145. THE OLD LION. A lion, worn out with age, lay fetching his last gasp and agonizing in the convulsive struggles of death: upon which occasion, several of the beasts who had formerly been sufferers by him, came and revenged themselves upon him. The boar, with his mighty tusks, drove at him in a stroke that glanced like lightning; and the bull gored him with his violent horns: which, when the ass saw they might do without any danger, he too came up, and threw his heels into the lion's face: upon which the poor old expiring tyrant uttered these words with his last dying groan: “Alas! How grievous it is to suffer insults, even from the brave and the valiant! But to be spurned by so base a creature as this is, who is the disgrace of nature, is worse than dying ten thousand deaths.” [more info]
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