[Illustration: THE STAG LOOKING INTO THE WATER.]
A Stag that had been drinking at a clear spring, saw himself in the
water: and, pleased with the prospect, stood afterwards for some time
contemplating and surveying his shape and features from head to
foot.--'Ah!' says he, 'what a glorious pair of branching horns are
there! how gracefully do those antlers hang over my forehead, and give
an agreeable turn to my whole face! If some other parts of my body were
but proportionable to them, I would turn my back to nobody; but I have a
set of such legs as really makes me ashamed to see them. People may talk
what they please of their conveniencies, and what great need we stand in
of them upon several occasions; but, for my part, I find them so very
slender and unsightly, that I had as lief have none at all.' While he
was giving himself these airs, he was alarmed with the noise of some
huntsmen, and a pack of hounds that had been just laid on upon the
scent, and were making towards him. Away he flies, in some
consternation, and, bounding nimbly over the plain, threw dogs and men
at a vast distance behind him. After which, taking a very thick copse,
he had the ill-fortune to be entangled by his horns in a thicket; where
he was held fast till the hounds came in and pulled him down. Finding
now how it was like to go with him, in the pangs of death he is said to
have uttered these words:--'Unhappy creature that I am! I am too late
convinced, that what I prided myself in has been the cause of my
undoing, and what I so much disliked was the only thing that could have
saved me.'