'For I've no fare resembling;

But then I eat at leisure,

And would not swap, for pleasure
So mix'd with fear and trembling.'

X. THE WOLF AND THE LAMB.1
THAT innocence is not a shield,
A story teaches, not the longest.
The strongest reasons always yield
To reasons of the strongest.

A lamb her thirst was slaking,
Once, at a mountain rill.
A hungry wolf was taking

His hunt for sheep to kill,

When, spying on the streamlet's brink This sheep of tender age,

He howl'd in tones of rage, 'How dare you roil my drink? Your impudence I shall chastise!' 'Let not your majesty,' the lamb replies,

'Decide in haste or passion!

For sure 'tis difficult to think

1 Phædrus, I. 1: also in Æsop.

In what respect or fashion

My drinking here could roil your drink,

Since on the stream your majesty now faces

I'm lower down, full twenty paces.'

'You roil it,' said the wolf; and, more, I know
You cursed and slander'd me a year ago.'

"O no! how could I such a thing have done!
A lamb that has not seen a year,

A suckling of its mother dear?

"Your brother then.' 'But brother I have none.*
'Well, well, what's all the same,
'Twas some one of your name.
Sheep, men, and dogs of every nation,
Are wont to stab my reputation,
As I have truly heard.'
Without another word,
He made his vengeance good,—
Bore off the lambkin to the wood,

And there, without a jury,
Judged, slew, and ate her in his fury.

XI. THE MAN AND HIS IMAGE.1

TO M. THE DUKE DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD.

A MAN, who had no rivals in the love
Which to himself he bore,
Esteem'd his own dear beauty far above
What earth had seen before.

This is one of La Fontaine's most admired fables, and is one of the few for which he did not go for the groundwork to some older fabulist. The Duke de la Rochefoucauld, to whom it was dedicated, was the author of the famous "Reflexions et Maximes Morales," which La Fontaine praises in the last lines of his fable. La Rochefoucauld was La Fontaine's friend and patron. The "Maximes" had achieved a second edition just prior to La Fontaine's publication of this first series of his Fables, in 1668. "The Rabbits" (Book x., Fable 15.), published in the second collection, in 1678-9, is also dedicated to the Duke, who died the following year, 1680. See Translator's Preface.

More than contented in his error,
He lived the foe of every mirror.
Officious fate, resolved our lover
From such an illness should recover,
Presented always to his eyes

The mute advisers which the ladies prize;-
Mirrors in parlours, inns, and shops,-
Mirrors the pocket furniture of fops,―
Mirrors on every lady's zone,1

From which his face reflected shone.
What could our dear Narcissus do?
From haunts of men he now withdrew,
On purpose that his precious shape
From every mirror might escape.
But in his forest glen alone,
Apart from human trace,
A watercourse,

Of purest source,
While with unconscious gaze
He pierced its waveless face,
Reflected back his own.

Incensed with mingled rage and fright,
He seeks to shun the odious sight;
But yet that mirror sheet, so clear and still,
He cannot leave, do what he will.

Ere this, my story's drift you plainly see.
From such mistake there is no mortal free.
That obstinate self-lover

The human soul doth cover;
The mirrors follies are of others,
In which, as all are genuine brothers,
Each soul may see to life depicted
Itself with just such faults afflicted;
And by that charming placid brook,

Needless to say, I mean your Maxim Book.

1 Lady's zone. One of La Fontaine's commentators remarks upon this passage that it is no exaggeration of the foppishness of the times in which the poet wrote, and cites the instance that the canons of St. Martin of Tours wore mirrors on their shoes, even while officiating in church.

XII.—THE DRAGON WITH MANY HEADS, AND
THE DRAGON WITH MANY TAILS.1

AN envoy of the Porte Sublime,
As history says, once on a time,
Before th' imperial German court 2
Did rather boastfully report,

The troops commanded by his master's firman,
As being a stronger army than the German :
To which replied a Dutch attendant,
'Our prince has more than one dependant
Who keeps an army at his own expense.'
The Turk, a man of sense,
Rejoin'd, 'I am aware

What power your emperor's servants share.
It brings to mind a tale both strange and true,
A thing which once, myself, I chanced to view.
I saw come darting through a hedge,
Which fortified a rocky ledge,

A hydra's hundred heads; and in a trice
My blood was turning into ice.

But less the harm than terror,

The body came no nearer;

Nor could, unless it had been sunder'd,

To parts at least a hundred.

While musing deeply on this sight,
Another dragon came to light,
Whose single head avails
To lead a hundred tails:
And, seized with juster fright,
I saw him pass the hedge,-
Head, body, tails, a wedge
Of living and resistless powers.-

The other was your emperor's force; this ours.'

1 The original of this fable has been attributed to the chief who made himself Emperor of Tartary and called himself Ghengis Khan (b. 1164, d. 1227). He is said to have applied the fable to the Great Mogul and his innumerable dependent potentates.

2 German court.-The court of the "Holy Roman Empire" is here

meant.

XIII. THE THIEVES AND THE ASS.1

Two thieves, pursuing their profession,
Had of a donkey got possession,
Whereon a strife arose,

Which went from words to blows.
The question was, to sell, or not to sell;
But while our sturdy champions fought it well,
Another thief, who chanced to pass,
With ready wit rode off the ass.

This ass is, by interpretation,

Some province poor, or prostrate nation.
The thieves are princes this and that,
On spoils and plunder prone to fat,-
As those of Austria, Turkey, Hungary.
(Instead of two, I've quoted three-
Enough of such commodity.)

These powers engaged in war all,
Some fourth thief stops the quarrel,

According all to one key,

By riding off the donkey.

XIV.-SIMONIDES PRESERVED BY THE GODS.2

THREE sorts there are, as Malherbe 3 says,
Which one can never overpraise—
The gods, the ladies, and the king;
And I, for one, endorse the thing.
The heart, praise tickles and entices ;
Of fair one's smile, it oft the price is.
See how the gods sometimes repay
Simonides-the ancients say it-
Once undertook, in poem lyric,
To write a wrestler's panegyric;

Æsop. 'Malherbe.-See note to Fable I., Book III.

it.

2 Phædrus, IV. 24.