The weasel in the granary
The weasel in the granary (French: La Belette entrée dans un grenier ) is the 17th fable in the third book of the collection of fables by the French poet Jean de La Fontaine . The fable tells of a female weasel who became slim and delicate after an illness. It slips through a hole in a well-filled granary and eats as much of the finest as it can for eight days, until one day it is startled by a noise. It wants to flee, but has become too fat in the meantime to squeeze out of the narrow hole again. At first it thinks it has accidentally been in the wrong hole and only came in five or six days ago. The moral of the fable is conveyed by a rat who watches the spectacle and says to the weasel:
“Back then your paunch wasn't as full as it is today.
Who came skinny, went skinny too!
The decision has already been given to many others, I should think.
We alone, out of sheer thoroughness, do not mix their situation with yours. "
As in the fable of the two goats , La Fontaine represents a credible scene from the animal kingdom, but compares the weasel with a lady in a series of fleeting allusions, whereby the reader perceives the human application to morality.
Individual evidence
- ^ Jean de La Fontaine (translated by Ernst Dohm ): Lafontaine's fables. Retrieved July 8, 2020 .
- ↑ Maya Slater: The Craft of La Fontaine . Associated University Presse, 2001, ISBN 978-0-8386-3920-7 , pp. 56 ( google.de [accessed on July 8, 2020]).