we hope to do best of all; and our projects often drop from us by
their weight. A little while ago your friend Molière exhibited a
remarkable proof of it.
_La Fontaine._ Ah, poor Molière! the best man in the world; but
flighty, negligent, thoughtless. He throws himself into other men, and
does not remember where. The sight of an eagle, M. de la
Rochefoucault, but the memory of a fly.
_Rochefoucault_. I will give you an example: but perhaps it is already
known to you.
_La Fontaine._ Likely enough. We have each so many friends, neither of
us can trip but the other is invited to the laugh. Well; I am sure he
has no malice, and I hope I have none: but who can see his own faults?
_Rochefoucault._ He had brought out a new edition of his comedies.
_La Fontaine._ There will be fifty; there will be a hundred: nothing
in our language, or in any, is so delightful, so graceful; I will add,
so clear at once and so profound.
_Rochefoucault._ You are among the few who, seeing well his other
qualities, see that Molière is also profound. In order to present the
new edition to the dauphin, he had put on a sky-blue velvet coat,
powdered with fleurs-de-lis. He laid the volume on his library table;
and, resolving that none of the courtiers should have an opportunity
of ridiculing him for anything like absence of mind, he returned to
his bedroom, which, as may often be the case in the economy of poets,
is also his dressing-room. Here he surveyed himself in his mirror, as
well as the creeks and lagoons in it would permit.
_La Fontaine._ I do assure you, from my own observation, M. de la
Rochefoucault, that his mirror is a splendid one. I should take it to
be nearly three feet high, reckoning the frame, with the Cupid above
and the elephant under. I suspected it was the present of some great
lady; and indeed I have since heard as much.
_Rochefoucault._ Perhaps then the whole story may be quite as fabulous
as the part of it which I have been relating.
_La Fontaine._ In that case, I may be able to set you right again.
_Rochefoucault._ He found his peruke a model of perfection; tight, yet
easy; not an inch more on one side than on the other. The black patch
on the forehead....
_La Fontaine._ Black patch too! I would have given a fifteen-sous
piece to have caught him with that black patch.
_Rochefoucault._ He found it lovely, marvellous, irresistible. Those
on each cheek....
_La Fontaine._ Do you tell me he had one on each cheek?
_Rochefoucault._ Symmetrically. The cravat was of its proper descent,
and with its appropriate charge of the best Strasburg snuff upon it.
The waistcoat, for a moment, puzzled and perplexed him. He was not
quite sure whether the right number of buttons were in their holes;
nor how many above, nor how many below, it was the fashion of the week
to leave without occupation. Such a piece of ignorance is enough to
disgrace any courtier on earth. He was in the act of striking his
forehead with desperation; but he thought of the patch, fell on his
knees, and thanked Heaven for the intervention.
_La Fontaine._ Just like him! just like him! good soul!
_Rochefoucault._ The breeches ... ah! those require attention: all
proper: everything in its place. Magnificent. The stockings rolled up,
neither too loosely nor too negligently. A picture! The buckles in the
shoes ... all but one ... soon set to rights ... well thought of! And
now the sword ... ah, that cursed sword! it will bring at least one
man to the ground if it has its own way much longer ... up with it! up
with it higher.... _Allons!_ we are out of danger.
_La Fontaine._ Delightful! I have him before my eyes. What simplicity!
aye, what simplicity!
_Rochefoucault._ Now for hat. Feather in? Five at least. Bravo!
He took up hat and plumage, extended his arm to the full length,
raised it a foot above his head, lowered it thereon, opened his
fingers, and let them fall again at his side.
_La Fontaine._ Something of the comedian in that; aye, M. de la
Rochefoucault? But, on the stage or off, all is natural in Molière.
_Rochefoucault._ Away he went: he reached the palace, stood before the
dauphin.... O consternation! O despair! 'Morbleu! bête que je suis,'
exclaimed the hapless man, 'le livre, où donc est-il?' You are
forcibly struck, I perceive, by this adventure of your friend.
_La Fontaine._ Strange coincidence! quite unaccountable! There are
agents at work in our dreams, M. de la Rochefoucault, which we shall
never see out of them, on this side the grave. [_To himself._]
Sky-blue? no. Fleurs-de-lis? bah! bah! Patches? I never wore one in my
life.
