Port-Royal des Champs. He passed his infancy there in the house of his paternal grandmother, Marie des Moulins, the wife of Jean Racine, controller of the salt warehouse; he was thirteen months old when his mother died and three years old at the death of his father. Of these early years we know nothing except that the grandmother loved the orphan more than any of her own children, an affection of which Racine retained the most tender memory.

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He later often returned to the town of his birth, where his sister Marie had remained and had married Antoine Rivière. The two families remained united; Racine handled the interests of his brother-in-law at Paris; the Rivières sent Racine skylarks and cheeses; and when Racine's children were ill, they were sent to their aunt to be cared for in the open air. And these were almost all the bonds between Racine and La Ferté-Milon.

It is therefore probable that almost nothing at La Ferté-Milon today will awaken reminiscences of the poet. However, let us seek.

At the exit from the station a long street, a sort of faubourg of low houses, with their naïve signs swinging in the wind, leads us to the bridge across the Ourcq. On the opposite bank, the little old town with its little old houses clambers up the abrupt slope of a hill which is crowned by the formidable ruin of the stronghold. Here and there, at the water's edge are remnants of walls, towers and terraced gardens, which, with the meadows and the poplars of the valley, compose a ravishing landscape.

Once across the bridge, behold Racine. It is a statue by David d'Angers. It is backed by the mayoralty and surrounded by a portico. Racine wears a great wig, which is not surprising; but, notwithstanding his great wig, he is half naked, holding up with his hand a cloth which surrounds his body and forms "harmonious" folds. It is Racine at the bath. Near him stands a cippus, on which are inscribed the names of his dramatic works, from Athalie to Les frères ennemis, the title of which latter is half concealed by the inevitable laurels.

While I was contemplating this academic but ridiculous image, a peasant, carrying a basket on his arm, approached me and delivered the following discourse: "This is Jean Racine, born in 1639, died in 1699. And you read upon this marble the list of his dramatic works. He was bom at La Ferté-Milon and I have at home parchments where one may see the names of the persons of his family; I possess also his baptismal font. I am, so to speak, the keeper of the archives of La Ferté.... The Comédie française will come here April 23.... Racine had two boys and five girls.... There was a swan in his coat of arms; the swan is the symbol of purity. Fénelon, Bishop of Cambrai, has been compared to a swan. Fénelon, born in 1651 and dead in 1715, is the author of Télémaque and of the Maximes des Saints. This last work embroiled him with Jacques Bénigne Bossuet, in Latin Jacobus Benignus, Bishop of Meaux, who wrote Oraisons funèbres and the Discours sur V histoire universelle, which he was unfortunately unable to finish.... My name is Bourgeois Parent, and here is my address. And you, what is your name? You would not belong to the Comédie française?" All this uttered in the voice of a scholar who has learned his lesson by heart, with sly and crafty winks.... I thank this bystander for his erudition; I admit humbly that I do not belong to the Comédie française and I take leave, not without difficulty, of this extraordinary "Ra-cinian," who truly has the genius of transition, in the manner of Petit-Jean.

In what house was Racine born? The accepted tradition is that his mother was brought to bed at No. 3, Rue de la Pescherie (now Rue Saint-Vaast); in this house lived the Sconin couple, the father and mother of Madame Racine. The old house has been demolished, and there remains of it nothing more than a pretty medallion of stone which represents the Judgment of Paris. This is inserted above a door in the garden of the new house. But, in the same street, there stands another house (No. 14) which belonged to the paternal grandparents of Jean Racine; it is here, according to other conjectures, that the author of Athalie was born. And these two houses are not the only ones at La Ferté which dispute the honor of having seen the birth of Racine.... I will not get mixed up in the search for the truth. I have heard that the people of Montauban recently had recourse to an ingenious means of ending a quarrel of the same kind. No one knew in which house Ingres had been born; a furious controversy had arisen between various proprietors of real estate. It was ended by a referendum. Universal suffrage gave its decision. Now the question is decided, irrevocably.

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There is another monument to the poet. Behind the apse of the church, in a little square, on top of a column, is perched an old bust more or less roughly repaired; at its foot has been placed a tawdry cast-iron hydrant. This is called the Racine Fountain. Decidedly La Ferté is a poor place of pilgrimage: few relics, and the images of the saint are not beautiful!

Fortunately, to recompense the pilgrim, there are in the two churches precious stained glass windows of the sixteenth century; those of Notre Dame, despite grievous restorations, are brilliant in coloring and free in design. The Saint Hubert is a good picture of almost Germanic precision, and, above the right-hand altar, the portraits of the donors and their children are natural and graceful. Above all, there is the admirable façade of the old castle of Louis of Orleans, an enormous crenelated fortress, flanked with towers, whose naked grandeur is set off by sculptures, marvelous but mutilated, alas! There are statues of armed champions framed in elegant foliage, and, above the arch of the great door, the celebrated Coronation of the Virgin, one of the masterpieces of French sculpture; a cast of it can be studied at the Trocadero, and there we can admire at full leisure the truth of the attitudes and the freedom of the draperies. But no one can imagine the beauty of this composition, unless he has seen it relieved against and shining from the ferocious wall of the citadel, colored with the golden green of mosses, while tufts of yellow wallflowers, growing among the delicate carvings of the wide frame, give an exquisite sumptuousness to the whole decoration.

Returning to the terrace on the other side of the castle, which dominates the houses, the towers and the gardens of the village, I find myself before the framework of a great tent which is being erected for the approaching performance by the Comédie française, and find myself brought back from the Middle Ages to Racine. These juxtapositions no longer surprise us, since we are now so accustomed to ramble through history and literature as through a great second-hand store, stopping at all the curiosities which amuse our eclectic taste. I imagine, however, that a man of the seventeenth century, a contemporary of Racine, would have been stupified to think that any one could enjoy the verses of Bérénice and at the same time be sensitive to the charm of the old Gothic images, carved upon the wall of this "barbarous" donjon. Time has done its work; it has effaced the prejudices of centuries; it has allowed us to perceive that the sculptor of the Coronation of the Virgin and the poet who wrote Bérénice were, after all, sons of the same race and servants of the same ideal. No,