going out.  "She had a mortal melancholy.  What absurdity again!  Is she
not the most fortunate woman in the world?  That is what people said,"
writes Madame de Sevigne; "it needed that she should be dead to prove
that she had good reason for not going out, and for being melancholy.
Her reins and her heart were all gone was not that enough to cause those
fits of despondency of which she complained?  And so, during her life,
she showed reason, and after death she showed reason, and never was she
without that divine reason which was her principal gift."

Madame de La Fayette had in her life one great sorrow, which had
completed the ruin of her health.  On the 16th of March, 1680, after the
closest and longest of intimacies, she had lost her best friend, the Duke
of La Rochefoucauld.  Carried away in his youth by party strife and an
ardent passion for Madame de Longueville, he had at a later period sought
refuge in the friendship of Madame de La Fayette.  "When women have
well-formed minds," he would say, "I like their conversation better than
that of men; you find with them a certain gentleness which is not met
with amongst us, and it seems to me, besides, that they express
themselves with greater clearness, and that they give a more pleasant
turn to the things they say."  A meddler and intriguer during the
Fronde, sceptical and bitter in his _Maximes,_ the Duke of La
Rochefoucauld was amiable and kindly in his private life.  Factions and
the court had taught him a great deal about human nature; he had seen it
and judged of it from its bad side.  Witty, shrewd, and often profound,
he was too severe to be just.  The bitterness of his spirit breathed
itself out completely in his writings; he kept for his friends that
kindliness and that sensitiveness of which he made sport.  "He gave me
wit," Madame de La Fayette would say, "but I reformed his heart."  He
had lost his son at the passage of the Rhine, in 1672.  He was ill,
suffering cruelly.  "I was yesterday at M. de La Rochefoucauld's,"
writes Madame de Sevigne, in 1680.  "I found him uttering loud shrieks;
his pain was such that his endurance was quite overcome without a single
scrap remaining.  The excessive pain upset him to such a degree that he
was sitting out in the open air with a violent fever upon him.  He
begged me to send you word, and to assure you that the wheel-broken do
not suffer during a single moment what he suffers one half of his life,
and so he wishes for death as a happy release."  He died with Bossuet at
his pillow.  "Very well prepared as regards his conscience," says Madame
de Sevigne again; "that is all settled; but, in other respects, it might
be the illness and death of his neighbor which is in question, he is not
flurried about it, he is not troubled about it. Believe me, my daughter,
it is not to no purpose that he has been making reflections all his
life; he has approached his last moments in such wise that they have had
nothing that was novel or strange for him."  M. de La Rochefoucauld
thought worse of men than of life.  "I have scarcely any fear of
things," he had said; "I am not at all afraid of death."  With all his
rare qualities and great opportunities he had done nothing but
frequently embroil matters in which he had meddled, and had never been
anything but a great lord with a good deal of wit.  Actionless
penetration and sceptical severity may sometimes clear the judgment and
the thoughts, but they give no force or influence that has power over
men.  "There was always a something (_je ne sais quoi_) about M. de La
Rochefoucauld," writes Cardinal de Retz, who did not like him; "he was
for meddling in intrigues from his childhood, and at a time when he had
no notion of petty interests, which were never his foible, and when he
did not understand great ones, which, on the other hand, were never his
strength.  He was never capable of doing anything in public affairs, and
I am sure I don't know why.  His views were not sufficiently broad, and
he did not even see comprehensively all that was within his range, but
his good sense,--very good, speculatively,--added to his suavity, his
insinuating style, and his easy manners, which are admirable, ought to
have compensated more than it did for his lack of penetration.  He
always showed habitual irresolution, but I really do not know to what to
attribute this irresolution; it could not, with him, have come from the
fertility of his imagination, which is anything but lively.  He was
never a warrior, though he was very much the soldier.  He was never a
good partyman, though he was engaged in it all his life.  That air of
bashfulness and timidity which you see about him in private life was
turned in public life into an air of apology.  He always considered
himself to need one, which fact, added to his maxims, which do not show
sufficient belief in virtue, and to his practice, which was always to
get out of affairs with as much impatience as he had shown to get into
them, leads me to conclude that he would have done far better to know
his own place, and reduce himself to passing, as he might have passed,
for the most polite of courtiers and the worthiest (_le plus honnete_)
man, as regards ordinary life, that ever appeared in his century."

