st. et Arch. de Bretagne_, Annee 1862. The Saint has a warning vision
of the dead wives, but not in consequence of opening a forbidden door.]

[Footnote 49: A partial collection of these will be found in _La
Mythologie_, Lang. Paris 1886. Australians, Ningphos, Greeks (Pandora's
box), the Montaguais of Labrador (_Relations de la Nouvelle France_,
1634), the Odahwah Indians (Hind's _Explorations in Labrador_, i. 61,
note 2), are examples of races which believe death to have come into the
world as the punishment of an infringed prohibition of this sort. The
deathly swoon of Psyche, in _The Golden Ass_ of Apuleius, when she has
opened the pyx of Proserpine, is another instance.]

[Footnote 50: Compare Mrs. Hunt's note to Grimm, i. 389.]

[Footnote 51: Crane, p. 78.]

LE MAISTRE CHAT, OU LE CHAT BOTTE.

_Puss in Boots._

Everybody knows Puss in Boots. He is, as Nodier says, the Figaro of the
nursery, as Hop o' My Thumb is the Ulysses, and Blue Beard the Othello;
and thus he is of interest to all children, and to all men who remember
their childhood. Ulysses himself did not travel farther than the story
of the patron of the Marquis de Carabas has wandered, and few things can
be more curious than to follow the Master-Cat in his migrations. For
many reasons the history of _Puss in Boots_, though it has been rather
neglected, throws a good deal of light on that very dark question, the
diffusion of popular tales. As soon as we read it in Perrault, we find
that Monsieur Perrault was at a loss for a moral to his narrative. In
fact, as he tells it, there is _no_ moral to the Master-Cat. Puss is a
perfectly unscrupulous adventurer who, for no reason but the fun of the
thing, dubs the miller's son marquis, makes a royal marriage for him, by
a series of amusing frauds, and finally enriches him with the spoils of
a murdered ogre. In the absence of any moral Perrault has to invent
one--which does not apply.

'Aux jeunes gens pour l'ordinaire,
L'industrie et le savoir-faire
Valent mieux que des biens acquis.'

Now the 'young person,' the cat's master, had shown no 'industry'
whatever, except in so far as he was a _chevalier d'industrie_, thanks
to his cat. These obvious truths pained Mr. George Cruikshank when he
tried to illustrate _Puss in Boots_, and found that the romance was
quite unfit for the young. 'When I came to look carefully at that story,
I felt _compelled_ to rewrite it, and alter the character of it to