The cat and the two sparrows
The cat and the two sparrows (French: Le Chat et les deux Moineaux ) is the second fable from the twelfth book of the Fables Choisies collection , Mises En Vers by Jean de La Fontaine . The entire twelfth book is dedicated to the then eight-year-old Duc of Bourgogne . The fable therefore has the subtitle A monseigneur le duc de bourgogne.
In Le Chat et les deux moineaux , the narrator leaves morality to the addressee, the Duke of Burgundy. La Fontaine makes it clear in the fable that the cat's natural tendency to eat sparrows is not impaired by spatial proximity:
A young cat and a young sparrow lived peacefully together in one room for a while. Often the two teased each other playfully, she with her paws - he with his beak. The cat spared its friend and never caused pain to the sparrow, while the careless sparrow would often hit its beak, which the cat most forgivingly excused as a game.
The happiness of the two lasted until one day another sparrow flew in and a fight broke out among the birds. The cat, which rushed to the friend's aid, killed the strange sparrow. Only then did she notice how good sparrows taste and ate the other sparrow too.
Individual evidence
- ↑ La Fontaine, Jean de: Fables Choisies: Mises En Vers. 1786, Retrieved December 28, 2019 .
- ^ Rubin, David Lee: A pact with silence: art and thought in the Fables of Jean de La Fontaine . Ohio State University, Columbus 1991, ISBN 0-8142-0543-7 , pp. 22 .