[Sidenote:  The animals’ assembly.] As was the custom among the Franks under their old Merovingian rulers, the animals all assembled at Whitsuntide around their king, Nobel the lion, who ruled over all the forest.  This assembly, like the Champ de Mars, its prototype, was convened not only for the purpose of deciding upon the undertakings for the following year, but also as a special tribunal, where all accusations were made, all complaints heard, and justice meted out to all.  The animals were all present, all except Reynard the fox, who, it soon became apparent, was accused of many a dark deed.  Every beast present testified to some crime committed by him, and all accused him loudly except his nephew, Grimbart the badger.

                     “And yet there was one who was absent,
    Reineke Fox, the rascal! who, deeply given to mischief,
    Held aloof from half the Court.  As shuns a bad conscience
    Light and day, so the fox fought shy of the nobles assembled. 
    One and all had complaints to make, he had all of them injured;
    Grimbart the badger, his brother’s son, alone was excepted.”

[Sidenote:  Complaints against Reynard.] The complaint was voiced by Isegrim the wolf, who told with much feeling how cruelly Reynard had blinded three of his beloved children, and how shamefully he had insulted his wife, the fair lady Gieremund.  This accusation had no sooner been formulated than Wackerlos the dog came forward, and, speaking French, pathetically described the finding of a little sausage in a thicket, and its purloining by Reynard, who seemed to have no regard whatever for his famished condition.

The tomcat Hintze, who at the mere mention of a sausage had listened more attentively, now angrily cried out that the sausage which Wackerlos had lost belonged by right to him, as he had concealed it in the thicket after stealing it from the miller’s wife.  He added that he too had had much to suffer from Reynard, and was supported by the panther, who described how he had once found the miscreant cruelly beating poor Lampe the hare.

                                  “Lampe he held by the collar,
    Yes, and had certainly taken his life, if I by good fortune
    Had not happened to pass by the road.  There standing you see him. 
    Look and see the wounds of the gentle creature, whom no one
    Ever would think of ill treating.”

[Sidenote:  Vindication of Reynard.] The king, Nobel, was beginning to look very stern as one after another rose to accuse the absent Reynard, when Grimbart the badger courageously began to defend him, and artfully turned the tables upon the accusers.  Taking up their complaints one by one, he described how Reynard, his uncle, once entered into partnership with Isegrim.  To obtain some fish which a carter was conveying to market, the fox had lain as if dead in the middle of the road.  He had been picked up by the man for the sake of his fur, and tossed up on top of the