“When the prince heard this dovish grumbling he stood there, stiff as a board, for a long time. At last he asked where the pie had come from, and when he heard from the steward that a kitchen boy hired for the occasion had made it, he had the boy brought before him. When she arrived she threw herself at Nardo Aniello’s feet and, crying a stream of tears, she could say nothing but, ‘What did I do to you, filthy dog? What did I do to you?’ Due to the power of Filadoro’s beauty and the force of her enchantment, the prince began to remember the obligations he had stipulated before her in the tribunal of Love, and he immediately had her rise and sit next to him. Then he told his mother of the great debt he owed this beautiful young woman, of all that she had done for him, and of the promise he had made her, which he needed to keep.
“His mother, who had no pleasure other than this son, said to him, ‘Do what you like, as long as you respect the honor and desire of this little miss whom you took for your wife.’ ‘Don’t bother yourselves,’ answered the bride, ‘for if you really want to know the truth, I would have been reluctant to stay in this land. But since the heavens have treated me well, with your kind permission I would like to return to my Flanders so that I can find the grandparents of the glasses28 that are used in Naples, where, when I thought I would be lighting the lamp the right way,29 the lantern of this life almost went out.’
“With great happiness the prince offered her a vessel and servants, and after Filadoro was dressed like a princess and the tables were cleared the musicians came in and the dancing began and lasted until evening. But then—when the Earth was covered in mourning clothes for the funeral rites of the Sun—torches were brought out, and on the stairs there was suddenly heard a loud jangling of bells, at which the prince said to his mother, ‘This must be a nice masquerade30 of some sort, to honor the festivities. My word, Neapolitan gentlemen are certainly refined, and when they have to they squander the raw and the cooked.’
“While they were passing this judgment, in the middle of the hall there appeared a hideous mask, no taller than three spans but wider than a barrel. When it was before the prince, it said, ‘You should know, Nard’Aniello, that your jokes and bad deeds have been the cause of all of the misfortunes you have encountered. I am the shadow of that old woman whose pot you broke, immediately after which I died of hunger. I put a curse on you so that you would fall victim to the torments of an ogress, and my prayers were granted, but due to the power of this lovely fairy you fled those troubles. Then you received another curse from the ogress, that at the first kiss you were given you would forget Filadoro. Your mother kissed you and Filadoro passed from your mind, but due to her art you now find her at your side. I’ve returned, though, to put yet another curse on you: in remembrance of the harm you did me, may the beans that you threw always appear before you, and may the proverb “He who sows beans sprouts horns” come true.’ That said, she slipped away like quicksilver, leaving not a wisp of smoke behind her.
“The fairy, who saw that the prince had grown pale at these words, cheered him up by saying, ‘Have no fear, my husband. Sciatola and matola:31 if it is a spell may it not be valid; I’ll get you out of the fire!’ When this was said and the festivities had ended, they went to bed, and to authenticate the contract of their newly promised loyalty the prince had his two witnesses32 sign it. And the past hardships made the present pleasures more tasty, since it can be seen in the crucible of all that happens in the world that he who stumbles and does not fall advances in his journey.”
8
THE LITTLE SLAVE GIRL*
Eighth Entertainment of the Second Day
Lisa is born from a rose petal and then dies because of a fairy’s curse. Her mother puts her in a room and gives her brother instructions not to open it. But his jealous wife wants to see what is in there, finds Lisa alive, and, after dressing her as a slave, makes her suffer a thousand torments. She is finally recognized by her uncle, who drives his wife away and arranges the richest of marriages for his niece.
“Truly,” said the prince, “every man must practice his own trade: the lord that of the lord, the groom that of the groom, and the cop that of the cop. For just as the boy who wants to act like a prince makes himself ridiculous, so the prince who acts like a boy loses his reputation.” Saying this, he turned to Paola and told her that she could let herself go. After sucking her lips at length and scratching her head, she began in this manner: “If it’s worth anything to tell the truth, jealousy is a terrible little demon, a vertigo that makes your head spin, a fever that heats up your veins, a calamity that chills your limbs, a dysentery that makes your intestines churn, and, finally, a sickness that takes your sleep away, makes your food bitter, disturbs your peace, and cuts your life in half; it’s a serpent that bites, a woodworm that gnaws, bile that poisons, snow that numbs, a nail that perforates, a marriage breaker of the delights of Love, a wrecker1 of amorous joys, and a constant tempest in the sea of Venus’s pleasures, from which nothing of good has ever sprung, as you will confess with your own tongues upon hearing the tale that follows.
