It is curious and instructive to observe one who has been regarded as essentially the poet of nature—one supposed never to have meditated or read—thus storing his mind with knowledge from the best sources, and forming his taste after the best models. His verses even, indolent as he was, and easy and careless as they seem, were slowly and laboriously produced. He has declared this in his letters and prefaces, and it is attested by some who knew him. The fact cannot be too strongly impressed. Mistaken or misrepresented instances of uncultivated genius, and of composition without labour or length of time, too frequently stimulate ignorant and pretending mediocrity to teaze the press and the public with commonplaces, without value as without number.
La Fontaine continued some years at Château Thierry, obscure and indolent,—neglecting his charge, his family, and his fortune,—reading his favourite authors, writing verse, and translating Terence. The preface to his poem of "Adonis," and its being composed in heroic verse, for which he had an early predilection, would imply that it was written during this period. Most of his other earlier verses have been lost through his neglect of the manuscripts; but, judging by some early pieces given in his posthumous works, their disappearance is scarcely to be regretted.
The monotony of his rural life was broken only by a visit to Paris, or some village adventure. The following affair is truly curious, as illustrating the character of the man:—Some self-called friends, either in jest or malice, intimated to him that the frequent visits of an old military officer, named Poignan, at his house, compromised the reputation of madame La Fontaine, and that her husband was bound in honour to challenge him. La Fontaine, the most negligent of husbands, and the most easy and credulous of mankind, listened implicitly to their counsel, made an extraordinary effort to rise at five in the morning, girded on his sword, sallied forth, and found Poignan in bed. "My dear friend," said the old captain, "what brings you out so early? Has any misfortune happened? Is your house on fire?" "Rise, and follow me," said the poet. The captain repeated and reiterated his entreaties for some explanation, but in vain. He was obliged to leave his bed, arm himself, and follow La Fontaine, without the remotest idea of his purpose. After they had gone some short distance. La Fontaine stopped, drew his sword, and desired his companion to draw and defend himself.
The latter, having no alternative, drew in his own defence; and, with his superior address as a military man, disarmed the poet at the first pass. He now obtained an explanation. "They have told me," said La Fontaine, "that I ought to fight you, because you go to my house to see my wife." "My dear friend," replied the captain, who was past the age of gallantry, and, having neither family nor occupations, sought, in his visits, only an escape from ennui, "you have been abused, and I slandered: but, to set your mind quite at ease, I will never again cross your threshold, grievous as the privation is to me." "No, my friend," rejoined the poet, "I have satisfied them by fighting you, as they advised me, and henceforth you shall come to my house more frequently than ever." This anecdote is scarce reconcilable with the maxims of one who reduced the question of conjugal fidelity to the following dilemma:—"Quand on ne le scait pas, ce n'est rien—quand on le scait c'est peu de choses." But it has passed without question in every biographical notice of him.
La Fontaine, according to some accounts, was an unfaithful as well as negligent husband. But his rural gallantries, besides the uncertain evidence of them, are too frivolous to be noticed here.
Opinions and representations are divided as respects madame La Fontaine. According to some, her talents and beauty were marred by an imperious temper, and she was the very original of "Madame Honesta," in the tale of Belphegor, who was
"D'une orgueil extreme;
A et d'autant plus, que de quelque vertu
Un tel orgueil paraissait revetu."
La Fontaine, they add, accordingly, like the husband in Belphegor, took occasion to absent himself as often and as long as he could. Others, again, assert that the lady was gentle as she was beautiful, and that her husband bore testimony to her good qualities of temper expressly, as well as to her taste, by submitting to her his poetical labours. It may be said, that the neglect and absences of such a husband as La Fontaine form no presumption against the conjugal temper of his wife. Some anecdotes related of his negligence and distractions startle belief. Despatched by his father to Paris, on business the most important and most urgent, he met a friend, dined with him, went to the play with him, supped with him, took up his lodging for the night in his house, and returned to Château Thierry next day. "Well, you have arranged every thing satisfactorily?" said the father. La Fontaine opened wide his eyes in astonishment. He had wholly forgotten the matter till that moment! Going to Paris on another occasion, with papers, upon which depended his private fortune and his public charge, he was overtaken by the postman. "Monsieur," said the latter, "has dropped some papers on the way." "No, no," replied the poet. But the other, knowing with whom he had to do, or having discovered from the papers to whom they belonged, requested him to examine his saddle-bags; upon which he remembered, for the first time, that he even had papers to lose. In his reveries and distractions, he was unconscious not only of the lapse of time but of the inclemency of the weather. He loved reading and musing in the open air. The duchess of Bouillon left him one morning, with a Livy in his hand, pacing up and down between two rows of trees. On her return in the evening she found him still pacing and reading in the same place. What made this the more extraordinary was a heavy fall of rain in the interim, and La Fontaine having all the time had his head uncovered.
He probably owed, and the world owes it, to his acquaintance with the duchess of Bouillon, that he did not pass his life idly and obscurely at Château Thierry. This lady was one of the celebrated Mancinis, nieces of Cardinal Mazarin. She inherited her uncle's ambition, sagacity, and love of intrigue: she shared with her sisters wit, gaiety, and the graces; and, with her family, a taste for literature. Whilst living in court disgrace at Château Thierry, some verses of La Fontaine happened to meet her eye. She immediately had the poet introduced to her, and soon became his friend. She had, it is said, the merit of discerning not only his genius but its peculiar bent. La Fontaine had yet written neither tales nor fables. She advised him to devote himself to simple and playful narrations in verse. His first tales in point of time, and some of the first in point of merit, are said to have been composed by him according to her suggestions, both of the matter and the manner. He is supposed indebted to her for that grace and delicacy of perception and expression which he combined with so much of simplicity and nature. He lived in her intimate society, and that alone must have been a great advantage to him. The conversation of a woman who knew the world, loved poetry, and judged of both with discernment, must have been the best school for one so simple and inexperienced, yet so ingenious and inspired, as La Fontaine.
It may appear strange that La Fontaine, a simple bourgeois, and village poet, was thus familiarly treated by a woman of the highest rank. His charge even placed him in the relation of a servant to the duke of Bouillon, her husband, who held some superior and sinecure charge of the royal domains. But, strongly as the gradations of birth and title were marked in France, it will be found that sense, wit, and genius conferred privilege, or, like love and death, levelled all degrees. Voiture, the son of a vintner, was the companion of princes, the lover of princesses, and would never have been reminded of his birth, had he not had the weakness to be ashamed of it; and even then only in pleasantries, which he well deserved for his weakness and vanity. A court lady, provoked by his conceit, one evening, whilst "playing at proverbs," as it was called, said to him, "Come, that won't do; give us a fresh tap—(percez nous en d'un autre)."