Imaginary Conversations and Poems: A Selection
agents at work in our dreams, M. de la Rochefoucault, which we shall
never see out of them, on this side the grave. [_To himself._]
Sky-blue? no. Fleurs-de-lis? bah! bah! Patches? I never wore one in my
life.
_Rochefoucault._ It well becomes your character for generosity, M. La
Fontaine, to look grave, and ponder, and ejaculate, on a friend's
untoward accident, instead of laughing, as those who little know you,
might expect. I beg your pardon for relating the occurrence.
_La Fontaine._ Right or wrong, I cannot help laughing any longer.
Comical, by my faith! above the tiptop of comedy. Excuse my flashes
and dashes and rushes of merriment. Incontrollable! incontrollable!
Indeed the laughter is immoderate. And you all the while are sitting
as grave as a judge; I mean a criminal one; who has nothing to do but
to keep up his popularity by sending his rogues to the gallows. The
civil indeed have much weighty matter on their minds: they must
displease one party: and sometimes a doubt arises whether the fairer
hand or the fuller shall turn the balance.
_Rochefoucault._ I congratulate you on the return of your gravity and
composure.
_La Fontaine._ Seriously now: all my lifetime I have been the
plaything of dreams. Sometimes they have taken such possession of me,
that nobody could persuade me afterward they were other than real
events. Some are very oppressive, very painful, M. de la
Rochefoucault! I have never been able, altogether, to disembarrass my
head of the most wonderful vision that ever took possession of any
man's. There are some truly important differences, but in many
respects this laughable adventure of my innocent, honest friend
Moliere seemed to have befallen myself. I can only account for it by
having heard the tale when I was half asleep.
_Rochefoucault._ Nothing more probable.
_La Fontaine._ You absolutely have relieved me from an incubus.
_Rochefoucault._ I do not yet see how.
_La Fontaine._ No longer ago than when you entered this chamber, I
would have sworn that I myself had gone to the Louvre, that I myself
had been commanded to attend the dauphin, that I myself had come into
his presence, had fallen on my knee, and cried, 'Peste! ou est donc le
livre?' Ah, M. de la Rochefoucault, permit me to embrace you: this is
really to find a friend at court.
_Rochefoucault._ My visit is even more auspicious than I could have
ventured to expect: it was chiefly for the purpose of asking your
permission to make another at my return to Paris.... I am forced to go
into the country on some family affairs: but hearing that you have
spoken favourably of my _Maxims_, I presume to express my satisfaction
and delight at your good opinion.
_La Fontaine._ Pray, M. de la Rochefoucault, do me the favour to
continue here a few minutes. I would gladly reason with you on some of
your doctrines.
_Rochefoucault._ For the pleasure of hearing your sentiments on the
topics I have treated, I will, although it is late, steal a few
minutes from the court, of which I must take my leave on parting for
the province.
_La Fontaine._ Are you quite certain that all your _Maxims_ are true,
or, what is of greater consequence, that they are all original? I have
lately read a treatise written by an Englishman, Mr. Hobbes; so loyal
a man that, while others tell you kings are appointed by God, he tells
you God is appointed by kings.
_Rochefoucault._ Ah! such are precisely the men we want. If he
establishes this verity, the rest will follow.
_La Fontaine._ He does not seem to care so much about the rest. In his
treatise I find the ground-plan of your chief positions.
_Rochefoucault._ I have indeed looked over his publication; and we
agree on the natural depravity of man.
_La Fontaine._ Reconsider your expression. It appears to me that what
is natural is not depraved: that depravity is deflection from nature.
Let it pass: I cannot, however, concede to you that the generality of
men are bad. Badness is accidental, like disease. We find more
tempers good than bad, where proper care is taken in proper time.
_Rochefoucault._ Care is not nature.
_La Fontaine._ Nature is soon inoperative without it; so soon indeed
as to allow no opportunity for experiment or hypothesis. Life itself
requires care, and more continually than tempers and morals do. The
strongest body ceases to be a body in a few days without a supply of
food. When we speak of men being naturally bad or good, we mean
susceptible and retentive and communicative of them. In this case (and
there can be no other true or ostensible one) I believe that the more
are good; and nearly in the same proportion as there are animals and
plants produced healthy and vigorous than wayward and weakly. Strange
is the opinion of Mr. Hobbes, that, when God hath poured so abundantly
His benefits on other creatures, the only one capable of great good
should be uniformly disposed to greater evil.
_Rochefoucault._ Yet Holy Writ, to which Hobbes would reluctantly
appeal, countenances the supposition.
_La Fontaine._ The Jews, above all nations, were morose and splenetic.
Nothing is holy to me that lessens in my view the beneficence of my
Creator. If you could show Him ungentle and unkind in a single
instance, you would render myriads of men so, throughout the whole
course of their lives, and those too among the most religious. The
less that people talk about God the better. He has left us a design to
fill up: He has placed the canvas, the colours, and the pencils,
within reach; His directing hand is over ours incessantly; it is our
business to follow it, and neither to turn round and argue with our
Master, nor to kiss and fondle Him. We must mind our lesson, and not
neglect our time: for the room is closed early, and the lights are
suspended in another, where no one works. If every man would do all
the good he might within an hour's walk from his house, he would live
the happier and the longer: for nothing is so conducive to longevity
as the union of activity and content. But, like children, we deviate
from the road, however well we know it, and run into mire and puddles
in despite of frown and ferule.
