roration of
a speech with which Fouquet was to open the parliament; and this speech
was a master-piece, because Pellisson wrote it for his friend--that is
to say, he inserted everything in it which the latter would most
certainly never have taken the trouble to say of his own accord.
Presently Loret and La Fontaine would enter from the garden, engaged in
a dispute upon the facility of making verses. The painters and musicians
in their turn, also, were hovering near the dining-room. As soon as
eight o'clock struck, the supper would be announced, for the
surintendant never kept any one waiting. It was already half-past seven,
and the appetites of the guests were beginning to be declared in a very
emphatic manner. As soon as all the guests were assembled Gourville
went straight up to Pellisson, awoke him out of his reverie, and led him
into the middle of a room, and closed the doors. "Well," he said,
"anything new?"

Pellisson raised his intelligent and gentle face, and said: "I have
borrowed five-and-twenty thousand francs of my aunt, and I have them
here in good sterling money."

"Good," replied Gourville, "we only want one hundred and ninety-five
thousand livres for the first payment."

"The payment of what?" asked La Fontaine.

"What! absent as usual! Why it was you who told us that the small estate
at Corbeil was going to be sold by one of M. Fouquet's creditors; and
you, also, who proposed that all his friends should subscribe; more than
that, too, it was you who said that you would sell a corner of your
house at Chateau-Thierry, in order to furnish your own proportion, and
you now come and ask--'_The payment of what?_'"

This remark was received with a general laugh, which made La Fontaine
blush. "I beg your pardon," he said, "I had not forgotten it; oh, no!
only--"

"Only you remembered nothing about it," replied Loret.

"That is the truth; and the fact is, he is quite right; there is a great
difference between forgetting and not remembering."

"Well, then," added Pellisson, "you bring your mite in the shape of the
price of the piece of land you have sold?"

"Sold? no!"

"Have you not sold the field, then?" inquired Gourville in astonishment,
for he knew the poet's disinterestedness.

"My wife would not let me," replied the latter, at which there were
fresh bursts of laughter.

"And yet you went to Chateau-Thierry for that purpose," said some one.

"Certainly I did, and on horseback."

"Poor fell