A Popular History of France from the Earliest Times Volume V Part 13

[Ill.u.s.tration: The King's Press----323]

At the same time that he was repairing and enriching the Sorbonne, the cardinal was helping Guy de la Brosse, the king's physician, to create the Botanic Gardens (_Le Jardin des Plantes_), he was defending the independence of the College of France against the pretensions of the University of Paris, and gave it for its Grand Almoner his brother, the Archbishop of Lyons. He was preparing the foundation of the King's Press (_Imprimerie royale_), definitively created in 1640; and he gave the Academy or King's College (college royal) of his town of Richelieu a regulation-code of studies which bears the imprint of his lofty and strong mind. He prescribed a deep study of the French tongue. "It often happens, unfortunately, that the difficulties which must be surmounted and the long time which is employed in learning the dead languages, before any knowledge of the sciences can be arrived at, have the effect, at the outset, of making young gentlemen disgusted and hasten to betake themselves to the exercise of arms without having been sufficiently instructed in good literature, though it is the fairest ornament of their profession. . . . It has, therefore, been thought necessary to establish a royal academy at which discipline suitable to their condition may be taught them in the French tongue, in order that they may exercise themselves therein, and that even foreigners, who are curious about it, may learn to know its riches and the graces it hath in unfolding the secrets of the highest discipline." Herein is revealed the founder of the French Academy, skilful as he was in divining the wants of his day, and always ready to profit by new means of action, and to make them his own whilst doing them service.

a.s.sociations of the literary were not unknown in France; Ronsard and his friends, at first under the name of the brigade and then under that of the Pleiad, often met to read together their joint productions, and to discuss literary questions; and the same thing was done, subsequently, in Malherbe's rooms.

"Now let us speak at our ease," Balzac would say, when the sitting was over, "and without fear of committing solecisms."

When Malherbe was dead and Balzac had retired to his country house on the borders of the Charente, some friends, "men of letters and of merits very much above the average," says Pellisson in his _Histoire de l'Academie Francaise,_ "finding that nothing was more inconvenient in this great city than to go often and often to call upon one another without finding anybody at home, resolved to meet one day in the week at the house of one of them. They used to a.s.semble at M. Conrart's, who happened to be most conveniently quartered for receiving them, and in the very heart of the city (Rue St. Martin). There they conversed familiarly as they would have on an ordinary visit, and upon all sorts of things, business, news, and literature. If any one of the company had a work done, as, often happened, he readily communicated its contents to all the others, who freely gave him their opinion of it, and their conferences were followed sometimes by a walk and sometimes by a collation which they took together. Thus they continued for three or four years, as I have heard many amongst them say; it was an extreme pleasure and an incredible gain, insomuch that, when they speak nowadays of that time and of those early days of the Academy, they speak of it as a golden age during the which, without bustle and without show, and without any other laws but those of friends.h.i.+p, they enjoyed all that is sweetest and most charming in the intercourse of intellects and in rational life."

Even after the intervention and regulationizing of Cardinal Richelieu, the French Academy still preserved something of that sweetness and that polished familiarity in their relations which caused the regrets of its earliest founders. [They were MM. G.o.deau, afterwards Bishop of Gra.s.se, Conrart and Gombault who were Huguenots, Chapelain, Giry, Habert, Abbe de Cerisy, his brother, M. de Serizay and M. de Maleville.] The secret of the little gatherings was not so well kept but that Bois-Robert, the cardinal's accredited gossip, ever on the alert for news to divert his patron, heard of them and begged before long to be present at them.

"There was no probability of his being refused, for, besides that he was on friendly terms with many of these gentlemen, the very favor he enjoyed gave him some sort of authority and added to his consequence. He was full of delight and admiration at what he saw, and did not fail to give the cardinal a favorable account of the little a.s.sembly, insomuch that the cardinal, who had a mind naturally inclined towards great things, and who loved the French language, which he himself wrote extremely well, asked if those persons would not be disposed to form a body and a.s.sembly regularly and under public authority." Bois-Robert was intrusted with the proposal.

Great was the consternation in the little voluntary and friendly Academy.

