Imaginary Conversations and Poems: A Selection
countenance, and in the same proportion as the varieties of mental
qualities are more numerous and fine than of the bodily. Hence I do
not expect nor wish that my opinions should in all cases be similar to
those of others: but in many I shall be gratified if, by just degrees
and after a long survey, those of others approximate to mine. Nor does
this my sentiment spring from a love of power, as in many good men
quite unconsciously, when they would make proselytes, since I shall
see few and converse with fewer of them, and profit in no way by their
adherence and favour; but it springs from a natural and a cultivated
love of all truths whatever, and from a certainty that these delivered
by me are conducive to the happiness and dignity of man. You shake
your head.
_La Fontaine._ Make it out.
_Rochefoucault._ I have pointed out to him at what passes he hath
deviated from his true interest, and where he hath mistaken
selfishness for generosity, coldness for judgment, contraction of
heart for policy, rank for merit, pomp for dignity; of all mistakes,
the commonest and the greatest. I am accused of paradox and
distortion. On paradox I shall only say, that every new moral truth
has been called so. Inexperienced and negligent observers see no
difference in the operations of ravelling and unravelling: they never
come close enough: they despise plain work.
_La Fontaine._ The more we simplify things, the better we descry their
substances and qualities. A good writer will not coil them up and
press them into the narrowest possible space, nor macerate them into
such particles that nothing shall be remaining of their natural
contexture. You are accused of this too, by such as have forgotten
your title-page, and who look for treatises where maxims only have
been promised. Some of them perhaps are spinning out sermons and
dissertations from the poorest paragraph in the volume.
_Rochefoucault._ Let them copy and write as they please; against or
for, modestly or impudently. I have hitherto had no assailant who is
not of too slender a make to be detained an hour in the stocks he had
unwarily put his foot into. If you hear of any, do not tell of them.
On the subjects of my remarks, had others thought as I do, my labour
would have been spared me. I am ready to point out the road where I
know it, to whosoever wants it; but I walk side by side with few or
none.
_La Fontaine._ We usually like those roads which show us the fronts of
our friends' houses and the pleasure-grounds about them, and the
smooth garden-walks, and the trim espaliers, and look at them with
more satisfaction than at the docks and nettles that are thrown in
heaps behind. The _Offices_ of Cicero are imperfect; yet who would not
rather guide his children by them than by the line and compass of
harder-handed guides; such as Hobbes for instance?
_Rochefoucault._ Imperfect as some gentlemen in hoods may call the
_Offices_, no founder of a philosophical or of a religious sect has
been able to add to them anything important.
_La Fontaine._ Pity! that Cicero carried with him no better
authorities than reason and humanity. He neither could work miracles,
nor damn you for disbelieving them. Had he lived fourscore years
later, who knows but he might have been another Simon Peter, and have
talked Hebrew as fluently as Latin, all at once! Who knows but we
might have heard of his patrimony! who knows but our venerable popes
might have claimed dominion from him, as descendant from the kings of
Rome!
_Rochefoucault._ The hint, some centuries ago, would have made your
fortune, and that saintly cat there would have kittened in a mitre.
_La Fontaine._ Alas! the hint could have done nothing: Cicero could
not have lived later.
_Rochefoucault._ I warrant him. Nothing is easier to correct than
chronology. There is not a lady in Paris, nor a jockey in Normandy,
that is not eligible to a professor's chair in it. I have seen a man's
ancestor, whom nobody ever saw before, spring back over twenty
generations. Our Vatican Jupiters have as little respect for old
Chronos as the Cretan had: they mutilate him when and where they think
necessary, limp as he may by the operation.
_La Fontaine._ When I think, as you make me do, how ambitious men are,
even those whose teeth are too loose (one would fancy) for a bite at
so hard an apple as the devil of ambition offers them, I am inclined
to believe that we are actuated not so much by selfishness as you
represent it, but under another form, the love of power. Not to speak
of territorial dominion or political office, and such other things as
we usually class under its appurtenances, do we not desire an
exclusive control over what is beautiful and lovely? the possession
of pleasant fields, of well-situated houses, of cabinets, of images,
of pictures, and indeed of many things pleasant to see but useless to
possess; even of rocks, of streams, and of fountains? These things,
you will tell me, have their utility. True, but not to the wisher, nor
does the idea of it enter his mind. Do not we wish that the object of
our love should be devoted to us only; and that our children should
love us better than their brothers and sisters, or even than the
mother who bore them? Love would be arrayed in the purple robe of
sovereignty, mildly as he may resolve to exercise his power.
_Rochefoucault._ Many things which appear to be incontrovertible are
such for their age only, and must yield to others which, in their age,
are equally so. There are only a few points that are always above the
waves. Plain truths, like plain dishes, are commended by everybody,
and everybody leaves them whole. If it were not even more impertinent
and presumptuous to praise a great writer in his presence than to
censure him in his absence, I would venture to say that your prose,
from the few specimens you have given of it, is equal to your verse.
