Savinien de Cyrano de Bergerac, a soldier, man of letters, and freethinker, was born in Paris, where he died thirty-six years later; he resembled only superficially the hero of Edmond Rostand's romanticized drama (1897). Hostile to the formal authoritarian education to which he had been subjected at the Collège de Beauvais, he was persuaded to serve in the army, where he gained a considerable reputation as a duelist and writer of verses. His military career came to an end when he was wounded at the siege of Arras in 1640. Between 1642 and 1651 he studied philosophy assiduously, with special stress on Pierre Gassendi and René Descartes, and was, according to some, a pupil of Gassendi himself. Descartes's principle of methodical doubt, Gassendi's rehabilitation of Epicurus, and the attendant influence of a newly translated Lucretius were all forces providing a common...