Chapter VII: La Fontaine as a Negotiator
FOUQUET pressed La Fontaine’s hand most warmly, saying to him, “My dear poet, write a hundred other tales, not only for the eighty pistoles which each of them will produce you, but still more to enrich our language with a hundred other masterpieces.”
“Oh! oh!” said La Fontaine, with a little air of pride, “you must not suppose that I have brought only this idea and the eighty pistoles to the superintendent.”
“Oh! indeed!” was the general acclamation from all parts of the room; “M. de la Fontaine is in funds to-day.”
“Heaven bless the idea, if it brings me one or two millions,” said Fouquet, gayly.
“Exactly,” replied La Fontaine.
“Quick, quick!” cried the assembly.
“Take care!” said Pellisson in La Fontaine’s ear. “You have had a most brilliant success up to the present moment; do not go too far.”
“Not at all, M. Pellisson; and you, who are a man of taste, will be the first to approve of what I have done.”
“Is it a matter of millions?” said Gourville.
“I have fifteen hundred thousand livres here, M. Gourville,” he replied, striking himself on the chest.
“The deuce take this Gascon from Chateau-Thierry!” cried Loret.
“It is not the pocket you should touch, but the brain,” said Fouquet.
“Stay a moment, Monsieur the Superintendent!” added La Fontaine; “you are not procureur-general,- you are a poet.”
“True, true!” cried Loret, Conrart, and every person present connected with literature.
“You are, I repeat, a poet and a painter, a sculptor, a friend of the arts and sciences; but acknowledge that you are no lawyer.”
“Oh, I do acknowledge it!” replied M. Fouquet, smiling.
“If you were to be nominated at the Academy, you would refuse, I think.”
“I think I should, with all due deference to the academicians.”
“Very good; if therefore you do not wish to belong to the Academy, why do you allow yourself to form one of the parliament?”
“Oh! oh!” said Pellisson; “we are talking politics.”
“I wish to know,” persisted La Fontaine, “whether the barrister’s gown does or does not become M. Fouquet.”
“There is no question of the gown at all,” retorted Pellisson, annoyed at the laughter of the company.
“On the contrary, the gown is in question,” said Loret.
“Take the gown away from the procureur-general,” said Conrart, “and we have M. Fouquet left us still, of whom we have no reason to complain; but as he is no procureur-general without his gown, we agree with M. de la Fontaine, and pronounce the gown to be nothing but a bugbear.”
“Fugiunt risus leporesque,” said Loret.
“The smiles and the graces,” said some one present.
“That is not the way,” said Pellisson, gravely, “that I translate lepores.”
“How do you translate it?” said La Fontaine.
“Thus: ‘The hares run away as soon as they see M. Fouquet.'”
A burst of laughter, in which the superintendent joined, followed this sally.
“But why hares?” objected Conrart, vexed.
“Because the hare will be the very one who will not be over-pleased to see M. Fouquet retaining the elements of strength which belong to his parliamentary position.”
“Oh! oh!” murmured the poets.
“Quo non ascendam,” said Conrart, “would seem to me impossible with a procureur’s gown.”
“And it seems so to me without that gown,” said the obstinate Pellisson. “What is your opinion, Gourville?”
“I think the gown in question is a very good thing,” replied the latter; “but I equally think that a million and a half is far better than the gown.”
“And I am of Gourville’s opinion,” exclaimed Fouquet, stopping the discussion by the expression of his own opinion, which would necessarily bear down all the others.
“A million and a half!” Pellisson grumbled out. “Now I happen to know an Indian fable-”
“Tell it to me,” said La Fontaine; “I ought to know it too.”
“Tell it, tell it!” said the others.
“There was a tortoise which was as usual well protected by its shell,” said Pellisson. “Whenever its enemies threatened it, it took refuge within its covering. One day some one said to it, ‘You must feel very hot in such a house as that in the summer, and you are altogether prevented from showing off your graces; here is a snake who will give you a million and a half for your shell.”