"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.