"There was scarcely one of these gentlemen who did not testify displeasure: MM. de Serizay and de Maleville, who were attached to the households of the Duke of La Rochefoucauld and Marshal Ba.s.sompierre, one in retirement on his estates and the other a prisoner in the Bastille, were for refusing and excusing themselves as best they might to the cardinal. Chapelain, who had a pension from his Eminence, represented that "in good truth he could have been well pleased to dispense with having their conferences thus bruited abroad, but in the position to which things were reduced, it was not open to them to follow the more agreeable of the two courses; they had to do with a man who willed in no half-hearted way whatever he willed, and who was not accustomed to meet resistance or to stiffer it with impunity; he would consider as an insult the disregard shown for his protection, and might visit his resentment upon each individual; he could, at any rate, easily prohibit their a.s.semblies, breaking up by that means a society which every one of them desired to be eternal." The arguments were strong, the members yielded; Bois-Robert was charged to thank his Eminence very humbly for the honor he did them, a.s.suring him that they were all resolved to follow his wishes. "I wish to be of that a.s.sembly the protector and the father,"

said Richelieu, giving at once divers proofs that he took a great interest in that establishment, a fact which soon brought the Academy solicitations from those who were most intimate with the cardinal, and who, being in some sort of repute for wit, gloried in being admitted to a body which he regarded with favor.

In making of this little private gathering a great national inst.i.tution, Cardinal Richelieu yielded to his natural yearning for government and dominion; he protected literature as a minister and as an admirer; the admirer's inclination was supported by the minister's influence. At the same time, and perhaps without being aware of it, he was giving French literature a centre of discipline and union whilst securing for the independence and dignity of writers a supporting-point which they had hitherto lacked. Whilst recompensing them by favors nearly always conferred in the name of the state, he was preparing for them afar off the means of withdrawing themselves from that private dependence, the yoke of which they nearly always had to bear. Set free at his death from the weight of their obligations to him, they became the servants of the state; ere long the French Academy had no other protector but the king.

Order and rule everywhere accompanied Cardinal Richelieu; the Academy drew up its statutes, chose a director, a chancellor, and a perpetual secretary: Conrart was the first to be called to that honor; the number of Academicians was set down at forty by letters patent from the king.

"As soon as G.o.d had called us to the conduct of this realm, we had for aim, not only to apply a remedy to the disorders which the civil wars had introduced into it, but also to enrich it with all ornaments suitable for the most ill.u.s.trious and the most ancient of the monarchies that are at this day in the world. Although we have labored without ceasing at the execution of this design, it hath been impossible for us. .h.i.therto to see the entire fulfilment thereof. The disturbances so often excited in the greater part of our provinces, and the a.s.sistance we have been obliged to give to many of our allies, have diverted us from any other thought but that of war, and have hindered us for a long while from enjoying the repose we procured for others. . . . Our very clear and very much beloved cousin, the cardinal-duke of Richelieu, who hath had the part that everybody knows in all these things, hath represented to us that one of the most glorious signs of the happiness of a kingdom was that the sciences and arts should flourish there, and that letters should be in honor there as well as arms; that, after having performed so many memorable exploits, we had nothing further to do but to add agreeable things to the necessary, and ornament to utility; and he was of opinion that we could not begin better than with the most n.o.ble of all the arts, which is eloquence; that the French tongue, which up to the present hath only too keenly felt the neglect of those who might have rendered it the most perfect of the day, is more than ever capable of becoming so, seeing the number of persons who have knowledge of the advantages it possesses; it is to establish fixed rules for it that he hath ordained an a.s.sembly whose propositions were satisfactory to him. For these reasons and in order to secure the said conferences, we will that they continue henceforth, in our good city of Paris, under the name of French Academy, and that letters patent be enregistered to that end by our gentry of the Parliament of Paris."

The Parliament was not disposed to fulfil the formality of enregistration. The cardinal had compressed it, stifled it, but he had never mastered it; the Academy was a new inst.i.tution, it was regarded as his work; on that ground it inspired great distrust in the public as well as the magistrates. "The people, to whom everything that came from this minister looked suspicious, knew not whether beneath these flowers there were not a serpent concealed, and were apprehensive that this establishment was, at the very least, a new prop to support is domination, that it was but a batch of folks in his pay, hired to maintain all that he did and to observe the actions and sentiments of others. It went about that he cut down scavenging expenses of Paris by eighty thousand livres in order to give them a pension of two thousand livres apiece; the vulgar were so frightened, without attempting to account for their terror, that a tradesman of Paris, who had taken a house that suited him admirably in Rue Cinq Diamants, where the Academy then used to meet at M. Chapelain's, broke off his bargain on no other ground but that he did not want to be in a street where a _'Cademy of Canspirators (une Cademie e Manopoleurs)_ met every week." The wits, like St. Evremond, in his comedy of the Academistes, turned into ridicule the body which, as it was said, claimed to subject the language of the public to its decisions:--

"So I, with h.o.a.ry head, to' school Must, like a child, go day by day, And learn my parts of speech, poor fool, when Death is taking speech away!"

said Maynard, who, nevertheless, was one of the forty.