_Rochefoucault._ It well becomes your character for generosity, M. La
Fontaine, to look grave, and ponder, and ejaculate, on a friend's
untoward accident, instead of laughing, as those who little know you,
might expect. I beg your pardon for relating the occurrence.
_La Fontaine._ Right or wrong, I cannot help laughing any longer.
Comical, by my faith! above the tiptop of comedy. Excuse my flashes
and dashes and rushes of merriment. Incontrollable! incontrollable!
Indeed the laughter is immoderate. And you all the while are sitting
as grave as a judge; I mean a criminal one; who has nothing to do but
to keep up his popularity by sending his rogues to the gallows. The
civil indeed have much weighty matter on their minds: they must
displease one party: and sometimes a doubt arises whether the fairer
hand or the fuller shall turn the balance.
_Rochefoucault._ I congratulate you on the return of your gravity and
composure.
_La Fontaine._ Seriously now: all my lifetime I have been the
plaything of dreams. Sometimes they have taken such possession of me,
that nobody could persuade me afterward they were other than real
events. Some are very oppressive, very painful, M. de la
Rochefoucault! I have never been able, altogether, to disembarrass my
head of the most wonderful vision that ever took possession of any
man's. There are some truly important differences, but in many
respects this laughable adventure of my innocent, honest friend
Molière seemed to have befallen myself. I can only account for it by
having heard the tale when I was half asleep.
_Rochefoucault._ Nothing more probable.
_La Fontaine._ You absolutely have relieved me from an incubus.
_Rochefoucault._ I do not yet see how.
_La Fontaine._ No longer ago than when you entered this chamber, I
would have sworn that I myself had gone to the Louvre, that I myself
had been commanded to attend the dauphin, that I myself had come into
his presence, had fallen on my knee, and cried, 'Peste! où est donc le
livre?' Ah, M. de la Rochefoucault, permit me to embrace you: this is
really to find a friend at court.
_Rochefoucault._ My visit is even more auspicious than I could have
ventured to expect: it was chiefly for the purpose of asking your
permission to make another at my return to Paris.... I am forced to go
into the country on some family affairs: but hearing that you have
spoken favourably of my _Maxims_, I presume to express my satisfaction
and delight at your good opinion.
_La Fontaine._ Pray, M. de la Rochefoucault, do me the favour to
continue here a few minutes. I would gladly reason with you on some of
your doctrines.
_Rochefoucault._ For the pleasure of hearing your sentiments on the
topics I have treated, I will, although it is late, steal a few
minutes from the court, of which I must take my leave on parting for
the province.
_La Fontaine._ Are you quite certain that all your _Maxims_ are true,
or, what is of greater consequence, that they are all original? I have
lately read a treatise written by an Englishman, Mr. Hobbes; so loyal
a man that, while others tell you kings are appointed by God, he tells
you God is appointed by kings.
_Rochefoucault._ Ah! such are precisely the men we want. If he
establishes this verity, the rest will follow.
_La Fontaine._ He does not seem to care so much about the rest. In his
treatise I find the ground-plan of your chief positions.
_Rochefoucault._ I have indeed looked over his publication; and we
agree on the natural depravity of man.
_La Fontaine._ Reconsider your expression. It appears to me that what
is natural is not depraved: that depravity is deflection from nature.
Let it pass: I cannot, however, concede to you that the generality of
men are bad. Badness is accidental, like disease. We find more
tempers good than bad, where proper care is taken in proper time.
_Rochefoucault._ Care is not nature.
_La Fontaine._ Nature is soon inoperative without it; so soon indeed
as to allow no opportunity for experiment or hypothesis. Life itself
requires care, and more continually than tempers and morals do. The
strongest body ceases to be a body in a few days without a supply of
food. When we speak of men being naturally bad or good, we mean
susceptible and retentive and communicative of them. In this case (and
there can be no other true or ostensible one) I believe that the more
are good; and nearly in the same proportion as there are animals and
plants produced healthy and vigorous than wayward and weakly. Strange
is the opinion of Mr. Hobbes, that, when God hath poured so abundantly
His benefits on other creatures, the only one capable of great good
should be uniformly disposed to greater evil.
