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Two gardener brothers had by inheritance
a garden, each cultivating half;
bound by a close friendship,
together they kept their household.
One of them, called Jean, a wit, a fine talker,
believed himself a very great scholar;
and Monsieur Jean spent his life
reading the almanac, watching the weather
and the weathervane and the winds.
Soon, giving free rein to his rare genius,
he wanted to discover how from a single pea
thousands of peas can come forth so quickly;
why the seed of the linden,
which produces a great tree, is yet smaller
than the bean that dies two feet from the ground;
finally by what secret mystery
this bean that one sows at random on the earth
knows how to turn itself in its breast,
places its root below and pushes its stem above.
While he dreams and grieves
at not penetrating these important secrets,
he does not water his plot;
his spinach and his lettuce
dry on the stalk; the north wind kills
his fig trees that he does not cover.
No fruit at the market, no money in the purse;
and the poor scholar, with his almanacs,
has only his brother for resource.
The latter, from early morning,
worked while singing some joyous refrain,
dug, watered everything from the peach tree to the sorrel.
About what he did not know, without wishing to discourse,
he sowed simply in order to reap.
So in his plot everything came out marvelously;
he had coins, fruits, and pleasure.
It was he who fed his brother;
and when Monsieur Jean, quite surprised,
came to ask him how he knew how to do it:
my friend, he said to him, here is the whole mystery:
I work, and you reflect;
which one brings in more?
You torment yourself, I enjoy;
which of us two is the wiser?
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-two-gardeners-jean-pierre-claris-de-florian/