[237] Les loups, qui ont très peu d'amis en France, et qui sont obligés d'apporter dans toutes leurs démarches une excessive prudence, chassent presque toujours à la muette. J'ai été plusieurs fois en position d'admirer la profondeur de leurs combinaisons stratégiques; c'est effrayant de sagacité et de calcul; Toussenel, L'Esprit des Bêtes, ch. i.—And Aldrovandi, De Quadrup. Dig. Viv. ii. "Lupi omnem vim ingenii naturalem in ovibus insidiando exercent; noctu enim ovili appropinquantes, pedes lambunt, ne strepitum in gradiendo edant, et foliis obstrepentibus pedes quasi reos mordent."
[238] In Piedmont it is also said in jest, that a man once met a wolf and thrust his hand down its throat, so far down that it reached its tail on the other side; he then pulled the tail inside the wolf's body and out through its throat, so that the wolf, turned inside out, expired.
[239] In an unpublished, though very popular Piedmontese story, Piccolino is upon a tree eating figs; the wolf passes by and asks him for some, threatening him thus: "Piculin, dame ün fig, dass no, i t mangiu." Piccolino throws him down two, which are crushed upon the wolf's nose. Then the wolf threatens to eat him if he does not bring him a fig down; Piccolino comes down, and the wolf puts him in a sack and carries him towards his house, where the mother-wolf is waiting for him. But on the way the wolf is pressed by a corporeal necessity, and is obliged to go on the roadside; meanwhile, Piccolino makes a hole in the sack, comes out and puts a stone in his place. The wolf returns, shoulders the sack, but thinks that Piccolino has become much heavier. He goes home and tells the she-wolf to be glad, and prepare the cauldron full of hot water; he then empties the sack into the cauldron; the stone makes the boiling water spurt out upon the wolf's head, and he is scalded to death.
[240] Cfr. the well-known English fairy-tales of Tom Thumb and Hop-o'-my-Thumb.
[241] Inferno, c. i.
[242] Hêraklês, Hektor, Achilles, among the Greek heroes; Wolfdieterich, and several other heroes of Germanic tradition, have these animals for their ensigns; the lion is the steed of the hero Hildebrand. Cfr. Die Deutsche Heldensage von Wilhelm Grimm, Berlin, Dümmler, 1867.—When Agarista and Philip dreamed of a lion, it was considered an augury, the one of the birth of Pericles, and the other of that of Alexander the Great.
[243] Ubhe tvashṭur bibhyatur ǵâyamânât pratîćî sinham prati ǵoshayete; Ṛigv. i. 95, 5.
[244] v.
[245] Te svânino rudriyâ varshanirṇiǵah siṅhâ na heshakratavaḥ sudânavaḥ; Ṛigv. iii. 26, 5.—In the Bohemian story of grandfather Vsievedas, the young hero is sent by the prince who wishes to ruin him to take the three golden hairs of this grandfather (the sun).
[246] Siṅho na bhîma âyudhâni bibhrat; Ṛigv. iv. 16, 14. Cfr. i. 174, 3.