"... il parle, on l'entend, il sait danser, baller
Faire des tours de toute sorte
Passer en des cerceaux."
—La Fontaine, Fables, ix. 3.
In La Fontaine, the monkey is again identified with the ass, as a judge on the tribunal between the wolf and the fox, and afterwards as dressed in the skin of the dead lion. In the fourth fable of the eleventh book, La Fontaine makes the monkey M.A. narrate the story of the asinus asinum fricat; in the second fable of the twelfth book the monkey scatters the miser's treasure, as in Hindoo tradition it spoils the sacrificial offerings.
[193] Cfr. Aldrovandi, De Quadr. Dig. Viv.
[194] Cfr. Ueber den Zusammenhang indischer Fabeln mit griechischen, Berlin, Dümmler, 1855.
[195] In a German tradition referred to by Schmidt, Forschungen, s. 105, we have the deity who presents himself as a fox to the hunter voluntarily to be sacrificed; the hunter flays him, and the flies and ants eat his flesh. In a Russian story of which I shall give an abridgment, the wolf eats the fox when he sees it without its hairy covering.
[196] i. 5566, et seq.
[197] i. 16, iv. 2; cfr. also iv. 10, and the chapter on the Hare.—In the story, iii. 14, of the Pańćatantram, the jackal cheats the lion who has occupied his cave, by making him roar; and thus assuring himself that the lion is in the cave, he is able to escape.
[198] iii. 29.
[199] Cfr. Pańćatantram, i. 10; Tuti-Name, ii. 146.
[200] i. 2, ii. 3.—In the nineteenth Mongol story, the young man who passes himself off as a hero is ordered to bring to the queen the skin of a certain fox which is indicated to him; on the way the youth loses his bow; returning to look for it, he finds the fox dead close to the bow, which it had tried to bite, and which had struck and killed it.