Imaginary Conversations and Poems Part 37

[10] The miseries of Ta.s.so arose not only from the imagination and the heart. In the metropolis of the Christian world, with many admirers and many patrons, bishops, cardinals, princes, he was left dest.i.tute, and almost famished. These are his own words: '_Appena_ in questo stato ho comprato _due meloni_: e benche io sia stato _quasi sempre infermo_, molte volte mi sono contentato del manzo: e la ministra di latte o di zucca, _quando ho potuto averne_, mi e stata in vece di delizie.' In another part he says that he was unable to pay the carriage of a parcel. No wonder; if he had not wherewithal to buy enough of zucca for a meal. Even had he been in health and appet.i.te, he might have satisfied his hunger with it for about five farthings, and have left half for supper. And now a word on his insanity. Having been so imprudent not only as to make it too evident in his poetry that he was the lover of Leonora, but also to signify (not very obscurely) that his love was returned, he much perplexed the Duke of Ferrara, who, with great discretion, suggested to him the necessity of feigning madness. The lady's honour required it from a brother; and a true lover, to convince the world, would embrace the project with alacrity. But there was no reason why the seclusion should be in a dungeon, or why exercise and air should be interdicted. This cruelty, and perhaps his uncertainty of Leonora's compa.s.sion, may well be imagined to have produced at last the malady he had feigned. But did Leonora love Ta.s.so as a man would be loved? If we wish to do her honour, let us hope it: for what greater glory can there be, than to have estimated at the full value so exalted a genius, so affectionate and so generous a heart!

[11] The author wrote the verses first in English, but he found it easy to write them better in Italian: they stood in the text as below: they only do for a girl of thirteen:

'Swallow! swallow! though so jetty Are your pinions, you are pretty: And what matter were it though You were blacker than a crow?

Of the many birds that fly (And how many pa.s.s me by!) You 're the first I ever prest, Of the many, to my breast: Therefore it is very right You should be my own delight.'

LA FONTAINE AND DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULT

_La Fontaine._ I am truly sensible of the honour I receive, M. de la Rochefoucault, in a visit from a personage so distinguished by his birth and by his genius. Pardon my ambition, if I confess to you that I have long and ardently wished for the good fortune, which I never could promise myself, of knowing you personally.

_Rochefoucault._ My dear M. de la Fontaine!

_La Fontaine._ Not '_de_ la', not '_de_ la'. I am _La_ Fontaine, purely and simply.

_Rochefoucault._ The whole; not derivative. You appear, in the midst of your purity, to have been educated at court, in the lap of the ladies. What was the last day (pardon!) I had the misfortune to miss you there?

_La Fontaine._ I never go to court. They say one cannot go without silk stockings; and I have only thread: plenty of them indeed, thank G.o.d! Yet, would you believe it? Nanon, in putting a _solette_ to the bottom of one, last week, sewed it so carelessly, she made a kind of cord across: and I verily believe it will lame me for life; for I walked the whole morning upon it.

_Rochefoucault._ She ought to be whipped.

_La Fontaine._ I thought so too, and grew the warmer at being unable to find a wisp of osier or a roll of packthread in the house. Barely had I begun with my garter, when in came the Bishop of Gra.s.se, my old friend G.o.deau, and another lord, whose name he mentioned, and they both interceded for her so long and so touchingly, that at last I was fain to let her rise up and go. I never saw men look down on the erring and afflicted more compa.s.sionately. The bishop was quite concerned for me also. But the other, although he professed to feel even more, and said that it must surely be the pain of purgatory to me, took a pinch of snuff, opened his waistcoat, drew down his ruffles, and seemed rather more indifferent.

_Rochefoucault._ Providentially, in such moving scenes, the worst is soon over. But G.o.deau's friend was not too sensitive.

_La Fontaine._ Sensitive! no more than if he had been educated at the butcher's or the Sorbonne.

_Rochefoucault._ I am afraid there are as many hard hearts under satin waistcoats as there are ugly visages under the same material in miniature cases.

_La Fontaine._ My lord, I could show you a miniature case which contains your humble servant, in which the painter has done what no tailor in his senses would do; he has given me credit for a coat of violet silk, with silver frogs as large as tortoises. But I am loath to get up for it while the generous heart of this dog (if I mentioned his name he would jump up) places such confidence on my knee.

_Rochefoucault._ Pray do not move on any account; above all, lest you should disturb that amiable grey cat, fast asleep in his innocence on your shoulder.

_La Fontaine._ Ah, rogue! art thou there? Why! thou hast not licked my face this half-hour.

_Rochefoucault._ And more, too, I should imagine. I do not judge from his somnolency, which, if he were President of the Parliament, could not be graver, but from his natural sagacity. Cats weigh practicabilities. What sort of tongue has he?

_La Fontaine._ He has the roughest tongue and the tenderest heart of any cat in Paris. If you observe the colour of his coat, it is rather blue than grey; a certain indication of goodness in these contemplative creatures.

_Rochefoucault._ We were talking of his tongue alone; by which cats, like men, are flatterers.

_La Fontaine._ Ah! you gentlemen of the court are much mistaken in thinking that vices have so extensive a range. There are some of our vices, like some of our diseases, from which the quadrupeds are exempt; and those, both diseases and vices, are the most discreditable.