The letters patent for establishment of the French Academy had been sent to the Parliament in 1635; they were not registered until 1637 at the express instance of the cardinal, who wrote to the premier President to a.s.sure him that "the foundation of the Academy was useful and necessary to the public, and the purpose of the Academicians was quite different from what it had been possible to make people believe hitherto."

The decree of verification, when it at length appeared, bore traces of the jealous prejudices of the Parliament. "They the said a.s.sembly and academy," it ran, "shall not be powered to take cognizance of anything but the ornamentation, embellishment, and augmentation of the French language, and of the books that shall be made by them and by other persons who shall desire it and want it."

The French Academy was founded; it was already commencing its Dictionary in accordance with the suggestion enunciated by Chapelain at the second meeting; the cardinal was here carrying out that great moral idea of literature which he had expressed but lately in a letter to Balzac: "The conceptions in your letters," said he, "are forcible and as far removed from ordinary imaginations as they are in conformity with the common sense of those who have superior judgment. Truth has this advantage, that it forces those who have eyes and mind sufficiently clear to discern what it is to represent it without disguise." Neither Balzac and his friends, nor the protection of Cardinal Richelieu, sufficed as yet to give l.u.s.tre to the Academy; great minds and great writers alone could make the glory of their society. The principle of the a.s.sociation of men of letters was, however, established: men of the world, friendly to literature, were already preparing to mingle with them; the literary, but lately servitors of the great, had henceforth at their disposal a privilege envied and sought after by courtiers; their independence grew by it and their dignity gained by it. The French Academy became an inst.i.tution, and took its place amongst the glories of France. It had this piece of good fortune, that Cardinal Richelieu died without being able to carry out the project he had conceived. He had intended to open on the site of the horse-market, near Porte St. Honore and behind the Palais-Cardinal, "a great Place which he would have called Ducale in imitation of the Royale, which is at the other end of the city," says Pellisson; he had placed in the hands of M. de la Mesnardiere, a memorandum drawn up by himself for the plan of a college "which he was meditating for all the n.o.ble sciences, and in which he designed to employ all that was most telling for the cause of literature in Europe. He had an idea of making the members of the Academy directors and as it were arbiters of this great establishment, and aspired, with a feeling worthy of the immortality with which he was so much in love, to set up the French Academy there in the most distinguished position in the world, and to offer an honorable and pleasant repose to all persons of that cla.s.s who had deserved it by their labors." It was a n.o.ble and a liberal idea, worthy of the great mind which had conceived it; but it would have stifled the fertile germ of independence and liberty which he had unconsciously buried in the womb of the French Academy. Pensioned and barracked, the Academicians would have remained men of letters, shut off from society and the world. The Academy grew up alone, favored indeed, but never reduced to servitude; it alone has withstood the cruel shocks which have for so long a time agitated France; in a country where nothing lasts, it has lasted, with its traditions, its primitive statutes, its reminiscences, its respect for the past. It has preserved its courteous and modest dignity, its habits of polite neutrality, the suavity and equality of the relations between its members. It was said just now that Richelieu's work no longer existed save in history, and that revolutions have left him nothing but his glory; but that was a mistake: the French Academy is still standing, stronger and freer than at its birth, and it was founded by Richelieu, and has never forgotten him.

Amongst the earliest members of the Academy the cardinal had placed his most habitual and most intimate literary servants, Bois-Robert, Desmarets, Colletet, all writers for the theatre, employed by Richelieu in his own dramatic attempts. Theatrical representations were the only pleasure the minister enjoyed, in accord with the public of his day. He had everywhere encouraged this taste, supporting with marked favor , Hardy and the _Theatre Parisien_. With his mind constantly exercised by the wants of the government, he soon sought in the theatre a means of acting upon the ma.s.ses. He had already foreseen the power of the press; he had laid hands on Doctor Renaudot's _Gazette de France;_ King Louis XIII. often wrote articles in it; the ma.n.u.script exists in the National Library, with some corrections which appear to be Richelieu's. As for the theatre, the cardinal aspired to try his own hand at the work; his literary labors were nearly all political pieces; his tragedy of _Mirame,_ to which he attached so much value, and which he had represented at such great expense for the opening of his theatre in the Palais-Cardinal, is nothing but one continual allusion, often bold even to insolence, to Buckingham's feelings towards Anne of Austria. The comedy, in heroic style, of Europe, which appeared in the name of _Desmarets,_ after the cardinal's death, is a political allegory touching the condition of the world. Francion and Ibere contend together for the favors of Europe, not without, at the same time, paying court to the Princess Austrasia (Lorraine). All the cardinal's foreign policy, his alliances with Protestants, are there described in verses which do not lack a certain force: Germanique (the emperor) pleads the cause of Ibere with Europe:--

"No longer can he brook to gaze on such as these, Destroyers of the shrines, foes of the Deities, By Francion evoked from out the Frozen Main,[1]

That he might cope with us and equal war maintain.

