[2] i. e. Hastinápura.
[3] Here Wilson observes: The circumstances here related are not without analogies in fact. It is not marvellous therefore that we may trace them in fiction. The point of the story is the same as that of the “Deux Anglais à Paris,” a Fabliau, and of “Une femme à l’extremité qui se mit en si grosse colère voyant son mari qui baisait sa servante qu’elle recouvra la santé” of Margaret of Navarre, (Heptameron. Nouvelle 71). Cp. Henderson’s Folk-lore of the Northern Counties, p. 131.
Webster, Duchess of Malfi, Act IV, Sc. 2, tells a similar story,
“A great physician, when the Pope was sick
Of a deep melancholy, presented him
With several sorts of madmen, which wild object,
Being full of change and sport, freed him to laugh,
And so the imposthume broke.”
[4] Cp. Sagas from the far East, Tale XI, pp. 123, 124. Here the crime contemplated is murder, and the ape is represented by a tiger. This story bears a certain resemblance to the termination of Alles aus einer Erbse, Kaden’s Unter den Olivenbäumen, p. 22. See also page 220 of the same collection. In the Pentamerone of Basile, Tale 22, a princess is set afloat in a box, and found by a king, whose wife she eventually becomes. There is a similar incident in Kaden’s Unter den Olivenbäumen, p. 220.
[5] Literally a handful of water, such as is offered to the Manes, is offered to Fortune. It is all over with his chance of attaining glory.