, Cléante chooses confession. He admits that a violent and profound passion for Nisida has possessed him for more than a year and that, unable to enter Arlequin’s household openly, he presented himself as a secretary. He calls these actions his crimes and submits himself to punishment. His confession abandons the protective advantage of disguise, but it also clarifies that the disguise was not a scheme to seduce Nisida through manipulation alone; it was the desperate method by which a poor lover gained access to the woman he adored.

Cléante explains that he had hoped to please Arlequin by living with him, win his esteem and kindness, and wait until respect and tenderness had created enough friendship for a truthful revelation. He believed that, once Arlequin knew his character, poverty and misfortune might become grounds for hope rather than barriers. The plan shows self-restraint as delayed disclosure: Cléante does not claim that love automatically entitles him to Nisida. He tries to earn the father’s judgment before asking for the daughter.

Wealth, Honesty, and the Final Cost

The final reversal makes Arlequin’s sacrifice the decisive form of renunciation. He reveals that Cléante is the son of the man who had left Arlequin and Nisida his fortune, and that the inheritance belongs to Cléante. As a result, the household was rich that morning but will become poor once the property is restored. Arlequin nevertheless accepts the loss because retaining the fortune would make them dishonest. Love can be fulfilled only after wealth has been surrendered.

This discovery also reinterprets the earlier obstacles. Cléante’s poverty had seemed to make his love socially and materially impossible, while Arlequin’s concern for Nisida had made marriage appear a choice between paternal security and romantic desire. The inheritance removes the economic barrier, but it does not erase the ethical problem: the fortune must pass to its rightful owner before the family can benefit from the marriage. Arlequin’s decision places honesty above comfort and converts paternal love into an act of material self-sacrifice.

The ending gathers the separate acts of restraint into a moral resolution. Arlequin tells Nérine that he can no longer give her Cléante according to his earlier plans, but he doubles the dowry intended for her and asks her to remain with the household as its good friend. Cléante and Nisida are to be united, while Nérine’s loyalty receives a concrete form of recognition. Arlequin’s concluding principle is that no pleasure in the world equals performing the duty of an honest man and a good father. The story thus treats self-denial not as the destruction of love but as the condition under which love, family loyalty, and property can be reconciled without moral corruption.