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.”