This antipathy was quite fearful. The poet showed himself a persecutor; he has lent assistance to the oppressors against the oppressed, and his comedy has been guilty of crimes. Aristophanes has remained in the eyes of posterity in the condition of a wicked genius,--fearful punishment! But there is for him one attenuating circumstance: he was an ardent admirer of the poet of "Prometheus," and to admire him was to defend him. Aristophanes did what he could to prevent his banishment; and if anything can diminish one's indignation in reading the "Clouds," implacable on Socrates, it is that one may see in the background the hand of Aristophanes holding the mantle of Æschylus going into exile. Æschylus has likewise a comedy, a sister of the broad farce of Aristophanes. We have spoken of his mirth. It goes very far in "The Argians." It equals Aristophanes, and outstrips the Shrove Tuesday of our Carnival. Listen: "He throws at my head a chamber utensil. The full vase falls on my head, and is broken, odoriferous, but in a different manner from an urnful of perfume." Who says that? Æschylus. And in his turn Shakespeare will come and will exclaim through Falstaff's lips: "Empty the jorden." What can you say? You have to deal with savages. One of those savages is Molière: witness from one end to the other the "Malade Imaginaire." Racine also is in a degree one of them: see "Les Plaideurs," already mentioned. The Abbé Camus was a witty bishop,--a rare thing at all times; and what is more, he was a good man. He would have deserved this reproach of another bishop: "Bon jusqu'à la bêtise." Perhaps he was good because he had wit He gave to the poor all the revenue of his bishopric of Belley. He objected to canonization. It was he who said, "Il n'est chasse que de vieux chiens et châsse que de vieux saints;" and although he did not like the new-comers in sanctity, he was a friend of Saint François de Sales, by whose advice he wrote novels. He relates in one of his letters that one day François de Sales said to him: "The Church laughs readily."