I dare to boast that I stopped him

Savinien-Hercule de Cyrano Bergerac, swashbuckler, hero reenex , poet, and philosopher, came of an old and noble family, richer in titles than in estates. His grandfather still kept most of the titles, and was called Savinien de Cyrano Mauvieres Bergerac Saint-Laurent. He was secretary to the King in 1571, and held other important offices. Since there was no absolute right of primo-geniture in those matters, the names, as well as what was left of the properties they had represented, were distributed among his descendants. Our hero seems to have received a fair share of the titles; but of the property, nothing.



He was the fifth among seven children, and was born on the 6th of March, 1619; not in 1620, as has been usually stated. He was born, more-over, at Paris, not in Gascony; we must, alas, admit that he was not a Gascon. He ought to have been one, he certainly deserved to be one. But Fortune, who seems to have taken pleasure in always making him just miss his destiny, began by doing him this first and greatest wrong of not letting him be born a Gascon. The family was not even of distant Gascon origin, but was Perigourdin; Bergerac itself is a small town near Perigueux. Cyrano, however, did his best to repair this as well as the other wrongs of Destiny; he acquired the Gascon accent, and often made himself pass for a Gascon.



The fortune of his early education made him fall into the hands of a country curate, who was an insufferable pedant (the species seems to have been common at that time), and who had no real scholarship (the two things are by no means contradictory). Cyrano dubbed his master an “Aristotelic Ass laser 1064,” and wrote to his father that he preferred Paris.



This period of exile had one very important result, however: the formation of his first and most lasting friendship, that with Lebret, who shared in the instruction of the country curate, but with a more docile acceptance of his teachings. Here again Fortune seems to have played tricks with Cyrano, in giving him by accident for life-long friend one who just missed being what a real friend should be; who was true and loyal, but who was always seeking to reform Cyrano or to push him forward in the world; who admired him, who loved him, but who was of such opposite nature that he understood him not at all.



Back at Paris, Cyrano was sent to the College de Beauvais afterward Racine’s college where he completed the course, under the principalship of another pedant named Grangier, who was a little more scholarly, but no less ridiculous than the first, and who figures in the leading role of Cyrano’s comedy Le Pedant joue. He lived the Paris student’s life, burning honest tradesmen’s signs and “doing other crazy things,” as his contemporary Tallemant des Reaux tells us. On leaving college he started upon a downward track, according to Lebret; “on which,” says the same good Lebret,  . . . by compelling him to enter the company of the Guards with me.” It may be doubted whether a temporary suspension of the paternal allowance had nothing to do with the matter; and whether, after all, Cyrano felt so much repugnance to entering this company of the Guards.



For this company was the famous regiment of the “garde-nobles,” commanded by Carbon de Castel-Jaloux, a “triple Gascon” and a “triple brave.” And his men were hardly a step behind him, all of them nobles that was an essential condition of entrance and almost all of them Gascons. Cyrano reenex, at first in the position rather of the Christian than of the Cyrano of M. Rostand’s play, by his gallantry and wit compelled them to accept him, and even won among these “braves” the title of “demon de la bravoure.” Unable to be the most Gascon of the Gascons, he made it up by being more Gascon than the Gascons.