Explore "The Weasel in the Granary" by Jean de La Fontaine on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
A weasel through a hole contrived to squeeze, / (She was recovering from disease,) / Which led her to a farmer's hoard. / There lodged, her wasted form she cherish'd; / Heaven knows the lard and victuals stored / That by her gnawing perish'd! / Of which the consequence / Was sudden corpulence. / A week or so was past, / When having fully broken fast. / A noise she heard, and hurried / To find the hole by which she came, / And seem'd to find it not the same; / So round she ran, most sadly flurried; / And, coming back, thrust out her head, / Which, sticking there, she said, / 'This is the hole, there can't be blunder: / What makes it now so small, I wonder, / Where, but the other day, I pass'd with ease? ' / A rat her trouble sees, / And cries, 'But with an emptier belly; / You enter'd lean, and lean must sally. ' / What I have said to you / Has eke been said to not a few, / Who, in a vast variety of cases,[1] / Have ventured into such-like places.[2]
[1]: _A vast variety of cases_. -- Chamfort says of this passage: "La Fontaine, with his usual delicacy, here alludes to the king's farmers and other officers in place; and abruptly quits the subject as if he felt himself on ticklish ground. "