"One day," says M.de Valicour, "when he was at Auteuil, at Boileau's, with M.Nicole and some distinguished friends, he took up a Sophocles in Greek, and read the tragedy of _OEdipus,_ translating it as he went.

He read so feelingly that all his auditors experienced the sensations of terror and pity with which this piece abounds.

I have seen our best pieces played by our best actors, but nothing ever came near the commotion into which I was thrown by this reading, and, at this moment of writing, I fancy I still see Racine, book in hand, and all of us awe-stricken around him." Thus it was that, whilst repeating, but a short time before, the verses of _Mithridate,_ as he was walking in the Tuileries, he had seen the workmen leaving their work and coming up to him, convinced as they were that he was mad, and was going to throw himself into the basin.
Racine for a long while enjoyed the favors of the king, who went so far as to tolerate the attachment the poet had always testified towards Port-Royal.

Racine, moreover, showed tact in humoring the susceptibilities of Louis XIV.

and his counsellors.