Note 861 — Chapter V
Reading edition
La Fontaine, Fables, Lib. XI. fab. 7, and Guevara, Relox, Lib. III. c. 3. The speech which the Spanish Bishop, the true inventor of this happy fiction, gives to his Rústico de Germania is, indeed, too long; but it was popular. Tirso de Molina, after describing a peasant who approached Xerxes, says in the Prologue to one of his plays,—
In short, He represented to the very life The Rustic that so boldly spoke Before the Roman Senate.
Cigarrales de Toledo, Madrid, 1624, 4to, p. 102
La Fontaine, however, did not trouble himself about the original Spanish or its popularity. He took his beautiful version of the fable from an old French translation, made by a gentleman who went to Madrid in 1526 with the Cardinal de Grammont, on the subject of Francis the First’s imprisonment. It is in the rich old French of that period, and La Fontaine often adopts, with his accustomed skill, its picturesque phraseology. I suppose this translation is the one cited by Brunet as made by René Bertaut, of which there were many editions. Mine is of Paris, 1540, folio, by Galliot du Pré, and is entitled “Lorloge des Princes, traduict Despaignol en Langaige François”; but does not give the translator’s name.