nued her
complaints; while Boileau in astonishment paced to and fro, perhaps
thinking of his Satire on Women, and exclaiming, "What insensibility! Is
it possible that a purse of 1000 louis is not worth a thought!" This
stoical apathy did not arise in Madame Racine from the grandeur, but the
littleness, of her mind. Her prayer-books and her children were the sole
objects that interested this good woman. Racine's sensibility was not
mitigated by his marriage; domestic sorrows weighed heavily on his
spirits: when the illness of his children agitated him, he sometimes
exclaimed, "Why did I expose myself to all this? Why was I persuaded not
to be a Chartreux?"--His letters to his children are those of a father and
a friend; kind exhortations, or pathetic reprimands; he enters into the
most domestic detail, while he does not conceal from them the mediocrity
of their fortune. "Had you known him in his family," said Louis Racine,
"you would be more alive to his poetical character, you would then know
why his verses are always so full of sentiment. He was never more pleased
than when, permitted to be absent from the court, he could come among us
to pass a few days. Even in the presence of strangers he dared to be
a father, and used to join us in our sports. I well remember our
processions, in which my sisters were the clergy, I the rector, and the
author of 'Athaliah,' chanting with us, carried the cross."

[Footnote A: The lady he chose was one Catherine de Romanet, whose family
was of great respectability but of small fortune. She is not described as
possessing any marked personal attractions.--ED.]

At length this infirm sensibility abridged his days. He was naturally of a
melancholic temperament, apt to dwell on objects which occasion pain,
rather than on those which exhilarate. Louis Racine observes that his
character resembled Cicero's description of himself, more inclined to
dread unfortunate events, than to hope for happy ones; _semper magis ad_
_versos rerum exitus metuens quam sperans secundos_. In the last incident
of his life his extreme sensibility led him to imagine as present a
misfortune which might never have occurred.

Madame de Maintenon, one day in conversation with the poet, alluded to the
misery of the people. Racine observed it was the usual consequence of long
wars: the subject was animating, and he entered into it with all that
enthusiasm peculiar to himself. Madame de Maintenon was charmed with his
el