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An envoy of the Grand Seigneur
Preferred, says History, one day at the Emperor’s court,
The forces of his master to those of the Empire.
A German began to say:
Our prince has dependents
Who are so powerful in their own right
That each of them could pay for an army.
The Chiaoux, a man of sense,
Told him: I know by reputation
What each Elector can furnish in men;
And that reminds me
Of a strange adventure, and one that is nonetheless true.
I was in a safe place, when I saw pass
The hundred heads of a Hydra through a hedge.
My blood begins to freeze;
And I believe one would be frightened for less.
Yet I had only the fear, not the harm.
Never could the body of the animal
Come toward me, nor find an opening.
I was pondering this adventure,
When another Dragon, which had only one head
And far more than one tail, appeared to pass.
There I was seized once again
With astonishment and terror.
This head passes, and the body, and each tail too.
Nothing stopped them; one made way for the other.
I maintain that it is the same
With your Emperor and ours.
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-dragon-with-many-heads-and-the-dragon-with-many-tails-jean-de-la-fontaine/