The Fable of the Fox and the Crow
25. I have complied with the desire of certain persons who just now begged me to speak extempore. But, by Hercules, I fear that I may suffer the fate that befell the crow in Aesop’s fable: namely, that in the attempt to win this new species of glory I may lose the little I have already acquired. What is this parable, you ask me? I will gladly turn fabulist for awhile. A crow and a fox caught sight of a morsel of food at the same moment and hurried to seize it. Their greed was equal, but their speed was not. Reynard ran, but the crow flew, with the result that the bird was too quick for the quadruped, sailed down the wind on extended pinions, outstripped and forestalled him. Then, rejoicing at his victory in the race for the booty, the crow flew into a neighbouring oak and sat out of reach on the topmost bough. The fox being unable to hurl a stone, launched a trick at him and reached him. For coming up to the foot of the tree, he stopped there, and seeing the robber high above him exulting in his booty, began to praise him with cunning words. ‘Fool that I was thus vainly to contend with Apollo’s bird! For his body is exquisitely proportioned, neither exceeding small nor yet too large, but just of the size demanded by use and beauty; his plumage is soft, his head sharp and fine, his beak strong. Nay, more, he has wings with which to follow, keen eyes with which to see, and claws with which to seize his prey. As for his colour, what can I say? There are two transcendent hues, the blackness of pitch and the whiteness of snow, the colours that distinguish night and day. Both of these hues Apollo has given to the birds he loves, white to the swan and black to the crow. Would he had given the latter a voice like the sweet song he has conferred upon the swan, that so fair a bird, so far excelling all the fowls of the air, might not live, as now he lives, voiceless, the darling of the god of eloquence, but himself mute and tongueless.’ When the crow heard that, though possessed of so many qualities, there yet lacked this one, he was seized with a desire to utter as loud a cry as possible, that the swan might not have the advantage of him in this respect at any rate, and forgetting the morsel which he held in his beak, he opened his mouth to its widest extent, and thus lost by his song what his wings had won him, while the fox recovered by craft what his feet had lost him. Let us reduce this fable to the smallest number of words possible. The crow, to prove himself musical—for the fox pretended that this, the absence of a voice, was the sole slur on such exquisite beauty—began to croak, and delivered over the spoil which he carried in his mouth to the enemy who had thus ensnared him.