The picture subject is taken from one of La Fontaine’s fables and there is a moral to be drawn on two levels. The story is simple enough; the monkey is content to scoff the chestnuts which the cat is laboriously taking from the fire with danger of scorching his paws. At the third chestnut’s retrieval from the fire, the servant comes in and the two rogues scatter leaving the cat without any chestnuts. La Fontaine’s broader moral reads; ‘And princes are equally dissatisfied when, flattered to be employed in any uncomfortable concern, they burn their fingers in a distant province for the profit of some king’.

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