The brothers Parfaict and d'Allainval assert that disgust at his treatment at the hands of Mlle. de Champmeslé was the immediate cause of Racine's retirement from dramatic authorship, at the age of thirty-eight, at the height of his talent, in the heyday of his success; for after _Phèdre_ he wrote but two more plays, _Esther_ and _Athalie_, which were performed by the young girls of Saint-Cyr, and were not seen upon the Paris stage until many years after his death. This, however, is very unlikely, and it is quite possible, as M. Larroumet suggests, that Racine, instead of abandoning the theatre, because Mlle. de Champmeslé had discarded him, discarded the actress, because he had abandoned the theatre. The poet's retirement indeed seems to have been attributable to several different motives: disgust at the shameful cabal against _Phèdre_ and the various annoyances to which it gave rise; the fear that a repetition of such tactics might jeopardise his position as the greatest tragic dramatist of his time; weariness of a dissipated life, and, above all, the awakening, after a sleep of many years, of the religious sentiments with which his old teachers of Port-Royal had inspired him in youth. Indignation at Mlle. Champmeslé's conduct may, of course, have had something to do with the positive antipathy to the theatre which he manifested in his last years;[54] but to assert that it was the cause of his renunciation of a profession which had brought him fame and fortune is to credit him with a capacity for sincere affection which he certainly never possessed. With Racine departed not a little of the immense popularity which the theatre had enjoyed during the past half-century, for though of capable actors there was, fortunately, no lack, dramatists of even moderate ability were few and far between. In place of _Andromaques_ and _Iphigénies_ and _Phèdres_, Mlle. de Champmeslé had to resign herself to appear in such deservedly-forgotten plays as the _Achille_ of Thomas Corneille, the _Argélie_ of the Abbé Abeille, and the _Troade_ of Pradon. Nevertheless, despite the barrenness of the field in which she laboured, she contrived to gather fresh laurels, and her masterly impersonation of Queen Elizabeth in Thomas Corneille's _Comte d'Essex_ (January 1678) was enthusiastically received, and secured for a mediocre play a success out of all proportion to its merits. "One might have said of her," remarks M. Noury, "as a critic said of Adrienne Lecouvreur, after seeing her in the same part, 'I have seen a queen among actors.' She possessed, in fact, majesty."