if he ever showed a want of independence, he certainly did not of
gratitude. Compliments of more touching tenderness we nowhere meet than
those which La Fontaine has paid to his benefactress. He published
nothing which was not first submitted to her eye, and entered into her
affairs and friendships with all his heart. Her unbounded confidence in
his integrity she expressed by saying, "La Fontaine never lies in
prose." By her death, in 1693, our fabulist was left without a home; but
his many friends vied with each other which should next furnish one. He
was then seventy-two years of age, had turned his attention to personal
religion, and received the seal of conversion at the hands of the Roman
Catholic church. In his conversion, as in the rest of his life, his
frankness left no room to doubt his sincerity. The writings which had
justly given offence to the good were made the subject of a public
confession, and everything in his power was done to prevent their
circulation. The death of one who had done so much for him, and whose
last days, devoted with the most self-denying benevolence to the welfare
of her species, had taught him a most salutary lesson, could not but be
deeply felt. He had just left the house of his deceased benefactress,
never again to enter it, when he met M. d'Hervart in the street, who
eagerly said to him, "My dear La Fontaine, I was looking for you, to beg
you to come and take lodgings in my house." "I was going thither,"
replied La Fontaine. A reply could not have more characteristic. The
fabulist had not in him sufficient hypocrisy of which to manufacture the
commonplace politeness of society. His was the politeness of a warm and
unsuspecting heart. He never concealed his confidence in the fear that it
might turn out to be misplaced.

His second collection of fables, containing five books, La Fontaine
published in 1678-9, with a dedication to Madame de Montespan; the
previous six books were republished at the same time, revised, and