Page:La Fontaine - The Original Fables Of, 1913.djvu/63

Rh with an eel and a swallow. After a time the three travellers were stopped by a river. This the eel got over by swimming and the swallow by flying"

"Well! what about Ceres? What did she do?" cried the crowd with one voice.

"She did what she did!" retorted the speaker in anger. "But first she raged against you. What! Does it take a child's story to open your ears, you who should be eager for any news of the peril that menaces; you, the only state in Greece that takes no heed? You ask what Ceres did. Why do you not ask what Philip does?"

At this reproach the assembly was stirred. A mere fable brought them open-eared to all the orator would say.

We are all Athenians in this respect. I myself am, even as I point this moral. I should take the utmost pleasure now in hearing "The Ass's Skin" told to me. The world is old, they say: so it is; but, nevertheless, it is as greedy of amusement as a child.