Version VII. has certain characteristics in common with the above. It is a Basque tale. Juan de Kalais, the son of a widow, sets off as a merchant, but sells his cargo and ship to pay the debts of a corpse, which is being dragged about on a dung-heap. On his return, his mother is angry. Again he goes on a voyage, but with a very poor ship, and is compelled by an English captain to ransom a beautiful maiden with all his cargo. The hero's mother is again angry at this seemingly bad bargain, but she does not forbid his marrying the girl. Juan is now sent to Portugal by his wife with a portrait on a flag, a handkerchief, and a ring. At the same time she tells him that she has been called Marie Madeleine. When the King of Portugal sees the portrait, he sends the hero back with a general to fetch Marie, who is his daughter. The general pitches Juan overboard and goes for the princess, whom he persuades to marry him after seven years. At the end of that time, a fox comes to Juan on an island, where he has lived, and bargains to rescue him for half of all he has at present and will have later. The hero arrives in Portugal, is recognized by the king, tells his story, and has the general burned. After a year the fox appears and demands payment, but, when Juan is going to divide his child, it says that it is the soul of the dead man whom he buried long before. The two variants are chiefly peculiar in that they introduce a new element into the compound,--The Thankful Beast. This substitution of some beast for the ghost has been encountered twice before [140] in connection with Jewish and Servian IV., and must receive special treatment later on. [141] For the present it is sufficient to remark the variation from all other forms of Jean de Calais except X. [142] In both II. and VII. Jean makes two journeys, [143] as in III., IV., and V., as against I. and VI. The attitude of the parent differs widely in the two. The maiden whom the hero marries is a Portuguese princess, which is the prevailing form of the tale. The portrait is also found in each, and both state the time of Jean's exile as seven years. II. differs from all the other versions in placing the later adventures of the story at Calais rather than at the court of the heroine's father. In II., as in VI., the ghost announces himself at the first meeting, which is undoubtedly a modification of the original story. Thus the two forms are sufficiently independent of one another, in spite of their common use of an animal as the hero's friend.