The Fables of La Fontaine | Page 9

He did not philosophize over the animals; he
sympathized with them. A philosopher would not have lost a
fashionable dinner in his admiration of a common ant-hill. La Fontaine
did so once, because the well-known little community was engaged in
what he took to be a funeral. He could not in decency leave them till it
was over. Verse-making out of the question, this was to be a genuine
poet, though, with commonplace mortals, it was also to be a fool."
But we will first, in few words, despatch the worst--for there is a very

bad part--of his life. It was not specially his life; it was the life of the
age in which he lived. The man of strong amorous propensities, in that
age and country, who was, nevertheless, faithful to vows of either
marriage or celibacy,--the latter vows then proved sadly dangerous to
the former,--may be regarded as a miracle. La Fontaine, without any
agency of his own affections, found himself married at the age of
twenty-six, while yet as immature as most men are at sixteen. The
upshot was, that his patrimony dwindled; and, though he lived many
years with his wife, and had a son, he neglected her more and more, till
at last he forgot that he had been married, though he unfortunately did
not forget that there were other women in the world besides his wife.
His genius and benevolence gained him friends everywhere with both
sexes, who never suffered him to want, and who had never cause to
complain of his ingratitude. But he was always the special favourite of
the Aspasias who ruled France and her kings. To please them, he wrote
a great deal of fine poetry, much of which deserves to be everlastingly
forgotten. It must be said for him, that his vice became conspicuous
only in the light of one of his virtues. His frankness would never allow
concealment. He scandalized his friends Boileau and Racine; still, it is
matter of doubt whether they did not excel him rather in prudence than
in purity. But, whatever may be said in palliation, it is lamentable to
think that a heaven-lighted genius should have been made, in any way,
to minister to a hell-envenomed vice, which has caused unutterable
woes to France and the world. Some time before he died, he repented
bitterly of this part of his course, and laboured, no doubt sincerely, to
repair the mischiefs he had done.
As we have already said, Jean was a backward boy. But, under a dull
exterior, the mental machinery was working splendidly within. He
lacked all that outside care and prudence,--that constant looking out for
breakers,--which obstruct the growth and ripening of the reflective
faculties. The vulgar, by a queer mistake, call a man absent-minded,
when his mind shuts the door, pulls in the latch-string, and is wholly at
home. La Fontaine's mind was exceedingly domestic. It was nowhere
but at home when, riding from Paris to Chateau-Thierry, a bundle of
papers fell from his saddle-bow without his perceiving it. The
mail-carrier, coming behind him, picked it up, and overtaking La

Fontaine, asked him if he had lost anything. "Certainly not," he replied,
looking about him with great surprise. "Well, I have just picked up
these papers," rejoined the other. "Ah! they are mine," cried La
Fontaine; "they involve my whole estate." And he eagerly reached to
take them. On another occasion he was equally at home. Stopping on a
journey, he ordered dinner at an hotel, and then took a ramble about the
town. On his return, he entered another hotel, and, passing through into
the garden, took from his pocket a copy of Livy, in which he quietly set
himself to read till his dinner should be ready. The book made him
forget his appetite, till a servant informed him of his mistake, and he
returned to his hotel just in time to pay his bill and proceed on his
journey.
It will be perceived that he took the world quietly, and his doing so
undoubtedly had important bearings on his style. We give another
anecdote, which illustrates this peculiarity of his mind as well as the
superlative folly of duelling. Not long after his marriage, with all his
indifference to his wife, he was persuaded into a fit of singular jealousy.
He was intimate with an ex-captain of dragoons, by name Poignant,
who had retired to Chateau-Thierry; a frank, open-hearted man, but of
extremely little gallantry. Whenever Poignant was not at his inn, he
was at La Fontaine's, and consequently with his wife, when he himself
was not at home. Some person took it in his head to ask La Fontaine
why he suffered these constant visits. "And why," said La Fontaine,
"should I not? He is my best friend."