"The Scorpion and the Tortoise"

[Tedlark]

"Are you not the most wicked and ungrateful of reptiles? But for me you must have given up on your journey, or have been drowned in that stream, and what is my reward? If it had not been for the armour which God has given me, I should have been stung to death. "Blame me not" said the scorpion, in a supplicatory tone, "it is not my fault; it is that of my nature; it is a constitutional habit I have of stinging."