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 Menage and the Abbe 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 Abbe 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 role. 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 Moliere 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 _Ecole des Femmes_, at which amusement the devots and prudes were indignant, when he saved the _Plaideurs_, almost hissed in the Hotel 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 Moliere 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."