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A Man saw an Adder.
Ah! wicked one, he said, I am going to perform a deed
Pleasing to the whole universe.
At these words, the perverse animal
(It is the serpent I mean,
And not the man: one could easily be mistaken),
At these words, the serpent, letting himself be caught,
Was taken, put in a sack; and, what was worse,
His death was resolved, whether he was guilty or not.
In order, however, to pay him with reason,
The other made him this speech:
Symbol of the ungrateful, to be good to the wicked
Is to be a fool, so die then: your anger and your teeth
Will never harm me. The Serpent, in his language,
Replied as best he could: If one had to condemn
All the ungrateful people in the world,
To whom could one ever forgive?
You yourself are passing judgment on yourself. I base my case
On your own lessons; cast your eyes on yourself.
My days are in your hands, cut them off: your justice
Is your utility, your pleasure, your whim;
According to these laws, condemn me;
But grant that with frankness
At least in dying I may tell you
That the symbol of the ungrateful
Is not the serpent, it is man. These words
Made the other pause; he stepped back.
At last he retorted: Your reasons are frivolous:
I could decide, for that right belongs to me;
But let us refer it. – So be it, said the reptile.
A Cow was there, she is called, she comes;
The case is put; it was an easy thing:
Did you have to call me for that? she said.
The Adder is right; why hide it?
I have fed this one for many years;
He has not passed a single day without my benefits;
Everything is for him alone; my milk and my children
Make him return home with full hands;
I even restored his health, which the years
Had impaired, and my pains
Have as their goal his pleasure as well as his need.
At last here I am old; he leaves me in a corner
Without grass; if only he would still let me graze!
But I am tethered; and if I had had as master
A serpent, would he ever have known how to push so far
The Man, quite astonished by such a sentence,
Said to the Serpent: Must we believe what she says?
She is a dotard; she has lost her mind.
Let us believe this Ox. – Let us believe him, said the crawling beast.
So said, so done. The Ox comes with slow steps.
When he had chewed over the whole case in his head,
He said that from the labor of years
For us alone he bore the heaviest cares,
Traversing without cease that long circle of toils
Which, returning upon itself, brought back to our plains
What Ceres gives us, and sells to the animals;
That this succession of labors
Had as reward, from all of us together,
Many blows, little thanks; then, when he was old,
They thought to honor him each time men
Bought with his blood the indulgence of the Gods.
Thus spoke the Ox. The Man said: Let us silence
This tedious declaimer;
He seeks grand words, and comes here to make himself,
Instead of an arbiter, an accuser.
I reject him too. The tree being taken as judge,
It was even worse. It served as a refuge
Against heat, rain, and the fury of the winds;
For us alone it adorned the gardens and fields.
The shade was not the only good it knew how to do;
It bent under fruit; yet for salary
A boor cut it down, that was its wage,
Although throughout the year it generously gives us
Either flowers in Spring, or fruit in Autumn;
Shade in Summer, in Winter the pleasures of the hearth.
Why not prune it, without taking the axe?
By its temperament it would still have lived.
The Man, finding it bad that he had been convinced,
Wanted at all costs to have won his case.
I am very good, he said, to listen to such people.
With the sack and the serpent at once he gave
Against the walls, until he killed the beast.
Thus do the great behave.
Reason offends them; they get it into their heads
That everything was born for them, quadrupeds, and people,
And serpents.
If anyone opens his mouth,
He is a fool. – I agree. But what then should one do?
– Speak from afar, or else keep silent.
Jean de La Fontaine
Translation generated by Poésies 123 with assistance from the deepseek-chat artificial-intelligence model.
Text published on Poésies 123: https://www.poesies123.com/en/fable-the-man-and-the-adder-jean-de-la-fontaine/