[11] The author wrote the verses first in English, but he found it easy to write them better in Italian: they stood in the text as below: they only do for a girl of thirteen:
‘Swallow! swallow! though so jetty
Are your pinions, you are pretty:
And what matter were it though
You were blacker than a crow?
Of the many birds that fly
(And how many pass me by!)
You ’re the first I ever prest,
Of the many, to my breast:
Therefore it is very right
You should be my own delight.’
LA FONTAINE AND DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULT
La Fontaine. I am truly sensible of the honour I receive, M. de la Rochefoucault, in a visit from a personage so distinguished by his birth and by his genius. Pardon my ambition, if I confess to you that I have long and ardently wished for the good fortune, which I never could promise myself, of knowing you personally.
Rochefoucault. My dear M. de la Fontaine!
La Fontaine. Not ‘de la’, not ‘de la’. I am La Fontaine, purely and simply.
Rochefoucault. The whole; not derivative. You appear, in the midst of your purity, to have been educated at court, in the lap of the ladies. What was the last day (pardon!) I had the misfortune to miss you there?
La Fontaine. I never go to court. They say one cannot go without silk stockings; and I have only thread: plenty of them indeed, thank God! Yet, would you believe it? Nanon, in putting a solette to the bottom of one, last week, sewed it so carelessly, she made a kind of cord across: and I verily believe it will lame me for life; for I walked the whole morning upon it.
Rochefoucault. She ought to be whipped.