We have given this detail of the "Lutrin," as being at once the best and the most successful of Boileau's poems. We now return to the author. We have alluded to his presentation at court, occasioned by the eulogy of Louis XIV., which the poet puts in the mouth of Indolence. Madame de Thianges, sister of madame de Montespan, was so struck by this passage, that, while the poem was still in manuscript, she read it to the king; and he, flattered and pleased, desired that the poet should be presented to him. Boileau accordingly appeared at court. The king conversed with him, and asked him what passage in his poems he himself esteemed the best. It so happened that the prince of Condé had found fault with the conclusion of his epistle to the king. It had ended with the fable of the two men quarrelling about an oyster they had found, and referred their dispute to a judge, who swallowed the cause of it in a moment. The prince considered this story, however well told, not in harmony with the elevated tone of the epistle; and Boileau, yielding to the criticism, wrote a different conclusion. When asked by the king for his favourite passage, the little tact he had as a courtier, joined to an author's natural partiality for his latest production, made him cite the lines, of which these are the concluding ones:-- "Et comme tes exploits étonnant les lecteurs, Seront à peine crus sur la foi des auteurs, Si quelque esprit malin les veut traiter de fables, On dira quelque jour, pour les rendre croyables. Boileau, qui dans ses vers, pleins de sincérité, Jadis à tout son siècle a dit la vérité, Qui mit à tout blâmer son étude et sa gloire, A pourtant de ce roi parlé comme l'histoire." The king was naturally touched by this forcible and eloquent praise: the tears came into his eyes, and he exclaimed, "This is, indeed, beautiful; and I would praise you more had you praised me less." And at once he bestowed a pension on the poet. Such applause and such tribute, from a monarch then adored by his subjects, might have elated a weak man. Boileau afterwards related that, on returning home, his first emotion was sadness: he feared that he had bartered his liberty, and he regretted its loss. [Sidenote: 1677. Ætat. 41.]