[Illustration: La Rochefoucauld and his fair Friends----629]

Cardinal de Retz had more wits, more courage, and more resolution than
the Duke of La Rochefoucauld; he was more ambitious and more bold; he
was, like him, meddlesome, powerless, and dangerous to the state.  He
thought himself capable of superseding Cardinal Mazarin, and far more
worthy than he of being premier minister; but every time he found himself
opposed to the able Italian he was beaten.  All that he displayed, during
the Fronde, of address, combination, intrigue, and resolution, would
barely have sufficed to preserve his name in history, if he had not
devoted his leisure in his retirement to writing his _Memoires_.
Vigorous, animated, always striking, often amusing, sometimes showing
rare nobleness and high-mindedness, his stories and his portraits
transport us to the very midst of the scenes he desires to describe and
the personages he makes the actors in them.  His rapid, nervous,
picturesque style is the very image of that little dark, quick, agile
man, more soldier than bishop, and more intriguer than soldier,
faithfully and affectionately beloved by his friends, detested by his
very numerous enemies, and dreaded by many people, for the causticity of
his tongue, long after the troubles of the Fronde had ceased, and he was
reduced to be a wanderer in foreign lands, still Archbishop of Paris
without being able to set foot in it.  Having retired to Commercy, he
fell under Louis XIV.'s suspicion.  Madame de Sevigne, who was one of his
best friends, was anxious about him.  "As to our cardinal, I have often
thought as you," she wrote to her daughter; "but, whether it be that the
enemies are not in a condition to cause fear, or that the friends are not
subject to take alarm, it is certain that there is no commotion.  You
show a very proper spirit in being anxious about the welfare of a person
who is so distinguished, and to whom you owe so much affection."  "Can I
forget him whom I see everywhere in the story of our misfortunes,"
exclaimed Bossuet, in his funeral oration over Michael Le Tellier,
"that man so faithful to individuals, so formidable to the state, of a
character so high that he could not be esteemed, or feared, or hated by
halves, that steady genius whom, the while he shook the universe, we saw
attracting to himself a dignity which in the end he determined to
relinquish as having been too dearly bought, as he had the courage to
recognize in the place that is the most eminent in Christendom, and as
being, after all, quite incapable of satisfying his desires, so conscious
was he of his mistake and of the emptiness of human greatness?  But, so
long as he was bent upon obtaining what he was one day to despise, he
kept everything moving by means of powerful and secret springs, and,
after that all parties were overthrown, he seemed still to uphold himself
alone, and alone to still threaten the victorious favorite with his sad
but fearless gaze."  When Bossuet sketched this magnificent portrait of
Mazarin's rival, Cardinal de Retz had been six years dead, in 1679.

Mesdames de Sevigne and de La Fayette were of the court, as were the Duke
of La Rochefoucauld and Cardinal de Retz.  La Bruyere lived all his life
rubbing shoulders with the court; he knew it, he described it, but he was
not of it, and could not be of it.  Nothing is known of his family.  He
was born at Dourdan in 1639, and had just bought a post in the Treasury
(_tresorier de France_) at Caen, when Bossuet, who knew him, induced him
to remove to Paris as teacher of history to the duke, grandson of the
great Conde.  He remained forever attached to the person of the prince,
who gave him a thousand crowns a year, and he lived to the day of his
death at Conde's house.  "He was a philosopher," says Abbe d'Olivet in
his _Histoire de l'Academie Francaise;_ "all he dreamt of was a quiet
life, with his friends and his books, making a good choice of both; not
courting or avoiding pleasure; ever inclined for moderate fun, and with
a talent for setting it going; polished in manners, and discreet in
conversation; dreading every sort of ambition, even that of displaying
wit."  This was not quite the opinion formed by Boileau of La Bruyere.
"Maximilian came to see me at Auteuil," writes Boileau to Racine on the
19th of May, 1687, the very year in which the _Caracteres_ was published;
"he read me some of his _Theophrastus_.  He is a very worthy (_honnete_)
man, and one who would lack nothing, if nature had created him as
agreeable as he is anxious to be.  However, he has wit, learning, and
merit."  Amidst his many and various portraits, La Bruyere has drawn his
own with an amiable pride.  "I go to your door, Ctesiphon; the need I
have of you hurries me from my bed and from my room.  Would to Heaven I
were neither your client nor your bore.  Your slaves tell me that you are
engaged and cannot see me for a full hour yet; I return before the time
they appointed, and they tell me that you have gone out.  What can you be
doing, Ctesiphon, in that remotest part of your rooms, of so laborious a
kind as to prevent you from seeing me?  You are filing some bills, you
are comparing a register; you are signing your name, you are putting the
flourish.  I had but one thing to ask you, and you had but one word to
reply: yes or no.  Do you want to be singular?  Render service to those
who are dependent upon you, you will be more so by that behavior than by
not letting yourself be seen.  O man of importance and overwhelmed with
business, who in your turn have need of my offices, come into the
solitude of my closet; the philosopher is accessible; I shall not put you
off to another day.  You will find me over those works of Plato which
treat of the immortality of the soul and its distinctness from the body;
or with pen in hand, to calculate the distances of Saturn and Jupiter.  I
admire God in His works, and I seek by knowledge of the truth to regulate
my mind and become better.  Come in, all doors are open to you; my
antechamber is not made to wear you out with waiting for me; come right
in to me without giving me notice.  You bring me something more precious
than silver and gold, if it be an opportunity of obliging you.  Tell me,
what can I do for you?  Must I leave my books, my study, my work, this
line I have just begun?  What a fortunate interruption for me is that
which is of service to you!"

