ng delicacy
served up, done to a turn.

It is indeed by an infinity of small touches that La Fontaine produces
his effects. And his effects are very various. With equal ease,
apparently, he can be playful, tender, serious, preposterous, eloquent,
meditative, and absurd. But one quality is always present in his work;
whatever tune he may be playing, there is never a note too much. Alike
in his shortest six-lined anecdote and his most elaborate pieces, in
which detail follows detail and complex scenes are developed, there is
no trace of the superfluous; every word has its purpose in the general
scheme. This quality appears most clearly, perhaps, in the adroit
swiftness of his conclusions. When once the careful preliminary
foundation of the story has been laid, the crisis comes quick and
pointed--often in a single line. Thus we are given a minute description
of the friendship of the cat and the sparrow; all sorts of details are
insisted on; we are told how, when the sparrow teased the cat--

En sage et discrete personne,
Maitre chat excusait ces jeux.

Then the second sparrow is introduced and his quarrel with the first.
The cat fires up--

Le moineau du voisin viendra manger le notre?
Non, de par tous les chats!--Entrant lors au combat,
Il croque l'etranger. Vraiment, dit maitre chat,
Les moineaux ont un gout exquis et delicat!

And now in one line the story ends--

Cette reflexion fit aussi croquer l'autre.

One more instance of La Fontaine's inimitable conciseness may be given.
When Bertrand (the monkey) has eaten the chestnuts which Raton (the cat)
has pulled out of the fire, the friends are interrupted; the fable ends
thus--

Une servante vint; adieu, mes gens! Raton
N'etait pas content, ce dit-on.

How admirable are the brevity and the lightness of that 'adieu, mes
gens'! In three words the instantaneous vanishing of the animals is
indicated with masterly precision. One can almost see their tails
whisking round the corner.

Modern admirers of La Fontaine have tended to throw a veil of sentiment
over his figure, picturing him as the consoling beatific child of
nature, driven by an unsympathetic generation to a wistful companionship
with the dumb world of brutes. But nothing could be farther from the
truth than this conception. La Fontaine was as unsentimental as Moliere
himself. This does not imply that he was unfeeling: feelings he
had--delicate and poignant ones; bu