g how cruelly Reynard had blinded three
of his beloved children, and how shamefully he had insulted his wife, the
fair lady Gieremund. This accusation had no sooner been formulated than
Wackerlos the dog came forward, and, speaking French, pathetically
described the finding of a little sausage in a thicket, and its purloining
by Reynard, who seemed to have no regard whatever for his famished
condition.

The tomcat Hintze, who at the mere mention of a sausage had listened more
attentively, now angrily cried out that the sausage which Wackerlos had
lost belonged by right to him, as he had concealed it in the thicket after
stealing it from the miller's wife. He added that he too had had much to
suffer from Reynard, and was supported by the panther, who described how he
had once found the miscreant cruelly beating poor Lampe the hare.

"Lampe he held by the collar,
Yes, and had certainly taken his life, if I by good fortune
Had not happened to pass by the road. There standing you see him.
Look and see the wounds of the gentle creature, whom no one
Ever would think of ill treating."

[Sidenote: Vindication of Reynard.] The king, Nobel, was beginning to look
very stern as one after another rose to accuse the absent Reynard, when
Grimbart the badger courageously began to defend him, and artfully turned
the tables upon the accusers. Taking up their complaints one by one, he
described how Reynard, his uncle, once entered into partnership with
Isegrim. To obtain some fish which a carter was conveying to market, the
fox had lain as if dead in the middle of the road. He had been picked up by
the man for the sake of his fur, and tossed up on top of the load of fish.
But no sooner had the carter's back been turned than the fox sprang up,
threw all the fish down into the road to the expectant wolf, and only
sprang down himself when the cart was empty. The wolf, ravenous as ever,
devoured the fish as fast as they were thrown down, and when the fox
claimed his share of the booty he had secured, Isegrim gave him only the
bones.[1] [Footnote 1: For Russian version see Guerber's Contes et
Legendes, vol. i., p. 93.]

Not content with cheating his ally once, the wolf had induced the fox to
steal a suckling pig from the larder of a sleeping peasant. With much
exertion the cunning Reynard had thrown the prize out of the window to the
waiting wolf; but when he asked for a portion of the meat