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"Well, Lucette, dear child," said her father, "won't you recite one of Lafontaine's fables before you go to bed?" "Here," observed M. de Salvandy, "is a little person who to-day recites fables and who one of these days will inspire romances." Lucette did not understand. She merely gazed with her big wondering eyes at Salvandy who was lolling in his chair with an air of benevolent condescension.
She was naturally quick-witted, and her intellect had been developed by an excellent education. The conversation turned upon Lafontaine's epigram, of which I had only recited the first ten verses, as the rest is too licentious; and she said, "But I suppose it is only a poet's fancy, at which one could but smile." "Possibly, but I did not care to wound your ears."
Indeed it is clear that LaFontaine's conservative instincts, which became stronger with age and experience of political conditions, forced him to proceed very slowly and cautiously with respect to a movement that would interfere with a tenure so deeply engrafted in the social and economic structure of his own province, while as a Roman Catholic he was at heart always doubtful of the justice of diverting to secular purposes those lands which had been granted by Great Britain for the support of a Protestant clergy.
When I returned home, the prefect not only blamed me for having presumed to travel in Switzerland, but made it the greatest proof of his indulgence to keep silence on the crime I had committed, in setting my foot on the territory of the French empire. I might have said, in the words of Lafontaine's fable: *Je tondu de ce pre la largeur de ma langue
A few years later Magdalena became a famous musician. After leaving Allegranti I took rooms in a tradesman's house; his wife was ugly, and he had no pretty daughters or seductive nieces. There I lived for three weeks like Lafontaine's rat, very discreetly. About the same time, Count Stratico arrived at Florence with his pupil, the Chevalier Morosini, who was then eighteen.
When at a later time LaFontaine's house was again attacked after the arrest of certain persons implicated in the destruction of the parliament house, and one of the assailants was killed by a shot fired from inside, he positively refused to consent to martial law or any measures of increased rigour until a further appeal had been made to the mayor and corporation of the city.
The debates in Parliament on this question have been acrimonious and lengthy, but M. Lafontaine's resolutions were finally passed by a majority of fifty to twenty-two.
They are satisfied; the world at least goes well enough with them; they sit as comfortable in it as Lafontaine's rat in the cheese; and why should those who would turn it upside down come hither also? Why not let well enough alone? Why tinker creeds, constitutions, and laws, and disturb the good old-fashioned order of things in church and state?
What a dressing up in old clothes!" says the critic. That wolf in sheep's clothing? do I not know him? That fox discoursing with the crow? have I not previously heard of him? Yes, in Lafontaine's fables: let us get the Dictionary and the Fable and the Biographie Universelle, article Lafontaine, and confound the impostor."
"Ah, you see, gentlemen," exclaimed the emperor, "this is a new rendering of Lafontaine's celebrated 'Toujours perdrix! The King of Rome, being able to command all that is beautiful and agreeable to his heart's content, is longing for the gutter. Be patient, sire, I cannot immediately fulfil your wish, but I shall have a palace for you, and in its court-yard you shall have a gutter, too.
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