_Rochefoucault._ Yet Holy Writ, to which Hobbes would reluctantly
appeal, countenances the supposition.
_La Fontaine._ The Jews, above all nations, were morose and splenetic.
Nothing is holy to me that lessens in my view the beneficence of my
Creator. If you could show Him ungentle and unkind in a single
instance, you would render myriads of men so, throughout the whole
course of their lives, and those too among the most religious. The
less that people talk about God the better. He has left us a design to
fill up: He has placed the canvas, the colours, and the pencils,
within reach; His directing hand is over ours incessantly; it is our
business to follow it, and neither to turn round and argue with our
Master, nor to kiss and fondle Him. We must mind our lesson, and not
neglect our time: for the room is closed early, and the lights are
suspended in another, where no one works. If every man would do all
the good he might within an hour's walk from his house, he would live
the happier and the longer: for nothing is so conducive to longevity
as the union of activity and content. But, like children, we deviate
from the road, however well we know it, and run into mire and puddles
in despite of frown and ferule.
_Rochefoucault._ Go on, M. La Fontaine! pray go on. We are walking in
the same labyrinth, always within call, always within sight of each
other. We set out at its two extremities, and shall meet at last.
_La Fontaine._ I doubt it. From deficiency of care proceed many
vices, both in men and children, and more still from care taken
improperly. Mr. Hobbes attributes not only the order and peace of
society, but equity and moderation and every other virtue, to the
coercion and restriction of the laws. The laws, as now constituted, do
a great deal of good; they also do a great deal of mischief. They
transfer more property from the right owner in six months than all the
thieves of the kingdom do in twelve. What the thieves take they soon
disseminate abroad again; what the laws take they hoard. The thief
takes a part of your property: he who prosecutes the thief for you
takes another part: he who condemns the thief goes to the tax-gatherer
and takes the third. Power has been hitherto occupied in no employment
but in keeping down Wisdom. Perhaps the time may come when Wisdom
shall exert her energy in repressing the sallies of Power.
_Rochefoucault._ I think it more probable that they will agree; that
they will call together their servants of all liveries, to collect
what they can lay their hands upon; and that meanwhile they will sit
together like good housewives, making nets from our purses to cover
the coop for us. If you would be plump and in feather, pick up your
millet and be quiet in your darkness. Speculate on nothing here below,
and I promise you a nosegay in Paradise.
_La Fontaine._ Believe me, I shall be most happy to receive it there
at your hands, my lord duke.
The greater number of men, I am inclined to think, with all the
defects of education, all the frauds committed on their credulity, all
the advantages taken of their ignorance and supineness, are disposed,
on most occasions, rather to virtue than to vice, rather to the kindly
affections than the unkindly, rather to the social than the selfish.
_Rochefoucault._ Here we differ: and were my opinion the same as
yours, my book would be little read and less commended.
_La Fontaine._ Why think so?
_Rochefoucault._ For this reason. Every man likes to hear evil of all
men: every man is delighted to take the air of the common, though not
a soul will consent to stand within his own allotment. No enclosure
act! no finger-posts! You may call every creature under heaven fool
and rogue, and your auditor will join with you heartily: hint to him
the slightest of his own defects or foibles, and he draws the rapier.
You and he are the judges of the world, but not its denizens.
_La Fontaine._ Mr. Hobbes has taken advantage of these weaknesses. In
his dissertation he betrays the timidity and malice of his character.
It must be granted he reasons well, according to the view he has taken
of things; but he has given no proof whatever that his view is a
correct one. I will believe that it is, when I am persuaded that
sickness is the natural state of the body, and health the unnatural.
If you call him a sound philosopher, you may call a mummy a sound man.
