f
laughter, in which the surintendant joined, followed this sally.

"But why hares?" objected Conrart, vexed.

"Because the hare will be the very one who will not be over-pleased to
see M. Fouquet surrounded by all the attributes which his parliamentary
strength and power confer on him."

"Oh! oh!" murmured the poets.

"_Quo non ascendant_," said Conrart, "seems impossible to me, when one
is fortunate enough to wear the gown of the procureur-general."

"On the contrary, it seems so to me without that gown," said the
obstinate Pellisson; "what is your opinion, Gourville?"

"I think the gown in question is a very good thing," replied the latter;
"but I equally think a million and a half is far better than the gown."

"And I am of Gourville's opinion," exclaimed Fouquet, stopping the
discussion by the expression of his own opinion, which would necessarily
bear down all the others.

"A million and a half," Pellisson grumbled out; "now I happen to know an
Indian fable--"

"Tell it me," said La Fontaine; "I ought to know it, too."

"Tell it, tell it," said the others.

"There was a tortoise, which was as usual well protected by its shell,"
said Pellisson; "whenever its enemies threatened it, it took refuge
within its covering. One day some one said to it, 'You must feel very
hot in such a house as that in the summer, and you are altogether
prevented showing off your graces; here is a snake here who will give
you a million and a half for your shell.'"

"Good!" said the surintendant, laughing.

"Well, what next?" said La Fontaine, much more interested in the
apologue than its moral.

"The tortoise sold his shell and remained naked and defenseless. A
vulture happened to see him, and being hungry, broke the tortoise's back
with a blow of his beak and devoured it. The moral is, that M. Fouquet
should take very good care to keep his gown."

La Fontaine understood the moral seriously. "You forget Eschylus," he
said to his adversary.

"What do you mean?"

"Eschylus was bald-headed, and a vulture--your vulture, probably--who
was a great amateur in tortoises, mistook at a distance his head for a
block of stone, and let a tortoise, which was shrunk up in his shell,
fall upon it."

"Yes, yes, La Fontaine is right," resumed Fouquet, who had become very
thoughtful; "whenever a vulture wishes to devour a tortoise, he well
knows how to break his shell; and but too happy is that tortoise which a
snake pays a million an