“Besides, it doesn’t rhyme,” answered Pelisson.
“What! 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, Pelisson?”
“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 save in prose,” said La Fontaine, who had taken up Pelisson’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.”
“Where are your verses?”
“In my head.”