Great was the consternation in the little voluntary and friendly Academy. “There was scarcely one of these gentlemen who did not testify displeasure: MM. de Serizay and de Maleville, who were attached to the households of the Duke of La Rochefoucauld and Marshal Bassompierre, one in retirement on his estates and the other a prisoner in the Bastille, were for refusing and excusing themselves as best they might to the cardinal. Chapelain, who had a pension from his Eminence, represented that “in good truth he could have been well pleased to dispense with having their conferences thus bruited abroad, but in the position to which things were reduced, it was not open to them to follow the more agreeable of the two courses; they had to do with a man who willed in no half-hearted way whatever he willed, and who was not accustomed to meet resistance or to stiffer it with impunity; he would consider as an insult the disregard shown for his protection, and might visit his resentment upon each individual; he could, at any rate, easily prohibit their assemblies, breaking up by that means a society which every one of them desired to be eternal.” The arguments were strong, the members yielded; Bois-Robert was charged to thank his Eminence very humbly for the honor he did them, assuring him that they were all resolved to follow his wishes. “I wish to be of that assembly the protector and the father,” said Richelieu, giving at once divers proofs that he took a great interest in that establishment, a fact which soon brought the Academy solicitations from those who were most intimate with the cardinal, and who, being in some sort of repute for wit, gloried in being admitted to a body which he regarded with favor. In making of this little private gathering a great national institution, Cardinal Richelieu yielded to his natural yearning for government and dominion; he protected literature as a minister and as an admirer; the admirer’s inclination was supported by the minister’s influence. At the same time, and perhaps without being aware of it, he was giving French literature a centre of discipline and union whilst securing for the independence and dignity of writers a supporting-point which they had hitherto lacked. Whilst recompensing them by favors nearly always conferred in the name of the state, he was preparing for them afar off the means of withdrawing themselves from that private dependence, the yoke of which they nearly always had to bear. Set free at his death from the weight of their obligations to him, they became the servants of the state; ere long the French Academy had no other protector but the king.