“Finally, no longer able to resist the itch of need, Marcuccio went to see his brother and begged him, seeing that fortune had made him the son of a white chicken,16 to remember that they were of the same blood and had both come out of the same hole. Parmiero, who with all the stimulation of wealth had become constipated, said to him, ‘You, who wanted to pursue your studies because of your father’s advice and have always reproached me for the company I keep and for my gaming, go gnaw on your books and leave me alone with my misfortunes, for I wouldn’t give you a pinch of salt, considering how hard I toil for these few coins that I have! You’re of age, you have common sense. He who does not know how to live must suffer the consequences; each man for himself and God for all! If you don’t have money, play hearts!17 If you’re hungry, take a bite of your legs; if you’re thirsty, take a bite of your fingers!’ And after saying these and other words he turned his back on him.
“Marcuccio, who saw himself treated with such cruelty by his own brother, became so desperate that he resolved with a firm heart to separate the gold of his soul from the soil of his body with the acid of desperation,18 and he set off in the direction of a very high mountain, which, like a spy for the earth, wanted to see what was happening up in the air; or, like a Grand Turk of all the mountains, with its turban of clouds rose up into the sky to pierce the moon and affix it to its forehead.19
“Marcuccio climbed the mountain, scrambling up as best he could on a very narrow road that ran between crags and sheer cliffs, and when he had reached the top, which looked out over a steep precipice, he opened the faucet of the fountain of his eyes, and at the end of a long lament he was intending to throw himself down headfirst when a lovely woman, dressed in green with a garland of laurel atop her hair of spun gold, grabbed him by the arm and said, ‘What are you doing, poor man? Where are you letting yourself be dragged by such a bad state of mind? You are that virtuous man who has burnt so much oil and lost so much sleep studying? You are the one who in order to send your fame to sea like a well-greased sailing vessel has spent so much time under the lash?20 And now, right at the best part you get lost and you don’t make use of the arms that you tempered at the forge of your studies to combat misery and bad fortune? Don’t you know that virtue is an antidote against the poison of poverty, a tobacco21 against the catarrh of envy, a prescription against the infirmity of time? Don’t you know that virtue is a compass for gaining your bearings amid the winds of adversity, a windproof torch for walking in the darkness of displeasure, an unshakable arch for resisting the earthquakes of torments? Come back, you poor soul, come back to your senses and do not turn your back on those who can give you courage in times of danger, strength in times of trouble, and calm in times of desperation. And know that the heavens sent you to this mountain, so difficult to climb and where Virtue herself resides, so that she in person, so wrongly accused, could rid you of the bad intentions that were blinding you. Wake up, then, be comforted and change your mind, and to help you see that virtue is always good, worthy, and useful, here, take this little paper full of powder and go to the kingdom of Wide Field, where you will find them reciting the Confitemini22 for the daughter of the king, who can find no cure for her ailment. Have her take this powder inside a fresh egg, and you’ll immediately serve her illness an eviction notice—the illness that, like a soldier who demands lodging, is sucking away her life. And you’ll receive such a great reward that you’ll be able to cast off your poverty and live as one like you deserves to live, without needing anything from anyone.’
“At the first whiff Marcuccio had recognized her, and he threw himself at her feet and begged her to pardon him for the mistake that he had been about to make, saying, ‘Now I am able to lift the veil from my eyes and recognize from your appearance that you are the Virtue praised by all and followed by few, the Virtue that causes intellects to stand up erect, minds to grow bold, judgment to sharpen, honorable labor to be embraced, and wings for flying to seventh heaven to be donned! I recognize you, and declare myself repentant for having improperly used the arms you gave me, and promise you that from this day on I’ll make such good use of your antidote that even March thunder won’t be able to touch me!’ And as he was about to kiss her feet she vanished before his eyes, leaving him greatly comforted, like a poor sick man who, after getting through the moment of crisis, is given a bit of root23 in cool water to drink.
