birthplace is the skies,
Of manly beauty blent with woman's grace,
No mortal pen, though fain, can fitly trace."

"I have only kept by me," she would say, "my three pets (_animaux_): my
dog, my cat, and La Fontaine." When she died, M. and Madame d'Hervart
received into their house the now old and somewhat isolated poet. As
D'Hervart was on his way to go and make the proposal to La Fontaine, he
met him in the street. "I was coming to ask you to put up at our house,"
said he. "I was just going thither," answered Fontaine with the most
touching confidence. There he remained to his death, contenting himself
with going now and then to Chateau-Thierry, as long as his wife lived, to
sell, with her consent, some strip of ground. The property was going,
old age was coming:--

"John did no better than he had begun,
Spent property and income both as one:
Of treasure saw small use in any way;
Knew very well how to get through his day;
Split it in two: one part, as he thought best,
He passed in sleep--did nothing all the rest."

He did not sleep, he dreamed. One day dinner was kept waiting for him.
"I have just come," said he, as he entered, "from the funeral of an ant;
I followed the procession to the cemetery, and I escorted the family
home." It has been said that La Fontaine knew nothing of natural
history; he knew and loved animals; up to his time, fable-writers had
been, merely philosophers or satirists; he was the first who was a poet,
unique not only in France but in Europe, discovering the deep and secret
charm of nature, animating it, with his inexhaustible and graceful
genius, giving lessons to men from the example of animals, without making
the latter speak like man; ever supple and natural, sometimes elegant and
noble, with penetration beneath the cloak of his simplicity, inimitable
in the line which he had chosen from taste, from instinct, and not from
want of power to transport his genius elsewhither. He himself has said,

"Yes, call me truly, if it must be said,
Parnassian butterfly, and like the bees
Wherein old Plato found our similes.
Light rover I, forever on the wing,
Flutter from flower to flower, from thing to thing,
With much of pleasure mix a little fame."

And in _Psyche:_--

"Music and books, and junketings and love,
And town and coun