comrade, Cyrano de Bergerac (1620-1655), who did not fear to indicate
his frame of mind in one of his dramas. In La Mort d'Agrippine
he puts in the mouth of Sejanus, as was said by a contemporary,
"horrible things against the Gods," notably the phrase, "whom men
made, and who did not make men," [567] which, however, generally
passed as an attack on polytheism; and though there was certainly
no blasphemous intention in the phrase, Frappons, voilà l'hostie
[= hostia, victim], some pretended to regard it as an insult to the
Catholic host. [568] At times Cyrano writes like a deist; [569] but
in so many other passages does he hold the language of a convinced
materialist, and of a scoffer at that, [570] that he can hardly be
taken seriously on the former head. [571] In short, he was one of
the first of the hardy freethinkers who, under the tolerant rule of
Richelieu and Mazarin, gave clear voice to the newer spirit. Under
any other government, he would have been in danger of his life: as it
was, he was menaced with prosecutions; his Agrippine was forbidden;
the first edition of his Pédant joué was confiscated; during his
last illness there was an attempt to seize his manuscripts; and
down till the time of the Revolution the editions of his works were
eagerly bought up and destroyed by zealots. [572] His recent literary
rehabilitation thus hardly serves to realize his importance in the
history of freethought. Between Cyrano and Molière it would appear
that there was little less of rationalistic ferment in the France of
their day than in England. Bossuet avows in a letter to Huet in 1678
that impiety and unbelief abound more than ever before. [573]