the rural poor and gives them no return for their service. Jean de la Fontaine makes his social point through satire. In Le loup et la cigogne (Fables III.9) he also describes the crane's action as a surgical service; but when it asks for the salary promised, it is scolded for ingratitude by the wolf. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing takes the satire even further in alluding to the fable in his sequel, "The Sick Wolf". The predator is near death and, in confessing himself to the fox, recalls occasions when he voluntarily abstained from killing sheep. The sympathising fox replies, 'I recollect all the particulars. It was just at that time that you suffered so much from the bone in your throat.’ In Ran Bosilek's Bulgarian adaptation, "The Choking Bear", the stork, after being deceived once, takes the precaution of pulling out the bear's teeth before treating its patient again, forcing her to think of an alternative reward. Symbolic meanings A political lesson can also be drawn from some mediaeval sculptures of the fable, most notably on the Great Fountain in Perugia executed in 1278 by Nicola Pisano and his son Giovanni. Since Perugia was at that time an ally of Rome, a carving of the wolf suckling Remus is included there; but the wolf peers back over her shoulder towards two adjacent panels depicting the fables "The Wolf and the Lamb" and "The Wolf and the Stork". This hints at the political lesson that the friend might find an excuse to swallow its ally or at the very least would not reward its help. Where sculptures of the fable are found in a church, a different symbolism is involved. Commenting on its appearance above a capital of the west door of Autun Cathedral, one scholar points out that what is in this instance a fox typifies the devil, and the crane is an emblem of Christian care and vigilance, ever active in saving souls from the jaws of hell. The crane must therefore be imagined as coming to the rescue, not of the fox, but of the bone. This religious meaning made the subject, according to the French architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, one of the commonest sculpted on buildings from the 12th to the 13th century, not simply in France, but elsewhere in Europe. The fable appears as one of many animal scenes in the borders of the 11th-century Bayeux Tapestry.