“He slid down the mountain and set off toward Wide Field, and when he arrived at the royal palace he immediately had the king informed that he intended to cure his daughter’s ailment. The king received him with the greatest honors and then took him to the princess’s room, where he found the unfortunate girl lying in a perforated bed,24 so consumed and worn that there was nothing left of her but skin and bones. Her eyes had caved in, so that you would have needed Galileo’s glass25 to see her pupils; her nose was so pointy that it could have taken over the job of an enema tube; her cheeks were so hollow that she looked like the Death of Sorrento;26 her bottom lip hung down to her wattle; her chest looked a magpie’s; and her arms were like legs of lamb that had been picked clean. In short, she was so haggard that she toasted compassion with the glass of pity.
“When Marcuccio saw her in this terrible state, tears welled up in his eyes, and he considered how the weakness of our nature is subject to the ravages of time, changes in constitution, and the maladies of life. But then he asked for the fresh egg of a spring chicken, and after barely warming it up a little, he sprinkled the powder in. He forced the princess to sip it down, and covered her with four blankets. And Night had not yet reached its port and set up tent when the invalid called her ladies-in-waiting and asked them to change her bed, which was soaked with sweat. Once she had been dried off and given clean clothes she asked for some refreshment, a word that in the seven years of her illness had never once come out of her mouth. They took hope from this and gave her a sip of broth, and with each hour she won back more strength and with each day her appetite advanced, so that before a week had passed she was completely and entirely better and got out of bed. For this the king honored Marcuccio as if he were the god of medicine, making him not only baron of vast lands but also the first of his court counselors, and he married him to the richest lady in the kingdom.
“In the meantime Parmiero was stripped of all he had, since gambled money goes as easily as it comes and a gambler’s luck falls as often as it rises. And thus, finding himself poor and disgraced, he decided to walk either until the change of place brought him a change of fortune, or until his place on the roster of life was freed. And he walked so far that after six months of twists and turns he reached Wide Field, with his tail dragging and in such a state of exhaustion that he couldn’t stand on his feet. When he saw that it was impossible to find a place to drop dead and that his hunger was increasing proportionately and that his clothes were falling off of him in shreds, he was so overcome by desperation that as soon as he found an old house outside the city walls, he took the strings, which were made of yarn and cotton wool, out of his socks, and knotted them together to make a nice noose, which he attached to one of the rafters. Then he climbed onto a little hill of stones that he had piled up himself, and pushed off. But fate willed it that the rafter was worm-eaten and rotten, and when it was jerked like that it split in half and the living hanged man banged his side on those stones so hard that he was sore for quite a few days.
“Now when the rafter split, a handful of golden chains, necklaces, and rings fell out onto the ground; they had been stuffed into the cavity made by the worms and, among the other things, there was a bag of Cordovan leather with a bunch of money in it. Parmiero saw how he had jumped the ditch of poverty with a hanged man’s jump, and if before he had been hanging by a thread of desperation, now he was suspended by happiness, so that his feet didn’t touch the ground. And he took this gift of fortune and raced off to a tavern to get his spirits back up, since they had almost left him.
“Two days earlier s
ome thieves had lifted that same money from the very tavern keeper where Parmiero went to eat, and they had hidden it in the rafter, which they were familiar with, so that later on they could change it and spend it little by little. So when Parmiero had filled his stomach to capacity and pulled out the bag to pay, the tavern keeper recognized it and called over some guards who were customers of the tavern, and they collared him and with great ceremony brought him before the judge. The judge had him searched, and once the material evidence was found and compared with the tavern keeper’s goods, he was declared guilty and condemned to play the game of three,27 where his feet would spin like the blades of a mill.
“The wretched fellow saw that he was under the hammer, and when he realized that the eve of sock strings would be followed by the feast of the rope, and that after the dress rehearsal of the rotten rafter would come the tournament of the crossbeam on a brand-new gallows, he began to thrash about and shriek that he was innocent and intended to appeal the sentence. And as he was shouting and howling in the street that there was no justice, that no one listened to poor people, and that judgments were handed out as if it were a game of smash-the-top,28 and that since he hadn’t greased the judge’s hand, sweetened up the scribe’s mouth, tipped the clerk, and made a deposit in the name of the attorney, he had been sent to the widowed teacher to do openwork,29 he happened to run into his brother, who, since he was counselor and head of the tribunal,30 had the procession stopped so that he could hear Parmiero’s explanation.
