1 60 LITEKABY AND SCIENTIFIC MEN.

offence demanded a more serious lesson of penance andreform. Having been on one occasion consigned tothe same convent they amused themselves by puttingink into the holy water. The nuns, who on their wayto matins and vespers dipped their fingers in the font,and crossed their foreheads with the sacred lymph, onmeeting in the chapel, beheld upon each other’s brows,with surprise and terror, the dark signs of reproba-tion.

La Fontaine doubtless owed that finesse of expressionwhich sometimes palliates, if it does not redeem, thefreedom of his pleasantries, to his intercourse with twopersons so witty, accomplished, and unconstrained.

Soon after his arrival in Paris he formed that unionof friendship between him, Moliere , Boileau, and Racine,which death only interrupted. These celebrated men ap-preciated his genius, before it yet received the stamp ofpublic admiration, and always regarded him with affec-tion. Boileau and Racine, indeed, amused themselveswith his simplicity, and treated him sometimes with acertain air of protection. The conversation happeningto turn one evening, at a supper party where they were,upon the dramatic probability of what are called stagewhispers or “asides,” La Fontaine said it was absurdto suppose that what was heard by the whole audiencecould escape a person on the stage. A discussionensued, as it commonly happened when any question ofart or literature was started, even in the highest circles,— so different from modern fashionable life. “ Don’tyou think La Fontaine a great rogue ? ” said Boileau,to his nearest neighbour, aside, but loud enough to beheard, and laughed at by everybody except La Fon-taine, who was thinking of something else. The argu-ment, as well as the laugh, was immediately turnedagainst him; but most illogically, for the factproved not the reasonableness of “ asides ; ” it wasevidence only of La Fontaine’s distractions. “ Letthem laugh,” said Moliere , “ le bon horame will take aflight beyond them — (le bon homme ira plus loin