The Spendthrift and the Swallow

A young spendthrift had squandered his inheritance and had nothing left but a cloak. He caught sight of a swallow that had come before its season. Believing that spring had come, and that he no longer needed a cloak, he went off to sell that too. But bad weather having then set in and the air having turned very cold, he saw, as he was walking, the swallow dead of cold. "Poor creature," he said, "you have ruined us, you and me together."