“There once was a baron, the baron of Dark Wood, who had a maiden sister who always went with other young ladies her age to frolic in a garden. And on one of these occasions they found a lovely, overblown rosebush, and pledged that whoever jumped clean over it without touching a leaf would win something.
“A number of the girls jumped, straddling their legs, but they all brushed against it, and none of them got clear over. But then it was the turn of Lilla, the baron’s sister, and she took a little running start and then raced off so fast that she jumped clear over the rose. She did cause one petal to fall, but she was so quick and agile that she picked it up in a flash from the ground, swallowed it, and won the prize.
“But before three days had gone by she felt pregnant and nearly died of grief, since she knew for certain that she hadn’t been up to any tricks or dirty business, and couldn’t figure out how her belly had swollen up. And so she ran off to some fairies who were friends of hers, who told her not to fear, for it was the rose petal that she had swallowed. When Lilla heard this she tried to hide her belly as best she could, and when it came time to unload the weight she gave birth in secret to a lovely daughter whom she named Lisa. She sent the girl to the fairies, who each gave her a charm, but as the last one came running to see the baby girl she twisted her foot so dreadfully that in her pain she put a curse on her: when she was seven years old, her mother would comb her hair and forget the comb on her head, where it would remain stuck and cause her to die.
“When the time arrived, all of this occurred. The poor mother, desperate over this misfortune, first lamented bitterly and then enclosed Lisa in seven crystal caskets, each contained within the other, and put her in the last room of the palace, keeping the key for herself. But since the pain caused by this matter had reduced her to the last drops2 of her life, she called her brother and said to him, ‘My brother, I feel myself being pulled, bit by bit, by Death’s hook, and thus I leave you all my trinkets, and may you be lord and master of them. I ask only that you give me your word that you will never open the last room of the house, and that you hide this key in the writing desk.’ Her brother, who loved her with all his heart, gave her his word in the same instant that she said, ‘Farewell; the pods are full.’
“Within a year,3 after he had married, the lord was invited to a hunting party and left the house in his wife’s hands, begging her above all not to open the room whose key he kept in the writing desk. But no sooner had he turned his back than she, pulled by suspicion, driven by jealousy, and choked by curiosity, which is the prime endowment of women, took the key and opened the room. When she opened the caskets, through which she could see the girl shining, what she found seemed to be asleep; the girl had grown just like any other woman, and the caskets, too, had increased in size at the same rate as she had grown.
“When she saw this beautiful creature the jealous woman immediately said, �
�Good boy! For the life of me! “Key on the belt and Martin inside!”4 That’s the reason for all this diligence about not opening the room, so that no one would see the Mohammed5 that he was worshiping in the caskets!’ Saying this she grabbed the girl by the hair and pulled her out, and as she did so the comb fell to the ground and the girl came to her senses, screaming, ‘Oh, dear mother! Oh, dear mother!’ ‘Come on, I’ll give you mommy and daddy!’ answered the baroness and, as full of bile as a slave, as angry as a bitch that has just pupped, and as full of poison as a serpent, she immediately cut off Lisa’s hair, gave her a juicy beating, put her in a ragged dress, and every day unloaded lumps on her head, eggplants on her eyes, brands on her face, and gave her a mouth that looked like she had eaten raw pigeons.
“Upon his return her husband saw this girl who was being treated so badly, and asked who she was; his wife answered that she was a slave his aunt had sent, and that she was always fishing for a beating and needed to be harnessed all the time. And when the lord had occasion to go to a fair he asked everyone in the house, even the cats, what they wanted him to buy for them; some asked for one thing and some for another, and he finally came to the little slave girl. His wife behaved like no Christian when she said, ‘Go ahead, put this thick-lipped slave in the same bag as us; let’s have one rule for everyone, and then we’ll all want to piss in the same chamber pot. Leave her alone, damn it, and let’s not award so much importance to an ugly animal like her!’ The lord, who was a courteous man, wanted at all costs that the little slave girl ask for something, and she said, ‘I want nothing more than a doll, a knife, and a pumice stone. And if you forget, may it be impossible for you to cross the first river you find on your way.’
“When the baron had purchased everything except what his niece had asked him for, he came to a river—that carried stones and trees from the mountains to the seacoast to pour foundations of fear and raise walls of marvel—across which it was impossible for him to pass. And so he remembered the curse of the little slave girl and went back and bought every last thing, and when he returned home he distributed, one by one, the things he had bought.6
“After Lisa had her little things she went into the kitchen and, putting the doll in front of her, began to cry and wail, telling that bundle of rags the whole story of her troubles as if she were speaking to a living person, and when she saw that the doll was not answering, she took the knife, sharpened it on the pumice stone, and said, ‘You’ll see; if you don’t answer me I’m going to stick myself, and the party will be over!’ And the doll, swelling up slowly like a bagpipe when it’s blown into, finally answered, ‘Yes, I heard you, and better than a deaf person!’
