Aesop's Fables, translated by Laura Gibbs (2002)
167. THE MURDERER AND THE MULBERRY TREE
Perry 152 (Chambry
214)
A robber had murdered someone along the road. When the bystanders began
to chase him, he dropped the bloody corpse and ran away. Some travellers
coming from the opposite direction asked the man how he had stained his
hands. The man said that he had just climbed down from a mulberry tree,
but as he was speaking, his pursuers caught up with him. They seized the
murderer and crucified him on a mulberry tree. The tree said to him, 'It
does not trouble me at all to assist in your execution, since you tried
to smear me with the murder that you yourself committed!'
If often happens that even honest people do not hesitate to persecute
someone who has slandered them.
Source:
Aesop's Fables. A new translation by Laura
Gibbs.
Oxford University Press (World's Classics): Oxford, 2002.
NOTE: New
cover, with new ISBN, published in 2008; contents of book unchanged.
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