The Good Book_ A Secular Bible - A. C. Grayling [20]
20. The stranger said, ‘I come from a distant land, from pleasant and fruitful hills. Its knowledge and wisdom is greater than in your country, and so are its laws.
21. ‘Come with me to my land and I will show you its happy environs and teach you its lore, for here your acquaintances and neighbours do not appreciate worth, nor know wisdom.
22. ‘My country is like a pleasant garden, full of loving people, wise beyond all other people.
23. ‘You are a scholar, and would learn much from what I could show you; it would be for you to bring that wisdom back again, to teach it to your fellows.’
24. But Charicles said, still holding the undrunk wine in his hand, ‘I cannot accompany you there; here my neighbours are good, and bear me on the wings of their love; when I die, they will make my death sweet and bury me with songs.
25. ‘I fear you, truly I do; you are a stranger, and one who has come unbidden; I am afraid to trust you.
26. ‘If this seems unfriendly of me, forgive me; but it is explained by the tale of the fox and the leopard. Do you know it? Then I will tell it to you.’
27. And Charicles told the following tale.
Chapter 3
1. A fox once lived near a leopard in a land of such plenty that the leopard always had as much as he needed to eat, as well for himself as for his wife the leopardess, and their young; and therefore the fox felt safe.
2. But although the fox and leopard were friends and good neighbours, the fox knew that if dearth came, and the plenty ceased, he might end as prey for the leopard himself; for hunger ends friendships, and necessity brings great changes.
3. So the fox counselled himself, saying, ‘The sages teach that if one comes to slay you, slay him first.’ And he resolved to remove the leopard, leading him into the ways of death to be rid of him.
4. Next day the fox went to the leopard and said, ‘I have seen a place of gardens and lilies, where deer disport themselves in innocence, unwitting of danger;
5. ‘Fawn and doe, and buck alike; handsome and well-grazed with fat flanks and shining coats; easy prey and good eating for such as you.’
6. The leopard was delighted by this picture, and accompanied the fox to the place that the latter had described, smiling with anticipation. The fox said to himself, ‘Ah, how many a smile ends in tears!’
7. When the leopard had seen the paradise, he said to the fox, ‘I must go and tell my wife, and bring her here; how happy she will be to know of it.’
8. But the fox was dismayed by this, for he knew that the leopard’s wife had much wisdom, and would suspect the design that lay behind all he had planned.
9. So he said to the leopard, ‘Do not trust your wife’s judgement in this. Having once built their homes wives do not like to leave them, even if there are better places to live,
10. ‘For they are attached by emotion, not reason, to the den where they raised their young. Hear what she says, but do the opposite.’
11. And indeed when the leopard told his wife, she did not want to move to the garden of lilies with its unsuspecting herds of deer, all the less so because her husband had been shown the garden by the fox.
12. ‘Beware of the fox,’ she told her husband. ‘There are two creatures one cannot trust, because they are crafty: the serpent and the fox. Did you not hear how the fox tricked the lion and killed him with cunning?’
13. ‘How could a fox dare to do such a thing,’ asked the leopard, ‘and kill a lion, so much more powerful than he?’
14. So the leopard’s wife told him the following tale.
Chapter 4
1. The lion loved the fox, but the fox mistrusted the lion because he feared that if famine came into the land, the lion would not hesitate to eat him.
2. One day therefore the fox went to the lion complaining of a terrible headache and asking for his help;
3. And when the lion asked what he could do to help, the fox said, ‘There is a sovereign remedy that the physicians prescribe, and I know what it is.’
4. ‘Tell me,’ said the lion, ‘for I do not like to see you suffer; and if you can