I hate that saying, old and savage, "'Tis nothing but a woman drowning." That's much, I say. What grief more keen should have edge Than loss of her, of all our joys the crowning? Thus much suggests the fable I am borrowing. A woman perish'd in the water, Where, anxiously, and sorrowing, Her husband sought her, To ease the grief he could not cure, By honour'd rites of sepulture. It chanced that near the fatal spot, Along the stream which had Produced a death so sad, There walk'd some men that knew it not. The husband ask'd if they had seen His wife, or aught that hers had been. One promptly answer'd, 'No! But search the stream below: It must nave borne her in its flow.' 'No,' said another; 'search above. In that direction She would have floated, by the love Of contradiction.' This joke was truly out of season;-- I don't propose to weigh its reason. But whether such propensity The sex's fault may be, Or not, one thing is very sure, Its own propensities endure. Up to the end they'll have their will, And, if it could be, further still. [24] Verdizotti. XVII.--THE WEASEL IN THE GRANARY.[25] A weasel through a hole contrived to squeeze, (She was recovering from disease,) Which led her to a farmer's hoard. There lodged, her wasted form she cherish'd; Heaven knows the lard and victuals stored That by her gnawing perish'd! Of which the consequence Was sudden corpulence. A week or so was past, When having fully broken fast. A noise she heard, and hurried To find the hole by which she came, And seem'd to find it not the same; So round she ran, most sadly flurried; And, coming back, thrust out her head, Which, sticking there, she said, 'This is the hole, there can't be blunder: What makes it now so small, I wonder, Where, but the other day, I pass'd with ease?' A rat her trouble sees, And cries, 'But with an emptier belly; You enter'd lean, and lean must sally.' What I have said to you Has eke been said to not a few, Who, in a vast variety of cases,[26] Have ventured into such-like places. [25] Aesop: also in Horace, _Epistles_, Book I. 7. [26] _A vast variety of cases_.--Chamfort says of this passage: "La Fontaine, with his usual delicacy, here alludes to the king's farmers and other officers in place; and abruptly quits the subject as if he felt himself on ticklish ground." XVIII.--THE CAT AND THE OLD RAT.[27]