"In fine, Reader, he always passed for a man of singular rare wit; to which he added such good fortune on the side of the senses that he always controlled them as he willed; in so much that he rarely drank wine because (said he) excess of drink brutalizes, and as much care is needed with it as with arsenic (with this he was wont to compare it) for everything is to be feared from this poison, whatever care is used; even if nothing were to be dreaded but what the vulgar call _qui pro quo_, which makes it always dangerous. He was no less moderate in his eating, from which he banished _ragoûts_ as much as he could in the belief that the simplest and least complicated living is the best; which he supported by the example of modern men, who live so short a time compared with those of the earliest ages, who appear to have lived so long because of the simplicity of their food. "He added to these two qualities so great a restraint towards the fair sex that it may be said he never departed from the respect owed it by ours; and with all this he had so great an aversion from self-interest that he could never imagine what it was to possess private property, his own belonging less to him than to such of his acquaintance as needed it. And so Heaven, which is not unmindful, willed that among the large number of friends he had during his life some should love him until death and a few even beyond death."[1] [Footnote 1: Le Bret, Préface, 1657.] It will be seen later that many of these virtues were probably necessities arising from an unheroic cause; but this moral character given by Le Bret was very useful to the 19th-century builders of the Cyrano legend. Other 17th-century writers give a very different impression of Cyrano de Bergerac: where Le Bret saw a noble, almost austere genius, they went to the opposite extreme and saw a madman. An anecdote in the _Historiettes_ of Tallemant des Réaux gives us another Cyrano: "A madman named Cyrano wrote a play called _The Death of Agrippina_ where Sejanus says horrible things against the Gods. The play was pure balderdash (_un vray galimathias_).[2] Sercy, who published it, told Boisrobert that he sold out the edition in a twinkling. 'You surprise me', said Boisrobert. 'Ah, Monsieur', replied the bookseller, 'it has such splendid impieties'."[3] [Footnote 2: "Nothing could be clearer or better in style, and it is less archaic than Corneille." (Remy de Gourmont).] [Footnote 3: Which means "Strike, there is the enemy", but might also mean "Strike, there is the sacrament."] The implication that the success of the play was due to its "impieties" is repeated in an anecdote of the _Menagiana_ quoted by Lacroix, to the following effect: When the pious people heard there were impieties in _The Death of Agrippina_, they went prepared to hiss it; they passed over in silence all the tirades against the Gods which had caused the rumour, but when Sejanus said: "Frappons, voilà l'hostie",[4]