The Son and the Painted Lion

A timid old man had an only son, brave and passionately fond of hunting; he saw him in a dream perish under a lion's claw. Fearing that the dream might be true and come to pass, he had a lofty, magnificent apartment fitted out, and there he kept his son. To amuse him, he had had animals of every kind painted there, among which figured also a lion. But the sight of all these paintings only increased the young man's boredom. One day, going up to the lion, he cried out, "Wicked beast, it is because of you and my father's lying dream that I have been shut up in this women's prison. What could I do to you?" With these words, he brought his hand down on the wall, to put out the lion's eye. But a splinter went in under his nail and caused him a sharp pain and an inflammation that ended in a tumour. Fever having set in from this soon carried him from life to death. The lion, for all that it was only a lion in paint, killed the young man nonetheless, and his father's contrivance was of no use to him.