money. The trick of frightening the peasants follows, and
finally, an ogress who owns a castle is thrown down a well by the fox.
Then comes in the new feature: the _man is ungrateful and kills the
fox_; nevertheless he lives happy ever after.

Now, at last, we have reached the moral. A beggar on horseback will
forget his first friend: _a man will be less grateful than a beast_.

This moral declares itself, with a difference (for the ingrate is
coerced into decent behaviour), in a popular French version, taken down
from oral recitation[62].

Here, then, even among the peasantry of Perrault's own country, and as
near France as Sicily, too, we have _Puss in Boots_ with a moral: that
of human ingratitude contrasted with the gratitude of a beast. May we
conclude, then, that _Puss in Boots_ was originally invented as a kind
of parable by which this moral might be inculcated? And, if we may draw
that conclusion, where is this particular moral most likely to have been
invented, and enforced in an apologue?

As to the first of these two questions, it may be observed that the
story with the moral, and with a fox in place of a cat, is found among
the Avars, a Mongolian people of Mussulman faith, on the northern slopes
of the Caucasus. Here the man is ungrateful, but the fox, as in Sicily,
coerces him, in this case by threatening to let out the story of his
rise in life[63]. In Russia, too, a fox takes the cat's _role_, and the
part of the ogre is entrusted to the Serpent Uhlan, a supernatural
snake, who is burned to ashes[64].

It is now plain that the tale with the moral, whether that was the
original motive or not, is more common than the tale without the moral.
We find the moral among French, Italians, Avars, Russians; among people
of Mahommedan, Greek, and Catholic religion. Now M. Emmanuel Cosquin is
inclined to believe that the moral--the ingratitude of man contrasted
with the gratitude of beasts,--is Buddhistic. If that be so, then India
is undeniably the original cradle of _Puss in Boots_. But M. Cosquin has
been unable to find any _Puss in Boots_ in India; at least he knew none
in 1876, when he wrote on the subject in _Le Francais_ (June 29, 1876).
Nor did the learned Benfey, with all his prodigious erudition, know an
Indian _Puss in Boots_[65]. Therefore the proof of this theory, that
Buddhistic India may be the real cat's cradle, is incomplete; nor does
it become more probable when we actually do discover _Puss in B