ok what he brought and said to him: 'You shall say to your
master: "Many, many compliments. I thank him for all that he has sent
me; but the month has only 18 days, the moon is only half full, the
chorister of dawn was not there, and the he-goat's skin is lank and
loose. But, to please the partridge, let him not beat the sow."' (That
is to say, there were only 18 loaves, half a cheese, no roasted cock,
and the wine-skin was scarcely half full; but that, to please the young
girl, he was not to beat the servant, who had not brought the gift
entire.)

"The servant left and returned to the palace. He repeated to the prince
what the young girl had said to him, except the last clause, which he
forgot. Then the prince understood all, and caused another servant to
give the rogue a good beating. When the culprit had received such a
caning that his skin and bones were sore, he cried out: 'Enough, prince,
my master! Wait until I tell you another thing that the young girl said
to me, and I have forgotten to tell you.' 'Come, what have you to
say?--be quick.' 'Master, the young girl added, "But, to please the
partridge, let him not beat the sow."' 'Ah, blockhead!' said the prince
to him. 'Why did you not tell me this before? Then you would not have
tasted the cane. But so be it.' A few days later the prince married the
young girl, and fetes and great rejoicings were held."

THE FOX AND THE BEAR, p. 240.

In no other version of this fable does the Fox take a stone with him
when he enters one of the buckets and then throw it away--nor indeed
does he go into the bucket at all; he simply induces the other animal to
descend into the well, in order to procure the "fine cheese." La
Fontaine gives a variant of the fable, in which a fox goes down into a
well with the same purpose, and gets out by asking a wolf to come down
and feast on the "cheese": as the wolf descends in one bucket he draws
up the fox in the other one, and so the wolf, like Lord Ullin, is "left
lamenting."[114] M. Berenger-Feraud thinks this version somewhat
analogous to a fable in his French collection of popular Senegambian
Tales,[115] of the Clever Monkey and the Silly Wolf, of which, as it is
short, I may offer a free translation, as follows:

A proud lion was pacing about a few steps forward, then a side movement,
then a grand stride backward. A monkey on a tree above imitates the
movements, and his antics enrage the lion, who warns him to desist. The
monkey how