The Young Hen and the Old Fox

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

A young pullet, young and without experience,
while trotting, clucking, scratching,
found herself, I know not how,
very far from the henhouse, cradle of her childhood.
She noticed that it was already late.
As she was returning there, behold, an old fox
to her troubled eyes appears.
The poor trembling pullet
commended her soul to God.
But the fox, approaching her,
said to her: alas! Miss,
your fright surprises me little;
it is the fault of my brethren,
men of the sack and the rope, infamous ravishers,
whose bloodthirsty appetites
have filled the earth with horrors.
I cannot change them, but at least I work
to preserve by my counsels
the innocent and feeble poultry
from the assaults of my fellows.
I find myself happy only in making myself useful;
and I was going at this very pace to your asylum
to warn your sisters that a bad rumor is abroad,
namely that a certain fox, wicked as he is cunning,
must attack you this night.
I come to watch over you. The credulous innocent
toward the henhouse leads him:
scarcely is he in that retreat,
when he kills, strangles, slaughters, and his bloody claw
piles up the dying stretched upon the ground,
as Diomedes did in the quarter of Rhesus.
He gobbled up everything, great and small,
roosters, chickens and capons; all perished under his teeth.
The worst species of wicked people
is that of old hypocrites.

Florian

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

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