The Two Pigeons (original French title: Les deux pigeons) is a fable by Jean de la Fontaine (Book IX.2) that was adapted as a ballet with music by André Messager in the 19th century and rechoreagraphed to the same music by Frederick Ashton in the 20th. Fable La Fontaine ascribed the fable to the Persian author Bidpai and had found it in an abridged version titled "The Book of Enlightenment or the Conduct of Kings". The original is of some length, embroidered as it is with many an exquisite flower of rhetoric upon the trellis of its exposition. In essence it differs little from La Fontaine's abbreviated version. Two pigeons (or doves in Elizur Wright's American translation) live together in the closest friendship and 'cherish for each other/The love that brother hath for brother.' One of them yearns for a change of scene and eventually flies off on what he promises will be only a three-day adventure. During this time he is caught in a storm with little shelter, ensnared, attacked by predators and then injured by a boy with a sling, returning with relief to roam no more. La Fontaine gives his text a Classical turn by alluding to a poem by Horace during its course. Horace's "Epistle to Aristus Fuscus" begins To Fuscus the city-lover I the country-lover Send greetings. To be sure in this one matter we Differ much, but in everything else we’re like twins With brothers’ hearts (if one says no, so does the other) And we nod in agreement like old familiar doves. You guard the nest: I praise the streams and woods And the mossy rocks of a beautiful countryside. (Epistles I.10) Turtle doves are traditionally the symbol of close bonding and their appearance in Horace's poem would not be enough alone to constitute the intended allusion. But at the end of his poem La Fontaine returns to the Horatian theme of a preference for the country over life in the city. Reflecting on a youthful (heterosexual) love affair, he declares that he would not then have exchanged for a life at Court the woods in which his beloved wandered. It is this sentiment that has gained the fable the reputation of being La Fontaine's best and tenderest as it comes to rest on an evocation of past innocence: O, did my wither'd heart but dare To kindle for the bright and good,