]

    Priam's daughter

   .--Cassandra, who predicted the fall of Troy, and was not heeded.

   [

    10

   ] Horace,

    Satires

   , II. 6: also in Aesop.

   [

    11

   ] Phaedrus, I. 1: also in Aesop.

   To M. The Duke De La Rochefoucauld.

   [

    12

   ] This is one of La Fontaine's most admired fables, and is one of the few for which he did not go for the groundwork to some older fabulist. The Duke de la Rochefoucauld, to whom it was dedicated, was the author of the famous "Reflexions et Maximes Morales," which La Fontaine praises in the last lines of his fable. La Rochefoucauld was La Fontaine's friend and patron. The "Maximes" had achieved a second edition just prior to La Fontaine's publication of this first series of his Fables, in 1668. "The Rabbits" (

    Book X., Fable 15.

   ), published in the second collection, in 1678-9, is also dedicated to the Duke, who died the following year, 1680. See Translator's Preface.

   [

    13

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