All this caution did not prevent Racine, however, from dis pleasing the king.  After a conversation he had held with Madame de Maintenon about the miseries of the people, she asked him for a memorandum on the subject.  The king demanded the name of the author, and flew out at him.  “Because he is a perfect master of verse,” said he, “does he think he knows everything?  And because he is a great poet, does he want to be minister?”—–­Madame de Maintenon was more discreet in her relations with the king than bold in the defence of her friends; she sent Racine word not to come and see her ‘until further orders.’  “Let this cloud pass,” she said; “I will bring the fine weather back.”  Racine was ill; his naturally melancholly disposition had become sombre.  “I know, Madame,” he wrote to Madame de Maintenon, “what influence you have; but in the house of Port-Royal I have an aunt who shows her affection for me in quite a different way.  This holy woman is always praying God to send me disgraces, humiliations, and subjects for penitence; she will have more success than you.”  At bottom his soul was not sturdy enough to endure the rough doctrines of Port-Royal; his health got worse and worse; he returned to court; he was re-admitted by the king, who received him graciously.  Racine continued uneasy; he had an abscess of the liver, and was a long while ill.  “When he was convinced that he was going to die, he ordered a letter to be written to the superintendent of finances, asking for payment, which was due, of his pension.  His son brought him the letter.  ‘Why,’ said he, ’did not you ask for payment of Boileau’s pension too?  We must not be made distinct.  Write the letter over again, and let Boileau know that I was his friend even to death.’  When the latter came to wish him farewell, he raised himself up in bed with an effort.  ‘I regard it as a happiness for me to die before you,’ he said to his friend.  An operation appeared necessary.  His son would have given him hopes.  ‘And you, too,’ said Racine, ’you would do as the doctors, and mock me?  God is the Master, and can restore me to life, but Death has sent in his bill.’”

He was not mistaken:  on the 21st of April, 1699, the great poet, the scrupulous Christian, the noble and delicate painter of the purest passions of the soul, expired at Paris, at fifty-nine years of age; leaving life without regret, spite of all the successes with which he had been crowned.  Unlike Corneille with the Cid, he did not take tragedy and glory by assault, he conquered them both by degrees, raising himself at each new effort, and gaining over, little by little, the most passionate admirers of his great rival.  At the pinnacle of this reputation and this victory, at thirty-eight years of age, he had voluntarily shut the door against the intoxications and pride of success; he had mutilated his life, buried his genius in penitence, obeying simply the calls of his conscience, and, with singular moderation in the very midst of exaggeration, becoming a father of a family and remaining a courtier, at the same time that he gave up the stage and glory.  Racine was gentle and sensible even in his repentance and his sacrifices.  Boileau gave religion the credit for this very moderation.  “Reason commonly brings others to faith; it was faith which brought M. Racine to reason.”