Page:Fables by La Fontaine translated by Elizur Wright.djvu/112

42  For, quick treating to their reedy bower,

He trod on twenty of them in an hour.

Of little folks it oft has been the fate

To suffer for the follies of the great.



V.

THE BAT AND THE TWO WEASELS.10

 A BLUNDERING bat once stuck her head

Into a wakeful weasel’s bed;

Whereat the mistress of the house,

A deadly foe of rats and mice,

Was making ready in a trice

To eat the stranger as a mouse.

'What! do you dare,' she said, 'to creep in

The very bed I sometimes sleep in,

Now, after all the provocation

I've suffered from your thievish nation?

Are you not really a mouse,

That gnawing pest of every house,

Your special aim to do the cheese ill?

Ay, that you are, or I'm no weasel.'

'I beg your pardon,' said the bat;

My kind is very far from that.

What! I a mouse! Who told you such a lie?

Why, ma'am, I am a bird;

And, if you doubt my word, 