sed them to her for
the next morning. The fox went there in the morning, and when the man
saw her he put some dogs in the bag, and told the fox not to eat the
hens close by, for fear the mistress of the house would hear it. So the
fox did not open the bag until she had reached a distant valley; then
the dogs came out and ate her; and so it is in the world; for who does
good is ill rewarded and who does evil is well rewarded.[6]

* * * * *

It would be surprising if we did not find the fascinating stories of the
Thousand and One Nights naturalized among the people. It is, of course,
impossible to tell whether they were communicated to the people directly
from a literary source, or whether the separate stories came to Italy
from the Orient by way of oral transmission.[7] These stories have
circulated among the people long enough to be treated as their own
property and changed to suit their taste. Incidents from other stories
have been added and the original story remodelled until it is hardly
recognizable. The story of "Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp," for
instance, is found from Sicily to Lombardy; but in no one version are
all the features of the original story preserved. In one of the Sicilian
versions (Messina) Aladdin does not lose his lamp; in another (Palermo),
after Aladdin has lost his lamp he goes in search of it, and on his
journey settles the quarrel of an ant, an eagle, and a lion, who give
him the power to transform himself into any one of them. He finally
discovers the magician, who has his life elsewhere than in his own body,
and who is killed after the usual complicated process. In the Roman
version the point of the unfinished window in Aladdin's palace is
missed, the magician requires to be killed, as in the version from
Palermo, and there are some additional incidents not in the Oriental
original. In the Mantuan story, instead of a lamp we have a rusty ring,
which the youngest brother finds inside of a dead cock bequeathed to
three brothers by their father. After the ring has fallen into the
possession of the magician and the palace has disappeared, the hero goes
in search of his wife and ring. On his way he is assisted by the "King
of the Fishes" and the "King of the Birds." The eagle carries a letter
to the captive princess, who obtains the ring from the magician, rubs it
on a stone, and when it asks what she wishes, answers: "I wish this
palace to return where it first