[Illustration: La Bruyere----633]

From the solitude of that closet went forth a book unique of its sort,
full of sagacity, penetration, and severity, without bitterness; a
picture of the manners of the court and of the world, traced by the hand
of a spectator who had not essayed its temptations, but who guessed them
and passed judgment on them all,--"a book," as M. de Malezieux said to La
Bruyere, "which was sure to bring its author many readers and many
enemies."  Its success was great from the first, and it excited lively
curiosity.  The courtiers liked the portraits; attempts were made to name
them; the good sense, shrewdness, and truth of the observations struck
everybody; people had met a hundred times those whom La Bruyere had
described.  The form appeared of a rarer order than even the matter; it
was a brilliant, uncommon style, as varied as human nature, always
elegant and pure, original and animated, rising sometimes to the height
of the noblest thoughts, gay and grave, pointed and serious.  Avoiding,
by richness in turns and expression, the uniformity native to the
subject, La Bruyere riveted attention by a succession of touches making a
masterly picture, a terrible one sometimes, as in his description of the
peasants' misery:

To be seen are certain ferocious animals, male and female, scattered over
the country, dark, livid, and all scorched by the sun, affixed to the
soil which they rummage and throw up with indomitable pertinacity; they
have a sort of articulate voice, and, when they rise to their feet, they
show a human face; they are, in fact, men.  At night they withdraw to the
caves, where they live on black bread, water, and roots.  They spare
other men the trouble of sowing, tilling, and reaping for their
livelihood, and deserve, therefore, not to go in want of the very bread
they have sown."  Few people at the court, and in La Bruyere's day, would
have thought about the sufferings of the country folks, and conceived the
idea of contrasting them with the sketch of a court-ninny.  "Gold
glitters," say you, "upon the clothes of Philemon; it glitters as well as
the tradesman's.  He is dressed in the finest stuffs; are they a whit the
less so when displayed in the shops and by the piece?  Nay; but the
embroidery and the ornaments add magnificence thereto; then I give the
workman credit for his work.  If you ask him the time, he pulls out a
watch which is a masterpiece; his sword-guard is an onyx; he has on his
finger a large diamond which he flashes into all eyes, and which is
perfection; he lacks none of those curious trifles which are worn about
one as much for show as for use; and he does not stint himself either of
all sorts of adornment befitting a young man who has married an old
millionnaire.  You really pique my curiosity: I positively must see such
precious articles as those.  Send me that coat and those jewels of
Philemon's; you can keep the person.  Thou'rt wrong, Philemon, if, with
that splendid carriage, and that large number of rascals behind thee, and
those six animals to draw thee, thou thiukest thou art thought more of.
We take off all those appendages which are extraneous to thee to get at
thyself, who art but a ninny."

More earnest and less bitter than La Rochefoucauld, and as brilliant and
as firm as Cardinal de Retz, La Bruyere was a more sincere believer than
either.  "I feel that there is a God, and I do not feel that there is
none; that is enough for me; the reasoning of the world is useless to me.
I conclude that God exists.  Are men good enough, faithful enough,
equitable enough to deserve all our confidence, and not make us wish
at least for the existence of God, to whom we may appeal from their
judgments and have recourse when we are persecuted or betrayed?"  A very
strong reason and of potent logic, naturally imprinted upon an upright
spirit and a sensible mind, irresistibly convinced, both of them, that
justice alone can govern the world.

La Bruyere had just been admitted into the French Academy, in 1693.  In
his admission speech he spoke in praise of the living, Bossuet, Fenelon,
Racine, La Fontaine; it was not as yet the practice.  Those who were not
praised felt angry, and the journals of the time bitterly attacked the
new academician.  He was hurt, and withdrew almost entirely from the
world.  Four days before his death, however, "he was in company.  All at
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 Corneille, younger than he, already
known by some comedies which had met with success.  The two brothers had
married two sisters.

"Their houses twain were made in one;
With keys and purse the same was done;
Their wives can never have been two.
Their wishes tallied at all times;
No games distinct their children' knew;
The fathers lent each other rhymes;
Same wine for both the drawers drew." --[Ducis.]

It is said, that when Peter Corneille was puizled to end a verse he would
undo a trap that opened into his brother's room, shouting, "Sans-souci, a
rhyme!"

Corneille had announced his renunciation of the stage; he was translating
into verse the _Imitation of Christ_.  "It were better," he had written
in his preface to _Pertharite,_ "that I took leave myself instead of
waiting till it is taken of me altogether; it is quite right that after
twenty years' work I should begin to perceive that I am becoming too old
to be still in the fashion.  This resolution is not so strong but that it
may be broken; there is every, appearance, however, of my abiding by it."

Fouquet was then in his glory, "no less superintendent of literature than
of finance," and he undertook to recall to the stage the genius of
Corneille.  At his voice, the poet and the tragedian rose up at a single
bound.

