once he perceived that he was becoming deaf, yes, stone deaf. He
returned to Versailles, where he had apartments at Conde's house.
Apoplexy carried him off in a quarter of an hour on the 11th of May,
1696," leaving behind him an incomparable book, wherein, according to his
own maxim, the excellent writer shows himself to be an excellent painter;
and four dialogues against Quietism, still unfinished, full of lively and
good-humored hostility to the doctrines of Madame Guyon. They were
published after his death.

We pass from prose to poetry, from La Bruyere to Corneille, who had died
in 1684, too late for his fame, in spite of the vigorous returns of
genius which still flash forth sometimes in his feeblest works.
Throughout the Regency and the Fronde, Corneille had continued to occupy
almost alone the great French stage. Rotrou, his sometime rival with his
piece of Venceslas, and ever tenderly attached to him, had died, in 1650,
at Dreux, of which he was civil magistrate. An epidemic was ravaging the
town, and he was urged to go away. "I am the only one who can maintain
good order, and I shall remain," he replied. "At the moment of my
writing to you the bells are tolling for the twenty-second person to-day;
perhaps to-morrow it will be for me; but my conscience has marked out my
duty. God's will be done!" Two days later he was dead.

Corneille had dedicated _Polyeucte_ to the regent Anne of Austria. He
published in a single year _Rodogune_ and the _Mort de Pompee,_
dedicating this latter piece to Mazarin, in gratitude, he said, for an
act of generosity with which his Eminence had surprised him. At the same
time he borrowed from the Spanish drama the canvas of the _Menteur,_ the
first really French comedy which appeared on the boards, and which
Moliere showed that he could appreciate at its proper value. After this
attempt, due perhaps to the desire felt by Corneille to triumph over his
rivals in the style in which he had walked abreast with them, he let
tragedy resume its legitimate empire over a genius formed by it. He
wrote _Heraclius_ and _Nicomede,_ which are equal in parts to his finest
masterpieces. But by this time the great genius no longer soared with
equal flight. _Theodore_ and _Pertharite_ had been failures. "I don't
mention them," Corneille would say, "in order to avoid the vexation of
remembering them." He was still living at Rouen, in a house adjoining
that occupied by his brother, Thomas