Corneille, younger than he, already
known by some comedies which had met with success. The two brothers had
married two sisters.

"Their houses twain were made in one;
With keys and purse the same was done;
Their wives can never have been two.
Their wishes tallied at all times;
No games distinct their children' knew;
The fathers lent each other rhymes;
Same wine for both the drawers drew." --[Ducis.]

It is said, that when Peter Corneille was puizled to end a verse he would
undo a trap that opened into his brother's room, shouting, "Sans-souci, a
rhyme!"

Corneille had announced his renunciation of the stage; he was translating
into verse the _Imitation of Christ_. "It were better," he had written
in his preface to _Pertharite,_ "that I took leave myself instead of
waiting till it is taken of me altogether; it is quite right that after
twenty years' work I should begin to perceive that I am becoming too old
to be still in the fashion. This resolution is not so strong but that it
may be broken; there is every, appearance, however, of my abiding by it."

Fouquet was then in his glory, "no less superintendent of literature than
of finance," and he undertook to recall to the stage the genius of
Corneille. At his voice, the poet and the tragedian rose up at a single
bound.

"I feel the selfsame fire, the selfsame nerve I feel,
That roused th' indignant Cid, drove home Iloratius' steel;
As cunning as of yore this hand of mine I find,
That sketched great Pompey's soul, depicted Cinna's mind,"--

wrote Corneille in his thanks to Fouquet. He had some months before said
to Mdlle. du Pare, who was an actress in Moliere's company, which had
come to Rouen, and who was, from her grand airs, nicknamed by the others
the Marchioness,

"Marchioness," if Age hath set
On my brow his ugly die;
At my years, pray don't forget,
You will be as--old as I.

"Yet do I possess of charms
One or two, so slow to fade,
That I feel but scant alarms
At the havoc Time hath made.

"You have such as men adore,
But these that you scorn to-day
May, perchance, be to the fore
When your own are worn away.