CHAPTER LII.
HOW JEAN DE LA FONTAINE WROTE HIS FIRST TALE.
All these intrigues are exhausted; the human mind, so variouslycomplicated, has been enabled to develop itself at its ease in the threeoutlines with which our recital has supplied it. It is not unlikelythat, in the future we are now preparing, a question of politics andintrigues may still arise, but the springs by which they work will be socarefully concealed that no one will be able to see aught but flowersand paintings, just as at a theater, where a Colossus appears upon thescene walking along moved by the small legs and slender arms of a childconcealed within the framework.
We now return to Saint-Mande, where the surintendant was in the habit ofreceiving his select society of epicureans. For some time past the hosthad met with some terrible trials. Every one in the house was aware ofand felt the minister's distress. No more magnificent or recklesslyimprovident reunions. Money had been the pretext assigned by Fouquet,and never _was_ any pretext, as Gourville said, more fallacious, forthere was not the slightest appearance of money.
M. Vatel was most resolutely painstaking in keeping up the reputation ofthe house, and yet the gardeners who supplied the kitchens complained ofa ruinous delay. The agents for the supply of Spanish wines frequentlysent drafts which no one honored; fishermen, whom the surintendantengaged on the coast of Normandy, calculated that if they were paid allthat was due to them, the amount would enable them to retire comfortablyfor the rest of their lives; fish, which, at a later period, was thecause of Vatel's death, did not arrive at all. However, on the ordinaryday of reception, Fouquet's friends flocked in more numerously thanever. Gourville and the Abbe Fouquet talked over money matters--that isto say, the abbe borrowed a few pistoles from Gourville; Pellisson,seated with his legs crossed, was engaged in finishing the peroration ofa speech with which Fouquet was to open the parliament; and this speechwas a master-piece, because Pellisson wrote it for his friend--that isto say, he inserted everything in it which the latter would mostcertainly never have taken the trouble to say of his own accord.Presently Loret and La Fontaine would enter from the garden, engaged ina dispute upon the facility of making verses. The painters and musiciansin their turn, also, were hovering near the dining-room. As soon aseight o'clock struck, the supper would be announced, for thesurintendant never kept any one waiting. It was already half-past seven,and the appetites of the guests were beginning to be declared in a veryemphatic manner. As soon as all the guests were assembled Gourvillewent straight up to Pellisson, awoke him out of his reverie, and led himinto the middle of a room, and closed the doors. "Well," he said,"anything new?"
Pellisson raised his intelligent and gentle face, and said: "I haveborrowed five-and-twenty thousand francs of my aunt, and I have themhere in good sterling money."
"Good," replied Gourville, "we only want one hundred and ninety-fivethousand 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 estateat Corbeil was going to be sold by one of M. Fouquet's creditors; andyou, also, who proposed that all his friends should subscribe; more thanthat, too, it was you who said that you would sell a corner of yourhouse at Chateau-Thierry, in order to furnish your own proportion, andyou now come and ask--'_The payment of what?_'"
This remark was received with a general laugh, which made La Fontaineblush. "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 greatdifference between forgetting and not remembering."
"Well, then," added Pellisson, "you bring your mite in the shape of theprice 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 werefresh 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 arrivedthere!"
"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 theland. 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 aquarter 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 beenterribly angry."
"Exceedingly so; I had caught cold; I returned home, and then my wifebegan to quarrel with me."
"In real earnest?"
"Yes, in real earnest; she threw a loaf of bread at my head, a largeloaf."
"And what did you do?"
"Oh! I upset the table over her and her guests; and then I got upon myhorse again, and here I am."
Every one had great difficulty in keeping his countenance at theexposure 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 poetrywritten in France?"
"Yes, of course," replied every one.
"And," pursued La Fontaine, "only a very small portion of it isprinted."
"The laws are strict, you know."
"That may be, but a rare article is a dear article, and that is thereason 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 haveintroduced in it the greatest freedom of language I could possiblyemploy."
Peals of laughter again broke forth, while the poet was thus announcingthe 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 samestyle."
"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 doit 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 hundredlivres," exclaimed La Fontaine, rubbing his hands together. "Serious andreligious books sell at about half that rate."
"It would have been better," said Gourville, "to have written tworeligious books instead."
"It would have been too long and not amusing enough," replied LaFontaine, 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; theothers stripped themselves in the same way; and the total sum in thepurse amounted to forty thousand livres. The money was still beingcounted over when the surintendant noiselessly entered the room; he hadheard everything; and then this man, who had possessed so many millions,who had exhausted all the pleasures and honors that this world had tobestow, this generous heart, this inexhaustible brain, which had, liketwo burning crucibles, devoured the material and moral substance of thefirst kingdom in the world, was seen to cross the threshold with hiseyes filled with tear
s, and pass his fingers through the gold andsilver which the bag contained.
"Poor offering," he said, in a softened and affected tone of voice; "youwill disappear in the smallest corner of my empty purse, but you havefilled to overflowing that which no one can ever exhaust, my heart.Thank you, my friends--thank you." And as he could not embrace every onepresent, who were all weeping a little, philosophers as they were, heembraced La Fontaine, saying to him, "Poor fellow! so you have, on myaccount, been beaten by your wife and censured by your confessor."
"Oh! it is a mere nothing," replied the poet; "if your creditors willonly wait a couple of years, I shall have written a hundred other tales,which, at two editions each, will pay off the debt."
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