All the favor that the opinion of the Academy can hope for is to make as much way; at any rate, I have had my account settled before them, and I am not at all sure that they can wait for theirs." Corneille did not care to carry his resentment higher than the Academy.
At the end of December, 1637, when writing to Bois-Robert a letter of thanks for getting him his pension, which he calls "the liberalities of my Lord," he adds, "As you advise me not to reply to the _Sentiments de l'Academie,_ seeing what personages are concerned therein, there is no need of interpreters to understand that; I am somewhat more of this world than Heliodorus was, who preferred to lose his bishopric rather than his book; and I prefer my master's good graces to all the reputations on earth.

I shall be mum, then, not from disdain, but from respect." The great Corneille made no further defence he had become a servitor again; but the public, less docile, persisted in their opinion.
"In vain against the Cid a minister makes league; All Paris, gazing on Chimene, thinks with Rodrigue; In vain to censure her th' Academy aspires; The stubborn populace revolts and still admires; " said Boileau subsequently.
The dispute was ended, and, in spite of the judgment of the Academy, the cardinal did not come out of it victorious; his anger, however, had ceased: the Duchess of Aiguillon, his niece, accepted the dedication of the _Cid;_ when _Horace_ appeared, in 1639, the dedicatory epistle, addressed to the cardinal, proved that Corneille read his works to him beforehand; the cabal appeared for a while on the point of making head again.

"_Horace,_ condemned by the decemvirs, was acquitted by the people," said Corneille.

The same year _Cinna_ came to give the finishing touch to the reputation of the great poet:-- "To the persecuted Cid the Cinna owed its birth." Corneille had withdrawn to the obscurity which suited the simplicity of his habits; the cardinal, it was said, had helped him to get married; he had no longer to defend his works,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.