“When he had recounted everything that had happened, Marcuccio answered, ‘You keep quiet, for you don’t know how lucky you are; there’s no doubt that if on the first try you found a chain that was three spans long, on the second you’ll find another that measures three strides! Go, and be cheerful, for the gallows are your blood sisters, and where others evacuate their lives you will fill your bag!’ Parmiero, who felt himself being pulled by the leg, said to him, ‘I come for justice, not to be made fun of! And you should know that regarding this matter of which I’ve been accused, my hands are clean, and although you see me ragged and in tatters like this I’m an honorable man, for clothes don’t make a monk. But because I didn’t listen to my father Marchionne and my brother Marcuccio I’ll have to deal with the proceedings, and it won’t be long before I sing a three-part madrigal31 under the hangman’s feet.”
“When he heard his father’s and his own name mentioned, Marcuccio felt his blood stir, and, staring fixedly at Parmiero, he seemed to recognize him. Finally, when he discovered that it was his brother, he found himself torn between shame and affection, flesh and honor, justice and mercy. He was ashamed to reveal himself as the brother of one who had the face of a hanged man; he was tormented to see his own blood end up like that; and if his flesh pulled him like a hook to find a remedy for this matter, his honor pushed him back so as not to disgrace himself before the king over a brother condemned for menatione uncini.32 Justice willed that he satisfy the offended party; pity searched for a way to procure the salvation of his own brother.
“As his brain was weighing this out and his noggin was thus divided, in ran a messenger sent by the judge, his tongue hanging down to his chin, and shouted, ‘Stop, stop the execution! Don’t move, don’t move! Wait!’ ‘What’s the matter?’ asked the counselor. And the other answered, ‘Something incredible has happened, luckily for this young man. Two thieves went to get some money and gold that they had hidden in a rafter of an old house, and when they couldn’t find it each of them thought that his buddy had pulled one over on him, and they came to blows and fatally wounded each other. The judge arrived, and they immediately confessed what they had done, and now that the innocence of this poor man is established, he sends me to prevent the execution and free this man, who bears no guilt.’
“Upon hearing this Parmiero grew a span taller, whereas he had been afraid, before, to extend himself an arm’s length, and Marcuccio, who saw his brother’s reputation return, took off his mask and allowed himself to be recognized, saying to Parmiero, ‘My brother, if you have met your ruin through vice and gaming, meet in the same way life’s pleasures and goodness through virtue. Come now, of your own free will, to my house, where you and I will together enjoy the fruits of the virtue you so despised, for I have forgotten the scorn you showed me and I will hold you as dear as the pupils of my eyes.’ As he was saying this he embraced him, took him home, dressed him from head to toe, and showed him, after all the evidence was in, how everything else is wind, since virtue alone makes for a blissful man.”
3
THE THREE ANIMAL KINGS*
Third Entertainment of the Fourth Day
Tittone, son of the king of Green Knoll, goes in search of his three blood sisters, who are married to a falcon, a stag, and a dolphin. After a long journey he finds them, and while returning home he encounters the daughter of a king, who is kept prisoner in a tower by a dragon. Tittone uses a signal given to him by his brothers-in-law, and all three of them appear to help him. Together they kill the dragon and free the princess, after which Tittone takes her for his wife and returns to his kingdom with his brothers-in-law and sisters.
More than a few of the listeners were moved by the mercy shown by Marcuccio to Parmiero, and they all acknowledged that virtue is an unfailing wealth that time cannot consume, storms cannot blow away, and woodworms cannot gnaw to dust, unlike other forms of wealth in this life that come and go, and that what is acquired dishonestly never reaches the third generation. Finally Meneca seasoned the episode that had just been told by bringing the following tale to the table of nursery stories.
“There once was a king, the king of Green Knoll, who had three daughters who were three jewels. These daughters were ardently loved by the three sons of the king of Lovely Meadow, who due to the curse of a fairy had all been turned into animals, for which reason the king of Green Knoll did not want to give them his daughters in marriage.
