The Wolf Accusing the Fox before the Monkey

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

A Wolf complained that he had been robbed:
A Fox, his neighbor, of rather wicked life,
For this alleged theft was summoned by him.
Before the Monkey the case was pleaded,
Not by Lawyers, but by each Party.
Themis had never worked,
In Monkey’s memory, on a more tangled case.
The Magistrate sweated on his judgment seat.
After they had argued well,
Replied, shouted, raged,
The Judge, informed of their malice,
Told them: “I have known you both a long time, my friends,
And both of you will pay the fine;
For you, Wolf, you complain, though nothing has been taken from you;
And you, Fox, have taken what is demanded of you.”
The judge claimed that, rightly or wrongly,
One cannot fail when condemning a scoundrel.

Jean de La Fontaine

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

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