"The Lyon and the Gnat" is fairly close to its original in length (46 lines to La Fontaine's 39) and in spirit; but Mandeville does not improve his fable by supplying the adjective "silly" ("silly Spider") where La Fontaine had written "une araignée," or by inserting a line about the gnat's pride, "Puffed up and blinded with his glory," where La Fontaine expected his readers to discern the gnat's pride for themselves.[13] Another translation that sticks close to the French in its sense is "The Dog and the Ass," in which an ass refuses food to a hungry dog and is in turn abandoned by the dog and killed by a hungry wolf. Mandeville adds the judgment that La Fontaine excluded. The wolf attacks: Grizz'l [the Ass] at a distance Hears him, and asks the Dog's assistance; But he don't budge, _and serves him right; Says he, I never us'd to fight Without a cause for fighting's sake_....[14] The italicized words, entirely added by Mandeville, apparently represent his conviction that the irony of La Fontaine's fable would be intensified by the dog's sardonic comment and the translator's "serves him right." Other examples might be cited of Mandeville's explicitness. The characterizing details of some of the great fables, however, disappear in Mandeville's English. Although "The Plague among the Beasts" is faithful to the original, the tragic overtones of "Les Animaux malade de la Peste" are not recaptured; they are perhaps unrecapturable. The ironies of La Fontaine's characterization are ignored: the lion's "L'histoire nous apprend," for instance, by which the unscrupulous politician poses as a deep-browed savant; the description of the other beasts as "petits saints," and of the wolf who condemns the innocent ass as "quelque peu clerc"--these disappear.[15] "L'Ivrogne et sa Femme" meets the same fate. Mandeville retains the outlines of the original but treats the details perfunctorily, as though he had given up trying to re-create the comic terror of La Fontaine's little masterpiece. "A drunkard" is not an adequate equivalent for "un suppôt de Bacchus"; "very drunk" is not the same as "plein du jus de la treille"; entire sentences are left out, such as "Là les vapeurs du vin nouveau / Cuvèrent à loisir"; and the ending of the poem suffers from the alteration of details and from an awkward inversion for the sake of a rhyme: He says to his dissembling Spirit, Who are you in the Name of Evil? She answers hoarsely I'm a Devil, That carries Victuals to the Damn'd By me they are with Brimstone cramm'd. What, says the Husband, do you think Never to bring them any Drink? "Quelle personne es-tu? dit-il à ce fantôme. --La cellerière du royaume De Satan, reprit-elle; et je porte à manger A ceux qu'enclôt la tombe noire." Le mari repart, sans songer: "Tu ne leur portes point à boire?"[16]