.

_Rochefoucault_. I will give you an example: but perhaps it is already
known to you.

_La Fontaine._ Likely enough. We have each so many friends, neither of
us can trip but the other is invited to the laugh. Well; I am sure he
has no malice, and I hope I have none: but who can see his own faults?

_Rochefoucault._ He had brought out a new edition of his comedies.

_La Fontaine._ There will be fifty; there will be a hundred: nothing
in our language, or in any, is so delightful, so graceful; I will add,
so clear at once and so profound.

_Rochefoucault._ You are among the few who, seeing well his other
qualities, see that Moliere is also profound. In order to present the
new edition to the dauphin, he had put on a sky-blue velvet coat,
powdered with fleurs-de-lis. He laid the volume on his library table;
and, resolving that none of the courtiers should have an opportunity
of ridiculing him for anything like absence of mind, he returned to
his bedroom, which, as may often be the case in the economy of poets,
is also his dressing-room. Here he surveyed himself in his mirror, as
well as the creeks and lagoons in it would permit.

_La Fontaine._ I do assure you, from my own observation, M. de la
Rochefoucault, that his mirror is a splendid one. I should take it to
be nearly three feet high, reckoning the frame, with the Cupid above
and the elephant under. I suspected it was the present of some great
lady; and indeed I have since heard as much.

_Rochefoucault._ Perhaps then the whole story may be quite as fabulous
as the part of it which I have been relating.

_La Fontaine._ In that case, I may be able to set you right again.

_Rochefoucault._ He found his peruke a model of perfection; tight, yet
easy; not an inch more on one side than on the other. The black patch
on the forehead....

_La Fontaine._ Black patch too! I would have given a fifteen-sous
piece to have caught him with that black patch.

_Rochefoucault._ He found it lovely, marvellous, irresistible. Those
on each cheek....

_La Fontaine._ Do you tell me he had one on each cheek?

_Rochefoucault._ Symmetrically. The cravat was of its proper descent,
and with its appropriate charge of the best Strasburg snuff upon it.
The waistcoat, for a moment, puzzled and perplexed him. He was not
quite sure whether the right number of buttons were in their holes;
nor how many above, nor how many below, it was the fashion of the week
to leave without occupation.