Chapter 45 - Page 2

Pelisson, awoke him out of his
reverie, and led him into the middle of a room, and closed the doors.
"Well," he said, "anything new?"

Pelisson raised his intelligent and gentle face, and said: "I have
borrowed five and twenty thousand francs of my aunt, and I have them here
in good sterling money."

"Good," replied Gourville; "we only what one hundred and ninety-five
thousand 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 small
estate 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 - more
than that, it was you who said that you would sell a corner of your house
at Chateau-Thierry, in order to furnish your own proportion, and you come
and ask - '_The payment of what?_'"

This remark was received with a general laugh, which made La Fontaine
blush. "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 great
difference between forgetting and not remembering."

"Well, then," added Pelisson, "you bring your mite in the shape of the
price of the piece of land you have sold?"

"Sold? no!"

"Have you not sold the field, then?" inquired Gourville, in astonishment,
for he knew the poet's disinterestedness.

"My wife would not let me," replied the latter, at which there were fresh
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 arrived
there?"

"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 the
land. The fellow drew back form 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 a
quarter 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 been terribly
angry."

"Exceedingly so; I caught cold; I returned home and then my wife began to
quarrel with me."

"In real earnest?"

"Yes, in real earnest. She threw a loaf of bread at