The Latin poem there continues, 'A small monkey gave us an example noteworthy and amusing for its cunning. Johannes Sambucus reports it as happening recently in the Dutch town of Bergen op Zoom in his Emblemata (1564). However, the earliest surviving texts relating the story date from the mid-16th century and some of these have a puppy in place of a cat as the monkey's victim. In the following century, Jean-Antoine de Baïf has the version faire comme le singe, tirer les marrons du feu avec la patte du chat in his Mimes, enseignements et proverbes (1575) and John Florio includes the saying in his collection of idioms Second Frutes (1591). Jean Miélot records the saying c'est un bon jeu de chat et singe (it's a cat and monkey game) in his Proverbes (1456) and there is another apparent reference to the story in a poem in Jean Molinet's Faictz et dictz. There are earlier idiomatic allusions in 15th century Burgundian sources. It is also the source of the English idiom 'a cat's paw', defined in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary as 'one used by another as a tool'. ![]() It is from this fable that the French get their idiom Tirer les marrons du feu, meaning to act as someone's dupe or, deriving from that, to benefit from the dirty work of others. They are disturbed by a maid entering and the cat gets nothing for its pains. As the cat scoops them from the fire one by one, burning his paw in the process, the monkey gobbles them up. In La Fontaine's telling, Bertrand the monkey persuades Raton the cat to pull chestnuts from the embers amongst which they are roasting, promising him a share. Usage of these and reference to the fable have been particularly employed in (although not limited to) political contexts. There are popular idioms derived from it in both English and French with the general meaning of being the dupe of another (e.g., a cat's-paw). ![]() In the fable, a monkey persuades a cat to retrieve chestnuts from the embers of a fire for the two to share, but the monkey quickly eats each chestnut as it is retrieved, and the cat burns its paw in the process. Although there is no evidence that the story existed before the 15th century, it began to appear in collections of Aesop's Fables from the 17th century but is not included in the Perry Index. The Monkey and the Cat is best known as a fable adapted by Jean de La Fontaine under the title Le Singe et le Chat that appeared in the second collection of his Fables in 1679 (IX.17). Grandville's illustration from the 1855 edition of La Fontaine's fables
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