The Mouse in the Wine Jar and the Cat
Once upon a time, in an old cellar around which dazzling vineyards stretched, there lived a little mouse. This damp and dim cellar was full of huge wooden barrels and fragrant wine jars. Our mischievous mouse, while walking along the rim of an open jar on the high shelf, lost his balance and fell into the deep jar. The mouse, who began to flounder in the sweet liquid at the bottom of the jar, tried to cling to the sides but could not climb up at all. While he was floundering in despair, a pitch-black fur appeared at the mouth of the jar. The cunning and nimble cat of the cellar heard the noises and settled with curiosity on the rim of the jar.
The cat, seeing the floundering mouse, twirled his whiskers and murmured, "At last you have fallen into my hands, my little one." The mouse, who was about to drown, begged the cat with one last hope: "Please take me out of this dark jar, I shall be grateful to you!" The cat asked with a mocking smile, "If I take you out, you will run off to your hole at once; what use will you be to me?" The mouse, whose head was spinning with the intoxicating effect of the liquid, said, "I promise, if you save me, I will come to you whenever you call me and hand myself over to you." The cat, who accepted this tempting offer, stretched his long tail down into the jar. The mouse held on tightly to the cat's tail and managed with a thousand hardships to get out.
The mouse, shaking his wet fur, darted with unbelievable speed into the safe hole nearby and hid. The disappointed cat leaned furiously against the door of the hole and began to strike it with his paw. The cat shouted with rage, "You had promised me, had you not, that you would come whenever I called?" The cunning mouse, settled in his safe nest, called out cheerfully toward the outside. "Forgive me, my friend, but when I gave that promise I was inside the wine jar and did not know what I was saying!" The cat, stunned by the clever answer of the cunning mouse, vanished empty-handed into the depths of the cellar. Promises given thoughtlessly in hard moments melt away easily in the light of the truth. Eat a big bite, but do not speak a big word.