c poem. Hence came the beautiful masterpiece _Esther_,
to which the young ladies seem to have done the fullest justice, for
listen to the testimony. The brilliant Madame de Lafayette wrote:
"There was no one, great or small, that did not want to go, and this
mere drama of a convent became the most serious affair of the court."
That the admiration was not merely feigned because it was the fashion,
here is the testimony of a woman of the finest taste, Madame de
Sevigne, given in her intimate letters to her daughter, who, in these
confidences, spared no one who deserved criticism:

The king and all the Court are charmed with
_Esther_. The prince has wept over it. I cannot tell
you how delightful the piece is. There is so perfect
a relation between the music, the verses, the songs,
and the personages, that one seeks nothing more.
The airs set to the words have a beauty which cannot
be borne without tears, and according to one's
taste is the measure of approbation given to the
piece. The king addressed me and said, "Madame,
I am sure you have been pleased." I, without being
astonished, answered, "Sire, I am charmed. What
I feel is beyond words." The king said to me,
"Racine has much genius." I said to him, "Sire,
he has much, but in truth these young girls have
much too; they enter into the subject as if they
had done nothing else." "Ah! as to that," said he,
"it is true." And then his Majesty went away and
left me the object of envy.

Racine himself says in the Preface to _Esther_:

The young ladies have declaimed and sung this
work with so much modesty and piety, it has not
been possible to keep it shut up in the secrecy of
the institution; so that a diversion of young people
has become a subject of interest for all the Court;

and what is still more speaking, he wrote at once the _Athalie_,
"la chef d'oeuvre de la poesie francaise," in the judgment of the
French critics, to be rendered by the some young tyros. When, in
1556, in Christ Church Hall, _Palamon and Arcite_ was finished,
outspoken Queen Bess, with her frank eyes full of pleasure, declared
"that Palamon must have been in love indeed. Arcite was a right
martial knight, having a swart and manly countenance, yet like a Venus
clad in armour." To the son of the dean of Christ Church, the boy of
fourteen, who played Emilie in the dress of a princess, her compliment
was still higher. It was a present of eight guine