rabas, you
shall be chopped as small as herbs for the pot."

The king did not fail asking of the mowers to whom the meadow they were
mowing belonged: "To my lord Marquis of Carabas," answered they, all
together, for the cat's threats had made them terribly afraid.

"You see, sir," said the marquis, "this is a meadow which never fails to
yield a plentiful harvest every year."

The master-cat, who went still on before, met with some reapers, and
said to them, "Good people, you who are reaping, if you do not tell the
king, who will presently go by, that all this corn belongs to the
Marquis of Carabas, you shall be chopped as small as herbs for the pot."

The king, who passed by a moment after, would needs know to whom all
that corn, which he then saw, did belong. "To my lord Marquis of
Carabas," replied the reapers; and the king was very well pleased with
it, as well as the marquis, whom he congratulated thereupon. The
master-cat, who went always before, said the same words to all he met;
and the king was astonished at the vast estates of my lord Marquis of
Carabas.

Master Puss came at last to a stately castle, the owner of which was an
ogre, the richest that had ever been known, for all the lands which the
king had then gone over belonged to this castle. The cat, who had taken
care to inform himself who the ogre was and what he could do, asked to
speak with him, saying he could not pass so near his castle without
having the honor of paying his respects to him.

The ogre received him as civilly as an ogre could do and made him sit
down. "I have been assured," said the cat, "that you have the gift of
being able to change yourself into all sorts of creatures you have a
mind to. You can, for example, transform yourself into a lion, or
elephant, and the like."

"This is true," answered the ogre very briskly, "and to convince you,
you shall see me now become a lion."

Puss was so sadly terrified at the sight of a lion so near him that he
immediately got into the gutter, not without abundance of trouble and
danger, because of his boots, which were of no use at all to him in
walking upon the tiles. A little while after, when Puss saw that the
ogre had resumed his natural form, he came down and owned he had been
very much frightened.

"I have been, moreover, informed," said the cat, "but I know not how to
believe it, that you have also the power to take on you the shape of the
smallest animals; for example, to change y