EUROPE.

O, call not by those names th' indomitable race, Who 'midst my champions hold honorable place.

Unlike to us, they own no shrine, no sacrifice; But still, unlike Ibere, they use no artifice; About the G.o.ds they speak their mind as seemeth best, Whilst he, with pious air, still keepeth me opprest; Through them I hold mine own, from harm and insult free, Their errors I deplore, their valor pleases me.

What was that n.o.ble king,[2] that puissant conqueror, Who through thy regions, like a mighty torrent, tore?

Who marched with giant strides along the path of fame, And, in the hour of death, left victory with his name?

What are those gallant chiefs, who from his ashes rose, Whom still, methinks, his shade a.s.sists against their foes?

[1] The Swedes. [2] Gustavus Adolphus.

What was that Saxon heart,[1] so full of n.o.ble rage, He, whom thine own decrees drove from his heritage?

Who, with his gallant few, full many a deed hath done Within thine own domains, and many a laurel won?

Who, wasting not his strength in strife with granite walls, Routs thee in open field, and lo! the fortress falls?

Who, taking just revenge for loss of all his own, Compressed thy boundaries, and cut thy frontiers down.

How many virtues in that prince's[2] heart reside Who leads yon free-set[3] people's armies in their pride, People who boldly spurned Ibere and all his laws, Bravely shook off his yoke and bravely left his cause?

Francion, without such aid, thou say'st would helpless be; What were Ibere without thy provinces and thee?

GERMANIQUE.

But I am of his blood:--own self same Deities.

EUROPE.

All they are of my blood:--gaze on the self-same skies Do all your hosts adore the Deities we own?

Nay, from your very midst come errors widely sown.

Ibere for chief support on erring men relies Yet, what himself may do, to others he denies.

What! Francion favor error! This is idle prate: He who from irreligion thoroughly purged the state!

Who brought the wors.h.i.+p back to altars in decay; Who built the temples up that in their ashes lay; True son of them, who, spite of all thy fathers' feats, Replaced my reverend priests upon their holy seats!

'Twixt Francion and Ibere this difference remains: One sets them in their seats, and one in iron chains."

[1] Bernard of Saxe-Weimar. [2] Prince of Orange. [3] The Hollanders.

Already, in Mirame, Richelieu had celebrated the fall of Roch.e.l.le and of the Huguenot party, bringing upon the scene the King of Bithynia, who is taking arms

"To tame a rebel slave, Perched proudly on his rock washed by the ocean-wave."

As epigraph to Europe there were these lines:--

"All friends of France to this my work will friendly be; And all unfriends of her will say the author ill; Yet shall I be content, say, reader, what you will; The joy of some, the rage of others, pleases me."

The enemies of France did not wait for the comedy, in heroic style, of Europe in order to frequently say ill of Cardinal Richelieu.

Occupied as he was in governing the affairs of France and of Europe otherwise than in verse, the cardinal chose out work-fellows; there were five of them, to whom he gave his ideas and the plan of his piece; he intrusted to each the duty of writing an act, and "by this means finished a comedy a month," says Pellisson. Thus was composed the comedy of the _Tuileries_ and the _Aveugle de Smyrne,_ which were printed in 1638; Richelieu had likewise taken part in the composition of the _Visionnaires of Desmarets,_ and supported in a rather remarkable scene the rule of the three unities against its detractors. A new comedy, the _Grande Pastorale,_ was in hand. "When he was purposing to publish it," says the _History of the Academy,_ "he desired M. Chapelain to look over it, and make careful observations upon it. These observations were brought to him by M. de Bois-Robert, and, though they were written with much discretion and respect, they shocked and nettled him to such a degree, either by their number or by the consciousness they caused him of his faults, that, without reading them through, he tore them up. But on the following night, when he was in bed, and all his household asleep, having thought over the anger he had shown, be did a thing incomparably more estimable than the best comedy in the world, that is to say, he listened to reason, for he gave orders to collect and glue together the pieces of that torn paper, and, having read it from one end to the other, and given great thought to it, he sent and awakened M. de Bois-Robert to tell him that he saw quite well that the gentlemen of the Academy were better informed about such matters than he, and that there must be nothing more said about that paper and print."

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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 compet.i.tors 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?"