But now he had broken off his intimacy with the duchesse, and he therefore parodied these lines:—­

    ’Pour ce coeur inconstant, qu’enfin je connais mieux,
     J’ai fait la guerre aux Rois, j’en ai perdue les yeux.’

Nevertheless, La Rochefoucault was still the gay, charming, witty host and courtier.  Racine composed, in 1660, his ‘Nymphe de Seine,’ in honour of the marriage of Louis XIV., and was then brought into notice of those whose notice was no empty compliment, such as, in our day, illustrious dukes pay to more illustrious authors, by asking them to be jumbled in a crowd at a time when the rooks are beginning to caw.  We catch, as they may, the shadow of a dissolving water-ice, or see the exit of an unattainable tray of negus.  No; in the days of Racine, as in those of Halifax and Swift in England, solid fruits grew out of fulsome praise; and Colbert, then minister, settled a pension of six hundred livres, as francs were called in those days (twenty-four pounds), on the poet.  And with this the former pupil of Port Royal was fain to be content.  Still he was so poor that he almost went into the church, an uncle offering to resign him a priory of his order if he would become a regular.  He was a candidate for orders, and wore a sacerdotal dress when he wrote the tragedy of ‘Theagenes,’ and that of the ‘Freres Ennemis,’ the subject of which was given him by Moliere.

He continued, in spite of a quarrel with the saints of Port Royal, to produce noble dramas from time to time, but quitted theatrical pursuits after bringing out (in 1677) ‘Phedre,’ that chef-d’oeuvre not only of its author, but, as a performance, of the unhappy but gifted Rachel.  Corneille was old, and Paris looked to Racine to supply his place, yet he left the theatrical world for ever.  Racine had been brought up with deep religious convictions; they could not, however, preserve him from a mad, unlawful attachment.  He loved the actress Champmesle:  but repentance came.  He resolved not only to write no more plays, but to do penance for those already given to the world.  He was on the eve of becoming, in his penitence, a Carthusian friar, when his religious director advised marriage instead.  He humbly did as he was told, and united himself to the daughter of a treasurer for France, of Amiens, by whom he had seven children.  It was only at the request of Madame de Maintenon that he wrote ‘Esther’ for the convent of St. Cyr, where it was first acted.

His death was the result of his benevolent, sensitive nature.  Having drawn up an excellent paper on the miseries of the people, he gave it to Madame de Maintenon to read it to the king.  Louis, in a transport of ill-humour, said, ’What! does he suppose because he is a poet that he ought to be minister of state?’ Racine is said to have been so wounded by this speech that he was attacked by a fever and died.  His decease took place in 1699, nineteen years after that of La Rochefoucault, who died in 1680.