XVII The Weasel in the Granary25
A weasel through a hole contrived to squeeze,
(She was recovering from disease,)
Which led her to a farmer’s hoard.
There lodged, her wasted form she cherish’d;
Heaven knows the lard and victuals stored
That by her gnawing perish’d!
Of which the consequence
Was sudden corpulence.
A week or so was past,
When having fully broken fast.
A noise she heard, and hurried
To find the hole by which she came,
And seem’d to find it not the same;
So round she ran, most sadly flurried;
And, coming back, thrust out her head,
Which, sticking there, she said,
‘This is the hole, there can’t be blunder:
What makes it now so small, I wonder,
Where, but the other day, I pass’d with ease?’
A rat her trouble sees,
And cries, ‘But with an emptier belly;
You enter’d lean, and lean must sally.’
What I have said to you
Has eke been said to not a few,
Who, in a vast variety of cases,26
Have ventured into such-like places.
[25] Aesop: also in Horace, Epistles, Book I. 7. [26] A vast variety of cases.—Chamfort says of this passage: “La Fontaine, with his usual delicacy, here alludes to the king’s farmers and other officers in place; and abruptly quits the subject as if he felt himself on ticklish ground.”