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RENAISSANCE
81
begged La Fontaine to give her a copy of every fable in which her favourite animal played its ungrateful part. These precious manuscripts, after being lost for a century and more, were discovered by M. Feuillet de Conches, stored away in a lumber room with other interesting and valuable papers of the de Bouillon family, whose estate had passed into alien hands, and whose long-prized treasures had been thrust into dusty oblivion.
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