[[20]] Mdlle. de Sillery.--Gabrielle-Françoise Brulart de Sillery, niece of La Fontaine's friend and patron, the Duke de La Rochefoucauld (author of the Maximes). She married Louis de Tibergeau, Marquis de La Motte-au-Maine, and died in 1732.
[[21]] Italian wit.--Referring to his Tales, in which he had borrowed many subjects from Boccaccio.--Translator.
[XIV].--THE FUNERAL OF THE LIONESS.[[22]]
The lion's consort died:
Crowds, gather'd at his side,
Must needs console the prince,
And thus their loyalty evince
By compliments of course;
Which make affliction worse.
Officially he cites
His realm to funeral rites,
At such a time and place;
His marshals of the mace
Would order the affair.
Judge you if all came there.
Meantime, the prince gave way
To sorrow night and day.
With cries of wild lament
His cave he well-nigh rent.
And from his courtiers far and near,
Sounds imitative you might hear.
The court a country seems to me,
Whose people are, no matter what,--
Sad, gay, indifferent, or not,--
As suits the will of majesty;
Or, if unable so to be,
Their task it is to seem it all--
Chameleons, monkeys, great and small.
'Twould seem one spirit serves a thousand bodies--
A paradise, indeed, for soulless noddies.
But to our tale again:
The stag graced not the funeral train;
Of tears his cheeks bore not a stain;
For how could such a thing have been,
When death avenged him on the queen,
Who, not content with taking one,
Had choked to death his wife and son?
The tears, in truth, refused to run.
A flatterer, who watch'd the while,
Affirm'd that he had seen him smile.
If, as the wise man somewhere saith,
A king's is like a lion's wrath,
What should King Lion's be but death?
The stag, however, could not read;
Hence paid this proverb little heed,
And walk'd, intrepid, to'ards the throne;
When thus the king, in fearful tone:
'Thou caitiff of the wood!
Presum'st to laugh at such a time?
Joins not thy voice the mournful chime?
We suffer not the blood
Of such a wretch profane
Our sacred claws to stain.
Wolves, let a sacrifice be made,
Avenge your mistress' awful shade.'
'Sire,' did the stag reply,
The time for tears is quite gone by;
For in the flowers, not far from here,
Your worthy consort did appear;
Her form, in spite of my surprise,
I could not fail to recognise.
"My friend," said she, "beware
Lest funeral pomp about my bier,
When I shall go with gods to share,
Compel thine eye to drop a tear.
With kindred saints I rove
In the Elysian grove,
And taste a sort of bliss
Unknown in worlds like this.
Still, let the royal sorrow flow
Its proper season here below;
'Tis not unpleasing, I confess."'
The king and court scarce hear him out.
Up goes the loud and welcome shout--
'A miracle! an apotheosis!'
And such at once the fashion is,
So far from dying in a ditch,
The stag retires with presents rich.
Amuse the ear of royalty
With pleasant dreams, and flattery,--
No matter what you may have done,
Nor yet how high its wrath may run,--
The bait is swallow'd--object won.
[[22]] Abstemius.
[XV].--THE RAT AND THE ELEPHANT.
One's own importance to enhance,
Inspirited by self-esteem,
Is quite a common thing in France;
A French disease it well might seem.
The strutting cavaliers of Spain
Are in another manner vain.
Their pride has more insanity;
More silliness our vanity.
Let's shadow forth our own disease--
Well worth a hundred tales like these.
A rat, of quite the smallest size,
Fix'd on an elephant his eyes,
And jeer'd the beast of high descent
Because his feet so slowly went.
Upon his back, three stories high,
There sat, beneath a canopy,
A certain sultan of renown,
His dog, and cat, and concubine,
His parrot, servant, and his wine,
All pilgrims to a distant town.
The rat profess'd to be amazed
That all the people stood and gazed
With wonder, as he pass'd the road,
Both at the creature and his load.
'As if,' said he, 'to occupy
A little more of land or sky
Made one, in view of common sense,
Of greater worth and consequence!
