You shall be judge, with permission to alter the whole, if you do not like it." Boileau's generous confidence was the more touching, in that Racine was sarcastic and bitter in discussion.
"Did you mean to hurt me ?" Boileau said to him one day.

"God forbid!" was the answer.

"Well, then, you made a mistake, for you did hurt me." [Illustration: Boileau-Despreaux----650] Racine had just brought out _Esther_ at the theatre of St.Cyr.

Madame de Brinon, lady-superior of the establishment which was founded by Madame de Maintenon for the daughters of poor noblemen, had given her pupils a taste for theatricals.

"Our little girls have just been playing your _Andromaque,_ wrote Madame de Maintenon to Racine, "and they played it so well that they never shall play it again in their lives, or any other of your pieces." She at the same time asked him to write, in his leisure hours, some sort of moral and historical poem from which love should be altogether banished.