Soon after, Puss caught a brace of partridges, and these, too, he
carried to the palace. The King was as gracious as before; again he
thanked the Marquis, and gave the cat a handsome present. So things
went on; from time to time Puss carried game to the King, who always
showed him the greatest favor. At last, one day, when the cat had
learned that the King and his daughter, the loveliest princess in the
whole world, were to drive through their village that afternoon, he ran
to his master, and cried: “Quick! Quick! Do as I tell you, and your
fortune is made forever. Take off your clothes, jump into the river,
and leave the rest to me.” So saying, he took the young man’s workaday
clothes and hid them under a large rock. Then, as he heard the rumble
of chariot wheels on the high road, he began to cry at the top of his
voice: “Help! Help! My master, the Marquis of Carabas, is drowning!”
The King, hearing these shouts, popped his head out of the coach
window, and seeing the cat who had so many times brought him presents
of game, he commanded his guards to go to the rescue of the Marquis.
“Alas, your Majesty!” cried Puss, “my master’s clothes have been
stolen. While he was bathing, robbers came and carried them away, and
although I cried, ‘Stop, thief! Stop, thief!’ I could not prevent them
from doing this wicked deed. And now he cannot appear before your
Majesty.”
“I will send the groom of my wardrobe for one of my finest suits,” said
the King; and when the suit was brought, and the Marquis of Carabas
had put it on, every one marvelled to see how handsome he was. The King
invited him to get into the coach and drive with them, and, as for his
daughter, the pretty Princess, she fell head over heels in love with
him.
All this time Puss had been busy, too. He ran quickly ahead of the
coach, and, stopping at a fine field, he cried aloud to the peasants
who were mowing it: “Good people! If you do not tell the King, when he
rides by, that this field belongs to the Marquis of Carabas, I will
chop you into mince-meat!”
The peasants were very much frightened at this threat, and, when the
King passed by, and asked them who owned the field, they cried with one
voice, “It belongs to the Marquis of Carabas.”
Puss, who was keeping ahead of the coach, had already come to the next
field, a rich meadow which the laborers were reaping. “Good people,” he
said to them, “when the King rides by, if you do not tell him that this
meadow belongs to the Marquis of Carabas, I will make mince-meat of
you!”
Terrified, the peasants promised, and when the King asked them whose
meadow they were reaping, they answered as one man, “Sire, it belongs
to the Marquis of Carabas.”
“You have some very fine property, Marquis,” said the King, pleased
to find the young man as wealthy as he was handsome. And the Marquis
seemed to grow richer, for Puss had stopped at each field, and the
peasants declared that all the land there-abouts belonged to the
Marquis of Carabas.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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