It was during these tentative years, while Saint-Cyr was trying its wings and working out its apprenticeship, that Mme. de Maintenon requested Racine to compose the sacred comedies that were there performed. If "Esther," with the worldly consequences and the introduction of the élite of profane society that then ensued, proved a distraction and perhaps an imprudence and fault in Mme. de Maintenon's management of the first Saint-Cyr, we feel that we ought not to cavil, and no one in the world can really blame her. "Esther" has remained, in the eyes of all, the crown of that establishment. The details of the composition of that adorable play and its representation are too well known to need repetition; they form one of the most graceful and assuredly the most original episodes of our dramatic literature. Nevertheless, Mme. de La Fayette, like a sensible woman, and one a little jealous, perhaps, of Mme. de Maintenon, found it a pretext to say:-- "Mme. de Maintenon, who is the foundress of Saint-Cyr, always busy with the purpose of amusing the king, is constantly introducing some novelty among the little girls brought up in that establishment, of which it may be said that it is worthy of the grandeur of the king and of the mind of her who invented and who conducts it. But sometimes the best-invented things degenerate considerably; and that establishment which, now that we have become devout, is the abode of virtue and piety, may some day, without any profound prophesying, be that of debauchery and impiety. For to believe that three hundred young girls can live there until they are twenty years old with a Court full of eager young men at their very doors, especially when the authority of the king will no longer restrain them,--to believe, I say, that young women and young men can be so near to each other without jumping the walls is scarcely reasonable." It became necessary, after the success of "Esther," and the instigation given to the Court, to make a step backward and return to the spirit of the foundation, fortifying it by more severe regulations. The danger of the neighbourhood of Saint-Cyr to Versailles was indeed great; it was of the utmost consequence that Mme. de La Fayette's prophecy should not be fulfilled, and that the young ladies of Saint-Cyr should in no wise resemble those of M. Alexandre Dumas. The lesson that Mme. de Maintenon drew from the representations of "Esther," and the invasion of the profane was henceforth to say and resay ceaselessly to her teachers: "Hide your pupils; do not let them be seen."