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-Mande, where the superintendent was in the habit
of receiving his select confederacy of epicureans. For some time past
the host had met with nothing but trouble. Every one in the house was
aware of and felt for 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 even a shadow of money to be seen.
M. Vatel was resolutely painstaking in keeping up the reputation of the
house, and yet the gardeners who supplied the kitchens complained of
ruinous delays. The agents for the supply of Spanish wines sent drafts
which no one honored; fishermen, whom the superintendent 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 life; fish,
which, at a later period, was the cause of Vatel’s death, did not arrive
at all. However, on the ordinary reception days, 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; Pelisson, 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 masterpiece, because
Pelisson wrote it for his friend--that is to say, he inserted all kinds
of clever things 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 about the art of making
verses. The painters and musicians, in their turn, were hovering near
the dining-room. As soon as eight o’clock struck the supper would be
announced, for the superintendent never kept any one waiting. It was
already half-past seven, and the appetites of the guests were beginning
to declare themselves in an emphatic manner. As soon as all the guests
were assembled, Gourville went straight up to Pelisson, awoke him out
of his reverie, and led him into the middle of a room, and closed the
doors. “Well,” he said, “anything new?”
Pelisson 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 what one hundred and ninety-five
thousand livres for the first payment.”
“The payment of what?” asked La Fontaine.
“What! absent-minded as usual! Why, it was you who told us the small
estate at Corbeli 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, 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 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 Pelisson, “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 bumped 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 wasn’t wounded either, for he never came on the field.”
“Capital!” cried his friends from all sides, “you must have been
terribly angry.”
“Exceedingly so; I 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 on my
horse again, and here I am.”
Every one had great difficulty in keeping his countenance at the
exposure of this heroi-comedy, and when the laughter had subsided, one
of the guests present said to La Fontaine: “Is that all you have brought
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 assumed indifference, “and I have
introduced 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 excel
everything that Boccaccio, Aretin, and other masters of their craft have
written in the same style.”
“Its fate is clear,” said Pelisson; “it will be suppressed 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 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
religions 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 superintendent 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 the 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 Europe, was seen to cross the threshold with tears
in his eyes, 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 into 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 tearful, too, 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.”