makes his fable a protest against sordid materialism. His nightingale offers to earn its release by singing the famous story of Tereus. The kite's interest fades as soon as he learns that it is not a question of some new kind of food-parvenu taste versus grand opera. Thereupon the nightingale proposes to sing for him a simple song, more in keeping with his intelligence and his tastes. The kite replies with financierish asperity that when he is hungry it is no time to talk of music. The nightingale, wounded in his artistic pride, cannot refrain from answering that kings have not disdained to listen to him. But this appeal to a more civilized feeling has no effect on one who has no other rule than that of force and brutish instinct : Quand un roi te prendra Ventre affamé n'a pas d'oreilles.5 However, such a transformation of the moral teaching or preachment offered by a fable was generally unnecessary because the moral truths which earlier fabulists wished to convey were, as a rule, so universally acceptable as to be practically axiomatic. But the ancients laid great stress upon this moral; it was for them the "soul" of the fable. La Fontaine accepted this traditional point of view with the single but important reservation that this moral did not need to be "moral" at all, in the ethical sense of the word. It need only be true to life as it is: The reason of the stronger prevails; it is wiser to bow before the storm than stand up against it; it is safer to side with the party in power, etc. The conception and consideration of this philosophical element or moral lesson to be presented by, or deduced from, a given fable subject was almost certainly the first stage in the composition of one of these little poems. This is illustrated in genial fashion by his reply to the young Duc de Bourgogne, who had asked him for a fable on the cat and the mouse. The poet did not write the fable, but contented himself with outlining the possibilities of the subject : 8 5 Liv. IX, XVIII, Œuvres, vol. 2, p. 449. For traces of the evolution of this sentiment in other fabulists who had treated the same subject see the notes of the Grands Écrivains edition. • Le Loup et l'Agneau, I, X, Œuvres, vol. 1, p. 88. 7 Le Chêne et le Roseau, I, XXII, ibid., vol. 1, p. 124. 8 La Chauve-Souris et les deux Belettes, II, V, ibid., vol. 1, p. 141. Dois-je représenter dans ces vers une belle Prendrai-je pour sujet les jeux de la Fortune? Introduirai-je un Roi qu'entre ses favoris Comme le Chat la Souris? But La Fontaine, himself quite inamenable to good advice, could realize as well as any other that the world has long since emerged from that primitive stage in which wise counsel and judicious warnings are listened to with complacency and perhaps grateful interest. If one would "get across" this moral preachment, it must be done adroitly.10 Instead of flinging it at his reader, after the fashion of the ancients, in the form of a proposition to be proved, or as a thing demonstrated by the story which has been related, he sought to present it with all the possible degrees of directness and indirectness: now at the beginning, now at the end, sometimes at both beginning and end, sometimes in the middle, sometimes suppressed altogether, or at least left to the perspicacity of his reader. In short, the moral, the "soul" of his fable, must present itself in much the same fashion that the soul of an individual ordinarily presents itself: now bursting from, now imprisoned in, its sensuous envelope; on the one hand, the physical body; on the other, the poetic narrative. In fables where brutal force prevails, as in Le Loup et l'Agneau, or Les Animaux malades de la Peste, two terse lines suffice; in La Laitière et le Pot au Lait, where a human foible is viewed with a sort of complacent irony, the moral represents a full third of the composition; in La Mort et Le Mourant, of deeper philosophical import, it is almost onehalf the poem. 9 A Monsieur le Duc de Bourgogne, qui avoit demandé à M. de la Fontaine une Fable qui fût nommée le Chat et la Souris. Ibid., vol. 3, p. 211. 