A very wealthy merchant possessed several country-houses, where
he kept a large number of cattle of every kind. He retired with
his wife and family to one of these estates, in order to improve
it under his own direction. He had the gift of understanding the
language of beasts, but with this condition, that he should not,
on pain of death, interpret it to any one else. And this hindered
him from communicating to others what he learned by means of this
faculty.

He kept in the same stall an ox and an ass. One day as he sat
near them, and was amusing himself in looking at his children who
were playing about him, he heard the ox say to the ass,
"Sprightly, O! how happy do I think you, when I consider the ease
you enjoy, and the little labour that is required of you. You are
carefully rubbed down and washed, you have well-dressed corn, and
fresh clean water. Your greatest business is to carry the
merchant, our master, when he has any little journey to make, and
were it not for that you would be perfectly idle. I am treated in
a very different manner, and my condition is as deplorable as
yours is fortunate. Daylight no sooner appears than I am fastened
to a plough, and made to work till night, which so fatigues me,
that sometimes my strength entirely fails. Besides, the labourer,
who is always behind me, beats me continually. By drawing the
plough, my tail is all flayed; and in short, after having
laboured from morning to night, when I am brought in they give me
nothing to eat but sorry dry beans, not so much as cleansed from
dirt, or other food equally bad; and to heighten my misery, when