What see ye, men, in this parade,
That food for wonder need be made?
The bulk which makes a child afraid?
In truth, I take myself to be,
In all aspects, as good as he.'
And further might have gone his vaunt;
But, darting down, the cat
Convinced him that a rat
Is smaller than an elephant.
[XVI].--THE HOROSCOPE.
On death we mortals often run,
Just by the roads we take to shun.
A father's only heir, a son,
Was over-loved, and doted on
So greatly, that astrology
Was question'd what his fate might be.
The man of stars this caution gave--
That, until twenty years of age,
No lion, even in a cage,
The boy should see,--his life to save.
The sire, to silence every fear
About a life so very dear,
Forbade that any one should let
His son beyond his threshold get.
Within his palace walls, the boy
Might all that heart could wish enjoy--
Might with his mates walk, leap, and run,
And frolic in the wildest fun.
When come of age to love the chase,
That exercise was oft depicted
To him as one that brought disgrace,
To which but blackguards were addicted.
But neither warning nor derision
Could change his ardent disposition.
The youth, fierce, restless, full of blood,
Was prompted by the boiling flood
To love the dangers of the wood.
The more opposed, the stronger grew
His mad desire. The cause he knew,
For which he was so closely pent;
And as, where'er he went,
In that magnificent abode,
Both tapestry and canvas show'd
The feats he did so much admire,
A painted lion roused his ire.
'Ah, monster!' cried he, in his rage,
'Tis you that keep me in my cage.'
With that, he clinch'd his fist,
To strike the harmless beast--
And did his hand impale
Upon a hidden nail!
And thus this cherish'd head,
For which the healing art
But vainly did its part,
Was hurried to the dead,
By caution blindly meant
To shun that sad event.
The poet Aeschylus, 'tis said,
By much the same precaution bled.
A conjuror foretold
A house would crush him in its fall;--
Forth sallied he, though old,
From town and roof-protected hall,
And took his lodgings, wet or dry,
Abroad, beneath the open sky.
An eagle, bearing through the air
A tortoise for her household fare,
Which first she wish'd to break,
The creature dropp'd, by sad mistake,
Plump on the poet's forehead bare,
As if it were a naked rock--
To Aeschylus a fatal shock!
From these examples, it appears,
This art, if true in any wise,
Makes men fulfil the very fears
Engender'd by its prophecies.
But from this charge I justify,
By branding it a total lie.
I don't believe that Nature's powers
Have tied her hands or pinion'd ours,
By marking on the heavenly vault
Our fate without mistake or fault.
That fate depends upon conjunctions
Of places, persons, times, and tracks,
And not upon the functions
Of more or less of quacks.
A king and clown beneath one planet's nod
Are born; one wields a sceptre, one a hod.
But it is Jupiter that wills it so!
And who is he?[[23]] A soulless clod.
How can he cause such different powers to flow
Upon the aforesaid mortals here below?
And how, indeed, to this far distant ball
Can he impart his energy at all?--
How pierce the ether deeps profound,
The sun and globes that whirl around?
A mote might turn his potent ray
For ever from its earthward way.
Will find, it, then, in starry cope,
The makers of the horoscope?
The war[[24]] with which all Europe's now afflicted--
Deserves it not by them to've been predicted?
Yet heard we not a whisper of it,
Before it came, from any prophet.
The suddenness of passion's gush,
Of wayward life the headlong rush,--
Permit they that the feeble ray
Of twinkling planet, far away,
Should trace our winding, zigzag course?
And yet this planetary force,
As steady as it is unknown,
These fools would make our guide alone--
Of all our varied life the source!
Such doubtful facts as I relate--
The petted child's and poet's fate--
Our argument may well admit.
The blindest man that lives in France,
The smallest mark would doubtless hit--
Once in a thousand times--by chance.
[[23]] And who is he?--By Jupiter, "the soulless clod," is of course meant the planet, not the god.
[[24]] The war.--See [note to Fable XVIII., Book VII].