“It will be of great use to him by and by, I am sure.”
“Won’t it be of use to him, indeed! I believe you, it will, and not a little so; for you see my friend Moliere is of all known tailors the man who best clothes our barons, counts, and marquises- according to their measure.”
On this observation, neither the application nor the depth of which shall we discuss, d’Artagnan and Porthos quitted M. Percerin’s house and rejoined their carriage, wherein we will leave them in order to look after Moliere and Aramis at St. Mande.
Chapter XXXIV: The Beehive, the Bees, and the Honey
THE Bishop of Vannes, much annoyed at having met d’Artagnan at M. Percerin’s, returned to St. Mande in no very good humor. Moliere, on the other hand, quite delighted at having made such a capital rough sketch, and at knowing where to find its original again whenever he should desire to convert his sketch into a picture, arrived in the merriest of moods. All the first story of the left wing was occupied by the most celebrated Epicureans in Paris, and those on the freest footing in the house,- every one in his compartment, like the bees in their cells, employed in producing the honey intended for that royal cake which M. Fouquet proposed to offer his Majesty Louis XIV during the fete at Vaux. Pellisson, his head leaning on his hand, was engaged in drawing out the plan of the prologue to “Les Facheux,” a comedy in three acts, which was to be put on the stage by Poquelin de Moliere, as d’Artagnan called him, or Coquelin de Voliere, as Porthos styled him. Loret, with all the charming innocence of a journalist,- the journalists of all ages have always been so artless!- Loret was composing an account of the fetes of Vaux, before those fetes had taken place. La Fontaine sauntered about among them,- a wandering, absent-minded, boring, unbearable shade, buzzing and humming at everybody’s shoulder a thousand poetic inanities. He so often disturbed Pellisson, that the latter, raising his head, crossly said, “At least, La Fontaine, supply me with a rhyme, since you say you have the run of the gardens at Parnassus.”
“What rhyme do you want?” asked the Fabler, as Madame de Sevigne used to call him.
“I want a rhyme to lumiere.”
“Orniere,” answered La Fontaine.
“Ah, but my good friend, one cannot talk of wheel-ruts when celebrating the delights of Vaux,” said Loret.
“Besides, it doesn’t rhyme,” answered Pellisson.
“How! doesn’t rhyme?” cried La Fontaine, in surprise.
“Yes; you have an abominable habit, my friend,- a habit which will ever prevent your becoming a poet of the first order. You rhyme in a slovenly manner.”
“Oh! oh! you think so, do you, Pellisson?”
“Yes, I do, indeed. Remember that a rhyme is never good so long as one can find a better.”
“Then I will never write anything again but in prose,” said La Fontaine, who had taken up Pellisson’s reproach in earnest. “Ah, I often suspected I was nothing but a rascally poet! Yes, ’tis the very truth.”
“Do not say so; your remark is too sweeping, and there is much that is good in your ‘Fables.'”
“And to begin,” continued La Fontaine, following up his idea, “I will go and burn a hundred verses I have just made.”
“Where are your verses?”
“In my head.”
“Well, if they are in your head you cannot burn them.”
“True,” said La Fontaine; “but if I do not burn them-”
“Well, what will happen if you do not burn them?”
“They will remain in my mind, and I shall never forget them.”
“The devil!” cried Loret; “what a dangerous thing! One would go mad with it!”
“The devil, devil, devil!” repeated La Fontaine; “what can I do?”
“I have discovered the way,” said Moliere, who had entered during the last words of the conversation.
“What way?”
“Write them first and burn them afterwards.”
“How simple it is! Well, I should never have discovered that. What a mind that devil Moliere has!” said La Fontaine. Then, striking his forehead, “Oh, thou wilt never be aught but an ass, Jean de la Fontaine!” he added.