It is impossible to indicate precisely the sources of the fables seriatim, seeing that in many cases there was available for Straparola a choice of origins. An approximate reckoning would give fifteen fables to the novelists who preceded him, twenty-two to Morlini, four to mediæval and seven to oriental legends, thus leaving twenty-eight to be classed as original. Towards the close of his work it would appear that his imagination must have been stricken with sterility, or that he became indolent, for of the concluding twenty fables nineteen are mere translations from Morlini. It is not improbable that such wholesale borrowing as this may have been the cause of the charges of plagiary to which allusion has already been made. From beginning to end he certainly made free use of all the storehouses of materials which were available, selecting therefrom whatever subjects pleased him, and working them up to the best of his skill. It was unreasonable to censure him on this score, seeing that in what he did he merely followed the fashion of the age. If he borrowed from Ser Giovanni, had not Ser Giovanni borrowed also from the “Directorium” and the “Gesta Romanorum”? Folk-lorists have discovered for us the fact that all the stories the world ever listened to may, by proper classification, be shown to be derived from some half-dozen sources. As the sorting and searching goes on, new facts constantly come to light, the drift of which tends to prove that the charge of plagiarism is now almost meaningless. It is hard to say what new and strange fruits may not be gathered from the wide field now covered by the folk-lorist. Formerly he hunted only in the East; now we find him amongst the Lapps and the Zulus—in Labrador, and in the South Pacific as well. A still more extended search will very likely find a fresh source for those of the fables in the “Notti” which have heretofore been classed as the original work of Straparola, and will discover for us a new and genuine author of “Puss in Boots.” [Illustration: [Fleuron]] [Illustration: [Fleuron]] =Orfeo dalla Carta to all delightful and lovesome ladies, greeting.=