ether with La Fontaine, a kind of private
"Academy," existing on a diminutive scale, which was not without its
important influence on French letters. La Fontaine seems to have been a
sort of Goldsmith in this club of wits, the butt of many pleasantries
from his colleagues, called out by his habit of absent-mindedness. St.
Augustine was one night the subject of an elaborate eulogy, which La
Fontaine lost the benefit of, through a reverie of his own indulged
meantime on a quite different character. Catching, however, at the name,
La Fontaine, as he came to himself for a moment, betrayed the secret of
his absent thoughts by asking, "Do you think St. Augustine had as much
wit as Rabelais?"--"Take care, Monsieur La Fontaine: you have put one of
your stockings on wrong side out,"--he had actually done so,--was the
only answer vouchsafed to his question. The speaker in this case was a
doctor of the Sorbonne (brother to Boileau), present as guest. The story
is told of La Fontaine, that egged on to groundless jealousy of his
wife,--a wife whom he never really loved, and whom he soon would finally
abandon,--he challenged a military friend of his to combat with swords.
The friend was amazed, and, amazed, reluctantly fought with La Fontaine,
whom he easily put at his mercy. "Now, what is this for?" he demanded.
"The public says you visit my house for my wife's sake, not for mine,"
said La Fontaine. "Then I never will come again." "Far from it,"
responds La Fontaine, seizing his friend's hand. "I have satisfied the
public. Now you must come to my house every day, or I will fight you
again." The two went back in company, and breakfasted together in mutual
good humor.

A trait or two more, and there will have been enough of the man La
Fontaine. It is said that when, on the death of Madame de la Sabliere,
La Fontaine was homeless, he was met on the street by a friend, who
exclaimed, "I was looking for you; come to my house, and live with me!"
"I was on the way there," La Fontaine characteristically replied. At
seventy, La Fontaine went through a process of "conversion," so called,
in which he professed repentance of his sins. On the genuineness of this
inward experience of La Fontaine, it is not for a fellow-creature of
his, especially at this distance of time, to pronounce. When he died,
at seventy-three, Fenelon could say of him (in Latin), "La Fontaine is
no more! He is no more; and with him have gone the playful jokes, the
merry la