The Drunkard and His Wife

Fable by Jean De La Fontaine Collection The FablesThemes LifePeriod 17th century

Each has his fault, to which he always returns:
Neither shame nor fear can cure it.
On this subject, a tale comes back to me:
I say nothing that I do not support
With some example. A devotee of Bacchus
Was ruining his health, his mind and his purse.
Such people have not run half their course
Before they are at the end of their coins.
One day when this man, full of the juice of the vine,
Had left his senses at the bottom of a bottle,
His wife locked him in a certain tomb.
There the fumes of the new wine
Fermented at leisure. On waking he finds
The trappings of death around his body:
A lamp, a burial shroud.
Oh! he said, what is this? Is my wife a widow?
Thereupon, his spouse, dressed as Alecto,
Masked and counterfeiting the tone of her voice,
Comes to the supposed dead man, approaches his coffin,
Offers him a gruel fit for Lucifer.
The Husband then does not doubt in any way
That he is a citizen of hell.
What person are you? he says to this phantom.
– The cellarer of the kingdom
Of Satan, she replied; and I bring food
To those whom the black tomb encloses.
The Husband replies without thinking:
You do not bring them anything to drink?

Jean de La Fontaine

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