Page:The fireside sphinx.djvu/262

 234 to American as to French children; and all may read how Moumouth lived, suffered, triumphed, died, and was honoured in his grave; while the cruel steward who persecuted him was appropriately cooked and eaten by avenging cannibals, sighing out with his last breath the name of the innocent animal he had so barbarously sought to destroy.

M. Bédollière, author of this delightful and harrowing tale, borrowed Mère Michel and Lustucru from an old song, familiar to many generations of Gallic infancy.

With schooldays come La Fontaine's Fables,—unless indeed a surfeit of mathematics has by this time driven even La Fontaine from the field,—and youthful students learn, or should learn, of Rodilard