"I feel the selfsame fire, the selfsame nerve I feel,
That roused th' indignant Cid, drove home Iloratius' steel;
As cunning as of yore this hand of mine I find,
That sketched great Pompey's soul, depicted Cinna's mind,"--

wrote Corneille in his thanks to Fouquet.  He had some months before said
to Mdlle. du Pare, who was an actress in Moliere's company, which had
come to Rouen, and who was, from her grand airs, nicknamed by the others
the Marchioness,

"Marchioness,"  if Age hath set
On my brow his ugly die;
At my years, pray don't forget,
You will be as--old as I.

"Yet do I possess of charms
One or two, so slow to fade,
That I feel but scant alarms
At the havoc Time hath made.

"You have such as men adore,
But these that you scorn to-day
May, perchance, be to the fore
When your own are worn away.

"These can from decay reprieve
Eyes I take a fancy to;
Make a thousand, years believe
Whatsoe'er I please of you.

"With that new, that coming race,
Who will take my word for it,
All the warrant for your face
Will be what I may have writ."

Corneille reappeared upon the boards with a tragedy called _OEdipe,_ more
admired by his contemporaries than by posterity.  On the occasion of
Louis XIV.'s marriage he wrote for the king's comedians the _Toison
d'or,_ and put into the mouth of France those prophetic words:--

"My natural force abates, from long success alone;
Triumphant blooms the state, the wretched people groan
Their shrunken bodies bend beneath my high emprise;
Whilst glory gilds the throne, the subject sinks and dies."

_Sertorius_ appeared at the commencement of the year 1662.  "Pray where
did Corneille learn politics and war?" asked Turenne when he saw this
piece played.  "You are the true and faithful interpreter of the mind and
courage of Rome," Balzac wrote to him; "I say further, sir, you are often
her teacher, and the reformer of olden times, if they have need of
embellishment and support.  In the spots where Rome is of brick, you
rebuild it of marble; where you find a gap, you fill it with a
masterpiece, and I take it that what you lend to history is always
better than what you borrow from it.  .  .  ."  "They are grander and
more Roman in his verses than in their history," said La Bruyere.  "Once
only, in the Cid, Corneille had abandoned himself unreservedly to the
reality of passion; scared at what he might find in the weaknesses of the
heart, he would no longer see aught but its strength.  He sought in man
that which resists and not that which yields, thus giving his times the
sublime pleasure of an enjoyment that can belong to nought but the human
soul, a cherished proof of its noble origin and its glorious destiny, the
pleasure of admiration, the appreciation of the beautiful and the great,
the enthusiasm aroused by virtue.  He moves us at sight of a masterpiece,
thrills us at the sound of a noble deed, enchants us at the bare idea of
a virtue which three thousand years have forever separated from us."
(_Corneille et son temps,_ by M. Guizot.)  Every other thought, every
other prepossession, are strangers to the poet; his personages represent
heroic passions which they follow out without swerving and without
suffering themselves to be shackled by the notions of a morality which
is still far from fixed and often in conflict with the interests and
obligations of parties, thus remaining perfectly of his own time and his
own country, all the while that he is describing Greeks, or Romans, or
Spaniards.

[Illustration: Corneille reading to Louis XIV.----642]

There is no pleasure in tracing the decadence of a great genius.
Corneille wrote for a long while without success, attributing his
repeated rebuffs to his old age, the influence of fashion, the capricious
taste of the generation for young people; he thought himself neglected,
appealing to the king himself, who had ordered _Cinna_ and _Pompee_ to be
played at court:--

"Go on; the latest born have naught degenerate,
Naught have they which would stamp them illegitimate
They, miserable fate! were smothered at the birth,
And one kind glance of yours would bring them back to earth;
The people and the court, I grant you, cry them down;
I have, or else they think I have, too feeble grown;
I've written far too long to write so well again;
The wrinkles on the brow reach even to the brain;
But counter to this vote how many could I raise,
If to my latest works you should vouchsafe your praise!
How soon so kind a grace, so potent to constrain,
Would court and people both win back to me again!
'So Sophocles of yore at Athens was the rage,
So boiled his ancient blood at five-score years of age,'
Would they to Envy cry, 'when OEdipus at bay
Before his judges stood, and bore the votes away.'"

Posterity has done for Corneille more than Louis XIV. could have done: it
has left in oblivion _Agesilas, Attila, Titus,_ and _Pulcherie;_ it
preserved the memory of the triumphs only.  The poet was accustomed to
say with a smile, when he was reproached with his slowness and emptiness
in conversation, "I am Peter Corneille all the same."  The world has
passed similar judgment on his works; in spite of the rebuffs of his
latter years, he has remained "the great Corneille."

