In a garden there lived an ant and a grasshopper who were very good friends.
It was springtime and the grasshopper was having a lot of fun playing, singing, and dancing in the sun. But the ant was hardworking. It was collecting food grains and storing them in its house.
The grasshopper did not understand why the ant was doing so and said, “Hey,’ Ant! Why don’t you come outside and play with me?”
The ant replied, “I cannot. I am storing food for the winter when there won’t be anything to eat!”
The grasshopper only laughed at the ant and said, “Why are you worrying now? There is plenty of food!” and continued to play, while the ant worked hard.
When winter came, the grasshopper did not find a single grain of food to eat. It began to starve and feel very weak. The grasshopper saw how the hardworking ant had plenty of food to eat and realised its foolishness.
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The story is attributed to a retelling of Aesop’s fable by Jean de La Fontaine (1621-1695), a French fabulist and one of the most widely read French poets of the 17th century. He is known above all for his Fables, which provided a model for subsequent fabulists across Europe and numerous alternative versions in France, as well as in French regional languages.
Images of French postage stamps issued in honour of Fontaine and his fables in 1995, courtesy: https://francoismunier.name/
