La Fontaine, as we have said, devoted his latter days to religion. In this he was sustained and cheered by his old friends Racine and De Maucroix. Death overtook him while applying his poetical powers to the hymns of the church. To De Maucroix he wrote, a little before his death,--"I assure you that the best of your friends cannot count upon more than fifteen days of life. For these two months I have not gone abroad, except occasionally to attend the Academy, for a little amusement. Yesterday, as I was returning from it, in the middle of the Rue du Chantre, I was taken with such a faintness that I really thought myself dying. O, my friend, to die is nothing: but think you how I am going to appear before God! You know how I have lived. Before you receive this billet, the gates of eternity will perhaps have been opened upon me!" To this, a few days after, his friend replied,--"If God, in his kindness, restores you to health, I hope you will come and spend the rest of your life with me, and we shall often talk together of the mercies of God. If, however, you have not strength to write, beg M. Racine to do me that kindness, the greatest he can ever do for me. Adieu, my good, my old, and my true friend. May God, in his infinite, goodness, take care of the health of your body, and that of your soul." He died the 13th of April, 1695, at the age of seventy-three, and was buried in the cemetery of the Saints-Innocents. When Fénélon heard of his death, he wrote a Latin eulogium, which he gave to his royal pupil to translate. "La Fontaine is no more!" said Fénélon, in this composition; "he is no more! and with him have gone the playful jokes, the merry laugh, the artless graces, and the sweet Muses." * * * * * THE FABLES OF LA FONTAINE * * * * * To Monseigneur The Dauphin.[1] I sing the heroes of old Aesop's line, Whose tale, though false when strictly we define, Containeth truths it were not ill to teach. With me all natures use the gift of speech; Yea, in my work, the very fishes preach, And to our human selves their sermons suit. 'Tis thus, to come at man, I use the brute. Son of a Prince the favourite of the skies, On whom the world entire hath fix'd its eyes, Who hence shall count his conquests by his days, And gather from the proudest lips his praise, A louder voice than mine must tell in song What virtues to thy kingly line belong. I seek thine ear to gain by lighter themes, Slight pictures, deck'd in magic nature's beams; And if to please thee shall not be my pride, I'll gain at least the praise of having tried.