When he died, in 1684, Racine, elected by the Academy in 1673, found
himself on the point of becoming its director; he claimed the honor of
presiding at the obsequies of Corneille.  The latter had not been
admitted to the body until 1641, after having undergone two rebuffs.
Corneille had died in the night.  The Academy decided in favor of Abbe de
Lavau, the outgoing director.  "Nobody but you could pretend to bury
Corneille," said Benserade to Racine, "yet you have not been able to
obtain the chance."  It was only when he received into the Academy Thomas
Corneille, in his brother's place, that Racine could praise to his
heart's content the master and rival who, in old age, had done him the
honor to dread him.  "My father had not been happy in his speech at his
own admission," says Louis Racine ingenuously; "he was in this, because
he spoke out of the abundance of his heart, being inwardly convinced that
Corneille was worth much more than he."  Louis XIV. had come in for as
great a share as Corneille in Racine's praises.  He, informed of the
success of the speech, desired to hear it.  The author had the honor of
reading it to him, after which the king said to him, "I am very pleased;
I would praise you more if you had praised me less."  It was on this
occasion that the great Arnauld, still in disgrace and carefully
concealed, wrote to Racine: "I have to thank you, sir, for the speech
which was sent me from you.  There certainly was never anything so
eloquent, and the hero whom you praise is so much the more worthy of your
praises in that he considered them too great.  I have many things that I
would say to you about that, if I had the pleasure of seeing you, but it
would need the dispersal of a cloud which I dare to say is a spot upon
this sun.  I assure you that the ideas I have thereupon are not
interested, and that what may concern myself affects me very little.  A
chat with you and your companion would give me much pleasure, but I would
not purchase that pleasure by the least poltroonery.  You know what I
mean by that; and so I abide in peace and wait patiently for God to make
known to this perfect prince that he has not in his kingdom a subject
more loyal, more zealous for his true glory, and, if I dare say so,
loving him with a love more pure and more free from all interest.  That
is why I should not bring myself to take a single step to obtain liberty
to see my friends, unless it were to my prince alone that I could be
indebted for it."  Fenelon and the great Arnauld held the same language,
independent and submissive, proud and modest, at the same time.  Only
their conscience spoke louder than their respect for the king.

[Illustration: Racine----646]

At the time when Racine was thus praising at the Academy the king and the
great Corneille, his own dramatic career was already ended.  He was born,
in 1639, at La Ferte-Milon; he had made his first appearance on the stage
in 1664 with the _Freres ennemis,_ and had taken leave of it in 1673 with
_Phedre_.  _Esther_ and _Athalie,_ played in 1689 and 1691 by the young
ladies of St. Cyr, were not regarded by their author and his austere
friends as any derogation from the pious engagements he had entered into.
Racine, left an orphan at four years of age, and brought up at Port-Royal
under the influence and the personal care of M. Le Maitre, who called him
his son, did not at first answer the expectations of his master.  The
glowing fancy of which he already gave signs caused dismay to Lancelot,
who threw into the fire one after the other two copies of the Greek tale
_Theayene et Chariclee_ which the young man was reading.  The third time,
the latter learnt it off by heart, and, taking the book to his severe
censor, "Here," said he, "you can burn this volume too, as well as the
others."

Racine's pious friends had fine work to no purpose; nature carried the
day, and he wrote verses.  "Being unable to consult you, I was prepared,
like Malherbe, to consult an old servant at our place," he wrote to one
of his friends, "if I had not discovered that she was a Jansenist like
her master, and that she might betray me, which would be my utter ruin,
considering that I receive every day letter upon letter, or rather
excommunication upon excommunication, all because of a poor sonnet."  To
deter the young man from poetry, he was led to expect a benefice, and was
sent away to Uzes to his uncle's, Father Sconin, who set him to study
theology.  "I pass my time with my uncle, St. Thomas, and Virgil," he
wrote on the 17th of January, 1662, to M. Vitard, steward to the Duke of
Luynes; "I make lots of extracts from theology and some from poetry.  My
uncle has kind intentions towards me, he hopes to get me something; then
I shall try to pay my debts.  I do not forget the obligations I am under
to you.  I blush as I write; _Erubuit puer, salva res est_ (the lad has
blushed; it is all right).  But that conclusion is all wrong; my affairs
do not mend."

Racine had composed at Uzes the _Freres ennemis,_ which was played on his
return to Paris in 1664, not without a certain success; _Alexandre_ met
with a great deal in 1665; the author had at first intrusted it to
Moliere's company, but he was not satisfied and gave his piece to the
comedians of the Hotel de Dourgogne.  Moliere was displeased, and
quarrelled with Racine, towards whom he had up to that time testified
much good will.  The disagreement was not destined to disturb the equity
of their judgments upon one another.  When Racine brought out _Les
Plaideurs,_ which was not successful at first, Moliere, as he left, said
out loud, "The comedy is excellent, and they who deride it deserve to be
derided."  One of Racine's friends, thinking to do him a pleasure, went
to him in all haste to tell him of the failure of the _Misanthrope_ at
its first representation.  "The piece has fallen flat," said he; "never
was there anything so dull; you can believe what I say, for I was there."
"You were there, and I was not," replied Racine, "and yet I don't believe
it, because it is impossible that Moliere should have written a bad
piece.  Go again, and pay more attention to it."

