A story is told of a mouse and a weasel that once lived in the house of a poor farmer. One of the farmer’s friends fell ill and the doctor prescribed for him husked sesame seeds. He asked a companion of his for sesame as a cure for his sickness and he then gave a quantity of it to the poor farmer so that he might husk this for him. The farmer brought the sesame to his wife to prepare and she, for her part, soaked it, spread it out, husked it and prepared it. When the weasel saw the sesame, she went up to it and spent the whole day carrying off seeds to her hole, until she had removed most of what was there. The farmer’s wife came back and saw, to her astonishment, that there was clearly less sesame than there had been. To find out why, she sat watching to see who would come there, and the weasel, on her way back to remove more seeds, as she had been doing, saw the farmer’s wife sitting there and realized that she was on the lookout. She said to herself: ‘What I have done may lead to evil consequences, for I’m afraid that this woman is lying in wait for me. Whoever does not think of the consequences of what he does will find out that Time is no friend to him. I must do something good to show my innocence and wipe away all the evil that I have done.’ So she started moving the sesame that was in her hole, bringing it out and taking it to put with the rest. When the woman found her doing this, she said to herself: ‘It could not have been the weasel that was responsible for this. She is taking the seeds from the hole of whoever stole them and putting them back with the rest. She has done us a favour here and the reward of one who does a favour is to have a favour done to him. As it is not the weasel who has stolen the sesame, I shall go on watching until the thief falls into the trap and I find out who he is.’
The weasel, realizing what the woman was thinking, went off to the mouse. ‘Sister,’ she said, ‘there is no good in anyone who does not respect his duty to his neighbour, maintaining friendship.’ ‘Yes, my friend,’ said the mouse, ‘and I am glad to have you as a neighbour, but why do you say this?’ The weasel went on: ‘The master of the house has brought sesame; he and his family have had their fill, and having no more need of it, they have left much of it uneaten. Every living creature has taken a share of it and were you to take yours, you would have a better right to it than the others.’ The mouse was pleased with this; she squeaked, danced, waggled her ears and her tail and, beguiled by her greed for the sesame, she got up straight away and left her hole. She saw the sesame dried, husked and gleaming white, with the farmer’s wife sitting and watching over it. The woman had armed herself with a cudgel and the mouse, taking no thought for the consequences, fell on it unrestrainedly, scattering it to and fro and starting to eat it. The woman hit her with the cudgel, splitting her skull. Greed was the cause of her death, and the fact that she ignored the consequences of what she had done.
