HOW JEAN DE LA FONTAINE WROTE HIS FIRST TALE.
All these intrigues are exhausted; the human mind, so variously
complicated, has been enabled to develop itself at its ease in the three
outlines with which our recital has supplied it. It is not unlikely
that, in the future we are now preparing, a question of politics and
intrigues may still arise, but the springs by which they work will be so
carefully concealed that no one will be able to see aught but flowers
and paintings, just as at a theater, where a Colossus appears upon the
scene walking along moved by the small legs and slender arms of a child
concealed within the framework.
We now return to Saint-Mandé, where the surintendant was in the habit of
receiving his select society of epicureans. For some time past the host
had met with some terrible trials. Every one in the house was aware of
and felt the minister's distress. No more magnificent or recklessly
improvident reunions. Money had been the pretext assigned by Fouquet,
and never _was_ any pretext, as Gourville said, more fallacious, for
there was not the slightest appearance of money.
M. Vatel was most resolutely painstaking in keeping up the reputation of
the house, and yet the gardeners who supplied the kitchens complained of
a ruinous delay. The agents for the supply of Spanish wines frequently
sent drafts which no one honored; fishermen, whom the surintendant
engaged on the coast of Normandy, calculated that if they were paid all
that was due to them, the amount would enable them to retire comfortably
for the rest of their lives; fish, which, at a later period, was the
cause of Vatel's death, did not arrive at all. However, on the ordinary
day of reception, Fouquet's friends flocked in more numerously than
ever. Gourville and the Abbe Fouquet talked over money matters--that is
to say, the abbe borrowed a few pistoles from Gourville; Pellisson,
seated with his legs crossed, was engaged in finishing the peroration of
a speech with which Fouquet was to open the parliament; and this speech
was a master-piece, because Pellisson wrote it for his friend--that is
to say, he inserted everything in it which the latter would most
certainly never have taken the trouble to say of his own accord.
Presently Loret and La Fontaine would enter from the garden, engaged in
a dispute upon the facility of making verses. The painters and musicians
in their turn, also, were hovering near the dining-room. As soon as
eight o'clock struck, the supper would be announced, for the
surintendant never kept any one waiting. It was already half-past seven,
and the appetites of the guests were beginning to be declared in a very
emphatic manner. As soon as all the guests were assembled Gourville
went straight up to Pellisson, awoke him out of his reverie, and led him
into the middle of a room, and closed the doors. "Well," he said,
"anything new?"
Pellisson raised his intelligent and gentle face, and said: "I have
borrowed five-and-twenty thousand francs of my aunt, and I have them
here in good sterling money."
"Good," replied Gourville, "we only want one hundred and ninety-five
thousand livres for the first payment."
"The payment of what?" asked La Fontaine.
"What! absent as usual! Why it was you who told us that the small estate
at Corbeil was going to be sold by one of M. Fouquet's creditors; and
you, also, who proposed that all his friends should subscribe; more than
that, too, it was you who said that you would sell a corner of your
house at Chateau-Thierry, in order to furnish your own proportion, and
you now come and ask--'_The payment of what?_'"
This remark was received with a general laugh, which made La Fontaine
blush. "I beg your pardon," he said, "I had not forgotten it; oh, no!
only--"
"Only you remembered nothing about it," replied Loret.
"That is the truth; and the fact is, he is quite right; there is a great
difference between forgetting and not remembering."
"Well, then," added Pellisson, "you bring your mite in the shape of the
price of the piece of land you have sold?"
"Sold? no!"
"Have you not sold the field, then?" inquired Gourville in astonishment,
for he knew the poet's disinterestedness.
"My wife would not let me," replied the latter, at which there were
fresh bursts of laughter.
"And yet you went to Chateau-Thierry for that purpose," said some one.
"Certainly I did, and on horseback."
"Poor fellow!"
"I had eight different horses, and I was almost jolted to death."
"You are an excellent fellow! And you rested yourself when you arrived
there!"
"Rested! Oh! of course I did, for I had an immense deal of work to do."
"How so?"
"My wife had been flirting with the man to whom I wished to sell the
land. The fellow drew back from his bargain, and so I challenged him."
"Very good; and you fought?"
"It seems not."
"You know nothing about it, I suppose?"
"No, my wife and her relations interfered in the matter. I was kept a
quarter of an hour with my sword in my hand; but I was not wounded."
"And your adversary?"
"Oh! he just as much, for he never came on to the field."
"Capital!" cried his friends from all sides: "you must have been
terribly angry."
"Exceedingly so; I had caught cold; I returned home, and then my wife
began to quarrel with me."
"In real earnest?"
"Yes, in real earnest; she threw a loaf of bread at my head, a large
loaf."
"And what did you do?"
"Oh! I upset the table over her and her guests; and then I got upon my
horse again, and here I am."
Every one had great difficulty in keeping his countenance at the
exposure of his heroi-comedy, and when the laughter had somewhat ceased,
one of the guests present said to him:
"Is that all you have brought us back?"
"Oh, no! I have an excellent idea in my head."
"What is it?"
"Have you noticed that there is a good deal of sportive, jesting poetry
written in France?"
"Yes, of course," replied every one.
"And," pursued La Fontaine, "only a very small portion of it is
printed."
"The laws are strict, you know."
"That may be, but a rare article is a dear article, and that is the
reason why I have written a small poem, excessively free in its style,
very broad, and extremely cynical in its tone."
"The deuce you have!"
"Yes," continued the poet, with cold indifference; "and I have
introduced in it the greatest freedom of language I could possibly
employ."
Peals of laughter again broke forth, while the poet was thus announcing
the quality of his wares.
"And," he continued, "I have tried to exceed everything that Boccaccio,
Aretin, and other masters of their craft, have written in the same
style."
"Its fate is clear," said Pellisson; "it will be scouted and forbidden."
"Do you think so?" said La Fontaine simply; "I assure you, I did not do
it on my own account so much as on M. Fouquet's."
This wonderful conclusion again raised the mirth of all present.
"And I have sold the first edition of this little book for eight hundred
livres," exclaimed La Fontaine, rubbing his hands together. "Serious and
religious books sell at about half that rate."
"It would have been better," said Gourville, "to have written two
religious books instead."
"It would have been too long and not amusing enough," replied La
Fontaine, tranquilly; "my eight hundred livres are in this little bag,
and I beg to offer them as my contribution."
As he said this, he placed his offering in the hands of their treasurer;
it was then Loret's turn, who gave a hundred and fifty livres; the
others stripped themselves in the same way; and the total sum in the
purse amounted to forty thousand livres. The money was still being
counted over when the surintendant noiselessly entered the room; he had
heard everything; and then this man, who had possessed so many millions,
who had exhausted all the pleasures and honors that this world had to
bestow, this generous heart, this inexhaustible brain, which had, like
two burning crucibles, devoured the material and moral substance of the
first kingdom in the world, was seen to cross the threshold with his
eyes filled with tears, and pass his fingers through the gold and
silver which the bag contained.
"Poor offering," he said, in a softened and affected tone of voice; "you
will disappear in the smallest corner of my empty purse, but you have
filled to overflowing that which no one can ever exhaust, my heart.
Thank you, my friends--thank you." And as he could not embrace every one
present, who were all weeping a little, philosophers as they were, he
embraced La Fontaine, saying to him, "Poor fellow! so you have, on my
account, been beaten by your wife and censured by your confessor."
"Oh! it is a mere nothing," replied the poet; "if your creditors will
only wait a couple of years, I shall have written a hundred other tales,
which, at two editions each, will pay off the debt."