The Master-Cat probably never made any child a rogue, but no doubt his conduct was flagrantly immoral. And this brings us to one of the problems of the science of nursery tales. When we find a story told by some peoples _with_ a moral, and by other peoples _without_ a moral, are we to suppose that the tale was originally narrated for the moral's sake, and that the forms in which there is _no_ moral are degenerate and altered versions? For example, the Zulus, the Germans, the French, and the Hindoos have all a nursery tale in which someone, by a series of lucky accidents and exchanges, goes on making good bargains, and rising from poverty to wealth. In French Flanders this is the tale of _Jean Gogue_; in Grimm it is _The Golden Goose_; in Zulu it is part of the adventures of the Hermes of Zulu myth, Uhlakanyana. In two of these the hero possesses some trifling article which is injured, and people give him something better in exchange, till, like Jean Gogue, for example, he marries the king's daughter[53]. Now these tales have no moral. The hero is thought neither better nor worse of because of his series of exchanges. But in modern Hindostan the story _has_ a moral. The rat, whose series of exchanges at last win him a king's daughter, is held up to contempt as a warning to bargain-hunters. He is not happy with his bride, but escapes, leaving his tail, half his hair, and a large piece of his skin behind him, howling with pain, and vowing that 'never, never, never again would he make a bargain[54].' Here then is a tale told with a moral, and _for_ the moral in India, but with no moral in Zululand and France. Are we to suppose that India was the original source of the narrative, that it was a parable invented for the moral's sake, and that it spread, losing its moral (as the rat lost his tail), to Europe and South Africa? Or are we to suppose that originally the narrative was a mere _Schwank_, or popular piece of humour, and that the mild, reflective Hindoo moralised it into a parable or fable? The question may be argued either way; but the school of Benfey and M. Cosquin, holding that almost all our stories were invented in India, should prefer the former alternative. Now _Puss in Boots_ has this peculiarity, that out of France, or rather out of the region influenced by Perrault's version of the history, a moral usually does inform the legend of the Master-Cat, or master-fox, or master-gazelle, or master-jackal, or master-dog, for each of these animals is the hero in different countries. Possibly, then, the story had originally what it sadly lacks in its best-known shape, a moral; and possibly _Puss in Boots_ was in its primitive shape (like _Toads and Diamonds_) a novel with a purpose. But where was the novel first invented?