The Wolf and the Lamb

WOLF, meeting with a Lamb astray from the fold, resolved not to
lay violent hands on him, but to find some plea to justify to the
Lamb the Wolf's right to eat him.  He thus addressed him:
"Sirrah, last year you grossly insulted me."  "Indeed," bleated
the Lamb in a mournful tone of voice, "I was not then born."  Then
said the Wolf, "You feed in my pasture."  "No, good sir," replied
the Lamb, "I have not yet tasted grass."  Again said the Wolf,
"You drink of my well."  "No," exclaimed the Lamb, "I never yet
drank water, for as yet my mother's milk is both food and drink
to me."  Upon which the Wolf seized him and ate him up, saying,
"Well! I won't remain supperless, even though you refute every
one of my imputations." 

The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny.


The Wolf and the Lamb

Once upon a time a Wolf was lapping at a spring on a hillside,
when, looking up, what should he see but a Lamb just beginning to
drink a little lower down.  "There's my supper," thought he, "if
only I can find some excuse to seize it."  Then he called out to
the Lamb, "How dare you muddle the water from which I am
drinking?"

"Nay, master, nay," said Lambikin; "if the water be muddy up
there, I cannot be the cause of it, for it runs down from you to
me."

"Well, then," said the Wolf, "why did you call me bad names
this time last year?"

"That cannot be," said the Lamb; "I am only six months old."

"I don't care," snarled the Wolf; "if it was not you it was
your father;" and with that he rushed upon the poor little Lamb
and ate her all up.  But before she died she gasped out
"Any excuse will serve a tyrant."