In a popular version from Sicily[61], a fox takes the cat's place, _from motives of gratitude_, because the man found it robbing and did not kill it. The fox then plays the usual trick with the game, and another familiar trick, that of leaving a few coins in a borrowed bushel measure to give the impression that his master does not _count_, but measures out his money. The trick of frightening the peasants follows, and finally, an ogress who owns a castle is thrown down a well by the fox. Then comes in the new feature: the _man is ungrateful and kills the fox_; nevertheless he lives happy ever after. Now, at last, we have reached the moral. A beggar on horseback will forget his first friend: _a man will be less grateful than a beast_. This moral declares itself, with a difference (for the ingrate is coerced into decent behaviour), in a popular French version, taken down from oral recitation[62]. Here, then, even among the peasantry of Perrault's own country, and as near France as Sicily, too, we have _Puss in Boots_ with a moral: that of human ingratitude contrasted with the gratitude of a beast. May we conclude, then, that _Puss in Boots_ was originally invented as a kind of parable by which this moral might be inculcated? And, if we may draw that conclusion, where is this particular moral most likely to have been invented, and enforced in an apologue? As to the first of these two questions, it may be observed that the story with the moral, and with a fox in place of a cat, is found among the Avars, a Mongolian people of Mussulman faith, on the northern slopes of the Caucasus. Here the man is ungrateful, but the fox, as in Sicily, coerces him, in this case by threatening to let out the story of his rise in life[63]. In Russia, too, a fox takes the cat's _role_, and the part of the ogre is entrusted to the Serpent Uhlan, a supernatural snake, who is burned to ashes[64].