This letter threw Racine into a great state of commotion.

He was anxious to please Madame de Maintenon, and yet it was a delicate commission for a man who had a great reputation to sustain.
Boileau was for refusing.

"That was not in the calculations of Racine," says Madame de Caylus in her Souvenirs.

He wrote _Esther_.

"Madame de Maintenon was charmed with the conception and the execution," says Madame de La Fayette; "the play represented in some sort the fall of Madame de Montespan and her own elevation; all the difference was that Esther was a little younger, and less particular in the matter of piety.