On her threshold, beside her full sacks of wheat, she disdainfully turns her back upon the would-be borrower, who holds out her claw--pardon, her hand.

With a wide coachman's hat, a guitar under her arm, and a skirt wrapped about her knees by the gale, there stands the second personage of the fable, the perfect portrait of a grasshopper.

Grandville knew no more than La Fontaine of the true Cigale; he has beautifully expressed the general confusion.
But La Fontaine, in this abbreviated history, is only the echo of another fabulist.

The legend of the Cigale and the cold welcome of the Ant is as old as selfishness: as old as the world.

The children of Athens, going to school with their baskets of rush-work stuffed with figs and olives, were already repeating the story under their breath, as a lesson to be repeated to the teacher.