Even in these early days Louis XIV. took the greatest interest in theatrical representations, especially those given by Molière's company. Perhaps the very best period of the French stage was between the years 1645, when Molière abandoned the law courts to join a troop of wandering players, and 1680, when the two most important companies of the day were combined; at which time Molière had been dead seven years, while Corneille was on the point of dying. The Comédie Française was formed in the most arbitrary manner. It has been said that the company which had been in the habit of playing at the Hôtel de Bourgogne was joined to that of the Théâtre Guénégaud in the Rue Mazarin. But there was at that day a third theatre in Paris, the Théâtre du Marais; and in order that everything dramatic might be concentrated at the one establishment, this unhappy house was simply suppressed. By Royal decree the number of actors and actresses connected with the Comédie Française was fixed at twenty-seven. A year later the establishment received for the first time an annual subvention, to the amount of 12,000 livres or francs. At the same time the French comedians were authorised, in lieu of previous arrangements, to deduct the full expenses of the theatre before paying anything to the authors. The company had scarcely taken possession of the Théâtre de Guénégaud when they were obliged to leave it for another and more commodious building in the Rue des Fossés, Saint-Germain-des-Prés; and it was here that the name of Comédie Française was first adopted. Hence the name of the Rue de l'Ancienne Comédie, in which street, newly baptised, the Comédie Française was for so many years installed. The Comédie Française had everything to itself until the year 1699, when much alarm and indignation was caused in the ranks of the company by the establishment of an opposition theatre, the Comédie Italienne. The French comedians were ready to do anything in order to keep their monopoly. In a formal petition they represented to the king that they were twenty-six in number (the principal actress had died) and capable, if necessary, of amusing His Majesty at two different theatres. They thought it hard, however, that after quitting, by His Majesty's orders, first the Hôtel de Bourgogne, then the Théâtre Guénégaud, they should now be threatened in their new abode, which had cost them 200,000 francs to construct. The king paid no attention to these representations, and the Comédie Italienne soon became the home of French comic opera, doing a flourishing business according to the tariff of those days, when a place in the pit cost five sous, and a seat in the boxes ten.