Editing Jean de La Fontaine (section)

===Anecdotes===
The curious personality of La Fontaine, like that of some other men of letters, has been enshrined in a kind of legend by literary tradition. At an early age his absence of mind and indifference to business gave a subject to [[Gédéon Tallemant des Réaux]]. His later contemporaries helped to swell the tale, and the 18th century finally accepted it; these anecdotes include: La Fontaine meeting his son, being told who he was, and remarking, ''Ah, yes, I thought I had seen him somewhere!''; his insisting upon fighting a duel with a supposed admirer of his wife, and then cheerily imploring the same to visit at his house just as before; his going into company with his stockings wrong side out; &c.—with, for a contrast, other tales of his awkwardness and silence, if not positive rudeness, in company.{{sfn|Saintsbury|1911|p=70}}

It ought to be remembered, as a comment on the unfavourable description by [[Jean de La Bruyère]], that La Fontaine was a special friend and ally of [[Isaac de Benserade|Benserade]], La Bruyere's chief literary enemy. But after all deductions much will remain, especially when it is remembered that one of the chief authorities for these anecdotes is [[Louis Racine]], a man who possessed intelligence and moral worth, and who received them from his father, La Fontaine's attached friend for more than thirty years. Perhaps the best worth recording of all these stories is one of the Vieux Colombier quartet, which tells how Molière, while Racine and Boileau were exercising their wits upon ''le bonhomme'' or ''le bon'' (by both which titles La Fontaine was familiarly known), remarked to a bystander, ''"Nos beaux esprits ont beau faire, ils n'effaceront pas le bonhomme."''{{efn|i.e.: ''"No matter how hard our gifted minds may try, they shall not erase the man."''}}  They have not.{{sfn|Saintsbury|1911|p=70}}