The Fables of Fontaine: Vol. 2

A storybook collecting short fables. Most are not original to the author but from ancient poems now lost.

The Crow and the Fox

One day a crow held stolen cheese in its beak and stood in a tree.

The fox living under the tree saw this and looked up to say: "Brother, what you hold in your mouth is no tempting feast, but a trouble that any person of sense flees. Your throat is so narrow, and the cheese so thick and heavy— if you swallow it straight, I fear brother will lose his life. The cheese-makers in the city know this well, and so let you steal the cheese rather than keep it safe."

The crow paid no mind and still bit the cheese without loosening.

Seeing the crow would not give up, the fox said again: "Brother, this cheese was never a delicacy worth tasting. When you once soared the mountains without a care, had you ever heard the name of cheese in this world? I say this thing should never have been ours to enjoy— let it rot among the hills, be blown by wild wind into the current. A thousand times wrong that it became the fetter binding you, brother."

The crow shook its feathers and still bit the cheese.

Seeing it still would not yield, the fox sighed: "Brother, if you truly mean to taste cheese this way, I, a fox outside the matter, will not presume to stop you. But brother may not yet know how cheese is cooked; if you gulp it whole in a muddle, I fear you waste such a precious rare thing. Alas—and all the recipes I learned elsewhere are wasted!"

The crow's heart itched and it opened its mouth unbidden. "Those recipes of yours—can you teach them to me?"

At that opening the cheese fell to the ground; the fox seized it and turned straight back into its den.

This story says: those who would pry into mysteries they ought not know in the end lose even all they already possessed.