The marriage of Racine was an act of penance—­neither love nor interest had any share in the union.  His wife was a good sort of woman, but perhaps the most insensible of her sex; and the properest person in the world to mortify the passion of literary glory, and the momentary exultation of literary vanity.[A] It is scarcely credible, but most certainly true, since her own son relates the fact, that the wife of Racine had neither seen acted, nor ever read, nor desired to read, the tragedies which had rendered her husband so celebrated throughout Europe; she had only learned some of their titles in conversation.  She was as insensible to fortune as to fame.  One day, when Racine returned from Versailles, with the princely gift from Louis XIV. of a purse of 1000 louis, he hastened to embrace his wife, and to show her the treasure.  But she was full of trouble, for one of the children for two days had not studied.  “We will talk of this another time,” exclaimed the poet; “at present let us be happy.”  But she insisted he ought instantly to reprimand this child, and continued her complaints; while Boileau in astonishment paced to and fro, perhaps thinking of his Satire on Women, and exclaiming, “What insensibility!  Is it possible that a purse of 1000 louis is not worth a thought!” This stoical apathy did not arise in Madame Racine from the grandeur, but the littleness, of her mind.  Her prayer-books and her children were the sole objects that interested this good woman.  Racine’s sensibility was not mitigated by his marriage; domestic sorrows weighed heavily on his spirits:  when the illness of his children agitated him, he sometimes exclaimed, “Why did I expose myself to all this?  Why was I persuaded not to be a Chartreux?”—­His letters to his children are those of a father and a friend; kind exhortations, or pathetic reprimands; he enters into the most domestic detail, while he does not conceal from them the mediocrity of their fortune.  “Had you known him in his family,” said Louis Racine, “you would be more alive to his poetical character, you would then know why his verses are always so full of sentiment.  He was never more pleased than when, permitted to be absent from the court, he could come among us to pass a few days.  Even in the presence of strangers he dared to be a father, and used to join us in our sports.  I well remember our processions, in which my sisters were the clergy, I the rector, and the author of ‘Athaliah,’ chanting with us, carried the cross.”

[Footnote A:  The lady he chose was one Catherine de Romanet, whose family was of great respectability but of small fortune.  She is not described as possessing any marked personal attractions.—­ED.]

At length this infirm sensibility abridged his days.  He was naturally of a melancholic temperament, apt to dwell on objects which occasion pain, rather than on those which exhilarate.  Louis Racine observes that his character resembled Cicero’s description of himself, more inclined to dread unfortunate events, than to hope for happy ones; semper magis ad versos rerum exitus metuens quam sperans secundos.  In the last incident of his life his extreme sensibility led him to imagine as present a misfortune which might never have occurred.