Racine had just brought out _Alexandre_ when he became connected with
Boileau, who was three years his senior, and who had already published
several of his satires.  "I have a surprising facility in writing my
verses," said the young tragic author ingenuously.  "I want to teach you
to write them with difficulty," answered Boileau, "and you have talent
enough to learn before long."  _Andromaque_ was the result of this novel
effort, and was Racine's real commencement.

He was henceforth irrevocably committed to the theatrical cause.  Nicole
attacking Desmarets, who had turned prophet after the failure of his
_Clovis,_ alluded to the author's comedies, and exclaimed with all the
severity of Port-Royal, "A romance-writer and a scenic poet is a public
poisoner not of bodies but of souls."  Racine took these words to
himself, and he wrote in defence of the dramatic art two letters so
bitter, biting, and insulting towards Port-Royal and the protectors of
his youth, that Boileau dissuaded him from publishing the second, and
that remorse before long took possession of his soul, never to be
entirely appeased.  He had just brought out _Les Plaideurs,_ which had
been requested of him by his friends and partly composed during the
dinners they frequently had together.  "I put into it only a few
barbarous law-terms which I might have picked up during a lawsuit and
which neither I nor my judges ever really heard or understood."  After
the first failure of the piece, the king's comedians one day risked
playing it before him.  "Louis XIV. was struck by it, and did not think
it a breach of his dignity or taste to utter shouts of laughter so loud
that the courtiers were astounded."  The delighted comedians, on leaving
Versailles, returned straight to Paris, and went to awaken Racine.
"Three carriages during the night, in a street where it was unusual to
see a single one during the day, woke up the neighborhood.  There was a
rush to the windows, and, as it was known that a councillor of requests
(law-officer) had made a great uproar against the comedy of the
_Plaideurs,_ nobody had a doubt of punishment befalling the poet who had
dared to take off the judges in the open theatre.  Next day all Paris
believed that he was in prison."  He had a triumph, on the contrary, with
_Britannicus,_ after which the, king gave up dancing in the court
ballets, for fear of resembling Nero. _Berenice_ was a duel between
Corneille and Racine for the amusement of Madame Henriette.  Racine bore
away the bell from his illustrious rival, without much glory. _Bajazet_
soon followed.  "Here is Racine's piece," wrote Madame de Sevigne to her
daughter in January, 1672; if I could send you La Champmesle, you would
think it good, but without her, it loses half its worth.  The character
of Bajazet is cold as ice, the manners of the Turks are ill observed in
it, they do not make so much fuss about getting married; the catastrophe
is not well led up to, there are no reasons given for that great
butchery.  There are some pretty things, however, but nothing perfectly
beautiful, nothing which carries by storm, none of those bursts of
Corneille's which make one creep.  My dear, let us be careful never to
compare Racine with him, let us always feel the difference; never will
the former rise any higher than _Andromaque_.  Long live our old friend
Corneille!  Let us forgive his bad verses for the sake of those divine
and sublime beauties which transport us.  They are master-strokes which
are inimitable."  Corneille had seen _Bajazet_.  "I would take great care
not to say so to anybody else," he whispered in the ear of Segrais, who
was sitting beside him, "because they would say that I said so from
jealousy; but, mind you, there is not in _Bajazet_ a single character
with the sentiments which should and do prevail at Constantinople; they
have all, beneath a Turkish dress, the sentiments that prevail in the
midst of France."  The impassioned loyalty of Madame de Sevigne, and the
clear-sighted jealousy of Corneille, were not mistaken; Bajazet is no
Turk, but he is none the less very human.  "There are points by which men
recognize themselves, though there is no resemblance; there are others in
which there is resemblance without any recognition.  Certain sentiments
belong to nature in all countries; they are characteristic of man only,
and everywhere man will see his own image in them."  [_Corneille et son
temps,_ by M. Guizot.]  Racine's reputation went on continually
increasing; he had brought out _Mithridate_ and _Iphigenie; Phedre_
appeared in 1677.  A cabal of great lords caused its failure at first.
When the public, for a moment led astray after the _Phedre_ of Pradon,
returned to the master-work of Racine, vexation and wounded pride had
done their office in the poet's soul.  Pious sentiments ever smouldering
in his heart, the horror felt for the theatre by Port-Royal, and
penitence for the sins he had been guilty of against his friends there,
revived within him; and Racine gave up profane poetry forever.  "The
applause I have met with has often flattered me a great deal," said he at
a later period to his son, "but the smallest critical censure, bad as it
may have been, always caused me more of vexation than all the praises had
given me of pleasure."  Racine wanted to turn Carthusian; his confessor
dissuaded him, and his friends induced him to marry.  Madame Racine was
an excellent person, modest and devout, who never went to the theatre,
and scarcely knew her husband's plays by name; she brought him some
fortune.  The king had given the great poet a pension, and Colbert had
appointed him to the treasury (_tresorier_) at Moulins.  Louis XIV.,
moreover, granted frequent donations to men of letters.  Racine received
from him nearly fifty thousand livres; he was appointed historiographer
to the king.  Boileau received the same title; the latter was not
married, but Racine before long had seven children.  "Why did not I turn
Carthusian!" he would sometimes exclaim in the disquietude of his
paternal affection when his children were ill.  He devoted his life to
them with pious solicitude, constantly occupied with their welfare, their
good education, and the salvation of their souls.  Several of his
daughters became nuns.  He feared above everything to see his eldest son
devote himself to poetry, dreading for him the dangers he considered he
himself had run.  "As for your epigram, I wish you had not written it,"
he wrote to him; "independently of its being commonplace, I cannot too
earnestly recommend you not to let yourself give way to the temptation of
writing French verses which would serve no purpose but to distract your
mind; above all, you should not write against anybody."  This son, the
object of so much care, to whom his father wrote such modest, grave,
paternal, and sagacious letters, never wrote verses, lived in retirement,
and died young without ever having married.  Little Louis, or Lionval,
Racine's last child, was the only one who ever dreamt of being a writer.
"You must be very bold," said Boileau to him, "to dare write verses with
the name you bear!  It is not that I consider it impossible for you to
become capable some day of writing good ones, but I mistrust what is
without precedent, and never, since the world was world, has there been
seen a great poet son of a great poet."  Louis Racine never was a great
poet, in spite of the fine verses which are to be met with in his poems
_la Religion_ and _la Grace_.  His _Memoires_ of his father, written for
his son, describe Racine in all the simple charm of his domestic life.
"He would leave all to come and see us," writes Louis Racine; "an equerry
of the duke's came one day to say that he was expected to dinner at
Conde's house.  'I shall not have the honor of going,' said he; 'it is
more than a week since I have seen my wife and children who are making
holiday to-day to feast with me on a very fine carp; I cannot give up
dining with them.'  And, when the equerry persisted, he sent for the
carp, which was worth about a crown.  'Judge for yourself,' said he,
'whether I can disappoint these poor children who have made up their
minds to regale me, and would not enjoy it if they were to eat this dish
without me.'  He was loving by nature," adds Louis Racine; "he was loving
towards God when he returned to Him; and, from the day of his return to
those who, from his infancy, had taught him to know Him, he was so
towards them without any reserve; he was so all his life towards his
friends, towards his wife, and towards his children."

