Mme. de Sévigné, who could not always prevent herself, although "mad with Corneille," from admiring Racine, or from letting him perceive it, hastened to correct herself when this happened. She wrote to her daughter, "Bajazet is beautiful," and added six lines further on, as a person who has a reproach to make, "Believe me, nothing will approach (I do not say surpass) some divine passages of Corneille." Having thus regulated her conscience, she returned to Bajazet to avow that she had "wept more than twenty tears" (letter dated January 15, 1672), but her letter evidently left her with a slight feeling of discomfort. Two months later, she attenuated the praise of the new piece, to which she now accorded only "agreeable things," and declared Corneille to be another order of genius: "My daughter, let us take care not to compare Racine with him, let us well perceive the difference!"
Almost all of Mademoiselle's generation showed themselves as jealous as Mme. de Sévigné for the glory of Corneille. To the admiration inspired by his genius is added the tender gratitude that we guard for works in which live again the ideals of our youth. It is our own thoughts, our fine dreams of early days, that we love in these productions.
The tragedy of Racine signified that the day of Corneille had passed; its success indicated the inroad of new ideas and pointed definitely to the fact that those faithful to the ancient worship had really been relegated to the position of old fogies. This is never an agreeable position when one feels still alive and with no very active realisation that old age is approaching. People of letters are the first to suffer from these revolutions of taste which leave surviving only works of the first rank while the rest are cast away into oblivion.
As we know, the litterateurs who frequented the salon of Mademoiselle were all enemies of Racine, half on account of loyalty to Corneille, half on their own behalf, through an instinct of self-preservation. Besides Ménage and the Abbé Cotin, whom we have lately encountered speaking frankly to each other, besides the amiable Segrais whose literary powers were too light to lead him far, there was the Abbé Boyer, whose tragedies Segrais desired to be pardoned, because he was a "sufficiently good academician," and that worthy old man De Chapelain, illustrious until the day upon which his verses went to press. There was some reason for accusing Mademoiselle of having been the "centre of the opposition to the new poetry."[199] To say this is, however, to exaggerate her rôle. We shall see later that she was far too occupied in living through her own tragedy to be actively interested in those being enacted upon the boards. Loaded with injuries and calumnies by the Vadius and the Trissotins, menaced with thrashings by the aristocratic protectors of these great men of the salon, Racine ran the risk of being crushed, and was saved only by the signal favour of the King. Neither he nor Molière would have accomplished their work if Louis XIV. had not sustained them against all critics. This is a service for which we should not limit our gratitude. The reflection upon this great debt arouses a tenderness towards a Prince with whom we are otherwise not always sympathetic.
It is possible that there was some politics in his attitude. The success of writers so new fell in well with his design of making a tabula rasa of the detested past: but after all the main reason for which protection was accorded was affection.
When Louis XIV. laughed "even till his sides ached"[200] over the École des Femmes, at which amusement the dévots and prudes were indignant, when he saved the Plaideurs, almost hissed in the Hôtel de Bourgogne, by "bursts of laughter, so great that the Court was astonished,"[201] there was no calculation: he was honestly amused, like any one else. It was also a true and frank admiration which caused him to dry his tears at Iphigenie, and to order the repetition of Mithridate. He loved the "new" for two reasons: because he had good taste, and because the heroes of the later writers were of the kind needful for his generation. It has been seen how marvellously Molière and the King understood each other, and the mention of Racine recalls to us the profound phrase of Heine. Racine revealed himself in the Andromaque as the "first modern poet." Hermione and Oreste have only a distant relationship with the heroes of Corneille. They are already "those possessed by love, the great passionates with whom love becomes a malady, who love to the brink of crime, and even till death."
With these characters, it can be said that modern love, profound, tender, melancholy, impregnated with soul, and at the same time troubled by the obscure influences of the nervous life, makes its entrance into French literature. Oreste shows a sadness, a despair, a madness, which a century and a half later burst forth in love romances. Louis XIV. had not waited for Racine for his education in passion. When Marie Mancini fascinated him, he was one of the first examples of the modern type of those "possessed by love," and he had never forgotten this crisis; in fact he never forgot anything. This episode in the life of the young King had been a good apprenticeship for the comprehending of the love of Oreste or of Phédre as the true love malady, as a fatality against which our single will is only a feeble weapon.
Around the King, Mme. Henriette, Mme. de Montespan, all the young Court and some shrewd spirits of the old, with Condé at the head, rendered justice to the truth of the "anatomies of the heart," in the tragedy of Racine. Mademoiselle was incapable of this; she believed too firmly in the superhuman strength of the heroes of Corneille, with whom the will laughs at resistance, whether the opposition arises in the soul or in the exterior world, to admit the fatality of passion. Nevertheless, it was the Grande Mademoiselle herself who was going to demonstrate clearly to all France that it was impossible to escape fate, when this fate points to love. Here we meet the great misfortune of her life!
An atmosphere of passion, and an intimacy with people whose sole occupation was to render themselves attractive, was somewhat dangerous for an old maid, sensitive without realising it. Mademoiselle had the singular desire, which later cost her dearly, to make an ally of Mme. de Montespan and thus to form a part of the chosen society of the Court.
She sought the company of the mistress and received service from her. Mme. de Montespan was her interpreter with the King. In return Mademoiselle endeavoured to calm M. de Montespan who, for serious or for trivial reasons[202] "flew into passions," like a "madman" or "wild person," against Madame his wife. "He is my relative and I scolded him," says the Mémoires of Mademoiselle. As a connoisseur, Mademoiselle hugely enjoyed the original wit of Mme. de Montespan. The pleasure found in returning the ball in conversation was the foundation of the intimacy.