The Rabbit and the Teal

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

United from their youthful years
by a brotherly friendship,
a rabbit and a teal
lived happy and content.
The rabbit’s burrow was on the edge
of a park bordered by a river.
Morning and evening our good friends,
taking advantage of this proximity,
now at the water’s edge, now under the foliage,
were united at each other’s home.
There, taking their meals, telling each other the news,
they found none so lovely
as repeating that they would always love each other.
This subject returned ceaselessly in their talk.
Everything was shared: pleasure, sorrow, suffering;
what one lacked, the other regretted;
if one had pain, his friend felt it;
if from a good, on the contrary, he tasted hope,
both enjoyed it in advance.
Such was their fate, when one day, dreadful day!
The rabbit, coming to dine at the teal’s,
found her no more: anxious, he calls her;
no one answers his sorrowful cries.
The rabbit, his soul seized with fright,
goes, comes, takes a thousand turns, searches among the reeds,
leans over the waves,
and would fain plunge in to find his friend.
Alas! he cried, do you hear me? Answer me,
my sister, my cherished companion;
do not prolong my terror:
a few more moments, and my life is done;
I would rather die than tremble for you.
Saying these words, he runs, he weeps,
and, advancing along the water,
arrives at last near the castle
where the lord of the place dwells.
There, our desolate rabbit
finds himself in the middle of a flowerbed,
and sees a great aviary
where a thousand diverse birds flew over a pool.
Friendship gives courage.
Our friend, fearing nothing, approaches the grating,
looks and recognizes… oh tenderness! oh happiness!
The teal: at once he utters a cry of joy;
and, without losing time to console his sister,
with his four feet he sets to work
to dig a secret path
to join his friend, and through this underground way
the rabbit suddenly enters the aviary,
like a miner who takes a besieged place.
The frightened birds press together in flight.
He runs to the teal; he drags her at once
into his dark path, leads her under the earth;
and, bringing her back to daylight, he is ready to die
of pleasure.
What a moment for both! Would that I knew how to paint it
as I would know how to feel it!
Our good friends believed they had nothing more to fear;
they were not at the end. The master of the garden,
seeing the damage done in his aviary,
swears to exterminate every last rabbit:
my guns! my ferrets! he cried in anger.
At once guns and ferrets
are all ready.
The guards and the dogs go into the young copses,
rummaging through burrows, through brushwood;
every rabbit that appears meets a dreadful death:
the shores of the Styx are lined with their shades;
on the fateful day of Cannae
fewer Romans were laid low.
Night comes; so much blood has not extinguished the rage
of the lord, who postpones to the next morning
the end of the horrible carnage.
Meanwhile, our rabbit,
hidden under reeds beside the teal,
awaited death trembling,
but implored his sister to flee to the other bank
so as not to die before her.
I will not leave you, the bird answered him;
to separate us would be the cruelest death.
Ah! if you could cross the water!
Why not? Wait for me… the teal leaves him,
and returns dragging an old nest
left by some ducks: she fills it quickly
with reed leaves, presses them, joins them
with feet and beak, shapes it into a little boat capable
of bearing a heavy burden;
then she attaches to this vessel
a bit of rush that will serve as a cable.
That done, and the craft
put in the water, the rabbit enters very gently
into the light skiff, sits on his hindquarters,
while before him the teal swimming
pulls the bit of rush, and goes steering
this ship so dear to his heart.
They land, they disembark; and judge the pleasure!
Not far from the port they go to choose
a refuge where, spending days worthy of envy,
our good friends, free, happy,
loved life all the more
because they owed it to each other.

Florian

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-le-lapin-et-la-sarcelle-jean-pierre-claris-de-florian-2/