A FABLE.

The ant found a grain of millet. The seed feeling itself taken
prisoner cried out to her: "If you will do me the kindness to allow
me accomplish my function of reproduction, I will give you a hundred
such as I am." And so it was.

A Spider found a bunch of grapes which for its sweetness was much
resorted to by bees and divers kinds of flies. It seemed to her that
she had found a most convenient spot to spread her snare, and having
settled herself on it with her delicate web, and entered into her
new habitation, there, every day placing herself in the openings
made by the spaces between the grapes, she fell like a thief on the
wretched creatures which were not aware of her. But, after a few
days had passed, the vintager came, and cut away the bunch of grapes
and put it with others, with which it was trodden; and thus the
grapes were a snare and pitfall both for the treacherous spider and
the betrayed flies.

An ass having gone to sleep on the ice over a deep lake, his heat
dissolved the ice and the ass awoke under water to his great grief,
and was forthwith drowned.

A falcon, unable to endure with patience the disappearance of a
duck, which, flying before him had plunged under water, wished to
follow it under water, and having soaked his feathers had to remain
in the water while the duck rising to the air mocked at the falcon
as he drowned.

The spider wishing to take flies in her treacherous net, was cruelly
killed in it by the hornet.

An eagle wanting to mock at the owl was caught by the wings in
bird-lime and was taken and killed by a man.

Fables on lifeless objects (1271--1274).