The Monkey and the Cat
[2] It is from this fable that the French get their idiom Tirer les marrons du feu, meaning to act as someone's dupe or, deriving from that, to benefit from the dirty work of others.
For, when he saw the chestnuts buried in the hearth, he began to brush the ash aside but, afraid of the burning coals, he suddenly seized the foot of a sleeping puppy and stole it out.
'[5] The same story involving a sleeping dog appeared in other emblem books, including the Choice of Emblemes by the English poet Geoffrey Whitney (1586), who draws a political lesson from it in common with the other emblematists: A version in which a cat figures is in Marcus Gheeraerts the Elder's illustrated book of fables, De warachtighe fabulen der dieren (True animal fables, Bruges, 1567), with Flemish verse provided by the foremost Netherlandic emblematist Edewaerd de Dene [fr].
In this combination of the Emblem book and collection of town plans, the scene of the fable takes place on the lower right and is accompanied by verses illustrating the Latin moral, Alterius Damno Quaeris Lucrum (Another is duped to benefit the greedy).
[10] Elsewhere in Europe, the monkey and cat version appears in Simone Majoli's Latin work Dies caniculares (1588), where it is told of the antics of the pet monkey of Pope Julius II at the start of the century; a little later the story appeared as Un Singe et un Chat in Philippe Deprez's collection of a hundred verse fables, Le Théâtre des animaux (Paris, 1595).
[11] A third version of the story, yet again quoted as happening recently, was contained in Gemelli Careri's Voyage round the world (1695) and related by 'the admiral of the Portuguese fleet in India' as witnessed by him.
[13] The statue accompanied by De Benserade's verse is described in Daniel Bellamy's 18th century description of the labyrinth: 'Upon a shell composed of brass, and supported by a column erected in the antique taste with the same metal, the spectator is amused with the resemblance of a large fire, from whence issues a torrent of water.
[19] The satirist Peter Pindar (John Wolcot) continued the political use of the fable by including a lengthy reference to it in his ode "To the Chancellor of the Exchequer" (1801), in the context of the argument over Catholic Emancipation.
In this King William IV is the cat, being coaxed by the bewigged Lord Chancellor Henry Brougham, depicted as a monkey seated at his side, to pull the hot iron of reform from a blazing fire.
[23] There the claim is made that the Irish members of Parliament halted agitations for wider representation while the Reform Bill was being passed and were now cheated of a similar reward.
The cartoon Bertrand avec Raton s'amusent à tirer les marrons du feu, dating from Napoleonic times, pictures a red uniformed monkey marshall guiding a blue-uniformed infantryman in the task.
[25] Another cartoon has a marquis urging a barefoot patriotic workman to take his place on a republican barricade, while chuckling to himself that soon the artistocratic exiles will return with their allies to impose a renewed feudalism.
[28] In the Netherlands the words of Vondel's Den aap en de katte were set for a cappella male chorus by Sem Dresden to celebrate the centenary of the Royal Dutch Choir in 1953.
