they interrupted the actor with whistling, booing and shouts of:
"Ah! the rascal! Ah! The atheist! Hear how he speaks of the holy sacrament!"
I cannot find this anecdote in my own copy of the Menagiana, but since my edition is 1693 and Lacroix quotes that of 1715, I presume his is an addition. In my edition I find another anecdote of Cyrano which I give here both for its rarity and because it shows 17th-century contempt for Cyrano at its most virulent:
"What wretched works are those of Cyrano de Bergerac! He studied at the Collège de Beauvais in the time of Principal Grangier. They say he was still in his 'rhetoric' when he wrote The Pedant Outwitted against his head-master. There are a few passable things in this play but all the rest is very flat. When he wrote his Voyage to the Moon I think he had one quarter of the moon in his head. The first public sign he gave of his madness was to go to mass in the morning in trunk hose and a night cap without his doublet. He had not one sou when he fell ill of the disease from which he died and if M. de Sainte-Marthe had not charitably supplied all his necessities he would have died in the poor-house."[5]
More 17th-century anecdotes of Cyrano will be found in the Life; those cited will at least show the early tendency to attach anecdotes to him and the curious conflict of contemporary opinion. During the second half of the 17th century Cyrano remained popular and his works were frequently reprinted. The 18th century saw a great decline in reputation and in editions; Voltaire repeated the accusation: "A madman!" No edition of Cyrano's works appeared in Paris between 1699 and 1855: the last of them before the revival of the 19th century was the Amsterdam edition of 1761. For a century there was no edition of Cyrano. He dropped out of sight almost entirely; but in the 19th century he was destined to be revived as an increasingly legendary figure, culminating in the heroic apotheosis of Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac.
Strangely enough the revival began in England in 1820 with an article in the Retrospective Review.[6] This article shows some acquaintance with Cyrano's originals as well as with the translation reviewed. The anonymous writer says:
"Cyrano de Bergerac is a marvellously strange writer—his character, too, was out of the common way. His chief passion appears to have been duelling; and, from the numerous affairs of honour in which he was concerned in a very short life and the bravery he displayed on those occasions, he acquired the cognomen of 'The Intrepid'. His friend Le Bret says he was engaged in no less than one hundred duels for his friends, and not one on his own account. Others however say, that, happening to have a nose somewhat awry, whoever was so unfortunate or so rash as to laugh at it, was sure to be called upon to answer its intrepid owner in the field. But however this may be, it is indisputable that Cyrano was a distinguished monomachist and a most eccentric writer."[7]
Seventeen years later that amiable man of letters, Charles Nodier, resuscitated Cyrano in his Bonaventure Desperiers et Cyrano de Bergerac. Before this Nodier had incidentally defended Cyrano in his Bibliographie des Fous:
"As to this book (The Voyage to the Moon), which he wrote when he was already mad (according to Voltaire), would you not be astonished if you were told that it contained more profound perceptions, more ingenious foresight, more anticipations in that science whose confused elements Descartes scarcely sorted out, than the large volume written by Voltaire under the supervision of the Marquis du Châtelet? Cyrano used his genius like a hot-head, but there is nothing in it which resembles a madman."[8]
Nodier is responsible for that portion of the Cyrano legend which makes him an innovator, plagiarized from, and persecuted to an early grave.