They were glad enough to get away from the place where they had had such ill luck, and so they went to the brother’s house once more. The brother was sorry for them, and gave them enough money to buy a small place, and there the hard-hearted brother took his family and lived.
The younger brother and his wife and his mother lived very happily in their beautiful home, but they always remembered the Stone Lion on the hillside, who gave them their good fortune.
The Oyster and Its Claimants
(From Walter Thornbury’s translation of Esop’s Fables, made into verse by M. De La Fontaine. Fable CLXXII. Page 501—“La Fontaine’s Fables.”)
There is something so grand in this species of composition, that many of the Ancients have attributed the greater part of these fables to Socrates; selecting as their author that individual amongst mortals who was most directly in communication with the gods. I am rather surprised that they have not maintained that these fables descended direct from heaven.... The fable is a gift which comes from the immortals; it if were the gift of man, he who gave it to us would deserve a temple. From Preface to La Fontaine’s Fables.
Two travellers discovered on the beach
An Oyster, carried thither by the sea.