Page:Fables of Aesop.pdf/4

 It was reported that the Lion was sick, and the beasts were made to believe, that they could not make their court better than by visiting him. Most of them went but the Fox was not among the number, upon which the Lion sends a Jackall to ask him why he never came to see him. "Why," replied the Fox, "I have been several times on my way to kiss his hand, but seeing the print of my fellow subjects' feet at his cave all pointing forwards, I dared not enter it." The Lion's illness was only a sham, the easier to devour the beasts.

When an enemy makes fine professions, we have need of caution.

A Stag saw himself in a clear spring, and surveyed his figure from head to foot with great pleasure. 'Ah!' said he, 'what a glorious pair of branching horns is there! but I have a set of such legs as makes me ashamed to see them.' While he was giving himself these airs, he was alarmed with the noise of some huntsmen and hounds that were making towards him. Starting off, he threw dogs and men far behind him; but his horns were caught in a thicket, and held him till the hounds took him. At death he uttered these words, 'Alas! what I prided myself in has ruined me, & what I disliked might have saved me.

.—Vanity takes delight in what often proves injurious.