[Illustration: THE OLD LION.]
A Lion, worn out with old age, lay fetching his last gasp, and agonizing
in the convulsive struggles of death. Upon which occasion several of the
beasts, who had formerly been sufferers by him, came and revenged
themselves upon him. The Boar, with his mighty tusks, drove at him in a
stroke that glanced like lightning. And the Bull gored him with his
violent horns. Which, when the Ass saw they might do without any danger,
he too came up, and threw his heels into the Lion's face. Upon which,
the poor old expiring tyrant uttered these words with his last dying
groan:--'Alas! how grievous is it to suffer insults, even from the brave
and the valiant; but to be spurned by so base a creature as this is, who
is the disgrace of Nature, is worse than dying ten thousand deaths.'