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A hare of good character
wanted to have many friends.
Many! You will tell me, that is a great matter;
a single one is rare in this land.
I admit it; but my hare had this little whim,
and did not know that Aristotle
said to the young Greeks admitted to his school:
my friends, there is no friend.
Ceaselessly he occupied himself with obliging and pleasing;
if a rabbit passed, with a gentle and civil air
quickly he ran to him: my cousin, he said,
I have fine wild thyme right near my burrow,
let me do you the favor of breakfasting at my home.
If he saw a horse grazing in the countryside,
he went to approach him: perhaps my lord
has need to drink; at the foot of the mountain
I know a transparent lake
that is never wrinkled by the slightest zephyr:
if my lord wishes, at once
I shall have the honor of leading him there.
Thus, for all the animals,
stags, sheep, steeds, does, bulls,
obliging, eager, always full of zeal,
he wanted to make of each a faithful friend,
and believed himself loved because he loved them.
One certain day, while tranquil in his shelter he slept,
the sound of the horn awakens him, he decamps as quickly as possible.
Four dogs leap after him,
a cursed huntsman urges them on;
and there is our hare measuring the fallow fields.
He goes, turns, comes back, passes the same places again,
leaps, crosses a long space
to mislead the dogs, and, swift as lightning,
gains country, and then stops.
Seated, both paws in the air,
eye and ear on the watch, he raises his head,
seeking whether he might see any one of his friends.
He glimpses in some thickets
a rabbit whom he always treated like a brother;
he runs there: for pity’s sake, save me, he says to him,
give shelter to my misery,
open your burrow to me; you see the dreadful peril…
ah! How sorry I am! Replies in a tranquil air
the rabbit: I cannot offer you my lodging,
my wife is giving birth at this moment,
her family and mine have filled my asylum;
I pity you most sincerely:
farewell, my dear friend. That said, he slips away;
and here is the pack that yelps.
The poor hare departs. A few steps farther on,
he meets a bull whom a hundred times in need
he had obliged; tenderly he begs him
to stop for a moment this furious pack
that will be afraid of his horns.
Alas! Says the bull, it would be with all my heart:
but of the heifers the fairest
is alone in this wood, I hear her calling me;
and you would not want to delay my happiness.
Saying these words, he departs. Our hare out of breath
implores in vain a doe, a stag with ten tines,
his surest friends; they scarcely listen to him,
so afraid are they of the sound of the horns.
The poor unfortunate one, without strength and without courage,
was about to surrender to the dogs, when, from the middle of the wood,
two deer resting under the same foliage
hear the voice of the hunters.
One of them rises and departs; the bloody pack
leaves the hare and runs after him.
In vain the angry huntsman
shouts, and swears, and rages; through the forests
the deer leads the hunt away,
makes a long circuit, and returns to the bush
where his companion awaited him,
who in that instant departs in his place.
This one does the same, and, during the whole day,
the two deer, started and abandoned in turn,
exhaust the obstinate pack.
Finally the hunters, all ashamed,
take the good course of returning home;
already the retreat is sounded,
and the deer reunited. The hare palpitating
approaches, and tells them, while congratulating them,
that his numerous friends, in this extreme peril,
had abandoned him. I am not surprised,
replies one of the deer: what good are so many friends?
A single one suffices when he loves us.
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-the-hare-his-friends-and-the-two-deer-jean-pierre-claris-de-florian/