The prince insists on seeing that palace, the cat
frightens the peasants into saying that all the land they pass is the
girl's; finally, the cat reaches a troll's house, with pillars of gold.
The cat turns himself into a loaf of bread and holds the troll in talk
till the sun rises on him and he bursts, as trolls always do if they see
the sun. The girl succeeds to the troll's palace, and nothing is said as
to what became of the cat.

Here is even less moral than in _Puss in Boots_, for the Marquis of
Carabas, as M. Deulin says, merely lets the cat do all the tricks,
whereas the Swedish girl is his active accomplice. The change of the cat
into bread (which can talk), and the bursting of the ogre at dawn, are
very ancient ideas, whether they have been tacked later on to the
_conte_ or not. In _Lord Peter_ the heroine gives place to a hero, while
the cat drives deer to the palace, saying that they come from Lord
Peter. The cat, we are not told how, dresses Lord Peter in splendid
attire, kills a troll for him, and then, as in Madame d'Aulnoy's _White
Cat_, has its head cut off and becomes a princess. Behold how fancies
jump! All the ogre's wealth had been the princess's, before the ogre
changed her into a cat, and took her lands. Thus George Cruikshank's
moral conclusion is anticipated, while puss acts as a match-maker
indeed, but acts for herself. This form of the legend, if not immoral,
has no moral, and has been mixed up either with Madame d'Aulnoy's
_Chatte Blanche_, or with the popular traditions from which she
borrowed.

Moving south, but still keeping near France, we find _Puss in Boots_ in
Italy. The tale is told by Straparola[60]. A youngest son owns nothing
but a cat which, by presents of game, wins the favour of a king of
Bohemia. The drowning trick is then played, and the king gives the cat's
master his daughter, with plenty of money. On the bride's journey to her
new home, the cat frightens the peasants into saying all the land
belongs to his master, for whom he secures the castle of a knight dead
without heirs.

Here, once more, there is no moral.

In a popular version from Sicily[61], a fox takes the cat's place, _from
motives of gratitude_, because the man found it robbing and did not kill
it. The fox then plays the usual trick with the game, and another
familiar trick, that of leaving a few coins in a borrowed bushel measure
to give the impression that his master does not _count_, but measures
out his