The Man who Runs after Fortune

[6] Charles Denis paraphrased the text radically in his version of the fable and shifted La Fontaine's preface to the end.

There the Catholic reference is altered to something more in accord with his time: "Here is a fellow, you will say,/ Carried a knapsack t'other day, / In wretched, dismal, dirty plight,/ And now, forsooth, he's dubb'd a Knight!

[9] When the man decides to go trading, La Fontaine reflects on the bravery of those who sail the seas: In this case the allusion is to lines in an ode of Horace, Illi robur et aes triplex circa pectus erat, qui fragilem truci commisit pelago ratem primus (Odes.1.3), which translates as "Oak round his breast and triple brass, the sailor wore, whose bark first ventured on the sea.

"[10] An image relative to the meaning area of La Fontaine's fable appeared in Barthélemy Aneau's emblem book Picta Poesis (1552) under the title Mulier Umbra Viri (man's feminine shadow).

Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea manages to encompass this commentary in her adaptation of the fable at the start of the 18th century, "The Decision of Fortune".

When the returning traveller at last encounters Fortune, she criticizes at some length the social conduct of those who pursue her and tells him that her real favourite is the one who "neither courts, nor yet my Gifts despises".