Do not feed, or take under your roof animals of ferocious and savage dispositions, that have sharp and crooked claws. Do not cherish a snake in your bosom, or enter into friendship with crafty and deceitful persons. Otez un vilain du gibet, il vous y mettra, save a thief from the gallows, and he will cut your throat. Cría el cuervo, y sacarte ha los ojos, breed up a crow and he will tear out your eyes. Ingratitude and the unyielding bent of nature were typified by the Greeks under the elegant representation of a goat giving suck to the whelp of a wolf, with a subscription, which has been thus rendered.
«A wolf reluctant with my milk I feed,
Obedient to a cruel master's will;
By him I nourish'd, soon condemned to bleed,
For stubborn nature will be nature still».
We may add two familiar lines to these,
«The hedge-sparrow fed the cuckoo so long,
That she had her head bit off by her young».

Such as is the mistress such will be the servants. Like master like man, Qual la madre tal la hija, like mother, like daughter; Qual el cuervo tal su huevo, as is the crow so is the egg. It is therefore becoming those who have the management of the family to set good examples. Madre piedosa cria hija merdosa, an indulgent mother makes a slothful and sluttish daughter.

Born in the fourth moon. Persons who were peculiarly unfortunate, scarcely anything succeeding to their minds, were said to be born in the fourth moon, that being the month in which Hercules was born, whose labours, though beneficial to the world, were productive of little advantage to himself. The Spaniards say, En hora mala nace, quien mala fama cobra, he was born under an unlucky planet, or in an evil hour, who gets an ill name. The contrary to this, but equally the child of superstition, is «Albæ gallinæ filius».