And after all, what are these victims?  Among the heaviest charges which were urged against him was the killing and eating of that wretched Scharfenebbe—­ Sharp-beak—­the crow’s wife.  It is well that there are two sides to every story.  A poor weary fox, it seemed, was not to be allowed to enjoy a quiet sleep in the sunshine but what an unclean carrion bird must come down and take a peck at him.  We can feel no sympathy with the outcries of the crow husband over the fate of the unfortunate Sharpbeak.  Wofully, he says, he flew over the place where, a few moments before, in the glory of glossy plumage, a loving wife sate croaking out her passion for him, and found nothing—­nothing but a little blood and a few torn feathers—­all else clean gone and utterly abolished.  Well, and if it was so, it was a blank prospect for him, but the earth was well rid of her:  and for herself, it was a higher fate to be assimilated into the body of a Reineke than to remain in a miserable individuality to be a layer of carrion crows’ eggs.

And then for Bellyn, and for Bruin, and for Hintze, and the rest, who would needs be meddling with what was no concern of theirs, what is there in them to challenge either regret or pity.  They made love their occupation.

’Tis dangerous when the baser nature fails
Between the pass and fell incensed points
Of mighty opposites: 
They lie not near our conscience: 

Ah! if they were all ....  But there is one misdeed, one which outweighs all others whatsoever—­a crime which it is useless to palliate, let our other friend say what he pleased; and Reineke himself felt it so.  It sate heavy, for him, on his soul, and alone of all the actions of his life we are certain that he wished it undone—­the death and eating of that poor foolish Lampe.  It was a paltry revenge in Reineke.  Lampe had told tales of him; he had complained that Reineke under pretence of teaching him his lesson, had seized him, and tried to murder him; and though he provoked his fate by thrusting himself, after such a warning, into the jaws of Malepartus, Reineke betrays an uneasiness about it in confession; and, unlike himself, feels it necessary to make some sort of an excuse.

Grimbart had been obliged to speak severely of the seriousness of the offence.  “You see,” he answers:—­

To help oneself out through the world is a queer sort of business:  one can not Keep, you know, quite altogether as pure as one can in the cloister.  When we are handling honey we now and then lick at our fingers.  Lampe sorely provoked me; he frisked about this way and that way, Up and down, under my eyes, and he looked so fat and so jolly, Really I could not resist it.  I entirely forgot how I loved him.  And then he was so stupid.

But even this acknowledgment does not satisfy Reineke.  His mind is evidently softened, and it is on that occasion that he pours out his pathetic lamentation over the sad condition of the world—­so fluent, so musical, so touching, that Grimbart listened with wide eyes, unable, till it had run to the length of a sermon, to collect himself.  It is true that at last his office as ghostly confessor obliged him to put in a slight demurrer:—­