The sick deer
The sick deer (French: Le cerf malade ) is the sixth fable from the twelfth and last book of the Fables Choisies collection , Mises En Vers by Jean de La Fontaine . She tells how a sick deer is visited and comforted by his friends. When the sick person sends the annoying visitors away, they eat the green forest near the deer bare, so that the deer ultimately dies of starvation after its recovery. The moral is:
"Yes, dear, that you can never get over it, you are 'physicians and soul doctors'. O time! O manners! Nothing in the world is free, everything is about money. "
This singular morality may be inspired by a joke by Antoine Furetière : after a long illness, he was presented with expense reports containing a jumble of prescriptions and ceremonies, and he exclaimed that he had been ruined with drugs and sacraments.
Individual evidence
- ↑ La Fontaine, Jean de: Fables Choisies: Mises En Vers. 1786, Retrieved December 28, 2019 .
- ↑ " https://digital.blb-karlsruhe.de/blbihd/content/pageview/5199260 " p. 311
- ^ Gabriel-Henri Gaillard , Solvet, P. Louis: Etudes sur La Fontaine Louis, ou, Notes et excursions littéraires sur ses fables; précédées de son éloge inédit . Paris: Chez Grabit, 1812, p. 196–197 ( archive.org [accessed December 29, 2019]).