A cabal of great lords caused its failure at first.
When the public, for a moment led astray after the _Phedre_ of Pradon, returned to the master-work of Racine, vexation and wounded pride had done their office in the poet's soul.

Pious sentiments ever smouldering in his heart, the horror felt for the theatre by Port-Royal, and penitence for the sins he had been guilty of against his friends there, revived within him; and Racine gave up profane poetry forever.

"The applause I have met with has often flattered me a great deal," said he at a later period to his son, "but the smallest critical censure, bad as it may have been, always caused me more of vexation than all the praises had given me of pleasure." Racine wanted to turn Carthusian; his confessor dissuaded him, and his friends induced him to marry.

Madame Racine was an excellent person, modest and devout, who never went to the theatre, and scarcely knew her husband's plays by name; she brought him some fortune.

The king had given the great poet a pension, and Colbert had appointed him to the treasury (_tresorier_) at Moulins.