his piece to the
comedians of the Hotel de Dourgogne. Moliere was displeased, and
quarrelled with Racine, towards whom he had up to that time testified
much good will. The disagreement was not destined to disturb the equity
of their judgments upon one another. When Racine brought out _Les
Plaideurs,_ which was not successful at first, Moliere, as he left, said
out loud, "The comedy is excellent, and they who deride it deserve to be
derided." One of Racine's friends, thinking to do him a pleasure, went
to him in all haste to tell him of the failure of the _Misanthrope_ at
its first representation. "The piece has fallen flat," said he; "never
was there anything so dull; you can believe what I say, for I was there."
"You were there, and I was not," replied Racine, "and yet I don't believe
it, because it is impossible that Moliere should have written a bad
piece. Go again, and pay more attention to it."

Racine had just brought out _Alexandre_ when he became connected with
Boileau, who was three years his senior, and who had already published
several of his satires. "I have a surprising facility in writing my
verses," said the young tragic author ingenuously. "I want to teach you
to write them with difficulty," answered Boileau, "and you have talent
enough to learn before long." _Andromaque_ was the result of this novel
effort, and was Racine's real commencement.

He was henceforth irrevocably committed to the theatrical cause. Nicole
attacking Desmarets, who had turned prophet after the failure of his
_Clovis,_ alluded to the author's comedies, and exclaimed with all the
severity of Port-Royal, "A romance-writer and a scenic poet is a public
poisoner not of bodies but of souls." Racine took these words to
himself, and he wrote in defence of the dramatic art two letters so
bitter, biting, and insulting towards Port-Royal and the protectors of
his youth, that Boileau dissuaded him from publishing the second, and
that remorse before long took possession of his soul, never to be
entirely appeased. He had just brought out _Les Plaideurs,_ which had
been requested of him by his friends and partly composed during the
dinners they frequently had together. "I put into it only a few
barbarous law-terms which I might have picked up during a lawsuit and
which neither I nor my judges ever really heard or understood." After
the first failure of the piece, the king's comedians one day risked
playing it before him. "Louis