[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 load of fish.
But no sooner had the carter's back been turned than the fox sprang up,
threw all the fish down into the road to the expectant wolf, and only
sprang down himself when the cart was empty. The wolf, ravenous as ever,
devoured the fish as fast as they were thrown down, and when the fox
claimed his share of the booty he had secured, Isegrim gave him only the
bones.[1] [Footnote 1: For Russian version see Guerber's Contes et
Légendes, vol. i., p. 93.]

Not content with cheating his ally once, the wolf had induced the fox to
steal a suckling pig from the larder of a sleeping peasant. With much
exertion the cunning Reynard had thrown the prize out of the window to the
waiting wolf; but when he asked for a portion of the meat as reward, he was
dismissed with nothing but the piece of wood upon which it had been hung.

The badger further proceeded to relate that Reynard had wooed Gieremund
seven years before, when she was still unmated, and that if Isegrim chose
to consider that an insult, it was only on a par with the rest of his
accusations, for the king could readily see that Reynard was sorely injured
instead of being guilty.

Then, encouraged by the favorable impression he had produced, Grimbart