The stories of his careless apathy, and absences of mind, are numberless. Meeting, at a large dinner party, a young man with whose conversation he seemed pleased, somebody asked his opinion of him. "He is a young man of sense and promise," said La Fontaine. "Why, it is your own son," said the questioner. "Ah! I am very glad of it," rejoined the father, with the utmost indifference. He had forgotten that he even had a son; who fortunately had been taken charge of and educated by others. La Fontaine treated religion with the same indifference as all other subjects, however serious. Racine took him one day to an extraordinary service, on one of the festivals of the Roman catholic church. Knowing that the service would be long, and apprehending the effect upon La Fontaine, he gave him a small bible to read, as a preventative against sleeping, or some other indecorum. The book happening to open before him at the lesser prophets, his attention soon became wholly absorbed by the prayer of the Jews in Baruch. It took the same possession of his imagination in his advanced age as the ode of Malherbe in his youth. His first question to everybody was, "Have you read Baruch? Do you know he was a man of genius?" This was his common expression for some time to all whom he met, without distinction of persons, from a buffoon to a bishop. It was one of his singularities, that, when anything took his fancy, he could think of nothing else for the time; and he introduced his favourite topic, or favourite author, in a manner at once unseasonable and comic. One day, whilst in company with the abbé Boileau, his head full of Rabelais, whom he had just been reading, he abruptly asked the grave ecclesiastic which he thought had more wit, Rabelais or St. Austin. Some were shocked, others laughed; and the abbé, when recovered from his surprise, replied, "M. de la Fontaine, you have put on your stocking the wrong side out," which was really the fact. Wishing to testify his respect for the celebrated Arnaud, he proposed dedicating to him one of the least scrupulous of his tales, in which a monk is made to cite scripture in a manner far from edifying. Boileau and Racine had the utmost difficulty in making him comprehend that such an offering would be an outrage to the respected and rigid Jansenist. He was nearly as absent as the man who forgot in the evening that he had been married in the morning. It occurred to him one day to go and dine with a friend. On his knocking at the door, a servant in mourning informed him that his friend had been buried ten days before, and reminded him that he had himself assisted at the funeral.