The Life of the Grasshopper 



public and private life is spent under his eyes; 

 but, where Jack Rabbit gambols, the Cicada 

 is an entire stranger : La Fontaine never 

 heard of her, never saw her. To him 

 the famous singer is undoubtedly a Grass- 

 hopper. 



Grandville,^ whose drawings have the 

 same delicious spice of malice as the text 

 itself, falls into the same error. In his illus- 

 tration, we see the Ant arrayed like an 

 industrious housewife. Standing on her 

 threshold, beside great sacks of wheat, she 

 turns a contemptuous back on the borrower, 

 who is holding out her foot, I beg pardon, 

 her hand. The second figure w^ears a great 

 cartwheel hat, with a guitar under her arm 

 and her skirt plastered to her legs by the 

 wind, and is the perfect picture of a Grass- 

 hopper. Grandville no more than La Fon- 

 taine suspected the real appearance of the 

 Cicada; he reproduced magnificently the 

 general mistake. 



For the rest, La Fontaine, in his poor 



'Jean Ignace Isidore Gerard (1803-1847), better 

 known by his pseudonym of Grandville. a famous French 

 caricaturist and illustrator of La Fontaine's Fables, 

 Beranjrer's Chansons and the standard French editions 

 of Robinson Crusoe and Gulliver's Travels. — Trans- 

 lator's Note. 



