Les plus belles Fables de La Fontaine et autres auteurs célèbres

Abstract

Here are fifty-five fables told in from one to six pages each, with colorful full-page illustrations around their texts on unnumbered pages. Those texts are prose presentations of the fables in sense-lines. The overfed hen in the first fable gets sick from overeating and thus lays no eggs. Unable to break a captured turtle on the ground, a fox gives in to the turtle's suggestion that he soften him up in water. Iriarte's Flautist Ass is well done in poetry. Why try to scrub a pig? The artist presents The Dog and the Crocodile cleverly by taking a point of view at exactly the water level. GA ends surprisingly, in fact in a way I have never seen before. The grasshopper has just said But if you heard my music, I at least entertained you. The ant answers What?! I suffered more from your music this summer than I did from the hard work that lets me eat now! The Stag at the Pool has a happy ending as the stag breaks off a branch of the tree holding him back. The illustration follows this kindly way of ending the story. The moral of MM turns against itself. The fable seems to say that it is not good to dream while we are awake. But we need a little imagination in life! Several morals here are similar in recommending particular fables to particular types of people but not stating a particular lesson.