Philosophy and the society of men of letters did not cause Cyrano to abandon his sword. Two documents are extant, dated October 1641, showing Cyrano's arrangements to take lessons in dancing and fencing. It is in these years 1641-43 that he began seriously to write and at the same time performed his most famous feats with the sword.
The battle of the Porte de Nesle, more authentic and even more heroic than the feats of Horatius celebrated by Lord Macaulay, has been related by every writer on Cyrano, from Le Bret to Rostand, from Gautier to M. Emile Magne. What happened, as far as one can make out, was this. A friend of Cyrano's, the Chevalier de Lignières, had been rash enough to banter the conjugal infelicities of a great lord who, sensible of the affront to his person and rank, hired a set of fellows to fall upon Lignières and to crop his ears in the public highway. Lignières heard of this, took refuge with Cyrano and remained with him until night, when they set out together for Lignières's home with Cyrano as escort and two officers of Conti's regiment as witnesses, in the rear. At the Porte de Nesle the bravi were ambushed to catch Lignières on his way to the Faubourg Saint-Germain; Le Bret says there were a hundred of them. In any event there was a crowd. Incredible as it seems, the fact is well attested that Cyrano attacked them all single-handed, killed two, wounded seven and put the rest to flight.[14]
The battle of Brioché's monkey is less creditable to Cyrano and far less authentic. The evidence is the unreliable one of an anonymous work, Combat de Cyrano de Bergerac avec le Singe de Brioché, au Bout du Pont-Neuf, almost certainly written by Dassoucy, a friend with whom Cyrano had quarrelled. Dassoucy fled to Italy when the pamphlet was published. The gist of the pamphlet is as follows:
One Brioché exhibited a marionette show near one end of the Pont-Neuf. Among the troup was a live monkey.
Cyrano came along, and some thirty or forty lackeys, waiting for the puppet show, began to hustle him and to make fun of his singular appearance; one of them actually flipped him on the end of his nose. Out came that deadly rapier in a flash, and the intrepid little "fiery whoreson," rushed at them, driving the whole mob of them before him. Brioché's monkey, "making a leg" for a sou, got in Cyrano's way and the gallant swordsman, not unnaturally mistaking it for one of the rabble, pierced it effectually with his rapier. Brioché brought an action against Cyrano to recover fifty pistoles damages.
"Bergerac defended himself like Bergerac, that is, with facetious writings and grotesque jokes. He told the judge he would pay Brioché like a poet, or 'with monkey's money' (i.e. laugh at him); that coins were an article of furniture unknown to Phœbus. He vowed he would immortalise the dead beast in an Apollonian epitaph."
It is possible that Dassoucy was merely parodying the battle of the Porte de Nesle; none of the facetious writings referred to is extant; but they may have perished with the elegy Le Bret saw Cyrano writing in the guard-room and the Story of the Spark and Cyrano's Lyric Poems.
The third anecdote attached to this period relates to the actor Mondory or Montfleury, the latter of whom is satirised in Cyrano's letter Against a Fat Man. The 1695 edition of the Menagiana gives the story as follows:
"Bergerac was a great sword-clanker. His nose, which was very ugly, was the cause of his killing at least ten people. He quarrelled with Montdory, the comedian, and strictly forbade him to appear on the stage. 'I forbid you to appear for a month', said he. Two days later Bergerac was at the play. Montdory appeared and began to act his part as usual; Bergerac shouted to him from the middle of the pit, with threats if he did not leave, and for fear of worse Montdory retired."[15]
The year 1645 in several respects opens a new phase in Cyrano's life. His mother was dead, he began to suffer from poverty—due to gambling it is said—and contracted a disease. There is a mystery about the death of Cyrano de Bergerac and the "maladie" which preceded it. M. Lachèvre has discovered a document showing the payment of four hundred livres to a barber-chirurgeon by Cyrano and, from circumstantial evidence we need not repeat, M. Lachèvre asserts that this was venereal disease. If so, the moral philosopher created by Le Bret disappears as completely as the delicate lover invented by Rostand.