As Simon Godart's analysis of the status of fabula has shown, the fabulous aspect in Descartes's concept of mundus is so crucial that much effort has been invested in superseding it in order to arrive at the Ego's infallible certainty. In Godart's reading, one could say that Descartes's Ego ought to devour the lesson of the fable. But does the fable always allow itself to be devoured and digested into a moral lesson? Is the reader capable of doing that? This question pertains not only to Descartes's appropriation of the narrative frame of the fable, but also to the conventional genre of the Aesopian fable. How well can the fable be reduced to a moral lesson by the reader? How general should this moral lesson be – should it pertain to humanity as a whole or to specific human beings? In this contribution, by discussing two passages from Phaedrus and Rousseau on the genealogy and use of the fable, we will see that these two authors frame the supposedly simple genre of the fable with paratexts, which assure the reader that they need not be personally concerned – the failure of which may be part of the genre's success. As Phaedrus denies and Rousseau openly fears, the fable renders the reader suspicious that its moral is not an impersonal musing about human manners, but a personal invective against the reader.