You can for ducats four or five.
Indeed, if circumstances drive,
Defraud, or take false oaths you may,
Or to the charms of life give way,
When Love must needs the door unbar.
Henceforth must not the pilgrim say,
A velvet road hath ESCOBAR?

Now, would to God that one would state
The pith of all his works to me.
What boots it to enumerate?
As well attempt to drain the sea!--
Your chart and compass let them be;
All other books put under ban;
Burn ARNAULD and his rigid clan--
They're blockheads if we but compare;--
It is no joke,--I tell you, man,
A velvet road hath ESCOBAR.

ADDRESS.

Thou warden of the prison black,
Who didst on heaven turn thy back,
The chieftain of th' infernal war!
To shun thy arrows and thy rack,
A velvet road hath ESCOBAR.

The verses of La Fontaine did more for his reputation than for his purse.
His paternal estate wasted away under his carelessness; for, when the
ends of the year refused to meet, he sold a piece of land sufficient to