try--all to me is bliss;
There nothing is that comes amiss;
In melancholy's self grim joy I prove."

The grace, the naturalness, the original independence of the mind and the
works of La Fontaine had not the luck to please Louis XIV., who never
accorded him any favor, and La Fontaine did not ask for any:--

"All dumb I shrink once more within my shell,
Where unobtrusive pleasures dwell;
True, I shall here by Fortune be forgot
Her favors with my verse agree not well;
To importune the gods beseems me not."

Once only, from the time of Fouquet's trial, the poet demanded a favor:
Louis XIV., having misgivings about the propriety of the _Contes of La
Fontaine,_ had not yet given the assent required for his election to the
French Academy, when he set out for the campaign in Luxemburg. La
Fontaine addressed to him a ballad:--

"Just as, in Homer, Jupiter we see
Alone o'er all the other gods prevail;
You, one against a hundred though it be,
Balance all Europe in the other scale.
Them liken I to those who, in the tale,
Mountain on mountain piled, presumptuously
Warring with Heaven and Jove. The earth clave he,
And hurled them down beneath huge rocks to wail:
So take you up your bolt with energy;
A happy consummation cannot fail.

"Sweet thought! that doth this month or two avail
To somewhat soothe my Muse's anxious care.
For certain minds at certain stories rail,
Certain poor jests, which nought but trifles are.
If I with deference their lessons hail,
What would they more? Be you more prone to spare,
More kind than they; less sheathed in rigorous mail;
Prince, in a word, your real self declare
A happy consummation cannot fail."

The election of Boileau to the Academy appeased the king's humor, who
preferred the other's intellect to that of La Fontaine. "The choice you
have made of M. Despreaux is very gratifying to me," he said to the board
of the Academy: "it will be approved of by everybody. You can admit La
Fontaine at once; he has promised to be good." It was a rash promise,
which the poet did not always keep.

The friends, of La Fontaine had but lately wanted to reconcile him to his
wife. They had with that view sent him to Chateau-Thierry; he returne