The Mouse Turned into a Maid

La Fontaine feigns shock at all this and finds at the story's culmination, in which the girl falls in love with the burrowing rat at the mere mention of its name, an argument to confound the Eastern fabulist's beliefs: The fable’s philosophical theme inspired the American poet Marianne Moore to a wry and idiosyncratic recreation in her version of La Fontaine (1954): This in turn was set for unaccompanied soprano by the British composer Alexander Goehr in 1992 (Opus 54).

[8] The Indian fable's western equivalent is the story of "Venus (or Aphrodite) and the Cat", which goes back to Classical times and is given the moral that nature is stronger than nurture.

It figures as number 50 in the Perry Index and its many versions feature a cat turned into a woman by the goddess, who then tests her on the wedding night by introducing a mouse into the bedchamber.

[9] In the Greek version by Babrius, however, it is a weasel (γαλῆ) that falls in love with a man and begs Aphrodite to change her into a human, but then goes chasing after a mouse in the middle of the marriage feast.

[10] In ancient times it was speculated that the Greek proverb ‘a saffron (wedding) robe does not suit a weasel’ was connected with the fable and has much the same meaning that one’s underlying nature does not change with circumstances.