The writer Jean de La Fontaine was born in 1621 in Château-Thierry. He went to Paris in 1636 and finished his schooling there. Five years later, La Fontaine began studying theology under the Catholic order of the Oratorians. At the end of his probation period in 1643, La Fontaine left the order and subsequently studied law in Paris from 1645 until 1647. He married in 1647 in Château-Thierry. He subsequently went alone to Paris, where he moved freely among the literary circles. In 1658, La Fontaine presented the short epic "Adonis," which he dedicated to the powerful minister of finance Nicolas Fouquet. In 1662, Fouquet fell out of favor with Louis XIV and was arrested. La Fontaine then fled to Limoges, where he completed his tales in verse, which he expanded and published in 1666 as "Contes et nouvelles en vers." In the Luxembourg Palace in Paris, where he stayed with his patroness Marguerite de Lorraine until 1672, La Fontaine produced his main work, the Fables. The first two jovial-ironic volumes of "Fables choisies, mises en vers par M. de La Fontaine" appeared in 1686. He ran into difficulties with the tightening standards of the censors in 1675, when selections of "Contes et nouvelles" were banned. The third and fourth volumes of the Fables appeared in 1677 and 1679, respectively. The author's attitude to the world and its relationships is obviously more skeptical in these volumes. The Comédie Française put his piece "Le Rendez-vous" on stage, though it was performed only four times. In 1692 La Fontaine published a revised complete edition of the tales. In late 1692 when La Fontaine fell ill, he returned to religion. He died in Paris in 1695.