“DIALOGO C. (p. ccxxiii.) For as it is but madnesse to trust to moche in surete, so it is but foly to hope to moche of vanyteys, for vayne be all erthly thinges longynge to men, as sayth Davyd, Psal. xciiii: Wher of it is tolde in fablys that a lady uppon a tyme delyvered to her mayden a _galon of mylke_ to sell at a cite, and by the way, as she sate and restid her by a dyche side, she began to thinke that with the money of the mylke she wold bye an henne, the which shulde bringe forth chekyns, and when they were growyn to hennys she wolde sell them and by piggis, and eschaunge them in to shepe, and the shepe in to oxen, and so whan she was come to richesse she sholde be maried right worshipfully unto some worthy man, and thus she reioycid. And whan she was thus mervelously comfortid and ravisshed inwardly in her secrete solace, thinkynge with howe greate ioye she shuld be ledde towarde the chirche with her husbond on horsebacke, she sayde to her self: ‘Goo we, goo we.’ Sodaynlye she smote the ground with her fote, myndynge to spurre the horse, but her fote slypped, and she fell in the dyche, and there lay all her mylke, and so she was farre from her purpose, and never had that she hopid to have.”[35] Here we have arrived at the end of our journey. It has been a long journey across fifteen or twenty centuries, and I am afraid our following Perrette from country to country, and from language to language, may have tired some of my hearers. I shall, therefore, not attempt to fill the gap that divides the fable of the thirteenth century from La Fontaine. Suffice it to say, that the milkmaid, having once taken the place of the Brahman, maintained it against all comers. We find her as Dona Truhana, in the famous “Conde Lucanor,” the work of the Infante Don Juan Manuel,[36] who died in 1347, the grandson of St. Ferdinand, the nephew of Alfonso the Wise, though himself not a king, yet more powerful than a king; renowned both by his sword and by his pen, and possibly not ignorant of Arabic, the language of his enemies. We find her again in the “Contes et Nouvelles” of Bonaventure des Periers, published in the sixteenth century, a book which we know that La Fontaine was well acquainted with. We find her after La Fontaine in all the languages of Europe.[37] [Transcriber’s Note: This large table could not be reproduced as printed, so the information has been split into two groups. The table itself gives only the years and languages of the translations, with their family relationship. The following lists then give the full text, again divided into two formats: the first strictly chronological, the second sorted by branches. Words in [brackets] were added by the transcriber.] A.D. OLD COLLECTION OF INDIAN FABLES. | 500- 531-579 _Pehlevi_ (lost) 600 570 _Syriac_