La Fontaine in the Character of a Negotiator.

Fouquet pressed La Fontaine’s hand most warmly, saying to him, “My dear poet, write a hundred other tales, not only for the eighty pistoles which each of them will produce you, but, still more, to enrich our language with a hundred new masterpieces of composition.”

“Oh!” said La Fontaine, with a little air of pride, “you must not suppose that I have only brought this idea and the eighty pistoles to the superintendent.”

“Oh!

indeed,” was the general acclimation from all parts of the room, “M. de la Fontaine is in funds to-day.”

“Exactly,” replied La Fontaine.