Beside them, a small white-haired clerical with a kindly face, Pere la Chaise, confessor to the king, was whispering his views upon Jansenism to the portly Bossuet, the eloquent Bishop of Meaux, and to the tall thin young Abbe de Fenelon, who listened with a clouded brow, for it was suspected that his own opinions were tainted with the heresy in question.

There, too, was Le Brun, the painter, discussing art in a small circle which contained his fellow-workers Verrio and Laguerre, the architects Blondel and Le Notre, and sculptors Girardon, Puget, Desjardins, and Coysevox, whose works had done so much to beautify the new palace of the king.

Close to the door, Racine, with his handsome face wreathed in smiles, was chatting with the poet Boileau and the architect Mansard, the three laughing and jesting with the freedom which was natural to the favourite servants of the king, the only subjects who might walk unannounced and without ceremony into and out of his chamber.
"What is amiss with him this morning ?" asked Boileau in a whisper, nodding his head in the direction of the royal group.

"I fear that his sleep has not improved his temper." "He becomes harder and harder to amuse," said Racine, shaking his head.
"I am to be at Madame De Maintenon's room at three to see whether a page or two of the _Phedre_ may not work a change." "My friend," said the architect, "do you not think that madame herself might be a better consoler than your _Phedre_ ?" "Madame is a wonderful woman.

She has brains, she has heart, she has tact--she is admirable." "And yet she has one gift too many." "And that is ?" "Age." "Pooh! What matter her years when she can carry them like thirty?
What an eye! What an arm! And besides, my friends, he is not himself a boy any longer." "Ah, but that is another thing." "A man's age is an incident, a woman's a calamity." "Very true.