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