er over again,
and let Boileau know that I was his friend even to death.' When the
latter came to wish him farewell, he raised himself up in bed with an
effort. 'I regard it as a happiness for me to die before you,' he said
to his friend. An operation appeared necessary. His son would have
given him hopes. 'And you, too,' said Racine, 'you would do as the
doctors, and mock me? God is the Master, and can restore me to life, but
Death has sent in his bill.'"

He was not mistaken: on the 21st of April, 1699, the great poet, the
scrupulous Christian, the noble and delicate painter of the purest
passions of the soul, expired at Paris, at fifty-nine years of age;
leaving life without regret, spite of all the successes with which he had
been crowned. Unlike Corneille with the Cid, he did not take tragedy and
glory by assault, he conquered them both by degrees, raising himself at
each new effort, and gaining over, little by little, the most passionate
admirers of his great rival. At the pinnacle of this reputation and this
victory, at thirty-eight years of age, he had voluntarily shut the door
against the intoxications and pride of success; he had mutilated his
life, buried his genius in penitence, obeying simply the calls of his
conscience, and, with singular moderation in the very midst of
exaggeration, becoming a father of a family and remaining a courtier, at
the same time that he gave up the stage and glory. Racine was gentle and
sensible even in his repentance and his sacrifices. Boileau gave
religion the credit for this very moderation. "Reason commonly brings
others to faith; it was faith which brought M. Racine to reason."

Boileau had more to do with his friend's reason than he probably knew.
Racine never acted without consulting him. With Racine, Boileau lost
half his life. He survived him twelve years without ever setting foot
again within the court after his first interview with the king. "I have
been at Versailles," he writes to his publisher, M. Brossette, "where I
saw Madame de Maintenon, and afterwards the king, who overcame me with
kind words; so, here I am more historiographer than ever. His Majesty
spoke to me of M. Racine in a manner to make courtiers desire death, if
they thought he would speak of them in the same way afterwards.
Meanwhile that has been but very small consolation to me for the loss of
that illustrious friend, who is none the less dead though regretted by
the greatest king i