Fable of the tongue bitten by the teeth. The cedar, made proud of its beauty, doubts the plants around it and, having had them removed from before it, the wind then, being unobstructed, threw it to the ground uprooted.

Fable.

The ant, having found a grain of millet, and the grain, feeling itself seized by it, cried out: 'If you do me the great favour of letting me enjoy my desire of being born, I will render you a hundred of myself.' And so it was done.

The spider, having found a cluster of grapes which for its sweetness was much visited by bees and various kinds of flies, thought it had found a place very convenient for its deceit. Lowering itself down by its slender thread and entering the new dwelling, there every day, placing itself at the openings made by the gaps between the grains of the grapes, it assailed like a robber the wretched creatures that did not guard themselves from it. And after some days the vintager, having gathered that grape and put it with the others, crushed it together with them. So the grape was the snare and deceit both of the deceiving spider and of the deceived flies.

The clematis, not content in its hedge, began to pass with its branches across the common road and to attach itself to the opposite hedge. Whence it was then broken by the passers-by.

The donkey having fallen asleep upon the ice of a deep lake, its heat dissolves that ice, and the donkey, under water to its own harm, awoke and immediately drowned.

A little snow, finding itself stuck to the summit of a rock placed upon the extreme height of a very high mountain, and having gathered its imagination, began to consider and say within itself: 'Now am I not to be judged haughty and proud, having placed me, a little dram of snow, in so high a place, and to allow that so great a quantity of snow as can be seen from here stays lower than me? Certainly my small quantity does not merit this height; for I can well know, by the testimony of my small figure, what the sun did yesterday to my companions, which in a few hours were undone by it, and this happened through their having placed themselves higher than was fitting. I wish to flee the wrath of the sun, lower myself, and find a place fitting for my small quantity.' And having thrown itself down and begun to descend, rolling from the high slopes over the other snow, the more it sought a low place the more its quantity grew, so that, its course ended upon a hill, it found itself of almost no smaller size than the hill that bore it; and it was the last that in that summer was undone by the sun. Told for those who humble themselves: they are exalted.

The falcon, unable to bear with patience the hiding that the duck makes by fleeing before it and going under water, wished to follow it under water like the duck; and having wet its feathers, it remained in that water, and the duck, risen into the air, mocked the falcon that was drowning.

The spider, wishing to catch the fly with its false nets, was cruelly killed upon them by the hornet.

The eagle, wishing to mock the owl, remained with its wings limed, and was taken and killed by man.