A poet, novelist, and playwright, Cyrano de Bergerac was born Savinien de Cyrano in Paris on 6 March 1619 to Abel de Cyrano and his wife, Espérance de Bellanger. Abel de Cyrano was a landowner in Mauvières and Bergerac in the region of Seine et Oise, near Paris. Savinien de Cyrano lived with his parents in Paris until his father broke off with the circle of church nobility that he frequented and settled in Mauvières. There Cyrano met Henri Le Bret, one year older than he and the son of a neighboring family, who became his closest friend and later the editor of his posthumous Histoire comique, par M. Cyrano de Bergerac, contenant les états et les empires de la lune (1657; translated as Selenarchia; or, The Government of the World in the Moon, 1659). Le Bret's preface to the work was the only source...