FABLE OF THE CIGALE AND THE ANT 3 



takes ? La Fontaine, who in most of his fables charms 

 us with his exquisite fineness of observation, has here 

 been ill-inspired. His earlier subjects he knew down to 

 the ground : the Fox, the Wolf, the Cat, the Stag, the 

 Crow, the Rat, the Ferret, and so many others, whose 

 actions and manners he describes with a delightful 

 precision of detail. These are inhabitants of his own 

 country ; neighbours, fellow-parishioners. Their life, 

 private and public, is lived under his eyes ; but the 

 Cigale is a stranger to the haunts of Jack Rabbit. La 

 Fontaine had never seen nor heard her. For him the 

 celebrated songstress was certainly a grasshopper. 



Grandville, whose pencil rivals the author's pen, has 

 fallen into the same error. In his illustration to the 

 fable we see the Ant dressed like a busy housewife. On 

 her threshold, beside her full sacks of wheat, she dis- 

 dainfully turns her back upon the would-be borrower, 

 who holds out her claw — pardon, her hand. With a 

 wide coachman's hat, a guitar under her arm, and a 

 skirt wrapped about her knees by the gale, there stands 

 the second personage of the fable, the perfect portrait of 

 a grasshopper. Grandville knew no more than La 

 Fontaine of the true Cigale ; he has beautifully expressed 

 the general confusion. 



But La Fontaine, in this abbreviated history, is only 

 the echo of another fabulist. The legend of the Cigale 

 and the cold welcome of the Ant is as old as selfishness : 

 as old as the world. The children of Athens, going to 

 school with their baskets of rush-work stuffed with figs 

 and olives, w^ere already repeating the story under their 

 breath, as a lesson to be repeated to the teacher. ^' In 

 winter," they used to say, ^'the Ants were putting their 



