Chapter 46

Chapter XLVI:
La Fontaine in the Character of 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 new masterpieces of composition."

"Oh!" said La Fontaine, with a little air of pride, "you must not suppose
that I have only brought this idea and the eighty pistoles to the
superintendent."

"Oh! indeed," was the general acclimation from all parts of the room, "M.
de la Fontaine is in funds to-day."

"Exactly," replied La Fontaine.

"Quick, quick!" cried the assembly.

"Take care," said Pelisson in La Fontaine's ear; "you have had a most
brilliant success up to the present moment; do not go beyond your depth."

"Not at all, Monsieur Pelisson; and you, who are a man of decided taste,
will be the first to approve of what I have done."

"We are talking of millions, remember," said Gourville.

"I have fifteen hundred thousand francs here, Monsieur Gourville," he
replied, striking himself on the chest.

"The deuce take this Gascon from Chateau-Thierry!" cried Loret.

"It is not the pocket you must tap - but the brain," said Fouquet.

"Stay a moment, monsieur le surintendant," 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!" said Pelisson, "we are talking politics."

"I wish to know whether the barrister's gown does or does not become M.
Fouquet."

"There is no question of the gown at all," retorted Pelisson, annoyed at
the laughter of those who were present.

"On the contrary, it is the gown," 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 Pelisson, gravely, "that I