The cardinal ended by permitting the liberties taken in literary matters by Chapelain and even Colletet. His courtiers were complimenting him about some success or other obtained by the king’s arms, saying that nothing could withstand his Eminence. “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. He himself said of the first, _Melite,_ which he wrote at three and twenty, “It was my first attempt, and it has no pretence of being according to the rules, for I did not know then that there were any. I had for guide nothing but a little common sense, together with the models of the late Hardy, whose vein was rather fertile than polished.” “The comedies of Corneille had met with success; praised as he was by his competitors in the career of the theatre, he was as yet, in their eyes, but one of the supports of that literary glory which was common to them all. Tranquil in their possession of bad taste, they were far from foreseeing the revolution which was about to overthrow its sway and their own.” [_Corneille et son Temps,_ by M. Guizot.] Corneille made his first appearance in tragedy, in 1633, with a _Medee_. “Here are verses which proclaim Corneille,” said Voltaire:-- “After so many boons, to leave me can he bear? After so many sins, to leave me can he dare?”