The Lion and the Mouse

5-7 min read
13 pages

The lion and the mouse, Aesop's fable to read aloud. He lets her go because she is too small to bother with — and then the ropes come.

A lion was asleep under a fig tree with his paws crossed and his chin resting on them, the way a lion sleeps when there is nothing at all in the world to worry him.

A mouse came along the root of the tree in a hurry, because she was always in a hurry, and she did not look up, and so she ran straight across the lion's nose.

The lion woke. One paw came down over her so fast that she never saw it move, and then she was in the dark, with the warm weight of it pressing down above her back.

«I'm sorry,» said the mouse into the dark. «I wasn't looking where I was going. Please let me go, and one day I'll help you.»

The paw lifted a little, and one yellow eye came down close to the gap. «You,» said the lion slowly, «will help me.»

«Yes,» said the mouse. She said it steadily, which surprised them both.

The lion laughed, and a lion's laugh is a sound the ground feels before the ears do. He took his paw away and put his chin back on the other one. «Go on, then,» he said. «You're too small to be angry with.» And the mouse went, and he went back to sleep, and by evening he had forgotten the whole thing.

The summer passed. Then one evening there were men in the wood with ropes, and they set the ropes low between the trees where the paths crossed, and in the dark, walking the way he always walked, the lion went into them.

He fought. He was very strong, and the ropes were stronger than he was, and the more he pulled the tighter they drew, until by morning they were so hard around his shoulders that he could not move them at all. Then he roared, because there was nothing else left to do.

The mouse heard him from the other side of the wood. She came out of the grass and looked at the ropes, and at the lion inside them, and at the ropes again.

«Hold still,» she said, and started to bite. Rope is not hard for a mouse. It is only slow. She chewed through one strand and found another under it, and her jaw began to ache, and she kept going while the light came up through the trees.

By the middle of the morning the last strand gave. The ropes slid off into the leaves and the lion stood up and shook himself all over, and then he looked down at her for a long time without saying anything.

«You did say,» he said at last. «I remember it. I didn't believe you.» «No,» said the mouse. «Nobody ever does.»

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Text source: Fable by Aesop (6th century BC), public domain. The text was written anew for Marytale — it is not a reprint of anyone else's version.

Where «The Lion and the Mouse» comes from and who wrote it down

The Lion and the Mouse

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