The Sick Lion

When you have finished, try The Sick Lion Quiz.

Vocabulary:

boar - a wild pig

gasping - fighting for breath, trying to breathe

gored - injured by having something stuck into one's body.

grudges - resentments, feeling badly over something someone might have done to you.

subjects - living things ruled by a king or queen.

A Lion had come to the end of his days and lay sick unto death at the mouth of his cave, gasping for breath. The animals, his subjects, came round him and drew nearer as he grew more and more helpless.

When they saw him on the point of death they thought to themselves: "Now is the time to pay off old grudges."

So the Boar came up and drove at him with his tusks; then a Bull gored him with his horns; still the Lion lay helpless before them: so the Ass, feeling quite safe from danger, came up, and turning his tail to the Lion kicked up his heels into his face.

"This is a double death," growled the Lion.

"Only cowards insult dying majesty."