La Goutte L’Araignee. Fable L.

Superb early French engraving of a bed ridden wealthy gentleman being attended by his doctor, illustrating one of Jean de La Fontaine’s fables from Book 3, Fable 8.

Book 3, Fable 8

When Nature angrily turn’d out Those plagues, the spider and the gout,– ‘See you,’ said she, ‘those huts so meanly built, These palaces so grand and richly gilt? By mutual agreement fix Your choice of dwellings; or if not, To end th’ affair by lot, Draw out these little sticks.’ ‘The huts are not for me,’ the spider cried; ‘And not for me the palace,’ cried the gout; For there a sort of men she spied Call’d doctors, going in and out, From whom, she could not hope for ease. So hied her to the huts the fell disease, And, fastening on a poor man’s toe, Hoped there to fatten on his woe, And torture him, fit after fit, Without a summons e’er to quit, From old Hippocrates. The spider, on the lofty ceiling, As if she had a life-lease feeling. Wove wide her cunning toils, Soon rich with insect spoils. A maid destroy’d them as she swept the room: Repair’d, again they felt the fatal broom. The wretched creature, every day, From house and home must pack away. At last, her courage giving out, She went to seek her sister gout, And in the field descried her, Quite starved: more evils did betide her Than e’er befel the poorest spider– Her toiling host enslaved her so, And made her chop, and dig, and hoe! (Says one, “Kept brisk and busy, The gout is made half easy.”) ‘O, when,’ exclaim’d the sad disease, ‘Will this my misery stop? O, sister spider, if you please, Our places let us swop.’ The spider gladly heard, And took her at her word,– And flourish’d in the cabin-lodge, Not forced the tidy broom to dodge The gout, selecting her abode With an ecclesiastic judge, Turn’d judge herself, and, by her code, He from his couch no more could budge. The salves and cataplasms Heaven knows, That mock’d the misery of his toes; While aye, without a blush, the curse, Kept driving onward worse and worse. Needless to say, the sisterhood Thought their exchange both wise and good.