following effect: A man, enraged with his son because he has learnt nothing at school but the languages of dogs, frogs, and birds, notwithstanding that his schools have been twice changed on account of the frivolity of his accomplishments, hands the boy over, in spite of his mother's intercession, to a poor neighbour to be put to death. He pays the man for this service, charging him to bring back the child's heart in proof that he has performed the task. The murderer, however, after taking the boy to a wood for the execution of his purpose, relents, and spares him on condition that he goes away and does not return. A bitch is killed, and her heart taken back to the father instead of his son's.[1] The hero wanders away, and, falling in with two priests who are journeying to Rome, is permitted to accompany them. On the way thither the knowledge his father had judged so useless proves of the greatest service. Lodged at a house which robbers have undermined with the intention of entering that very night, he discovers the plot by overhearing the conversation of the owner's restless hounds; and, by persuading his host to watch, he delivers him from this danger. At another place he heals a girl who has been stricken dumb as a punishment for her carelessness in letting fall to the ground at her first communion a portion of the sacred wafer, which had been afterwards swallowed by a frog. The hero listens to the frogs talking in the ditch, and thus discovers the cause of the maiden's disease. On beating the ditch a frog of unusual size is found; and, after three priests successively have tried in vain, the boy succeeds, speaking to the frog in her own tongue, in inducing her to disgorge the precious fragment. The three travellers reach Rome to find that the pope has died and his successor is about to be chosen. Our hero, with astonishment, overhears the birds in the trees predicting his good fortune. A touch of humour follows. The two priests, his companions, not despairing of being chosen, make him promises of preferment: the one will install him as his shoeblack, the other as his messenger. The new pope is to be indicated by a "portion of heaven" (interpreted by the collector of the story as a cloud) resting
- ↑ It is too much to recognise in the sex of the animal killed an indication of any special relationship of the story with the King Lear and The Value of Salt types. Yet the coincidence is curious.
