Chapter XLV. How Jean de La Fontaine Came to Write 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 beso carefully 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 superintendent was in the habitof receiving his select confederacy of epicureans. For some time pastthe host had met with nothing but trouble. Every one in the house wasaware of and felt for the minister's distress. No more magnificent orrecklessly improvident _reunions_. Money had been the pretext assignedby Fouquet, and never _was_ any pretext, as Gourville said, morefallacious, for there was not even a shadow of money to be seen.
M. Vatel was resolutely painstaking in keeping up the reputation of thehouse, and yet the gardeners who supplied the kitchens complained ofruinous delays. The agents for the supply of Spanish wines sent draftswhich no one honored; fishermen, whom the superintendent engaged on thecoast of Normandy, calculated that if they were paid all that was due tothem, 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 arriveat all. However, on the ordinary reception days, Fouquet's friendsflocked in more numerously than ever. Gourville and the Abbe Fouquettalked over money matters--that is to say, the abbe borrowed a fewpistoles from Gourville; Pelisson, seated with his legs crossed, wasengaged in finishing the peroration of a speech with which Fouquetwas to open the parliament; and this speech was a masterpiece, becausePelisson wrote it for his friend--that is to say, he inserted all kindsof clever things the latter would most certainly never have taken thetrouble to say of his own accord. Presently Loret and La Fontaine wouldenter from the garden, engaged in a dispute about the art of makingverses. The painters and musicians, in their turn, were hovering nearthe dining-room. As soon as eight o'clock struck the supper would beannounced, for the superintendent never kept any one waiting. It wasalready half-past seven, and the appetites of the guests were beginningto declare themselves in an emphatic manner. As soon as all the guestswere assembled, Gourville went straight up to Pelisson, awoke him outof his reverie, and led him into the middle of a room, and closed thedoors. "Well," he said, "anything new?"
Pelisson 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 what one hundred and ninety-fivethousand 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 smallestate 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--morethan that, it was you who said that you would sell a corner of yourhouse at Chateau-Thierry, in order to furnish your own proportion, andyou 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 Pelisson, "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, inastonishment, 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 bumped 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 wasn't wounded either, for he never came on the field."
"Capital!" cried his friends from all sides, "you must have beenterribly angry."
"Exceedingly so; I caught cold; I returned home and then my wife beganto 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 on myhorse again, and here I am."
Every one had great difficulty in keeping his countenance at theexposure of this heroi-comedy, and when the laughter had subsided, oneof the guests present said to La Fontaine: "Is that all you have broughtback?"
"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 assumed indifference, "and I haveintroduced the greatest freedom of language I could possibly employ."
Peals of laughter again broke forth, while the poet was thus announcingthe quality of his wares. "And," he continued, "I have tried to exceleverything that Boccaccio, Aretin, and other masters of their craft havewritten in the same style."
"Its fate is clear," said Pelisson; "it will be suppressed andforbidden."
"Do you think so?" said La Fontaine, simply. "I assure you I did not doit 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 hundredlivres," exclaimed La Fontaine, rubbing his hands together. "Serious andreligions 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 superintendent noiselessly entered the room;he had heard everything; and then this man, who had possessed so manymillions, who had exhausted all the pleasures and honors the world hadto bestow, this generous heart, this inexhaustible brain, which had,like two burning crucibles, devoured the material and moral substance ofthe first kingdom in Europe, was seen to cross the threshold with tearsin his eyes, and pass his fingers through the gold and silver which thebag contained.
"Poor offer
ing," he said, in a softened and affected tone of voice, "youwill disappear into 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 everyone present, who were all tearful, too, 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."