“Now this music lasted a few days, and it happened once that the baron, who had a little room that shared a wall with the kitchen, heard the usual dirge and stuck his eyes to the keyhole of the door. He saw Lisa telling the doll about how her mother had jumped over the rose, eaten the petal, and given birth; about the spell that had been cast on her, the fairy’s curse, how the comb had stayed in her hair, her death, how she had been shut in the seven caskets and hidden in the room; about her mother’s death, the key left to her brother, the hunting trip, the wife’s jealousy, her entrance into the room where Lisa lay against the brother’s order; about how her hair had been cut and she had been treated like a slave, and the so very many torments to which she had been subjected. As she was recounting all this and weeping, she cried, ‘Answer me, doll, or I’ll kill myself with this knife!’ But while she was sharpening it on the pumice stone with the intention of stabbing herself, the baron gave the door a kick and took the knife from her hand. When he had heard the story in greater detail he embraced her as his niece and removed her from the house, putting her in the care of a relative of his so that she could recover a little, for she had become half of what she had once been due to the bad treatment received from that heart of Medea.
“Within a few months, when she had grown as beautiful as a goddess, he had her brought to his house, saying that she was a niece of his, and after they had a great banquet and the tables had been cleared, he asked Lisa to tell the story of the suffering she had undergone and the cruelty of his wife, which made all the guests cry. And then he kicked out his wife, banishing her to the house of some relatives, and gave a nice husband to his niece, just as her heart desired. And thus Lisa touched with her own hands the fact that when you least expect it, the heavens rain down their graces.”
9
THE PADLOCK*
Ninth Entertainment of the Second Day
Lucia goes to get some water at a fountain and finds a slave who puts her in a splendid palace, where she is treated like a queen. But she is advised by her envious sisters to look at the person with whom she sleeps at night, and when she discovers that it is a handsome young man she loses favor with him and is sent away. After wandering through the world for several years, pregnant and big-bellied, she reaches her lover’s house and gives birth to a son. Following various incidents they make peace and she becomes his wife.
Everyone’s heart was moved to great compassion by all the misfortunes that poor little Lisa had undergone, and more than a few of them displayed red eyes welled up with tears, for there is nothing that arouses pity more than seeing someone suffer innocently. But since it was Ciommetella’s turn to work the spinning wheel, she spoke in this manner: “Advice given in envy has always been the father of misfortune, because under the mask of goodwill hides the face of ruin, and a person who finds his hands in Fortune’s hair must imagine that at any moment there will be a hundred other people who stretch cords in front of his feet to make him trip and fall. That is what happened to a poor girl who, because of the bad advice of her sisters, fell from the top of the ladder of happiness, and it was only by the mercy of the heavens that she didn’t break her neck.
“There once was a mother who had three daughters, and because of the great poverty that had stepped foot into her house, which was a sewer pipe where streams of misfortunes flowed, she sent them out to beg so that they could scrape by. One morning she found some cabbage leaves that had been thrown away by a cook in a palace and, wanting to cook them, she told each of her daughters to go get a little water at the fountain. They batted it back and forth between them like a cat giving orders to its tail1 until the poor mother said, ‘Give orders, but do it yourself,’ and, taking the jug, she intended to go do the chore in person even if she could barely drag her legs on account of her advanced old age.
“But Luciella, the youngest, said, ‘Give that to me, my dear mother, for although I don’t have all the strength I might need, I still want to relieve you of this labor.’ And she took the jug and went outside the city, where there stood a fountain—that when it saw the flowers pale with fear of the night threw water in their faces—at which she encountered a handsome slave, who said to her, ‘My lovely girl, if you want to come with me to a grotto not far from here, I’ll give you a lot of nice little things.’ Luciella, always dying for a favor, answered him, ‘Let me bring this bit of water to my mother, who is waiting for me, and then I’ll come right back.’ She brought the jug home, then returned to the fountain with the excuse of going to look for a splinter or two of wood; there she found the slave again and set off with him. She was taken through a grotto of tufa decorated with maidenhair and ivy and then into a splendid underground palace, all aglitter with gold, where a fabulous table was immediately set for her. In the meantime two lovely pieces of servant girls came out, took off the few rags she was wearing, and dressed her to perfection, and in the evening they put her to sleep in a bed embroidered all over in pearls and gold, where, as soon as the candles were put out, someone came and lay down beside her.
The Tale of Tales Page 25
