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 Corneille, in alarm, would have withdrawn the piece from the hands of the comedians who were learning it, and he only left it on the assurance of one of the comedians, who did not play in it because he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!" The great literary movement of the seventeenth century had begun; it had no longer any need of a protector; it was destined to grow up alone during twenty years, amidst troubles at home and wars abroad, to flourish all at once, with incomparable splendor, under the reign and around the throne of Louis XIV.

Cardinal Richelieu, however, had the honor of protecting its birth; he had taken personal pleasure in it; he had comprehended its importance and beauty; he had desired to serve it whilst taking the direction of it.

Let us end, as we began, with the judgment of La Bruyere: "Compare yourselves, if you dare, with the great Richelieu, you men devoted to fortune, you who say that you know nothing, that you have read nothing, that you will read nothing.

Learn that Cardinal Richelieu did know, did read; I say not that he had no estrangement from men of letters, but that he loved them, caressed them, favored them, that he contrived privileges for them, that he appointed pensions for them, that he united them in a celebrated body, and that he made of them the French Academy." The Academy, the Sorbonne, the Botanic Gardens (_Jardin des Plantes_), the King's Press have endured; the theatre has grown and been enriched by many masterpieces, the press has become the most dreaded of powers; all the new forces that Richelieu created or foresaw have become developed without him, frequently in opposition to him and to the work of his whole life; his name has remained connected with the commencement of all these wonders, beneficial or disastrous, which he had grasped and presaged, in a future happily concealed from his ken..