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FAIRY TALES
19

did what the cat advised, without knowing why or wherefore.

While he was washing, the king passed by, and the cat began to cry out as loud as he could, “Help, help, my Lord Marquis of Carabas is going to be drowned. At this noise the king put his head out of the coach-window, and finding it was the eat who had so often brought him such good game, he commanded the guards to run immediately to the assistance of his lordship the Marquis of Carabas.

While they were drawing the poor Marquis out of the river, the cat came up to the coach and told the king, that, while his master was washing there came by some rogues who went of with his clothes, though he had cried cut, Thieves, thieves, several times, as loud as he could. This cunning cat had hidden them under a great stone. The king immediately commanded the officers of his wardrobe to run and fetch one of his best suits for the Lord Marquis of Carabas.

The king caressed him after a very extraordinary manner, and as the fine clothes he had given him, extremely set off his good mein, (for he was well made and very handsome in his person) the king’s daughter took a secret inclination to him, and the Marquis of Carabas had no sooner cast two or three respectful and tender glances, but she fell in love with him to distraction. The king would have him come into his coach and take a part of the airing. The cat overjoyed to see his project begin to succeed, marched on before, and meeting with some countrymen who were mowing a meadow, he said to them, “Good people if you do not tell the king, that the meadow you mow belongs to the Marquis of Carabas, you shall be chopped as small as herbs for the pot.”

The king did not fail to ask the mowers, to whom