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When Hell had brought forth the Gout and the Spider,
“My daughters,” said he, “you may boast
Of being for the human race
Equally to be dreaded.
Now let us consider the places where you must dwell.
Do you see these narrow hovels,
And these palaces so grand, so fair, so richly gilded?
I have purposed to make them your retreats.
Here then, here are two little sticks;
Settle yourselves, or draw lots.
– There is nothing, said the Spider, in the hovels that pleases me.”
The other, quite the contrary, seeing the Palaces full
Of those people named Physicians,
Did not believe she could dwell there at her ease.
She takes the other lot, plants her stake there,
Stretches at her pleasure on the toe of a poor man,
Saying: “I do not believe that in this post I shall be idle,
Nor that to dislodge me and pack my bags
Hippocrates will ever summon me.”
The Spider meanwhile sets herself up in a wainscot,
As if of these places she had made a lease for life,
Works to stay there: behold her web woven,
Behold gnats caught.A servant comes to sweep away all the work.
Another web woven, another sweep of the broom.
The poor Beast moves house every day.
At last, after a vain attempt,
He goes to find the Gout. She was in the country,
A thousand times more wretched
Than the most wretched Spider.
Her host led her now to split wood,
Now to dig, to hoe. The Gout, much harassed,
Is, they say, half cured.
“Oh! I can no longer, says she, resist it.
Let us change, my sister the Spider.” And the other to listen:
She takes her at her word, slips into the cabin:
No sweep of the broom obliges her to change.
The Gout, on the other hand, goes straight to lodge
With a Prelate, whom she condemns
Never to move from his bed.
Poultices, God knows. People are not ashamed
To make the ill always go from bad to worse.
Both thus found their account;
And did most wisely to change their dwelling.
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-gout-and-the-spider-jean-de-la-fontaine/