Original content

English translation

Have you not seen how the discerning one, with sugar, makes the bitter medicine sweet, so that by that stratagem, from the ailing body he drives away long-standing pain and suffering?

A fox was striking up friendship with a wolf and walking in accord with him, and together they came upon a garden. Its gate was firmly shut and its wall full of thorns. They went around it until they reached a hole—wide for the fox and narrow for the wolf. The fox got in easily, and the wolf with great difficulty.

They saw grapes of every kind and found fruits of every color. The fox was shrewd and gave thought to how he would get out again, but the heedless wolf ate as much as he could. Suddenly the gardener became aware of them, took up a cudgel, and set upon them.

The slender-waisted fox quickly leapt out through the hole, but the big-bellied wolf got stuck fast there. The gardener reached him and plied the cudgel, beating him so hard that—neither dead nor alive, his skin torn and his fur plucked out—he made his way out of that tight place.

Do not use force, O master, by means of gold, for in the end you will go off vanquished. Much wealth and comfort have made you fat; therefore consider how you will depart. With such a body, I do not know in what manner you will go out through the door of death.