The princely Greek then turned to a wolf with the same proposals, and risking a similar rebuff said:  “Comrade, it overwhelms me that a sweet young shepherdess should be driven to complain to the echoing crags of the gluttonous appetite that impelled you to devour her sheep.  Time was when you would have protected her sheepfold.  In those days you led an honest life.  Leave your lairs and become, instead of a wolf, an honest man again.”

“What is that?” answered the wolf.  “I don’t see your point.  You come here treating me as though I were a carnivorous beast.  But what are you, who are talking in this strain?  Would not you and yours have eaten these sheep, which all the village is deploring, if I had not?  Now say, on your oath, do you really think I should have loved slaughter any less if I had remained a man?  For a mere word, you men are at times ready to strangle each other.  Are you not, therefore, as wolves one to another?  All things considered, I maintain as a matter of fact that, rascal for rascal, it is better to be a wolf than a man.  I decline to make any change in my condition.”

In this way did Ulysses go from one to another making the same representations and receiving from all, large and small alike, the same refusals.  Liberty, unbridled lust of appetite, the ambushes of the woods, all these things were their supreme delight.  They all renounced the glory attaching to great deeds.

They thought that in following their passions they were enjoying freedom, not seeing that they were but slaves to themselves.

XXXIX

THE QUARREL BETWEEN THE DOGS AND THE CATS AND BETWEEN THE CATS AND THE MICE

(Book XII—­No. 8)

Discord has always reigned in the universe; of this our world furnishes a thousand different instances, for with us the sinister goddess has many subjects.

Let us begin with the four elements.  Here you may be astonished to observe that they are, throughout, in antagonism to each other.  Besides these four potentates how many other forces of all descriptions are everlastingly at war!

In bygone times there was a house which was full of cats and dogs who lived together like amicable cousins, for this reason:  Their master had made a hundred irrevocable laws and rules, settling their respective tasks, their meals, and every other incident of their lives, and at the same time he threatened with the whip the first one who should promote a quarrel.  The kindly, almostly brotherly nature of this union was very edifying to the neighbours.

But at last the concord ceased.  Some little favouritism in the bestowal of a bone, or a dish of food, caused the outraged remainder to raise furious protests.  I have heard some chroniclers attribute the discord to an affair of love and jealousy.  At any rate, whatever the origin, the altercation speedily fired both hall and kitchen, and divided the company into partisans for this cat or for that dog.