10 Une morale nue apporte de l'ennui. VI, I, ibid., vol. 2, p. 1. With the question of the moral settled, the poet was free to turn his attention to the fashioning of the body which was to contain it. Now La Fontaine was of this world, very much of it in fact, and no one was more apt than he to realize that, without attractive bodies, the finest souls are not likely to attract very general or very curious attention. "I felt," he says in a preface, "that, since everybody knows these fables, I would have to renew them by adding touches which would enliven them. . . What people want nowadays is novelty and gayety: I do not call gayety that which provokes laughter, but a certain charm and agreeable air which may be given to all sorts of subjects, even the most serious.''11 In some of his earlier fables this did not call for any great effort of his inventive faculty. In the fable of the frog which wished to make itself as large as an ox, for example, he did no more than turn the narrative of his source (Phædrus) into vivacious dialogue. As his art progressed, his "rejuvenations" became more complete, his own contributions more characteristic, his technique more elaborate and subtle; although, convinced that Loin d'épuiser une matière On n'en doit prendre que la fleur,12 he was always careful not to overload his canvas. In general his source supplied him with the skeleton of his fable; his "invention, the flesh and blood and sinews and the impression of life which was to animate it. Perhaps as apt an illustration as any may be found in the fable of the man unhappily married. It is the story of a husband driven to seek a separation by the impossible temper of a vixenish wife, the whole being designed to illustrate the truth that marriage is at best a hazardous enterprise. This is, in part, what La Fontaine found in Aesop. "A man whose wife was detested by all the people of her house wanted to find out if she was equally odious to the slaves in the home from which she came. That is why, under a plausible pretext, the husband sent her back to the paternal domicile." A reading of the part of La Fontaine's fable which corresponds to the first sentence cited above, reveals clearly how the poet could transform a dry scenario of a little comedy into a "mirror held up to nature," by the accumulation 11 Preface to the first collection of Fables, Euvres, vol. 1, p. 14. 12 Epilogue to the sixth book; ibid., vol. 2, p. 77. of those traits of character and details of conduct which arouse more or less intimate memories of observation or experience in the minds of every one: Rien ne la contentait, rien n'était comme il faut; On se levait trop tôt, on se couchait trop tard Elle en dit tant que Monsieur à la fin Lassé d'entendre un tel butin, Vous la renvoie à la campagne Chez ses parents. By a lucky chance, the first draft of one of La Fontaine's fables has been preserved. A comparison of this original sketch with the finished poem enables us to follow with relative surety the methods by which the poet appropriated the material which he found in his sources. To illustrate some point in his Rhetorica, Aristotle relates that Aesop was one day defending, before the assembly of the people, a demagogue accused of stealing funds belonging to the state. In making his plea, Aesop told the story of The Fox, the Flies and the Hedgehog." A fox, after crossing a stream, fell into a ditch, from which he could not get out and where he suffered for a long time. The gnats came in great numbers to prey upon him. Finally, a hedgehog which happened along saw him, and, being moved with compassion, offered to brush off the offending gnats. The fox rejected his offer, and when the hedgehog asked him why, he replied: ""Tis because these are already satiated with my blood and are now taking very little from me; whereas, if you brush them away, other famishing ones will come who will drink up what little blood I have left'... 'And you, Oh citizens of Samos,' continued Aesop, 'you have no longer to fear this demagogue, for he has become rich; but, if you put him to death, others will come who are poor and will steal the public funds and you will be ruined'. ''13 The story was current in La Fontaine's time. A collection of state papers published in 1651, contained the report of a "Harangue" delivered before the king in 1599, in which the speaker referred to this apologue of Aesop's in order to reinforce his contention that the people wished no change in government. 13 Aristotle, Rhetorica, book II, chap. XX. They preferred to remain under the oppression of "the leeches (statesmen, officers of the crown, financiers) who were already satiated." The story was quite as à propos in the poet's own time. An early commentator cited, in connection with this fable, the anecdote of a "rich financier" who had "fattened on the misfortunes of France." One day, at his country estate, he received an order from the king dismissing him from service. "I am sorry," said the financier, "for, having fixed up my own affairs, I was ready to attend to those of the king."'14 Here are the original and the final versions of La Fontaine's fable placed in parallel columns for greater convenience of comparison: 14 See notes, Grands Écrivains edition. The first draft of the fable is given in a note, vol. 3, p. 266. |