Corneille had withdrawn to the obscurity which suited the simplicity of his habits; the cardinal, it was said, had helped him to get married; he had no longer to defend his works, their fame was amply sufficient.  “Henceforth Corneille walks freely by himself and in the strength of his own powers; the circle of his ideas grows larger, his style grows loftier and stronger, together with his thoughts, and purer, perhaps, without his dreaming of it; a more correct, a more precise expression comes to him, evoked by greater clearness in idea, greater fixity of sentiment; genius, with the mastery of means, seeks new outlets.  Corneille writes Polyeucte.” [Corneille et son Temps, by M. Guizot.]

It was a second revolution accomplished for the upsetting of received ideas, at a time when paganism was to such an extent master of the theatre that, in the midst of an allegory of the seventeenth century, alluding to Gustavus Adolphus and the wars of religion, Richelieu and Desmarets, in the heroic comedy of Europe, dared not mention the name of God save in the plural.  Corneille read his piece at the Hotel Rambouillet.  “It was applauded to the extent demanded by propriety and the reputation already achieved by the author,” says Fontenelle; “but some days afterwards, M. de Voiture went to call upon M. Corneille, and took a very delicate way of telling him that Polyeucte had not been so successful as he supposed, that the Christianism had been extremely displeasing.”  “The story is,” adds Voltaire, “that all the Hotel Rambouillet, and especially the Bishop of Vence, Godeau, condemned the attempt of Polyeucte to overthrow idols.”  Corneille, in alarm, would have withdrawn the piece from the hands of the comedians who were learning it, and he only left it on the assurance of one of the comedians, who did not play in it because he was too bad an actor.  Posterity has justified the poor comedian against the Hotel Rambouillet; amongst so many of Corneille’s masterpieces it has ever given a place apart to Polyeucte; neither the Saint-Genest of Rotrou, nor the Zaire of Voltaire, in spite of their various beauties, have dethroned Polyeucte; in fame as well as in date it remains the first of the few pieces in which Christianism appeared, to gain applause, upon the French classic stage.

[Illustration:  Corneille at the Hotel Rambouillet—–­342]

Richelieu was no longer there to lay his commands upon the court and upon the world:  he was dead, without having been forgiven by Corneille:—­

         “Of our great cardinal let men speak as they will,
          By me, in prose or verse, they shall not be withstood;
          He did me too much good for me to say him ill,
          He did me too much ill for me to say him good!”