RACINE'S preoccupation with material questions,
together with his personal loyalty to Port-Royal,
were jointly responsible for the disfavour which
he incurred in the last year of his life. It was not
irrevocable; it seems to have passed in a few months; but
he was not to end his days without seeing at least the
shadow of the royal displeasure.

At the beginning of 1698 Racine found himself in a
difficult financial position. The middle years of his married
life had been prosperous enough. By 1688 he had accumu-
lated sufficient capital to make a loan of 22,000 livres to his
patron Chevreuse, followed by loans to Boileau of 10,000
livres and 3,000 livres in 1689 and 1695 respectively. If his
historiographer's salary was reduced in 1692, this loss was
compensated by the revenue from his post of Gentilhomme
ordinaire du roi, which he had acquired at the end of 1690
at the cost of 10,000 livres. He then went on to purchase
the post of Conseiller secrétaire du roi which, although it
increased both his income and his social status, was in
other ways an unlucky acquisition. It cost him 50,000 livres
when he obtained it early in 1696, and he had hardly
recovered from this considerable disbursement when he
was faced with several other heavy calls on his purse.
Nanette's entry into the Ursulines, Marie-Catherine's
marriage and Jean-Baptiste's promotion to the Embassy at
the Hague--all occurring in the winter of 1697-8--cost
him in all another forty to fifty thousand livres. ¹

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