make them do so. His wife, no better qualified to manage worldly gear
than himself, probably lived on her family friends, who were able to
support her, and who seem to have done so without blaming him. She had
lived with him in Paris for some time after that city became his
abode; but, tiring at length of the city life, she had returned at
Chateau-Thierry, and occupied the family mansion. At the earnest
expostulation of Boileau and Racine, who wished to make him a better
husband, he returned to Chateau-Thierry himself, in 1666, for the purpose
of becoming reconciled to his wife. But his purpose strangely vanished.
He called at his own house, learned from the domestic, who did not know
him, that Madame La Fontaine was in good health, and passed on to the
house of a friend, where he tarried two days, and then returned to Paris
without having seen his wife. When his friends inquired of him his
success, with some confusion he replied, "I have been to see her, but I
did not find her: she was well." Twenty years after that, Racine
prevailed on him to visit his patrimonial estate, to take some care of
what remained. Racine, not hearing from him, sent to know what he was
about, when La Fontaine wrote as follows:--"Poignant, on his return from
Paris, told me that you took my silence in very bad part; the worse,
because you had been told that I have been incessantly at work since my
arrival at Chateau-Thierry, and that, instead of applying myself to my
affairs, I have had nothing in my head but verses. All this is no more
than half true: my affairs occupy me as much as they deserve to--that is
to say not at all; but the leisure which they leave me--it is not poetry,
but idleness, which makes away with it." On a certain occasion, in the
earlier part of his life, when pressed in regard to his improvidence, he
gaily produced the following epigram, which has commonly been appended to
his fables as "The Epitaph of La Fontaine, written by Himself":--

Jean s'en alla comme il etait venu,