'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. _La Fontaine._ I thought so too, and grew the warmer at being unable to find a wisp of osier or a roll of packthread in the house. Barely had I begun with my garter, when in came the Bishop of Grasse, my old friend Godeau, and another lord, whose name he mentioned, and they both interceded for her so long and so touchingly, that at last I was fain to let her rise up and go. I never saw men look down on the erring and afflicted more compassionately. The bishop was quite concerned for me also. But the other, although he professed to feel even more, and said that it must surely be the pain of purgatory to me, took a pinch of snuff, opened his waistcoat, drew down his ruffles, and seemed rather more indifferent. _Rochefoucault._ Providentially, in such moving scenes, the worst is soon over. But Godeau's friend was not too sensitive. _La Fontaine._ Sensitive! no more than if he had been educated at the butcher's or the Sorbonne. _Rochefoucault._ I am afraid there are as many hard hearts under satin waistcoats as there are ugly visages under the same material in miniature cases. _La Fontaine._ My lord, I could show you a miniature case which contains your humble servant, in which the painter has done what no tailor in his senses would do; he has given me credit for a coat of violet silk, with silver frogs as large as tortoises. But I am loath to get up for it while the generous heart of this dog (if I mentioned his name he would jump up) places such confidence on my knee.