Page:The Man in the Iron Mask.djvu/67

Rh in the merriest of moods. All the first story of the left wing was occupied by the most celebrated Epicureans in 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 féte at Vaux. Pellisson, his head leaning on his hand, was engaged in drawing out the plan of the prologue to the "Fâcheux," a comedy in three acts, which was to be put on the stage by Poquelin de Molière, as D'Artagnan called him, or Coquelin de Volière, as Perthes 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 fétes of Vaux, before the fétes 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 have the run of the gardens at Parnassus."

"What rhyme do you want?" asked the Fabler, as Mme, de Sévigne used to call him.

"I want a rhyme to lumière."

"Ornière," 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."