no other witnesses than that noble restlessness, that vivacity, that ardour, those many evidences of spirit, of courage, of greatness of soul, which you so continually display. It must, doubtless, be the greatest gratification to our monarch, as it is a most agreeable spectacle to the universe, to see you thus growing up, a young plant which will one day protect with its shadow peoples and nations. I might enlarge upon this subject. But as the plan I have proposed to myself of amusing you is more suited to my powers than that of praising you, I shall hasten to have recourse to my fables, and will add to the truths I have told you but this--and that is, Monseigneur, that I am, with respectful zeal, your very humble, very obedient, and very faithful servant, DE LA FONTAINE. [1] Louis, Dauphin of France, son of Louis XIV., and of Marie Theresa of Austria, was born at Fontainebleau on the 1st of November, 1661, and died at Meudon on the 14th of April, 1671. [2] Socrates. [3] The Dauphin was six years and five months old when La Fontaine published the collection of fables to which this Dedication is prefixed. It was completed on the 3rd of March, 1668. [4] Monseigneur the Dauphin had two tutors: the first being M. the President de Perigni, and the second M. Bossuet, the Bishop of Meaux. La Fontaine, in the above passage, alludes to M. de Perigni. [5] This refers to the Triple Alliance formed between England, Spain, and Holland, for the purpose of checking the conquests of the French monarch. [6] Flanders, in which the French king made a campaign in 1667, when he took Douai, Tournoi, Oudenarde, Ath, Alost, and Lille. [7] Franche-Comté, which he subdued in 1668. PREFACE. The indulgence with which some of my fables have been received[1] has induced me to hope that this present collection may meet with the same favour. At the same time I must admit that one of the masters of our eloquence[2] has disapproved of the plan of rendering these fables in verse, since he believes that their chief ornament consists in having none; and that, moreover, the restraints of poetry, added to the severity of our language, would frequently embarrass me, and deprive most of these narratives of that brevity which may be styled the very soul of the art of story-telling, since without it a tale necessarily becomes tame and languid. This opinion could only have been expressed by a man of exquisite taste, and I will merely ask of him that he will in some degree relax it, and will admit that the Lacedemonian graces are not so entirely opposed to the French language, that it is impossible to make them accord.