Dear friends, there is a tale, A little frog, after some adventures landward, came hopping back to the pond in great haste. “Oh my brothers,” the frog cried, “I have seen a terrible monster! It was as big as a mountain, with menacing horns, and it seemed to gnaw on the ground and pull up the earth.”
I feel like translating Jean de la Fontaine's moral of the story as I can, outdated but interesting:
Le monde est plein de gens qui ne sont pas plus sages:
Tout bourgeois veut bâtir comme les grands seigneurs,
Tout petit prince a des ambassadeurs,
Tout marquis veut avoir des pages.
Lots of people are not much wiser:
Every bourgeois wants to build like governors,
Every low-ranking prince has ambassadors,
Every marquess wants pages.