et surrounded by all the attributes which his parliamentary
strength and power confer on him."

"Oh! oh!" murmured the poets.

"_Quo non ascendam_," said Conrart, "seems impossible to me, when one is
fortunate enough to wear the gown of the procureur-general." [9]

"On the contrary, it seems so to me without that gown," said the
obstinate Pelisson; "what is your opinion, Gourville?"

"I think the gown in question is a very good thing," replied the latter;
"but I equally think that a million and a half is far better than the
gown."

"And I am of Gourville's opinion," exclaimed Fouquet, stopping the
discussion by the expression of his own opinion, which would necessarily
bear down all the others.

"A million and a half," Pelisson grumbled out; "now I happen to know an
Indian fable--"

"Tell it to me," said La Fontaine; "I ought to know it too."

"Tell it, tell it," said the others.

"There was a tortoise, which was, as usual, well protected by its
shell," said Pelisson; "whenever its enemies threatened it, it took
refuge within its covering. One day some one said to it, 'You must feel
very hot in such a house as that in the summer, and you are altogether
prevented showing off your graces; there is a snake here, who will give
you a million and a half for your shell.'"

"Good!" said the superintendent, laughing.

"Well, what next?" said La Fontaine, more interested in the apologue
than in the moral.

"The tortoise sold his shell and remained naked and defenseless. A
vulture happened to see him, and being hungry, broke the tortoise's back
with a blow of his beak and devoured it. The moral is, that M. Fouquet
should take very good care to keep his gown."

La Fontaine understood the moral seriously. "You forget Aeschylus," he
said, to his adversary.

"What do you mean?"

"Aeschylus was bald-headed, and a vulture--your vulture, probably--who
was a great amateur in tortoises, mistook at a distance his head for a
block of stone, and let a tortoise, which was shrunk up in his shell,
fall upon it."

"Yes, yes, La Fontaine is right," resumed Fouquet, who had become very
thoughtful; "whenever a vulture wishes to devour a tortoise, he well
knows how to break his shell; but happy is that tortoise a snake pays
a million and a half for his envelope. If any one were to bring me a
generous-hearted snake like the one in your fable, Pelisson, I would
give him my shell."

"_Rara avis in terres!_" cried Conrart. [10]