<p>La Fontaine's fables have made their author famous the world over. Beneath the pleasant animal guise emerges a portrait of human mores, with their shortcomings, vices and virtues transcending space and time. These stories, known as apologues, depict characters in numerous situations representing a wide range of human behaviour, from the seven deadly sins committed by humans, gods and various animals, to the noblest actions of a Good Samaritan or the Lion King. A major work of world literature, the <i>Fables</i> can be viewed from a variety of angles and perspectives. Law and justice, as the key institutions of society, are naturally present in varying degrees. The fabulist's aim is to instruct readers through the moral drawn from the story: the moral of the fable. Different from moral (duty), this moral often stems from common and popular sense, resembling a truth of La Palice, a truism. But this truth occasionally creates a tension between the moral derived from the fable and the law and justice, as can be seen in the fable <i>The Wolf and the Lamb</i>, where ‘the reason of the strongest’ prevails. La Fontaine's art lies in striking a subtle, fragile balance between the violence of the facts he describes and the relevance of the solutions that tighten or loosen the threads of tension created by the scenes he depicts.</p>