Boileau remained now, as ever, loyal--loyal for warning as well as for encouragement. Nicole, the former guide of Racine's studies, in his _Visionnaires_, had spoken of dramatic poets as "public poisoners." The reproach was taken to himself by Racine, and in two letters, written with some of the spirit of the _Provinciales_, he turned his wit against his Jansenist friends. Thanks to Boileau's wise and firm counsel, the second of these remained unpublished. Madame de Sevigne was the devoted admirer of the great Corneille, but when she witnessed his young rival's _Andromaque_ she yielded to its pathos six reluctant tears. On its first appearance in 1667 a triumph almost equal to that of the _Cid_ was secured. Never before had grace and passion, art and nature, ideality and truth, been so united in the theatre of France. Racine did not seek for novelty in the choice of a subject; Euripides had made Andromache familiar to the Greek stage. The invention of Racine was of a subtler kind than that which manufactures incidents and constructs a plot. Like Raphael in the art of painting, he could accept a well-known theme and renew it by the finest processes of genius. He did not need an extraordinary action, or personages of giant proportions; the simpler the intrigue, the better could he concentrate the interest on the states of a soul; the more truly and deeply human the characters, the more apt were they for betraying the history of a passion. In its purity of outline, its harmony of proportions, _Andromaque_ was Greek; in its sentiment, it gained something from Christian culture; in its manners, there was a certain reflection of the Versailles of Louis XIV. It was at once classical and modern, and there was no discordance between qualities which had been rendered, to borrow a word from Shakespeare, "harmonious charmingly." With _Andromaque_ French tragedy ceased to be oratorical, and became essentially poetic.