By the side of these intrigues, apocryphal or doubtful, it is pleasant to be able to record a friendship of an altogether unexceptional nature. The great Corneille, in spite of his affection for his wife, Marie de Lemperière, whose hand Cardinal de Richelieu is said to have obtained for him, after her father had sent the poet about his business, was of a very gallant disposition and in the habit of offering incense at the shrine of any goddess of the theatre who was inclined to accept his devotion. At Rouen, in 1758, he had, like Molière at an earlier date, fallen desperately in love with Mlle. du Parc, but had fared no better at the hands of that haughty beauty than the chief of the Illustre Théâtre. This rebuff, which drew from the chagrined poet the well-known _Stances à une marquise_, seems to have brought home to Corneille the fact that he was no longer young, and to have somewhat damped his amorous ardour. At any rate, when Armande appeared upon the scene, he contented himself with offering her a platonic admiration, charmingly expressed in the third act of _Psyché_. _Psyché._--"Can one be jealous of the affection of relatives?" _Amour._--"I am so, my Psyché; I am so of all nature. The sun's rays kiss you too often; your tresses suffer too many caresses from the wind. The moment it toys with them, I murmur at it. The very air you breathe with too much pleasure passes between your lips. And, so soon as you sigh, I know not what affrights me, and makes me fear, among your sighs, some errant ones." Not content with this tribute to the lady's charms, the old poet conceived the idea of writing for Armande a play in which she might impersonate the heroine, and he might portray himself in the character of a chivalrous old man in love with her. He, accordingly, composed his _Pulchérie_, which, as Molière, for some reason, could not see his way to accept it for the Palais-Royal, was produced at the Marais on November 2, 1672. It was a poor play, the dramatist having failed to endow either the plot with interest, or the characters, apart from the amorous old senator Martian, with any special individuality; and even Corneille's devoted admirer, Madame de Sévigné, was compelled to admit that "_Pulchérie_ was not a success." Nevertheless the terms in which Martian speaks of the heroine were so very flattering that Armande must have regretted that circumstances had prevented her undertaking the latter part.