kitchen. And the cook, finding nothing else, picked up a firebrand, half-consumed and still blazing, and struck him. Whereat, with half his body blazing, he plunged bleating into the stable near by. There he rolled until flames started up on all sides—for the stable was mostly thatch—and of the horses tethered there some died, their eyes popping, while some, half-burned to death and whinnying with pain, snapped their halters, so that nobody knew what to do.
In this state of affairs, the saddened king assembled the veterinary surgeons and said: "Prescribe some method of giving these horses relief from the pain of their burns." And they, recalling the teachings of their science, said: "O King, the blessèd master of our craft prescribed for this emergency as follows:
Let monkey-fat be freely used;
Like dark before the dawn,
The pain that horses feel from burns,
Will very soon be gone.
Pray adopt this remedy before they perish miserably."
When the king heard this, he ordered the slaughter of the monkeys. And, not to waste words, every one was killed.
Now the monkey chief did not with his own eyes see this outrage perpetrated on his household. But he heard the story as it passed from one to another, and did not take it tamely. As the proverb says:
