to
touch. As for alighting on the heads of kings and emperors, you know
very well that whether you pitch on the head of an emperor or of an ass
(and it is as often on the one as the other), you are shaken off from
both with impatience. And, then, the 'altars of the gods,' indeed!
There and everywhere else you are looked upon as nothing but a
nuisance. In the winter, too, while I feed at my ease on the fruit of
my toil, what more common than to see your friends dying with cold,
hunger, and fatigue? I lose my time now in talking to you. Chattering
will fill neither my bin nor my cupboard."

The Frog Who Wished to Be as Big as an Ox

An Ox, grazing in a meadow, chanced to set his foot on a young Frog and
crushed him to death. His brothers and sisters, who were playing near,
at once ran to tell their mother what had happened.

"The monster that did it, mother, was such a size!" said they.

The mother, who was a vain old thing, thought that she could easily
make herself as large.

"Was it as big as this?" she asked, blowing and puffing herself out.

"Oh, much bigger than that," replied the young Frogs.

"As this, then?" cried she, puffing and blowing again with all her
might.

"Nay, mother," said they; "if you were to try till you burst yourself,
you could never be so big."

The silly old Frog then tried to puff herself out still more, and burst
herself indeed.

The Cat and the Mice

A certain house was overrun with mice. A Cat, discovering this, made
her way into it and began to catch and eat them one by one.

The Mice being continually devoured, kept themselves close in their
holes.

The Cat, no longer able to get at them, perceived that she must tempt
them forth by some device. For this purpose she jumped upon a peg,
and, suspending herself from it, pretended to be dead.

One of the Mice, peeping stealthily out, saw her, and said, "Ah, my
good madam, even though you should turn into a meal-bag, we would not
come near you."

The Cock and the Jewel

A brisk young Cock, scratching for something with which to entertain
his favourite Hens, happened to turn up a Jewel. Feeling quite sure
that it was something precious, but not knowing well what to do with
it, he addressed it with an air of affected wisdom, as follows: "You
are a very fine thing, no doubt, but you are not at all to my taste.
For my part, I would rather have one grain of dear delicious barley
than all the Jewels in the w