e had shown, be did a thing incomparably more
estimable than the best comedy in the world, that is to say, he listened
to reason, for he gave orders to collect and glue together the pieces of
that torn paper, and, having read it from one end to the other, and given
great thought to it, he sent and awakened M. de Bois-Robert to tell him
that he saw quite well that the gentlemen of the Academy were better
informed about such matters than he, and that there must be nothing more
said about that paper and print."

The cardinal ended by permitting the liberties taken in literary matters
by Chapelain and even Colletet. His courtiers were complimenting him
about some success or other obtained by the king's arms, saying that
nothing could withstand his Eminence. "You are mistaken," he answered,
laughing; "and I find even in Paris persons who withstand me. There's
Colletet, who, after having fought with me yesterday over a word, does
not give in yet; look at this long letter that he has just written me!"
He counted, at any rate, in the number of his five work-fellows one mind
too independent to be subservient for long to the ideas and wishes of
another, though it were Cardinal Richelieu and the premier minister. In
conjunction with Colletet, Bois-Robert, De l'Etoile, and Rotrou, Peter
Corneille worked at his Eminence's tragedies and comedies. He handled
according to his fancy the act intrusted to him, with so much freedom
that the cardinal was shocked, and said that he lacked, in his opinion,
"the follower-spirit" (_l'esprit de suite_). Corneille did not appeal
from this judgment; he quietly took the road to Rouen, leaving henceforth
to his four work-fellows the glory of putting into form the ideas of the
all-powerful minister; he worked alone, for his own hand, for the glory
of France and of the human mind.

[Illustration: Peter Corneille----334]

Peter Corneille, born at Rouen on the 6th of June, 1606, in a family of
lawyers, had been destined for the bar from his infancy; he was a
briefless barrister; his father had purchased him two government posts,
but his heart was otherwise set than "on jurisprudence;" in 1635, when he
quietly renounced the honor of writing for the cardinal, Corneille had
already had several comedies played. He himself said of the first,
_Melite,_ which he wrote at three and twenty, "It was my first attempt,
and it has no pretence of being according to the rules, for I did not
know then that ther