It is indeed by an infinity of small touches that La Fontaine produces his effects. And his effects are very various. With equal ease, apparently, he can be playful, tender, serious, preposterous, eloquent, meditative, and absurd. But one quality is always present in his work; whatever tune he may be playing, there is never a note too much. Alike in his shortest six-lined anecdote and his most elaborate pieces, in which detail follows detail and complex scenes are developed, there is no trace of the superfluous; every word has its purpose in the general scheme. This quality appears most clearly, perhaps, in the adroit swiftness of his conclusions. When once the careful preliminary foundation of the story has been laid, the crisis comes quick and pointed--often in a single line. Thus we are given a minute description of the friendship of the cat and the sparrow; all sorts of details are insisted on; we are told how, when the sparrow teased the cat-- En sage et discrète personne, Maître chat excusait ces jeux. Then the second sparrow is introduced and his quarrel with the first. The cat fires up-- Le moineau du voisin viendra manger le nôtre? Non, de par tous les chats!--Entrant lors au combat, Il croque l'étranger. Vraiment, dit maître chat, Les moineaux ont un gout exquis et délicat! And now in one line the story ends-- Cette réflexion fit aussi croquer l'autre. One more instance of La Fontaine's inimitable conciseness may be given. When Bertrand (the monkey) has eaten the chestnuts which Raton (the cat) has pulled out of the fire, the friends are interrupted; the fable ends thus-- Une servante vint; adieu, mes gens! Raton N'était pas content, ce dit-on. How admirable are the brevity and the lightness of that 'adieu, mes gens'! In three words the instantaneous vanishing of the animals is indicated with masterly precision. One can almost see their tails whisking round the corner. Modern admirers of La Fontaine have tended to throw a veil of sentiment over his figure, picturing him as the consoling beatific child of nature, driven by an unsympathetic generation to a wistful companionship with the dumb world of brutes. But nothing could be farther from the truth than this conception. La Fontaine was as unsentimental as Molière himself. This does not imply that he was unfeeling: feelings he had--delicate and poignant ones; but they never dominated him to the exclusion of good sense. His philosophy--if we may call so airy a thing by such a name--was the philosophy of some gentle whimsical follower of Epicurus. He loved nature, but unromantically, as he loved a glass of wine and an ode of Horace, and the rest of the good things of life. As for the bad things--they were there; he saw them--saw the cruelty of the wolf, and the tyranny of the lion, and the rapacity of man--saw that--