V.--THE BAT AND THE TWO WEASELS.[10] A blundering bat once stuck her head Into a wakeful weasel's bed; Whereat the mistress of the house, A deadly foe of rats and mice, Was making ready in a trice To eat the stranger as a mouse. 'What! do you dare,' she said, 'to creep in The very bed I sometimes sleep in, Now, after all the provocation I've suffer'd from your thievish nation? Are you not really a mouse, That gnawing pest of every house, Your special aim to do the cheese ill? Ay, that you are, or I'm no weasel.' 'I beg your pardon,' said the bat; 'My kind is very far from that. What! I a mouse! Who told you such a lie? Why, ma'am, I am a bird; And, if you doubt my word, Just see the wings with which I fly. Long live the mice that cleave the sky!' These reasons had so fair a show, The weasel let the creature go. By some strange fancy led, The same wise blunderhead, But two or three days later, Had chosen for her rest Another weasel's nest, This last, of birds a special hater. New peril brought this step absurd; Without a moment's thought or puzzle, Dame weasel oped her peaked muzzle To eat th' intruder as a bird. 'Hold! do not wrong me,' cried the bat; 'I'm truly no such thing as that. Your eyesight strange conclusions gathers. What makes a bird, I pray? Its feathers. I'm cousin of the mice and rats. Great Jupiter confound the cats!' The bat, by such adroit replying, Twice saved herself from dying. And many a human stranger Thus turns his coat in danger; And sings, as suits, where'er he goes, 'God save the king!'--or 'save his foes!'[11] [10] Aesop. [11] _Or save his foes!_--La Fontaine's last line is--"Vive le roi! Vive la ligue!" conveying an allusion to the "Holy League" of the French Catholic party, which, under the Guises, brought about the war with Henry III. and the Huguenots, which ended, for a time, in the edict of Nantes, promulgated by Henry IV. in 1598. VI.--THE BIRD WOUNDED BY AN ARROW.[12] A bird, with plumèd arrow shot, In dying case deplored her lot: 'Alas!' she cried, 'the anguish of the thought! This ruin partly by myself was brought! Hard-hearted men! from us to borrow What wings to us the fatal arrow! But mock us not, ye cruel race, For you must often take our place.' The work of half the human brothers Is making arms against the others. [12] Aesop. VII.--THE BITCH AND HER FRIEND.[13]