Zacharie Jacob

He was enrolled as one of the pages to the duc de Guise, but he ran away to join some strolling players, assuming the stage name of Montfleury.

About 1635, he was a valued member of the company at the Hôtel de Bourgogne, and he was in the original cast of the Cid (1636) and of Horace (1640).

Richelieu thought highly of him, and when in 1638, Montfleury married the actress Jeanne de la Chalpe (d. 1683), the cardinal desired the ceremony to take place at his own country house at Rueil.

Shortly before his death, Zacharie denounced Molière to King Louis XIV as having committed incest, a rumor which has never gone away.

Montfleury died in Paris from the rupture of a blood-vessel, while playing the part of Orestes in Andromaque, in December 1667.