The following year, accordingly, the two authors accompanied the king to the siege of Gand. The fact of two poets following the army to be present at sieges and battles was the source of a number of pleasantries at court. Their more warlike friends, in good-humoured raillery, laid a thousand traps for their ignorance: they often fell in; and when they did not they got the credit of so doing, as the king was to be diverted by their mistakes. The poets seem to have been singularly ignorant of everything appertaining to a journey, and to have shown the most amusing credulity. Racine was told that he must take care to have his horse shod by a bargain of forfeit. "Do you imagine," said his adviser, M. de Cavoie, "that an army always finds blacksmiths ready on their march? Before you leave Paris, a bargain is made with a smith, who warrants, on penalty of a forfeit, that your horse's shoes shall remain on for six months." "I never heard of that before," said Racine; "Boileau did not tell me; but I do not wonder--he never thinks of anything." He hastened to his friend to reproach him for this neglect; Boileau confessed his ignorance; and they hurried out to seek the blacksmith most in use for this sort of bargain. The king was duly informed of their perplexity, and, by his raillery in the evening, undeceived them. One day, after a long march, Boileau, whose health was weak, being much fatigued, threw himself on his bed, supperless, on arriving. M. de Cavoie, hearing this, went to him, after the king's supper, and said, with an appearance of great uneasiness, that he had bad news. "The king," he said, "is displeased with you. He remarked a very blameable act of which you were guilty to-day." "What was it?" asked Boileau in alarm. "I cannot bring myself to tell you," replied his tormentor; "I cannot make up my mind to afflict my friends." Then, after teazing him for some time, he said, "Well, if I must confess it, the king remarked that you were sitting awry on your horse." "If that is all," said Boileau, "let me go to sleep." On one occasion, during this campaign, Louis having so exposed himself that a cannon ball passed within perilous vicinity, Boileau addressed him, saying, "I beg, sire, in the character of your historian, that you will not bring your history to so abrupt a conclusion." Boileau's health prevented him from following any other campaign; but Racine accompanied the king in several, and wrote long narrations to his brother historian. It has been asserted that, though named historiographers, they did not employ themselves in fulfilling the duties of their office; and a fragment of Racine's, on the siege of Namur, is the only relic that remains of their employment. Louis Racine, however, assures us that they were continually occupied on it. On their death, their joint labours fell into the hands of M. de Valincour, their successor, and were consumed when his house at Saint-Cloud was burned down.