It could be the sequel to The
Wolf and the Lamb,
published six years earlier:
"He looks like those wolves we feed, and does well: / Because a wolf must always keep his character, / Like a sheep keeps his own … ”
But, when he wrote down on paper, in 1674, these few lines with innocent exterior, La Fontaine had a completely different idea in mind: to ridicule the all-powerful Jean-Baptiste Lully, superintendent of the king's music for a decade. .
See also
In Versailles, with heritage goldsmiths
The latter, who reigns supreme over French lyric, has just made the poet, a great lover of music himself and a licensed harpsichordist, the affront to send him
Daphne,
the opera libretto he had written for him.
The writer, who knows only too well the taste of revenge for having sung it many times in his fables, will not then have enough harsh words.
In a pamphlet he describes the Florentine as a
“bawdy”
, as
“mastiff / Who devours everything, / Takes everything, squeezes everything”
.
“He has a triple throat.
Give him, stuff him, the glutton.
He asks again / The king
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