Green Grapes 71

vines. One day the green grapes fell as
he was watching them: the people inside
the wall had lopped off the branch which
climbed. So the fox sprang forward and
stood over them, thinking they must
have fallen because he desired them, or
that the gods to whom foxes pray had
sent them to him, knowing what was in
his heart. Yet, from what he said you
might have fancied that he had always
been certain he would some day find his
hopes fulfilled.

“«Dear green grapes!’ he said, ‘I knew
you would be mine. I have tried to win
you in a hundred ways; every day I have
thought of you a thousand times, and it
was so before I found you. Ah! but you
will be sweet |’

“Then he drew nearer still and took one
of the green grapes in his mouth. The
skin had hardly broken before he knew
that he had been fooled by his hope: the
grapes had kept their greenness all the
summer only because they had been born