Note 245 — LETTERS TO MADAME DE GRIGNAN[11] FROM 1671 TO 1690. (continued 6)

It was the Supérieure Brinon who first made the pensioners of St. Cyr perform pieces of her selection. They were ill chosen. Cinna, and afterward Andromache, were substituted in their room. But there was so much love in this last tragedy, and the young ladies played it so well, that it was not judged proper for their representation. This was what Madame de Maintenon wrote herself to Racine, at the same time desiring him to supply another poem, moral or historical. Racine hesitated: he wished to please the court, but the public and posterity withheld him. He deemed it impossible to fill the frame that was given him, by a performance worthy of his music. Boileau, too, despaired of it. Racine thought of the subject of Esther; and his friend considered it well judged, as it really was. This very Boileau, the severity of whose taste and character made him so much aspersed, gave, in his regard for Racine, the most perfect example of friendship—an example perhaps, that will never again be met with between two men gifted with the same kind of superiority.