also squanders his money, he attempts to support himself by working as a servant, an attempt that fails because all his masters' wives or sisters fall in love with him, and he has to leave every job. Calvino notes that in his sources, the sisters were merely envious, and added their explicit wish that they would gladly be taken by the Devil because of their rage. "Hell's Gatekeeper" is another version of Bearskin that is more brief than the other versions. In Hell's Gatekeeper, the main character is not a soldier, but a child who has been dirty for the entirety of his life. This causes the boy to be sent to hell and serve as the gatekeeper of hell for seven years after which he is released. The boy vows to stay clean forever after the experience to avoid being sent to hell eternal. Yet another version of Bearskin is "The Reward of Kindness" a story about a couple who can not have a child, so the wife promises her child to serve the devil if she could only have one. The wife then has a child and a devil takes him away and tries to tempt him into his service. The child refuses to work for the devil and eventually, the devil give up and allows the child to leave his service for good if he takes a large bag of money and only does good with it in seven years. The child does good in the seven years and returns to the devil and is then freed from the devil's service and lives a happy life. Analysis The tale has much in common with Beauty and the Beast and other tales of monstrous bridegrooms (or brides), but unlike most the main character is the transformed bridegroom. Some other tales, such as Hans My Hedgehog have such a main character, but differ in that, in Bearskin, the wedding is not the trigger for his being restored to human form. The hero of the German version is a soldier. The tale was collected at a time at which many German kings were conscripting many more men into their armies, and the people of the country and town, who were forced to pay taxes to support such new armies and to house them. Soldiers often left, whether by any discharge they could get, or by deserting, and such an ex-soldier