Le Rat et l’Huître

Un Rat, hôte d’un champ, rat de peu de cervelle,
Des lares paternels un jour se trouva sou.
Il laissa là le champ, le grain, et la javelle,
Va courir le pays, abandonne son trou.
Sitôt qu’il fut hors de la case:
"Que le monde, dit-il, est grand et spacieux!
Voilà les Apennins, et voici la Caucase."
La moindre taupinée était mont à ses yeux.
Au bout de quelques jours, le voyageur arrive
En un certain canton où Téthys sur la rive
Avait laissé mainte huître; et notre Rat d’abord
Crut voir, en les voyant, des vaisseaux de haut bord.
"Certes, dit-il, mon père était un pauvre sire:
Il n’osait voyager, craintif au dernier point.
Pour moi, j’ai déjà vu le maritime empire;
J’ai passé les déserts, mais nous n’y bûmes point."
D’un certain magister le Rat tenait ces choses,
Et les disait à travers champs,
N’étant pas de ces rats qui, livres rongeants,
Se font savants jusques aux dents.
Parmi tant d’huîtres toutes closes
Une s'était ouverte; et, se bâillant au soleil,
Par un doux zéphir réjouie,
Humait l’air, respirait, était épanouie,
Blanche, grasse, et d’un goût, à la voir, nonpareil.
D’aussi loin que le Rat voit cette Huître qui bâille:
"Qu’aperçois-je, dit-il, c’est quelque victuaille;
Et, si je ne me trompe à la couleur du mets,
Je dois faire aujourd’hui bonne chère, ou jamais."
Là-dessus, maître Rat, plein de belle espérance,
Approche de l’écaille, allonge un peu le cou,
Se sent pris comme aux lacs; car l’Huître tout d’un coup
Se referme: et voilà ce que fait l’ignorance.
Cette fable contient plus d’un enseignement:
Nous y voyons premièrement
Que ceux qui n’ont du monde aucune expérience
Sont aux moindres objets frappés d’étonnement;
Et puis nous y pouvons apprendre
Que tel est pris qui croyait prendre.

The Rat and the Oyster

A Rat living in a field, a rat of weak mind and brain,
Fed up once with father’s household gods so bland,
Leaving behind the field, the sheaves, and the grain,
Quit his hole, set forth to travel the land.
As soon as he’d gone from his grange,
"How spacious the world is," he said, "how big and wide!
Here’s the Caucasus; there’s the Apennine range."
A little molehill, to his eyes, was a mountainside.
Wandering thus, our traveler, after several days more,
Got to a district where Tethys, right on the shore,
Had left many an oyster. Straightway our Rat did opine
On seeing them, that he was observing big ships of the line.
"Certainly," he said, "my father was just a pitiful soul.
He didn’t dare travel, beset by fears as he could be.
Whereas I’ve already had a good look at the whole
Ocean realm, crossed deserts (but no drinking there for me)."
By a schoolmaster the Rat had been provided his lore,
But mixed it all up in disarray,
Not being one of those rats who, nibbling at books all day,
Became scholars to the teeth in every way.
Among all these oysters shut tight, a score,
One had opened up its shell; gaping wide at the sun,
Rejoicing in a warm, gentle breeze,
It sniffed the air, breathing, expanding at ease;
White, fat, and of a savor, one could see, matched by none.
From as far as the Rat saw this Oyster, yawning on the sand,
"What do I perceive?" he said. "It’s victuals, at hand.
And if I’m right on the color of the dish, I feel
That, today or never, out of it I’m to have a tasty meal."
Whereupon Master Rat, buoyed by fine hopes in profusion,
Approached the shell, stuck out his neck, all brash,
Found himself caught as in a snare; for the Oyster, in a flash,
Closed. That’s the fruit of ignorance and delusion.
This fable contains more than one bit of edification:
What we see first is a demonstration
That those whose experience of the world is but illusion
Judge every trivial object to be an astonishing revelation.
And then this lesson is also apt:
The would-be trapper is often trapped.