et me hear your voice." "_Zivuzi!
zivuzi! zivuzi! zivuzi!_" "Come up, for you please me." So the mouse
went up to the old woman, and stayed with her. One day the old woman
went to mass, and left the pot near the fire and told the mouse to be
careful not to fall in it. When she came home she could not find the
mouse anywhere. At last she went to take the soup from the pot, and
there she found the mouse dead. She began to lament, and the ashes on
the hearth began to scatter, and the window asked what was the matter.
The ashes answered: "Ah! you know nothing. Friend Mouse is in the pot;
the old woman is weeping, weeping; and I, the ashes, have wished to
scatter." Then the window opens and shuts, the stairs fall down, the
bird plucks out its feathers, the laurel shakes off its leaves, the
servant girl who goes to the well breaks her pitcher, the mistress who
was making bread throws the flour over the balcony, and finally the
master comes home, and after he hears the story, exclaims: "And I, who
am master, will break the bones of both of you!" And therewith he takes
a stick and gives the servant and her mistress a sound beating.[16]

There is a curious class of versions of the above story, in which the
principal actors are a mouse and a sausage, reminding one of the Grimm
story of "The Little Mouse, the Little Bird, and the Sausage." In the
Venetian version (Bernoni, Punt. III. p. 81), the beginning is as
follows: Once upon a time there was a mouse and a sausage, and one day
the mouse said to the sausage: "I am going to mass; meanwhile get ready
the dinner." "Yes, yes," answered the sausage. Then the mouse went to
mass, and when he returned he found everything ready. The next day the
sausage went to mass and the mouse prepared the dinner. He put on the
pot, threw in the rice, and then went to taste if it was well salted.
But he fell in and died. The sausage returned home, knocked at the
door,--for there was no bell,--and no one answered. She called: "Mouse!
mouse!" But he does not answer. Then the sausage went to a smith and had
the door broken in, and called again: "Mouse, where are you?" And the
mouse did not answer. "Now I will pour out the rice, and meanwhile he
will come." So she went and poured out the rice, and found the mouse
dead in the pot. "Ah! poor mouse! Oh! my mouse! What shall I do now? Oh!
poor me!" And she began to utter a loud lamentation. Then the table
began to go around the room, the sideboard to throw do