The Miser and His Son

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

Through some adventure I can’t say,
a miser, one fine day, wishing to treat himself well,
ran to the market to buy
some apples for his nourishment.
He carried them to his cupboard,
counted them, arranged them, counted them again,
closed the double bolts of his double lock,
and visited them every day.
This wretch, in his madness,
was sparing the good apples;
but when he found one that was rotten,
sighing, he ate it.
His son, a young schoolboy, eating very poorly,
discovered at last his father’s apples.
He grabs the keys, and goes into that little nook,
followed by two friends with excellent appetites.
Now you can judge the damage they did there,
and how many apples perished.
The miser arrives at that moment,
panting with grief and dread.
My apples! he cried: you scoundrels, you must give them back,
or I’ll have you all hanged.
Father, said the son, calm down, if you please;
we are honest people:
and what harm have we done you?
We only ate the good ones

Florian

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

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