But Perrette with the milk-pail has not yet arrived at the end of her journey, for if we look at the “Livre des Lumières,” as published at Paris, we find neither the milkmaid nor her prototype, the Brahman who kicks his wife, or the religious man who flogs his boy. That story occurs in the later chapters, which were left out in the French translation; and La Fontaine, therefore, must have met with his model elsewhere. Remember that in all our wanderings we have not yet found the milkmaid, but only the Brahman or the religious man. What we want to know is who first brought about this metamorphosis. No doubt La Fontaine was quite the man to seize on any jewel which was contained in the Oriental fables, to remove the cumbersome and foreign-looking setting, and then to place the principal figure in that pretty frame in which most of us have first become acquainted with it. But in this case the charmer’s wand did not belong to La Fontaine, but to some forgotten worthy, whose very name it will be difficult to fix upon with certainty. We have, as yet, traced three streams only, all starting from the Arabic translation of Abdallah ibn Almokaffa, one in the eleventh, another in the twelfth, a third in the thirteenth century, all reaching Europe, some touching the very steps of the throne of Louis XIV., yet none of them carrying the leaf which contained the story of “Perrette,” or of the “Brahman,” to the threshold of La Fontaine’s home. We must, therefore, try again. After the conquest of Spain by the Mohammedans, Arabic literature had found a new home in Western Europe, and among the numerous works translated from Arabic into Latin or Spanish, we find towards the end of the thirteenth century (1289) a Spanish translation of our fables, called “Calila é Dymna.”[31] In this the name of the philosopher is changed from Bidpai to Bundobel. This, or another translation from Arabic, was turned into Latin verse by Raimond de Béziers in 1313 (not published). Lastly, we find in the same century another translation from Arabic straight into Latin verse, by Baldo, which became known under the name of “Æsopus alter.”[32] From these frequent translations, and translations of translations, in the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries, we see quite clearly that these Indian fables were extremely popular, and were, in fact, more widely read in Europe than the Bible, or any other book. They were not only read in translations, but having been introduced into sermons,[33] homilies, and works on morality, they were improved upon, acclimatized, localized, moralized, till at last it is almost impossible to recognize their Oriental features under their homely disguises. I shall give you one instance only. Rabelais, in his “Gargantua,” gives a long description how a man might conquer the whole world. At the end of this dialogue, which was meant as a satire on Charles V., we read:--