“I will make you a pair.  Bring me two fat camels.  I will skin them and make you some good shoes.”

The lion went away and brought the two fat camels.  “They are thin,” said the jackal.  “Go change them for others.”

He brought two thin ones.

“They are fat,” said the jackal.  He skinned them, cut some thorns from a palm-tree, rolled the leather around the lion’s paws and fastened it there with the thorns.

“Ouch!” screamed the lion.

“He who wants to look finely ought not to say, ‘Ouch.’”

“Enough, my dear.”

“My uncle, I will give you the rest of the slippers and boots.”  He covered the lion’s skin with the leather and stuck in the thorns.  When he reached the knees, “Enough, my dear,” said the lion.  “What kind of shoes are those?”

“Keep still, my uncle, these are slippers, boots, breeches, and clothes.”

When he came to the girdle the lion said, “What kind of shoes are those?”

“My uncle, they are slippers, boots, breeches, and clothing.”  In this way he reached the lion’s neck.  “Stay here,” he said, “until the leather dries.  When the sun rises look it in the face.  When the moon rises, too, look it in the face.”

“It is good,” said the lion, and the jackal went away.

The lion remained and did as his companion had told him.  But his feet began to swell, the leather became hard, and he could not get up.  When the jackal came back he asked him, “How are you, my uncle?”

“How am I?  Wretch, son of a wretch, you have deceived me.  Go, go; I will recommend you to my children.”

The jackal came near and the lion seized him by the tail.  The jackal fled, leaving his tail in the lion’s mouth.

“Now,” said the lion, “you have no tail.  When my feet get well I will catch you and eat you up.”

The jackal called his cousins and said to them, “Let us go and fill our bellies with onions in a garden that I know.”  They went with him.  Arriving he tied their tails to the branches of a young palm-tree, and twisted them well.  “Who has tied our tails like this?” they asked.  “No one will come before you have filled your bellies.  If you see the master of the garden approach, struggle and fly.  You see that I, too, am bound as you are.”  But he had tied an onion-stalk on himself.  When the owner of the garden arrived, the jackal saw him coming.  They struggled, their tails were all torn out, and stayed behind with the branches to which they were fastened.  When the jackal saw the man, he cut the onion stem and escaped the first of all.

As for the lion, when his feet were cured, he went to take a walk and met his friend the jackal.  He seized him and said, “Now I’ve got you, son of a wretch.”

The other answered, “What have I done, my uncle?”

“You stuck thorns in my flesh.  You said to me, ’I will make you some shoes.’  Now what shall I do to you?”