CYRANO DE BERGERAC, SAVINIEN French romance-writer and dramatist, son of Abel de Cyrano, seigneur de Mauvieres et de Bergerac, was born in Paris on March 6, 1620. He studied with a country priest, and had for a fel low pupil his friend and future biographer, Henri Lebret. He then studied in Paris at the college de Beauvais, where he had for mas ter Jean Grangier, whom he afterwards ridiculed in his comedy Le Pedant joue (1654). At the age of 19 he entered a corps of the guards, serving in the campaigns of 1639 and 1640, and began the series of exploits that were to make him a hero of romance. The story of his adventure single-handed against zoo enemies is vouched for by Lebret as the simple truth. After two years of this life Cyrano left the service and began to write tragedies cast in the orthodox classical mode. He was, however, as a pupil of Gas sendi, suspected of thinking too freely, and in the Mort d' Agrip pine (1654) his enemies even found blasphemy. But his most famous works are the two romances L'Histoire comique des etats du soleil (166 2) and L'Histoire comique des etats de la lune (1656?). Cyrano's ingenious mixture of science and romance furnished a model for many writers, such as Swift and Poe. Cyrano spent a stormy existence in Paris and was involved in many duels, and in quarrels with the comedian Montfleury, with Scarron and others. In 1654 he was injured by a falling timber in the house of the duc d' Arpajon, his patron. His reputation as a free-thinker later forced him to seek refuge with friends in Paris, where he died in Sept. M. Edmond Rostand's romantic play Cyrano de Bergerac (1897) revived interest in the author of the Histoires comiques. A modern edition of his Oeuvres (2 vols.) , by P. L. Jacob (Paul Lacroix) , appeared in 1858 (new ed. 1900), with the preface by H. Lebret originally prefixed to the Histoire comique des etats de la lune (1656?). See also P. A. Brun, Savinien de Cyrano Bergerac (1894) F. Lachevre, Cyrano de Bergerac (192o) . Other studies of Cyrano are those of Charles Nodier (1841) , F. Merilhon (Perigueux, 1856) , Fourgeaud-Lagreze (in Le Perigord litteraire, 1875) and Theophile Gautier, in his Grotesques.