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Could flowers be more sweet and perfect? I always dream of happy things among roses." "But you must not dream now, dear. It is very near dinner-time. We have had a very pleasant hour. I shall think of all you have said." But the thing she thought most persistently of was Richard Fontaine's temper. Was it possible that the equable charm and serenity of his mood was only an assumed one?
If the man replied in French, it was in a variety of that tongue that Tom's limited attainments did not understand, and, annoyed by the incomprehensible replies, he asked for "le captaine". At length, possibly attracted by the altercation at the bows, the authoritative-looking person who had come ashore in the morning in response to Madame de La Fontaine's signal, now appeared at the gunwale and glanced below at the two young men in the dory.
Rousseau here analyzes several of La Fontaine's fables, to show the immorality and the danger of their "ethics." He dwells particularly upon the fable of the Fox and the Crow. In this he is right; the morality of the greater part of these fables leaves much to be desired. But there is nothing to prevent the teacher from making the application.
But the dauber would have been wrong, for this massive splendor was wanting neither in grandeur nor character. Two pictures only lighted up the cold walls; one, signed by Gros, was an equestrian portrait of the Marshal, Madame Fontaine's father, the old drummer of Pont de Lodi, one of the bravest of Napoleon's lieutenants.
He is attracted by what is false and he misses the truth, and the means adopted to make the teaching pleasant prevent him profiting by it. Men may be taught by fables; children require the naked truth. All children learn La Fontaine's fables, but not one of them understands them.
At Madame Fontaine's dinner on the next Tuesday, some abominable wine and aged salmon was served to Amedee by a butler named Adolphe, who ought rather to have been called Exili or Castaing, and who, after fifteen years' service to the Countess, already owned two good paying houses in Paris.
The son of Flanders came back to Douai, like La Fontaine's pigeon to its nest; he wept with joy as he re-entered the town on the day of the Gayant procession, Gayant, the superstitious luck of Douai, the glory of Flemish traditions, introduced there at the time the Claes family had emigrated from Ghent.
Fontaine's house in the Rue Vieille-du-Temple as regularly as frequenters of the Cafe Anglais drop in at that restaurant for lunch. Mme. Cibot, being a very old customer, often introduced young persons and old gossips consumed with curiosity to the wise woman. The old servant who acted as provost marshal flung open the door of the sanctuary with no further ceremony than the remark, "It's Mme.
We had no right, that I could see, to alarm the widow, because we happened to attach purely fanciful suspicions to a man of whom we knew nothing. I expressed this opinion to Mr. Engelman; and he agreed with me. The same subdued tone which had struck me in the little household in Main Street, was again visible in the welcome which I received in Madame Fontaine's lodgings.
Two of Monsieur Longueville's qualities, very adverse to general curiosity, and especially to Mademoiselle de Fontaine's, were unexpected modesty and discretion. He never spoke of himself, of his pursuits, or of his family.
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