Naturam expellas Furca tamen usque recurret.

Which may be aptly enough rendered by our English proverb, what is bred in the bone, will never get out of the flesh. Lupus pilum mutat, non mentem, it is easier for the wolf to change his coat than his disposition: habits are with difficulty changed, and with greater difficulty if of such long continuance as to become a second nature. As the bough of a tree drawn from its natural course, recoils and returns to its old position as soon as the force by which it had been restrained is removed; so do we return to old habits as soon as the motives, whether interest or fear, which had induced us to quit them, are done away: the cat that had been transformed into a fine lady, on seeing a mouse, forgetting the decorum required by her new form, sprung from the table where she was sitting to seize on her prey. Vizio di natura dura fino alla sepoltura, the vice that is born with us or is become natural to us, accompanies us to the grave. A rich miser being at the point of death, his confessor placed before him a large silver crucifix, and was about to begin an exhortation, when the usurer, fixing his eyes on the crucifix, said, «I cannot, sir, lend you much upon this ».