n Paris, and those on the freest
footing in the house--every one in his compartment, like the bees in
their cells, employed in producing the honey intended for that royal
cake which M. Fouquet proposed to offer his majesty Louis XIV. during
the fete at Vaux. Pellisson, his head leaning on his hand, was engaged
in drawing out the plan of the prologue to the "Facheux," a comedy in
three acts, which was to be put on the stage by Poquelin de Moliere, as
D'Artagnan called him, or Coquelin de Voliere, as Porthos styled him.
Loret, with all the charming innocence of a gazetteer--the gazetteers of
all ages have always been so artless!--Loret was composing an account of
the fetes of Vaux, before those fetes had taken place. La Fontaine,
sauntering about from one to the other, a wandering, absent, boring,
unbearable shade, who kept buzzing and humming at everybody's shoulder a
thousand poetic abstractions. He so often disturbed Pellisson, that the
latter, raising his head, crossly said, "At least, La Fontaine, supply
me with a rhyme, since you say you have the run of the gardens at
Parnassus."

"What rhyme do you want?" asked the _Fabler_, as Madame de Sevigne used
to call him.

"I want a rhyme to _lumiere_."

"_Orniere_," answered La Fontaine.

"Ah, but, my good friend, one cannot talk of _wheel-ruts_ when
celebrating the delights of Vaux," said Loret.

"Besides, it doesn't rhyme," answered Pellisson.

"How! doesn't rhyme!" cried La Fontaine, in surprise.

"Yes; you have an abominable habit, my friend--a habit which will ever
prevent your becoming a poet of the first order. You rhyme in a slovenly
manner."

"Oh, oh, you think so, do you, Pellisson?"

"Yes, I do, indeed. Remember that a rhyme is never good so long as one
can find a better."

"Then I will never write anything again but in prose," said La Fontaine,
who had taken up Pellisson's reproach in earnest. "Ah! I often suspected
I was nothing but a rascally poet! Yes, 'tis the very truth."

"Do not say so; your remark is too sweeping, and there is much that is
good in your 'Fables.'"

"And to begin," continued La Fontaine, following up his idea, "I will go
and burn a hundred verses I have just made."

"Where are your verses?"

"In my head."

"Well, if they are in your head you cannot burn them."

"True," said La Fontaine; "but if I do not burn them--"

"Well, what will happen if you do not burn them?"

"They will remain in my mind, and I shall never