“What rhyme do you want?” asked the Fabler as Madame de Sévigné used to call him.
“I want a rhyme to lumière.”
“Ornière,” 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 Pélisson.
“What! 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, Pélisson?”
“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 save in prose,” said La Fontaine, who had taken up Pélisson’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 deuce!” cried Loret; “what a dangerous thing! One would go mad with it!”
“The deuce! the deuce!” repeated La Fontaine; “what can I do?”
“I have discovered the way,” said Molière, who had entered just at this point of the conversation.
“What way?”
“Write them first and burn them afterwards.”
“How simple! Well, I should never have discovered that. What a mind that devil of a Molière has!” said La Fontaine. Then, striking his forehead, “Oh, thou wilt never be aught but an ass, Jean La Fontaine!” he added.
“What are you saying there, my friend?” broke in Molière, approaching the poet, whose aside he had heard.
“I say I shall never be aught but an ass,” answered La Fontaine, with a heavy sigh and swimming eyes. “Yes, my friend,” he added, with increasing grief, “it seems that I rhyme in a slovenly manner.”
“Oh, ’tis wrong to say so.”
“Nay, I am a poor creature!”
“Who said so?”
“Parbleu! ’twas Pélisson; did you not, Pélisson?”
Pélisson, again absorbed in his work, took good care not to answer.
“But if Pélisson said you were so,” cried Molière, “Pélisson has seriously offended you.”
“Do you think so?”
“Ah! I advise you, as you are a gentleman, not to leave an insult like that unpunished.”
“What!” exclaimed La Fontaine.
“Did you ever fight?”
“Once only, with a lieutenant in the light horse.”
“What wrong had he done you?”
“It seems he ran away with my wife.”
“Ah, ah!” said Molière, becoming slightly pale; but as, at La Fontaine’s declaration, the others had turned round, Molière kept upon his lips the rallying smile which had so nearly died away, and continuing to make La Fontaine speak—
“And what was the result of the duel?”
“The result was, that on the ground my opponent disarmed me, and then made an apology, promising never again to set foot in my house.”
“And you considered yourself satisfied?” said Molière.
“Not at all! on the contrary, I picked up my sword. ‘I beg your pardon, Monsieur,’ I said, ‘I have not fought you because you were my wife’s friend, but because I was told I ought to fight. So, as I have never known any peace save since you made her acquaintance, do me the pleasure to continue your visits as heretofore, or morbleu! let us set to again.’ And so,” continued La Fontaine, “he was compelled to resume his friendship with Madame, and I continue to be the happiest of husbands.”
All burst out laughing. Molière alone passed his hand across his eyes. Why? Perhaps to wipe away a tear, perhaps to smother a sigh. Alas! we know that Molière was a moralist, but he was not a philosopher. “ ’Tis all one,” he said, returning to the topic of the conversation, “Pélisson has insulted you.”
“Ah, truly! I had already forgotten it.”
“And I am going to challenge him on your behalf.”
“Well, you can do so, if you think it indispensable.”
“I do think it indispensable, and I am going to—”
“Stay,” exclaimed La Fontaine, “I want your advice.”
“Upon what? this insult?”
“No; tell me really now whether lumière does not rhyme with ornière.”
“I should make them rhyme.”
“Ah! I knew you would.”
“And I have made a hundred thousand such rhymes in my time.”
“A hundred thousand!” cried La Fontaine. “Four times as many as La Pucelle, which M. Chapelain is meditating. Is it also on this subject, too, that you have composed a hundred thousand verses?”
“Listen to me, you eternally absentminded creature,” said Molière.
“It is certain,” continued La Fontaine, “that légume, for instance, rhymes with posthume.”
“In the plural, above all.”
“Yes, above all in the plural, seeing that then it rhymes not with three letters, but with four; as ornière does with lumière.”
“But give me ornières and lumières in the plural, my dear Pélisson,” said La Fontaine, clapping his
