n the real cause of his misfortune. At any rate, for the last twenty
years of his life he was hopelessly deformed, almost helpless, and
subject to acute attacks of pain. But his spirit was unconquerable. He
had some preferment at Le Mans and a pension from the queen, which he
lost on suspicion of writing _Mazarinades_. Besides these he had what he
called his 'Marquisat de Quinet,' that is to say, the money which Quinet
the bookseller paid him for his wares. In 1652 he astonished Paris by
marrying Francoise d'Aubigne, the future Madame de Maintenon, the
granddaughter of Agrippa d'Aubigne. The strange couple seem to have been
happy enough, and such unfavourable reports as exist against Madame
Scarron may be set down to political malice. But Scarron's health was
utterly broken, and he died in 1660 at the age of fifty. His work was
not inconsiderable, including some plays and much burlesque poetry, the
chief piece of which was his 'Virgil travestied,' an ignoble task at
best, but very cleverly performed. His prose, however, is of much
greater value. Many of his _nouvelles_, mostly imitated from the
Spanish, have merit, and his _Roman Comique_[245], though also inspired
to some extent from the peninsula, has still more. It is the unfinished
history of a troop of strolling actors, displaying extraordinary truth
of observation and power of realistic description in the style which, as
has been said, Le Sage and Fielding afterwards made popular throughout
Europe.

[Sidenote: Cyrano de Bergerac.]

With Scarron may be classed another writer of not dissimilar character,
but of far less talent, whose eccentricities have given him a
disproportionate reputation even in France, while they have often
entirely misled foreign critics. Cyrano de Bergerac was a Gascon of not
inconsiderable literary power, whose odd personal appearance, audacity
as a duellist, and adherence, after conversion, to the unpopular cause
of Mazarin, gave him a position which his works fail to sustain. They
are not, however, devoid of merit. His _Pedant Joue_, a comedy, gave
Moliere some useful hints; his _Agrippine_, a tragedy, has passages of
declamatory energy. But his best work comes under the head of fiction.
The _Voyages a la Lune et au Soleil_[246], in which the author partly
followed Rabelais, and partly indulged his own fancy for rodomontade,
personal satire, and fantastic extravagance, have had attributed to them
the great and wholly unmerited honour of