Its darkness, its hardness, its forced uprightness, and the place in
which you find it, may commend it to you; give me rather some weakness
and peccability, with vital warmth and human sympathies. A shrewd
reasoner in one thing, a sound philosopher is another. I admire your
power and precision. Monks will admonish us how little the author of
the _Maxims_ knows of the world; and heads of colleges will cry out 'a
libel on human nature!' but when they hear your titles, and, above
all, your credit at court, they will cast back cowl, and peruke, and
lick your boots. You start with great advantages. Throwing off from a
dukedom, you are sure of enjoying, if not the tongue of these
puzzlers, the full cry of the more animating, and will certainly be as
long-lived as the imperfection of our language will allow. I consider
your _Maxims_ as a broken ridge of hills, on the shady side of which
you are fondest of taking your exercise: but the same ridge hath also
a sunny one. You attribute (let me say it again) all actions to
self-interest. Now, a sentiment of interest must be preceded by
calculation, long or brief, right or erroneous. Tell me then in what
region lies the origin of that pleasure which a family in the country
feels on the arrival of an unexpected friend. I say a family in the
country; because the sweetest souls, like the sweetest flowers, soon
canker in cities, and no purity is rarer there than the purity of
delight. If I may judge from the few examples I have been in a
position to see, no earthly one can be greater. There are pleasures
which lie near the surface, and which are blocked up by artificial
ones, or are diverted by some mechanical scheme, or are confined by
some stiff evergreen vista of low advantage. But these pleasures do
occasionally burst forth in all their brightness; and, if ever you
shall by chance find one of them, you will sit by it, I hope,
complacently and cheerfully, and turn toward it the kindliest aspect
of your meditations.
_Rochefoucault._ Many, indeed most people, will differ from me.
Nothing is quite the same to the intellect of any two men, much less
of all. When one says to another, 'I am entirely of your opinion,' he
uses in general an easy and indifferent phrase, believing in its
accuracy, without examination, without thought. The nearest
resemblance in opinions, if we could trace every line of it, would be
found greatly more divergent than the nearest in the human form or
countenance, and in the same proportion as the varieties of mental
qualities are more numerous and fine than of the bodily. Hence I do
not expect nor wish that my opinions should in all cases be similar to
those of others: but in many I shall be gratified if, by just degrees
and after a long survey, those of others approximate to mine. Nor does
this my sentiment spring from a love of power, as in many good men
quite unconsciously, when they would make proselytes, since I shall
see few and converse with fewer of them, and profit in no way by their
adherence and favour; but it springs from a natural and a cultivated
love of all truths whatever, and from a certainty that these delivered
by me are conducive to the happiness and dignity of man. You shake
your head.
_La Fontaine._ Make it out.
_Rochefoucault._ I have pointed out to him at what passes he hath
deviated from his true interest, and where he hath mistaken
selfishness for generosity, coldness for judgment, contraction of
heart for policy, rank for merit, pomp for dignity; of all mistakes,
the commonest and the greatest. I am accused of paradox and
distortion. On paradox I shall only say, that every new moral truth
has been called so. Inexperienced and negligent observers see no
difference in the operations of ravelling and unravelling: they never
come close enough: they despise plain work.
_La Fontaine._ The more we simplify things, the better we descry their
substances and qualities. A good writer will not coil them up and
press them into the narrowest possible space, nor macerate them into
such particles that nothing shall be remaining of their natural
contexture. You are accused of this too, by such as have forgotten
your title-page, and who look for treatises where maxims only have
been promised. Some of them perhaps are spinning out sermons and
dissertations from the poorest paragraph in the volume.
_Rochefoucault._ Let them copy and write as they please; against or
for, modestly or impudently. I have hitherto had no assailant who is
not of too slender a make to be detained an hour in the stocks he had
unwarily put his foot into. If you hear of any, do not tell of them.
On the subjects of my remarks, had others thought as I do, my labour
would have been spared me. I am ready to point out the road where I
know it, to whosoever wants it; but I walk side by side with few or
none.
_La Fontaine._ We usually like those roads which show us the fronts of
our friends' houses and the pleasure-grounds about them, and the
smooth garden-walks, and the trim espaliers, and look at them with
more satisfaction than at the docks and nettles that are thrown in
heaps behind. The _Offices_ of Cicero are imperfect; yet who would not
rather guide his children by them than by the line and compass of
harder-handed guides; such as Hobbes for instance?
_Rochefoucault._ Imperfect as some gentlemen in hoods may call the
_Offices_, no founder of a philosophical or of a religious sect has
been able to add to them anything important.
