in Mediaeval Latin retellings of the fable such as those of Adémar de Chabannes and Romulus Anglicus was that one should learn from the misfortunes of others, but it was also given a political slant by the additional comment that “it is easier to enter the house of a great lord than to get out of it”, as William Caxton expressed it in his English version. Hieronymus Osius, however, confined himself to making the story's lesson that the wise man notes not only signs of danger but also learns from them to be cautious. The necessity of being wary in all one's enterprises, "keeping in view the profit and loss", was also the message of Gilles Corrozet's emblematic use of the fable in his Hecatomographie (1540). During the 17th century the fable was almost always interpreted as a warning against association with rulers. Wenceslas Hollar emphasised the political connection in his illustration of The Fables of Aesop (1673). At the mouth of a cave, a crown and sceptre are laid prominently on rocks as the lion feasts on its slaughtered visitors. The same point is made by Pieter de la Court in his Sinryke Fabulen (Amsterdam, 1685). Above the woodcut illustrating the fable is the Dutch distich Een oud hoveling, een oud schoveling (an old courtier, an old survivor), while below it is the Latin proverb Cum principibus ut cum igne (With princes as with fire, be wary). In Jean de La Fontaine's Fables additional details are drawn from royal practice. The lion issues a safe conduct (passeport) to the deluded animals bidden to visit him. In reply the foxes send back a note that echoes the former Latin conclusion: “While seeing how the beasts get in,/ We do not see how they get out". The inference to be drawn is that the word of the powerful is not to be trusted. Roger L’Estrange's 1692 narration follows La Fontaine in making communication between fox and lion an exchange of diplomatic notes but ends on the more pointed moral that ”the kindness of ill-natur’d and designing People should be throughly consider’d and examin’d, before we give credit to them”. Later interpretations counsel resorting to reason in order to avoid harm, in this life or thereafter. Samuel Croxall ends the ‘application’ in his Fables of Aesop and Others (1722) on the thought that “it becomes us, as we are reasonable Creatures, to