A rat, who saw a passing elephant, made mock of that behemoth’s sluggish pace.
The beast was burdened with a howdah full of a renowned sultana’s retinue (including monkey, parakeet, and cat) and equipage.
The rat was by the crowd’s astonishment himself astonished. “Look how wonderingly they look!” he said. “As if the more or less mere space one fills, the more or less importance one possesses. What do people so admire about that mass of flesh? Is it the fact he frightens children? We rats, despite our littleness, are just as good at that!”
He’d more to say; the cat, however, springing from her cage, fast proved that rats aren’t elephants.
Insanity itself’s no foolisher than vanity.