_La Fontaine._ Pity! that Cicero carried with him no better
authorities than reason and humanity. He neither could work miracles,
nor damn you for disbelieving them. Had he lived fourscore years
later, who knows but he might have been another Simon Peter, and have
talked Hebrew as fluently as Latin, all at once! Who knows but we
might have heard of his patrimony! who knows but our venerable popes
might have claimed dominion from him, as descendant from the kings of
Rome!
_Rochefoucault._ The hint, some centuries ago, would have made your
fortune, and that saintly cat there would have kittened in a mitre.
_La Fontaine._ Alas! the hint could have done nothing: Cicero could
not have lived later.
_Rochefoucault._ I warrant him. Nothing is easier to correct than
chronology. There is not a lady in Paris, nor a jockey in Normandy,
that is not eligible to a professor's chair in it. I have seen a man's
ancestor, whom nobody ever saw before, spring back over twenty
generations. Our Vatican Jupiters have as little respect for old
Chronos as the Cretan had: they mutilate him when and where they think
necessary, limp as he may by the operation.
_La Fontaine._ When I think, as you make me do, how ambitious men are,
even those whose teeth are too loose (one would fancy) for a bite at
so hard an apple as the devil of ambition offers them, I am inclined
to believe that we are actuated not so much by selfishness as you
represent it, but under another form, the love of power. Not to speak
of territorial dominion or political office, and such other things as
we usually class under its appurtenances, do we not desire an
exclusive control over what is beautiful and lovely? the possession
of pleasant fields, of well-situated houses, of cabinets, of images,
of pictures, and indeed of many things pleasant to see but useless to
possess; even of rocks, of streams, and of fountains? These things,
you will tell me, have their utility. True, but not to the wisher, nor
does the idea of it enter his mind. Do not we wish that the object of
our love should be devoted to us only; and that our children should
love us better than their brothers and sisters, or even than the
mother who bore them? Love would be arrayed in the purple robe of
sovereignty, mildly as he may resolve to exercise his power.
_Rochefoucault._ Many things which appear to be incontrovertible are
such for their age only, and must yield to others which, in their age,
are equally so. There are only a few points that are always above the
waves. Plain truths, like plain dishes, are commended by everybody,
and everybody leaves them whole. If it were not even more impertinent
and presumptuous to praise a great writer in his presence than to
censure him in his absence, I would venture to say that your prose,
from the few specimens you have given of it, is equal to your verse.
Yet, even were I the possessor of such a style as yours, I would never
employ it to support my _Maxims_. You would think a writer very
impudent and self-sufficient who should quote his own works: to defend
them is doing more. We are the worst auxiliaries in the world to the
opinions we have brought into the field. Our business is, to measure
the ground, and to calculate the forces; then let them try their
strength. If the weak assails me, he thinks me weak; if the strong, he
thinks me strong. He is more likely to compute ill his own vigour than
mine. At all events, I love inquiry, even when I myself sit down. And
I am not offended in my walks if my visitor asks me whither does that
alley lead. It proves that he is ready to go on with me; that he sees
some space before him; and that he believes there may be something
worth looking after.
_La Fontaine._ You have been standing a long time, my lord duke: I
must entreat you to be seated.
_Rochefoucault._ Excuse me, my dear M. la Fontaine; I would much
rather stand.
_La Fontaine._ Mercy on us! have you been upon your legs ever since
you rose to leave me?
_Rochefoucault._ A change of position is agreeable: a friend always
permits it.
_La Fontaine._ Sad doings! sad oversight! The other two chairs were
sent yesterday evening to be scoured and mended. But that dog is the
best tempered dog! an angel of a dog, I do assure you; he would have
gone down in a moment, at a word. I am quite ashamed of myself for
such inattention. With your sentiments of friendship for me, why could
you not have taken the liberty to shove him gently off, rather than
give me this uneasiness?
_Rochefoucault._ My true and kind friend! we authors are too
sedentary; we are heartily glad of standing to converse, whenever we
can do it without any restraint on our acquaintance.
_La Fontaine._ I must reprove that animal when he uncurls his body. He
seems to be dreaming of Paradise and houris. Ay, twitch thy ear, my
child! I wish at my heart there were as troublesome a fly about the
other: God forgive me! The rogue covers all my clean linen! shirt and
cravat! what cares he!
_Rochefoucault._ Dogs are not very modest.