[Footnote 51: Crane, p. 78.] LE MAISTRE CHAT, OU LE CHAT BOTTE. _Puss in Boots._ Everybody knows Puss in Boots. He is, as Nodier says, the Figaro of the nursery, as Hop o' My Thumb is the Ulysses, and Blue Beard the Othello; and thus he is of interest to all children, and to all men who remember their childhood. Ulysses himself did not travel farther than the story of the patron of the Marquis de Carabas has wandered, and few things can be more curious than to follow the Master-Cat in his migrations. For many reasons the history of _Puss in Boots_, though it has been rather neglected, throws a good deal of light on that very dark question, the diffusion of popular tales. As soon as we read it in Perrault, we find that Monsieur Perrault was at a loss for a moral to his narrative. In fact, as he tells it, there is _no_ moral to the Master-Cat. Puss is a perfectly unscrupulous adventurer who, for no reason but the fun of the thing, dubs the miller's son marquis, makes a royal marriage for him, by a series of amusing frauds, and finally enriches him with the spoils of a murdered ogre. In the absence of any moral Perrault has to invent one--which does not apply. 'Aux jeunes gens pour l'ordinaire, L'industrie et le savoir-faire Valent mieux que des biens acquis.' Now the 'young person,' the cat's master, had shown no 'industry' whatever, except in so far as he was a _chevalier d'industrie_, thanks to his cat. These obvious truths pained Mr. George Cruikshank when he tried to illustrate _Puss in Boots_, and found that the romance was quite unfit for the young. 'When I came to look carefully at that story, I felt _compelled_ to rewrite it, and alter the character of it to a certain extent, for, as it stood, the tale was a succession of successful falsehoods--a _clever_ lesson in lying, a system of _imposture_ rewarded by the greatest worldly advantages. A _useful_ lesson, truly, to be impressed upon the minds of children.' So Mr. Cruikshank made the tale didactic, showing how the Marquis de Carabas was the real heir, 'kep' out of his own' by the landgrabbing ogre, and how puss was a gamekeeper metamorphosed into a cat as a punishment for his repining disposition. This performance of Mr. Cruikshank was denounced by Mr. Dickens in _Household Words_ as a 'fraud on the fairies,' and 'the intrusion of a whole hog of unwieldy dimensions into the fairy flower-garden[52].'