Boileau had undertaken the task of reconciling his friend with
Port-Royal.  Nicole had made no opposition, "not knowing what war was."
M. Arnauld was intractable.  Boileau one day made up his mind to take him
a copy of _Phedre,_ pondering on the way as to what he should say to him.
"Shall this man," said he, "be always right, and shall I never be able to
prove him wrong?  I am quite sure that I shall be right to-day; if he is
not of my opinion,--he will be wrong."  And, going to M. Arnauld's, where
he found a large company, be set about developing his thesis, pulling out
_Phedre,_ and maintaining that if tragedy were dangerous, it was the
fault of the poets.  The younger theologians listened to him
disdainfully, but at last M. Arnauld said out loud, "If things are as he
says, he is right, and such tragedy is harmless."  Boileau declared that
he had never felt so pleased in his life.  M. Arnauld being reconciled to
_Phedre,_ the principal step was made next day the author of the tragedy
presented himself.  The culprit entered, humility and confusion depicted
on his face; he threw himself at the feet of M. Arnauld, who took him in
his arms; Racine was thenceforth received into favor by Port-Royal.  The
two friends were preparing to set out with the king for the campaign of
1677.  The besieged towns opened their gates before the poets had left
Paris.  "How is it that you had not the curiosity to see a siege?" the
king asked them on his return: "it was not a long trip."  "True, sir,"
answered Racine, always the greater courtier of the two, "but our tailors
were too slow.  We had ordered travelling suits; and when they were
brought home, the places which your Majesty was besieging were taken."
Louis XIV. was not displeased.  Racine thenceforth accompanied him in all
his campaigns; Boileau, who ailed a great deal, and was of shy
disposition, remained at Paris.  His friend wrote to, him constantly, at
one time from the camp and at another from Versailles, whither he
returned with the king.  "Madame de Maintenon told me, this, morning,"
writes Racine, "that the king had fixed our pensions at four thousand
francs for me and two thousand for you: that is, not including our
literary pensions.  I have just come from thanking the king.  I laid more
stress upon your case than even my own.  I said, in as many words, 'Sir,
he has more wit than ever, more zeal for your Majesty, and more desire to
work for your glory than ever he had.'  I am, nevertheless, really pained
at the idea of my getting more than you.  But, independently of the
expenses and fatigue of the journeys, from which I am glad that you are
delivered, I know that you are so noble-minded and so friendly, that I am
sure you would be heartily glad that I were even better treated.  I shall
be very pleased if you are."  Boileau answered at once: "Are you mad with
your compliments?  Do not you know perfectly well that it was I who
suggested the way in which things have been done?  And can you doubt of
my being perfectly well pleased with a matter in which I am accorded all
I ask?  Nothing in the world could be better, and I am even more rejoiced
on your account than on my own."  The two friends consulted one another
mutually about their verses; Racine sent Boileau his spiritual songs.
The king heard the _Combat du Chretien_ sung, set to music by Moreau

"O God, my God, what deadly strife!
Two men within myself I see
One would that, full of love to Thee,
My heart were leal, in death and life;
The other, with rebellion rife,
Against Thy laws inciteth me."

