Page:La Fontaine - The Original Fables Of, 1913.djvu/70

58 promptings of his years than he sighed for the forbidden pleasures. The greater the hindrance the stronger the desire. Knowing the reason of his galling restrictions, and viewing day by day in his palatial  home the hunting scenes pictured in paint and tapestry  on every wall, his excitement became unrestrained.

Once his eye fell upon a pictured lion. "Ah! Monster!" he exclaimed in a transport of indignation. "It is to you that the shade and fetters in which I live are due!" With that he struck the lion's form a heavy blow with his fist. Hidden under the tapestry a great nail offered its cruel point, and upon this his hand was  impaled. The wound grew beyond the reach of medical skill, and in the end this life, so guarded and cherished,  was lost by means of the very care taken to preserve it.

The same jealous precaution proved fatal to the poet Æschylus. It is said that some fortune-teller menaced him with the fall of a house as his doom, upon which  he at once left the town and made his bed in the open  fields, far from roofs and beneath the sky. But an eagle flew by overhead carrying in its talons a tortoise, and  seeing the bald head of the poet beneath, which it  mistook for a stone, the bird let fall its prey in order  to break the shell of the tortoise. Thus were the days of poor Æschylus ended.

From these two examples it would seem that this art of fortune-telling, if there be any truth in it, causes  one to fall into the very evil one would be in dread of  when one consulted it. But I will demonstrate and maintain that the art is false. I do not believe that Nature