The Parricide

Fable by Jean-Pierre Claris de Florian Period 18th century

A son had killed his father.
That dreadful crime scarcely ever occurs
among tigers and bears; but man commits it.
This parricide had the art to hide his deed,
no one suspected him: fierce and solitary,
he fled from humankind, he lived in the woods,
hoping to escape remorse as he had the law.
One day he was seen destroying with stones
a wretched nest of sparrows.
Why! What have those birds done to you?
a passerby asks him: why so much rage?
What have they done to me? The criminal replies:
those lying little birds, may heaven confound them,
reproach me for having murdered my father.
The passerby looks at him; he grows troubled, he turns pale,
his crime is written on his brow:
brought before the judge, he confesses and atones for it.
O last friend of the virtues,
you whom one would vainly try to avoid or deceive,
terrible conscience, none can escape you!

Florian

Translation generated by Poésies 123 with assistance from the deepseek-chat artificial-intelligence model.

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