“And thus the first of them, a beautiful falcon and enchanted as well, summoned all the birds to an assembly, to which chaffinches, wrens, orioles, siskins, flycatchers, screech owls, hoopoes, larks, cuckoos, magpies, and other members of the feathered species came. When they had responded to his call, the falcon sent them all to demolish the choicest trees of Green Knoll so that neither flower nor leaf was left. The second of them, a stag, summoned the deer, rabbits, hares, porcupines, and all the other animals of that land, and ordered them to devastate the farmlands so that not even a blade of grass was left. The third, a dolphin, plotted with a hundred sea monsters and unleashed such a storm on the shores of that land that not one boat remained whole.
“When the king saw that things were going worse and worse and he couldn’t remedy the damage that these three beastly lovers were causing him, he decided to put an end to the predicament and consented to give them his daughters in marriage. And the three grooms, wanting neither festivities nor music making, took their brides and left the kingdom. Upon the brides’ departure Grazolla, the queen, gave three similar rings to each of her daughters and told them that if they ever had to separate and after some time needed to find each other or someone of their own blood again, they could be recognized by means of these rings.
“And so, after saying good-bye they took their leave. The falcon carried Fabiella, the first sister, to the top of a mountain so terribly high that its dry head rose above the border of clouds to a place where it never rains, and there he showed her to a splendid palace, where he kept her like a queen. The stag carried off Vasta, the second of the daughters, to a wood so entangled that when they were summoned by Night the shadows that lived there didn’t know how to find their way out to go pay her court. And there, in a marvelous house with a garden that was the most beautiful thing in the world, he had her live as his equal. The dolphin swam away with Rita, the third daughter, on his shoulders until he got to the middle of the sea, where he showed her to a house atop a lovely reef that was fit for three crowned kings.
&nb
sp; “In the meantime Grazolla gave birth to a beautiful baby boy, whom she named Tittone. Since he had always heard his mother lament her three daughters, who were married to three animals and about whom she had never received a bit of news, when he was fifteen he got it into his head to roam the world until he found some sign of them. After bothering his father and mother about it to no end, the queen gave him another ring similar to the ones she had given her daughters and they sent him on his way, making sure he took with him all the equipment and companions that were necessary and fitting for a prince of his station.
“He left no hole unexplored in Italy, no cave in France nor corner of Spain unsearched, and when he had passed through England and covered Flanders and seen Poland and, in short, traveled through East and West, at last, having left all his servants behind in either taverns or hospitals and without a penny in his pocket, he found himself atop the mountain where Fabiella and the falcon lived. And as he was standing there, his eyes popping out of his head in contemplation of the beauty of the palace, which had jambs of porphyry, walls of alabaster, windows of gold, and roof tiles of silver, he was seen by his sister, who called him over and asked him who he was, from whence he came, and what circumstance had brought him to that land. Tittone told her the name of his land, who his father and mother were, as well as his own name, and Fabiella recognized him as her brother, which was confirmed when she compared the ring that he wore on his finger to the one her mother had given her. She embraced him with the greatest joy, but then, out of fear that her husband might be displeased by his arrival, made him hide. And when the hawk returned from outside, Fabiella began saying that she had a longing to see her relatives, to which he responded, ‘Just let it pass, my wife; that won’t be possible until I’m in the mood to let you go.’ ‘At least,’ said Fabiella, ‘let me have the comfort of having one of my relatives sent for.’ And the hawk replied, ‘And who would want to travel so far to see you?’ ‘But if someone did come,’ Fabiella resumed, ‘would that displease you?’ ‘And why should that displease me?’ answered the hawk. ‘Anyone who shares your blood will be the apple of my eye.’ When Fabiella heard that she cheered up, called out her brother, and showed him to the hawk, who said, ‘Five and five makes ten;1 love passes through gloves2 and water through boots! May you be welcome, for you are the master of this house; your wish is my command; make yourself at home!’ And he ordered that Tittone be honored and served in the same way that he himself was.
The Tale of Tales Page 38