“I met upon my road with a bitch, Like a dog guided by scent in the circle of a chase. Her paw was colored with blood, In the middle of the road she lay like a tiger; Impelled either by wild instinct or necessity, She had made her own whelp the aliment of life. At the sight of so strange a scene, I restrained my hand from striking, and opening my lips, I said: ‘O dog, what desirest thou to do? Upon thy own heart why inflicting all this pain?’ Scarce had the tip of my tongue perforated the pearl of the secret, When her tail was agitated, and she said: ‘O thou who art not informed of thy own state, How shall I give thee an account of my condition?’ When the words of the dog came upon my ear, A resplendent sun fell into my mind. In the sense of (_these words indicative of the dog’s_) insanity, My own sense found the authority of a precept.[263] The desire of wandering in the garden left my heart, Which assumed the quality of a tulip and a deep mark; It saw nothing upon the path of profligacy But the privation of remedies. I said again to her: ‘O lion-like dog, The morning-breeze learns from thee rapidity: Manifest to me the state of thy heart, Exhibit to me the form of its history.’ She gave a howl, and, emitting lamentations: Rendered testimony of her own secret condition: ‘I devoured the blood of the offspring of my own womb That nobody might place a weight upon my head.’”