Yet, even were I the possessor of such a style as yours, I would never
employ it to support my _Maxims_. You would think a writer very
impudent and self-sufficient who should quote his own works: to defend
them is doing more. We are the worst auxiliaries in the world to the
opinions we have brought into the field. Our business is, to measure
the ground, and to calculate the forces; then let them try their
strength. If the weak assails me, he thinks me weak; if the strong, he
thinks me strong. He is more likely to compute ill his own vigour than
mine. At all events, I love inquiry, even when I myself sit down. And
I am not offended in my walks if my visitor asks me whither does that
alley lead. It proves that he is ready to go on with me; that he sees
some space before him; and that he believes there may be something
worth looking after.
_La Fontaine._ You have been standing a long time, my lord duke: I
must entreat you to be seated.
_Rochefoucault._ Excuse me, my dear M. la Fontaine; I would much
rather stand.
_La Fontaine._ Mercy on us! have you been upon your legs ever since
you rose to leave me?
_Rochefoucault._ A change of position is agreeable: a friend always
permits it.
_La Fontaine._ Sad doings! sad oversight! The other two chairs were
sent yesterday evening to be scoured and mended. But that dog is the
best tempered dog! an angel of a dog, I do assure you; he would have
gone down in a moment, at a word. I am quite ashamed of myself for
such inattention. With your sentiments of friendship for me, why could
you not have taken the liberty to shove him gently off, rather than
give me this uneasiness?
_Rochefoucault._ My true and kind friend! we authors are too
sedentary; we are heartily glad of standing to converse, whenever we
can do it without any restraint on our acquaintance.
_La Fontaine._ I must reprove that animal when he uncurls his body. He
seems to be dreaming of Paradise and houris. Ay, twitch thy ear, my
child! I wish at my heart there were as troublesome a fly about the
other: God forgive me! The rogue covers all my clean linen! shirt and
cravat! what cares he!
_Rochefoucault._ Dogs are not very modest.
_La Fontaine._ Never say that, M. de la Rochefoucault! The most modest
people upon earth! Look at a dog's eyes, and he half closes them, or
gently turns them away, with a motion of the lips, which he licks
languidly, and of the tail, which he stirs tremulously, begging your
forbearance. I am neither blind nor indifferent to the defects of
these good and generous creatures. They are subject to many such as
men are subject to: among the rest, they disturb the neighbourhood in
the discussion of their private causes; they quarrel and fight on
small motives, such as a little bad food, or a little vainglory, or
the sex. But it must be something present or near that excites them;
and they calculate not the extent of evil they may do or suffer.
_Rochefoucault._ Certainly not: how should dogs calculate?
_La Fontaine._ I know nothing of the process. I am unable to inform
you how they leap over hedges and brooks, with exertion just
sufficient, and no more. In regard to honour and a sense of dignity,
let me tell you, a dog accepts the subsidies of his friends, but never
claims them: a dog would not take the field to obtain power for a son,
but would leave the son to obtain it by his own activity and prowess.
He conducts his visitor or inmate out a-hunting, and makes a present
of the game to him as freely as an emperor to an elector. Fond as he
is of slumber, which is indeed one of the pleasantest and best things
in the universe, particularly after dinner, he shakes it off as
willingly as he would a gadfly, in order to defend his master from
theft or violence. Let the robber or assailant speak as courteously
as he may, he waives your diplomatical terms, gives his reasons in
plain language, and makes war. I could say many other things to his
advantage; but I never was malicious, and would rather let both
parties plead for themselves; give me the dog, however.
_Rochefoucault._ Faith! I will give you both, and never boast of my
largess in so doing.
_La Fontaine._ I trust I have removed from you the suspicion of
selfishness in my client, and I feel it quite as easy to make a
properer disposal of another ill attribute, namely cruelty, which we
vainly try to shuffle off our own shoulders upon others, by employing
the offensive and most unjust term, brutality. But to convince you of
my impartiality, now I have defended the dog from the first obloquy, I
will defend the man from the last, hoping to make you think better of
each. What you attribute to cruelty, both while we are children and
afterward, may be assigned, for the greater part, to curiosity.
Cruelty tends to the extinction of life, the dissolution of matter,
the imprisonment and sepulture of truth; and if it were our ruling and
chief propensity, the human race would have been extinguished in a few
centuries after its appearance. Curiosity, in its primary sense,
implies care and consideration.
_Rochefoucault._ Words often deflect from their primary sense. We find
the most curious men the most idle and silly, the least observant and
conservative.
_La Fontaine._ So we think; because we see every hour the idly
curious, and not the strenuously; we see only the persons of the one
set, and only the works of the other.
More is heard of cruelty than of curiosity, because while curiosity is
silent both in itself and about its object, cruelty on most occasions
is like the wind, boisterous in itself, and exciting a murmur and
bustle in all the things it moves among. Added to which, many of the
higher topics whereto our curiosity would turn, are intercepted from
it by the policy of our guides and rulers; while the principal ones on
which cruelty is most active, are pointed to by the sceptre and the