_Rochefoucault._ I do not bear patiently any evil spoken of the court: for it must be acknowledged, by the most malicious, that the court is the purifier of the whole nation.

_La Fontaine._ I know little of the court, and less of the whole nation; but how can this be?

_Rochefoucault._ It collects all ramblers and gamblers; all the market-men and market-women who deal in articles which G.o.d has thrown into their baskets, without any trouble on their part; all the seducers and all who wish to be seduced; all the duellists who erase their crimes with their swords, and sweat out their cowardice with daily practice; all the n.o.bles whose patents of n.o.bility lie in gold snuff-boxes, or have worn Mechlin ruffles, or are deposited within the archives of knee-deep waistcoats; all stock-jobbers and church-jobbers, the black-legged and the red-legged game, the flower of the _justaucorps_, the _robe_, and the _soutane_. If these were spread over the surface of France, instead of close compressure in the court or cabinet, they would corrupt the whole country in two years.

As matters now stand, it will require a quarter of a century to effect it.

_La Fontaine._ Am I not right then in preferring my beasts to yours?

But if yours were loose, mine (as you prove to me) would be the last to suffer by it, poor dear creatures! Speaking of cats, I would have avoided all personality that might be offensive to them: I would not exactly have said, in so many words, that, by their tongues, they are flatterers, like men. Language may take a turn advantageously in favour of our friends. True, we resemble all animals in something. I am quite ashamed and mortified that your lords.h.i.+p, or anybody, should have had the start of me in this reflection. When a cat flatters with his tongue he is not insincere: you may safely take it for a real kindness. He is loyal, M. de la Rochefoucault! my word for him, he is loyal. Observe too, if you please, no cat ever licks you when he wants anything from you; so that there is nothing of baseness in such an act of adulation, if we must call it so. For my part, I am slow to designate by so foul a name, that (be it what it may) which is subsequent to a kindness. Cats ask plainly for what they want.

_Rochefoucault._ And, if they cannot get it by protocols they get it by invasion and a.s.sault.

_La Fontaine._ No! no! usually they go elsewhere, and fondle those from whom they obtain it. In this I see no resemblance to invaders and conquerors. I draw no parallels: I would excite no heart-burnings between us and them. Let all have their due.

I do not like to lift this creature off, for it would waken him, else I could find out, by some subsequent action, the reason why he has not been on the alert to lick my cheek for so long a time.

_Rochefoucault._ Cats are wary and provident. He would not enter into any contest with you, however friendly. He only licks your face, I presume, while your beard is but a match for his tongue.

_La Fontaine._ Ha! you remind me. Indeed I did begin to think my beard was rather of the roughest; for yesterday Madame de Rambouillet sent me a plate of strawberries, the first of the season, and raised (would you believe it?) under gla.s.s. One of these strawberries was dropping from my lips, and I attempted to stop it. When I thought it had fallen to the ground, 'Look for it, Nanon; pick it up and eat it,' said I.

'Master!' cried the wench, 'your beard has skewered and spitted it.'

'Honest girl,' I answered, 'come, cull it from the bed of its adoption.'

I had resolved to shave myself this morning: but our wisest and best resolutions too often come to nothing, poor mortals!

_Rochefoucault._ We often do very well everything but the only thing we hope to do best of all; and our projects often drop from us by their weight. A little while ago your friend Moliere exhibited a remarkable proof of it.

_La Fontaine._ Ah, poor Moliere! the best man in the world; but flighty, negligent, thoughtless. He throws himself into other men, and does not remember where. The sight of an eagle, M. de la Rochefoucault, but the memory of a fly.

_Rochefoucault_. I will give you an example: but perhaps it is already known to you.

_La Fontaine._ Likely enough. We have each so many friends, neither of us can trip but the other is invited to the laugh. Well; I am sure he has no malice, and I hope I have none: but who can see his own faults?

_Rochefoucault._ He had brought out a new edition of his comedies.

_La Fontaine._ There will be fifty; there will be a hundred: nothing in our language, or in any, is so delightful, so graceful; I will add, so clear at once and so profound.

_Rochefoucault._ You are among the few who, seeing well his other qualities, see that Moliere is also profound. In order to present the new edition to the dauphin, he had put on a sky-blue velvet coat, powdered with fleurs-de-lis. He laid the volume on his library table; and, resolving that none of the courtiers should have an opportunity of ridiculing him for anything like absence of mind, he returned to his bedroom, which, as may often be the case in the economy of poets, is also his dressing-room. Here he surveyed himself in his mirror, as well as the creeks and lagoons in it would permit.

_La Fontaine._ I do a.s.sure you, from my own observation, M. de la Rochefoucault, that his mirror is a splendid one. I should take it to be nearly three feet high, reckoning the frame, with the Cupid above and the elephant under. I suspected it was the present of some great lady; and indeed I have since heard as much.

_Rochefoucault._ Perhaps then the whole story may be quite as fabulous as the part of it which I have been relating.

_La Fontaine._ In that case, I may be able to set you right again.

_Rochefoucault._ He found his peruke a model of perfection; tight, yet easy; not an inch more on one side than on the other. The black patch on the forehead....

_La Fontaine._ Black patch too! I would have given a fifteen-sous piece to have caught him with that black patch.

_Rochefoucault._ He found it lovely, marvellous, irresistible. Those on each cheek....

_La Fontaine._ Do you tell me he had one on each cheek?