In mountain solitude there lived a bear, bedraggled and uncouth.
It’s sweet to talk—and to stay mute; but either in excess is bad for bears and people. Consequently, the bear began to rue his lonely life.
Not far away there lived a gardener, a priest of fruits and flowers, who began to likewise pine for more companionship and conversation than a garden gives. One sparkling morning, he set out to find a friend, and met, to his surprise, embarked on that same quest, descending from the hills, a bear.
“Good morn!” he cried, dissembling fear as best he could.
The bear, no courtier, said bluntly, “Come home with me.”
The gardener counter-invited, saying that his home was nearer—just beyond that copse, in fact; that he could offer berries, porridge, milk—though, come to think of it, did bears drink milk? He didn’t know, but that was what he had . . .
“Okay,” the bear said—and moved in with him.
The bear proved friendly, if ungarrulous. He shared his kills, and, when the gardener was sleeping, shooed the flies from off his face.
One day, beyond endurance rattled by a fly’s impertinence, he seized a stone and brought it down upon the botherer.
“Death to a fly!”—and to a man the end.
A wise foe’s better than a foolish friend.