The master of this school of seventeenth-century realism was PAUL SCARRON (1610-60), the comely little abbe, unconcerned with ecclesiastical scruples or good manners, who, when a paralytic, twisted and tortured by disease, became the husband of D'Aubigne's granddaughter, destined as Madame de Maintenon to become the most influential woman in all the history of France. In his _Virgile Travesti_ he produced a vulgar counterpart to the heroic epics, which their own dead-weight would have speedily enough borne downwards to oblivion. His _Roman Comique_ (1651), a short and lively narrative of the adventures of a troupe of comedians strolling in the provinces, contrasted with the exaltations, the heroisms, the delicate distresses of the ideal romance. The _Roman Bourgeois_ (1666) of ANTOINE FURETIERE is a belated example of the group to which _Francion_ belongs. The great event of its author's life was his exclusion from the Academy, of which he was a member, on the ground that he had appropriated for the advantage of his Dictionary the results of his fellow-members' researches for the Dictionary, then in progress, of the learned company. His _Roman_ is a remarkable study of certain types of middle-class Parisian life, often animated, exact, effective in its satire; but the analysis of a petty and commonplace world needs some relief of beauty or generosity to make its triviality acceptable, and such relief Furetiere will not afford. Somewhat apart from this group of satiric tales, yet with a certain kinship to them, lie the more fantastic satires of that fiery swashbuckler--"demon des braves"--CYRANO DE BERGERAC (1619-55), _Histoire Comique des Etats et Empires de la Lune_, and _Histoire Comique des Etats et Empires du Soleil_. Cyrano's taste, caught by the mannerisms of Italy and extravagances of Spain, was execrable. To his violences of temper he added a reputation for irreligion. His comedy _Le Pedant Joue_ has the honour of having furnished Moliere with the most laughable scene of the _Fourberies de Scapin_. The voyages to the moon and the sun, in which the inhabitants, their manners, governments, and ideas, are presented, mingle audacities and caprices of invention with a portion of satiric truth; they lived in the memories of the creator of Gulliver and the creator of Micromegas. CHAPTER II THE FRENCH ACADEMY--PHILOSOPHY (DESCARTES)--RELIGION (PASCAL)