The Crow and the Fox by La Fontaine: the Full Text, and the Flatterer's Lesson

The FableLe Corbeau et le Renard, the Complete Original Text

The fable is the second of Book I in Jean de La Fontaine's Fables, published in 1668 : it comes straight after La Cigale et la Fourmi. Old editions punctuate the speeches with dashes ; we give them here with quotation marks, without changing a word.

Maître Corbeau, sur un arbre perché,
Tenait en son bec un fromage.
Maître Renard, par l'odeur alléché,
Lui tint à peu près ce langage :
« Hé ! bonjour, Monsieur du Corbeau.
Que vous êtes joli ! que vous me semblez beau !
Sans mentir, si votre ramage
Se rapporte à votre plumage,
Vous êtes le Phénix des hôtes de ces bois. »

À ces mots le Corbeau ne se sent pas de joie ;
Et pour montrer sa belle voix,
Il ouvre un large bec, laisse tomber sa proie.
Le Renard s'en saisit, et dit : « Mon bon Monsieur,
Apprenez que tout flatteur
Vit aux dépens de celui qui l'écoute :
Cette leçon vaut bien un fromage, sans doute. »
Le Corbeau, honteux et confus,
Jura, mais un peu tard, qu'on ne l'y prendrait plus.

Jean de La Fontaine, Fables.

A plain prose translation, offered as a reading aid ; the print itself carries the French original.

Master Crow, perched on a tree, held a cheese in his beak. Master Fox, drawn by the smell, spoke to him more or less thus: “Well, hello there, Sir Crow. How handsome you are! how fine you look to me! Truly, if your song matches your plumage, you are the Phoenix of all the dwellers of these woods.”

At these words the Crow is beside himself with joy; and to show off his fine voice, he opens a wide beak and lets his prize fall. The Fox seizes it and says: “My good sir, learn that every flatterer lives at the expense of the one who listens to him: this lesson is well worth a cheese, no doubt.” The Crow, ashamed and confused, swore, though a little late, that he would not be caught again.

Where does this fable come from?

It comes from a long way back. Six centuries before our era, Aesop already tells of a crow holding a piece of meat and losing it for wanting to sing. The Latin fabulist Phaedrus takes it up, and La Fontaine makes it the second fable of his first book, right after La Cigale et la Fourmi. He changes neither the bird nor the trick: he changes the tone, and replaces the meat with a cheese.

One word often stops readers: the Phoenix. It is the unique bird of legend, reborn from its ashes, of which only one exists in the world. Telling someone he is “the Phoenix of all the dwellers of these woods” is telling him he has no equal. Flattery is never done by halves.

A Stanza-by-Stanza Reading

Eighteen lines, alternating eight and ten syllables, with no stanza breaks: a single sweep, from the branch to the fall. One narrator, two speeches, and a moral spoken by a character rather than by the poet.

Two lines, and the scene is set

“Master Crow, perched on a tree, held a cheese in his beak.” A place, a character, a coveted object: the scene is staged in two lines. The word Maître, given to both animals, is already ironic: it was the title given to lawyers and notaries. Two counsels are about to plead, and one of them will not say a word.

The fox never quite lies

This is the fine point of the text, and it is rarely noticed. The fox does not say the crow sings well. He says: “if your song matches your plumage”. Everything is in that “if”. He sets a condition and lets the crow fulfil it himself, so he will have stated nothing false. Effective flattery does not lie: it suggests, and lets the other do the rest.

The fall, and who speaks the moral

The crow opens his beak, the cheese falls, the fox seizes it. And there La Fontaine does something unusual: the lesson is spoken not by the poet but by the thief, with his mouth full. He charges for his lesson with what he has just stolen. The last word goes to the crow, ashamed, swearing “a little late”.

Learn that every flatterer lives at the expense of the one who listens to him. Le Corbeau et le Renard, the moral, spoken by the fox

Why it is the fox who gives the lesson

La Cigale et la Fourmi, just before it in the collection, stops without a moral and leaves the reader to judge. Here it is the opposite: the moral is written in plain words. But it is placed in the mouth of the winner, who has just cheated. Is a lesson given by a swindler still a lesson? It is true, and it is self-serving: the fox uses it to justify his theft. La Fontaine neither condemns the fox nor pities the crow, he shows a mechanism. And that may be why the fable holds: everyone recognises a scene they have lived through, on one side or the other.

The Poem on Your Wall

At Heure d'été we set the full text of Le Corbeau et le Renard as a typographic art print, composed like the page of an old edition: the poem, the poet's name, nothing else. Printed to order on 170 g/m² matte paper, it finds its place in a reading corner, above a desk, or inside a gallery wall of literary prints.

A poem you love on a wall is a text you reread. That is the whole idea.

The Last Word

Le Corbeau et le Renard is probably the most recited fable in the French language, and it still works because it judges no one. Read it, read it again, and if it is one of yours, give it a place where you can see it every day.