_Rochefoucault._ Go on, M. La Fontaine! pray go on. We are walking in
the same labyrinth, always within call, always within sight of each
other. We set out at its two extremities, and shall meet at last.
_La Fontaine._ I doubt it. From deficiency of care proceed many
vices, both in men and children, and more still from care taken
improperly. Mr. Hobbes attributes not only the order and peace of
society, but equity and moderation and every other virtue, to the
coercion and restriction of the laws. The laws, as now constituted, do
a great deal of good; they also do a great deal of mischief. They
transfer more property from the right owner in six months than all the
thieves of the kingdom do in twelve. What the thieves take they soon
disseminate abroad again; what the laws take they hoard. The thief
takes a part of your property: he who prosecutes the thief for you
takes another part: he who condemns the thief goes to the tax-gatherer
and takes the third. Power has been hitherto occupied in no employment
but in keeping down Wisdom. Perhaps the time may come when Wisdom
shall exert her energy in repressing the sallies of Power.
_Rochefoucault._ I think it more probable that they will agree; that
they will call together their servants of all liveries, to collect
what they can lay their hands upon; and that meanwhile they will sit
together like good housewives, making nets from our purses to cover
the coop for us. If you would be plump and in feather, pick up your
millet and be quiet in your darkness. Speculate on nothing here below,
and I promise you a nosegay in Paradise.
_La Fontaine._ Believe me, I shall be most happy to receive it there
at your hands, my lord duke.
The greater number of men, I am inclined to think, with all the
defects of education, all the frauds committed on their credulity, all
the advantages taken of their ignorance and supineness, are disposed,
on most occasions, rather to virtue than to vice, rather to the kindly
affections than the unkindly, rather to the social than the selfish.
_Rochefoucault._ Here we differ: and were my opinion the same as
yours, my book would be little read and less commended.
_La Fontaine._ Why think so?
_Rochefoucault._ For this reason. Every man likes to hear evil of all
men: every man is delighted to take the air of the common, though not
a soul will consent to stand within his own allotment. No enclosure
act! no finger-posts! You may call every creature under heaven fool
and rogue, and your auditor will join with you heartily: hint to him
the slightest of his own defects or foibles, and he draws the rapier.
You and he are the judges of the world, but not its denizens.
_La Fontaine._ Mr. Hobbes has taken advantage of these weaknesses. In
his dissertation he betrays the timidity and malice of his character.
It must be granted he reasons well, according to the view he has taken
of things; but he has given no proof whatever that his view is a
correct one. I will believe that it is, when I am persuaded that
sickness is the natural state of the body, and health the unnatural.
If you call him a sound philosopher, you may call a mummy a sound man.
Its darkness, its hardness, its forced uprightness, and the place in
which you find it, may commend it to you; give me rather some weakness
and peccability, with vital warmth and human sympathies. A shrewd
reasoner in one thing, a sound philosopher is another. I admire your
power and precision. Monks will admonish us how little the author of
the _Maxims_ knows of the world; and heads of colleges will cry out 'a
libel on human nature!' but when they hear your titles, and, above
all, your credit at court, they will cast back cowl, and peruke, and
lick your boots. You start with great advantages. Throwing off from a
dukedom, you are sure of enjoying, if not the tongue of these
puzzlers, the full cry of the more animating, and will certainly be as
long-lived as the imperfection of our language will allow. I consider
your _Maxims_ as a broken ridge of hills, on the shady side of which
you are fondest of taking your exercise: but the same ridge hath also
a sunny one. You attribute (let me say it again) all actions to
self-interest. Now, a sentiment of interest must be preceded by
calculation, long or brief, right or erroneous. Tell me then in what
region lies the origin of that pleasure which a family in the country
feels on the arrival of an unexpected friend. I say a family in the
country; because the sweetest souls, like the sweetest flowers, soon
canker in cities, and no purity is rarer there than the purity of
delight. If I may judge from the few examples I have been in a
position to see, no earthly one can be greater. There are pleasures
which lie near the surface, and which are blocked up by artificial
ones, or are diverted by some mechanical scheme, or are confined by
some stiff evergreen vista of low advantage. But these pleasures do
occasionally burst forth in all their brightness; and, if ever you
shall by chance find one of them, you will sit by it, I hope,
complacently and cheerfully, and turn toward it the kindliest aspect
of your meditations.
_Rochefoucault._ Many, indeed most people, will differ from me.
Nothing is quite the same to the intellect of any two men, much less
of all. When one says to another, 'I am entirely of your opinion,' he
uses in general an easy and indifferent phrase, believing in its
accuracy, without examination, without thought. The nearest
resemblance in opinions, if we could trace every line of it, would be
found greatly more divergent than the nearest in the human form or