He turned to Madame de Maintenon, and, "Madame," said he, "I know those
two men well."  Boileau sends Racine his ode on the capture of Namur.
"I have risked some very new things," he says, "even to speaking of the
white plume which the king has in his hat; but, in my opinion, if you are
to have novel expressions in verse, you must speak of things which have
not been said in verse.  You shall be judge, with permission to alter the
whole, if you do not like it."  Boileau's generous confidence was the
more touching, in that Racine was sarcastic and bitter in discussion.
"Did you mean to hurt me?" Boileau said to him one day.  "God forbid!"
was the answer.  "Well, then, you made a mistake, for you did hurt me."

[Illustration: Boileau-Despreaux----650]

Racine had just brought out _Esther_ at the theatre of St. Cyr.  Madame
de Brinon, lady-superior of the establishment which was founded by Madame
de Maintenon for the daughters of poor noblemen, had given her pupils a
taste for theatricals.  "Our little girls have just been playing your
_Andromaque,_ wrote Madame de Maintenon to Racine, "and they played it so
well that they never shall play it again in their lives, or any other of
your pieces."  She at the same time asked him to write, in his leisure
hours, some sort of moral and historical poem from which love should be
altogether banished.  This letter threw Racine into a great state of
commotion.  He was anxious to please Madame de Maintenon, and yet it was
a delicate commission for a man who had a great reputation to sustain.
Boileau was for refusing.  "That was not in the calculations of Racine,"
says Madame de Caylus in her Souvenirs.  He wrote _Esther_.  "Madame de
Maintenon was charmed with the conception and the execution," says Madame
de La Fayette; "the play represented in some sort the fall of Madame de
Montespan and her own elevation; all the difference was that Esther was a
little younger, and less particular in the matter of piety.  The way in
which the characters were applied was the reason why Madame de Maintenon
was not sorry to make public a piece which had been composed for the
community only and for some of her private friends.  There was exhibited
a degree of excitement about it which is incomprehensible; not one of the
small or the great but would go to see it, and that which ought to have
been looked upon as merely a convent-play became the most serious matter
in the world.  The ministers, to pay their court by going to this play,
left their most pressing business.  At the first representation at which
the king was present, he took none but the principal officers of his
hunt.  The second was reserved for pious personages, such as Father
La Chaise, and a dozen or fifteen Jesuits, with many other devotees of
both sexes; afterwards it extended to the courtiers."  "I paid my court
at St. Cyr the other day, more agreeably than I had expected writes
Madame de Sevigne to her daughter: listened, Marshal Bellefonds and I,
with an attention that was remarked, and with certain discreet
commendations which were not perhaps to be found beneath the
head-dresses' of all the ladies present.  I cannot tell you how
exceedingly delightful this piece is; it is a unison of music, verse,
songs, persons, so perfect that there is nothing left to desire.  The
girls who act the kings and other characters were made expressly for it.
Everything is simple, everything innocent, everything sublime and
affecting.  I was charmed, and so was the marshal, who left his place to
go and tell the king how pleased he was, and that he sat beside a lady
well worthy of having seen Esther.  The king came over to our seats.
'Madame,' he said to me, 'I am assured that you have been pleased.'
I, without any confusion,' replied, 'Sir, I am charmed; what I feel is
beyond expression.'  The king said to me, 'Racine is very clever.'
I said to him, 'Very, Sir; but really these young people are very clever
too; they throw themselves into the subject as if they had never done
aught else.'  'Ah! as to that,' he replied, 'it is quite true.' And then
his Majesty went away and left me the object of envy.  The prince and
princess came and gave me a word, Madame de Maintenon a glance; she went
away with the king.  I replied to all, for I was in luck."

_Athalie_ had not the same brilliant success as _Esther_.  The devotees
and the envious had affrighted Madame de Maintenon, who had requested
Racine to write it.  The young ladies of St. Cyr, in the uniform of the
house, played the piece quite simply at Versailles before Louis XIV. and
Madame de Maintenon, in a room without a stage.  When the players gave a
representation of it at Paris, it was considered heavy; it did not,
succeed.  Racine imagined that he was doomed to another failure like that
of _Phedre,_ which he preferred before all his other pieces.  "I am a