THE BEGGAR AND THE CHICK-PEA.1

THE BEGGAR AND THE CHICK-PEA.1There was once a poor man who went about from door to door begging his bread. He came to the cottage of a poor peasant and said: ‘Give me something, for the love of God.’The peasant’s wife said, ‘Good man, go away; I have nothing.’But the poor man said, ‘Leave me out something against I come again.’The peasant’s wife answered, ‘The most I can give you is a single chick-pea.’2‘Very well; that will do,’ replied the poor man; ‘only mind the hen doesn’t eat it.’The peasant’s wife was as good as her word, and put out a chick-pea on the dresser against the beggar came by next time. While her back was turned, however, the hen came in and gobbled it up. Presently after the beggar came by.‘Where’s the chick-pea you promised me?’ he asked.‘Ah! I put it out for you, but the hen gobbled it up!’At this he assumed an air of terrible authority, and said: ‘Did I not tell you to beware lest the hen should eat it? Now, you must give me either the pea or the hen!’As it was impossible for the peasant’s wife now to give him the pea, she was obliged to give him the hen.The beggar, therefore, took the hen, and went to another cottage.‘Good woman,’ he said to the peasant’s wife; ‘can you be so good as to take care of this hen for me?’‘Willingly enough!’ said the peasant’s wife.‘Here it is then,’ said the beggar; ‘but mind the pig doesn’t get it.’‘Never fear!’ said the peasant’s wife; and the poor man went his way.Next day the beggar came back and claimed his hen.‘Oh, dear me!’ said the peasant’s wife, ‘while my back was turned, the pig gobbled it up!’Assuming an air of terrible authority, the man said: ‘Didn’t I warn you to beware lest the pig gobbled it up? Now, you must give me either the hen or the pig.’As the peasant’s wife couldn’t give him the hen, she was obliged to give him the pig. So the poor man took the pig and went his way.He came now to another cottage, and said to the peasant’s wife: ‘Good woman, can you take care of this pig a little space for me?’‘Willingly!’ said the peasant’s wife; ‘put him in the yard.’‘Mind the calf doesn’t get at him,’ said the man.‘Never fear,’ said the peasant’s wife, and the beggar went his way.The next day he came back and claimed his pig.‘Oh, dear!’ answered the peasant’s wife; ‘while I wasn’t looking, the calf got at the pig, and seized it by the throat, and killed it, and trampled it all to pieces.’Assuming an air of terrible authority, the beggar said: ‘Did I not warn you to beware lest the calf got at it? Now you must give me the pig or the calf.’As the poor woman could not give him the pig, she was forced to give him the calf. The beggar took the calf and went away.He went on to another cottage, and said to the peasant’s wife: ‘Good woman, can you take care of this calf for me?’‘Willingly!’ said the peasant’s wife; ‘put it in the yard.’The poor man put the calf in the yard; but he said: ‘I see you have a sick daughter there in bed; mind she doesn’t desire the calf.’‘Never fear!’ said the peasant’s wife; and the man went his way.He was no sooner gone, however, than the sick daughter arose, and saying, ‘Little heart! little heart!3I must have you,’ she went down into the yard and killed the calf, and took out its heart and ate it.The next day the beggar man came back and claimed the calf.‘Oh, dear!’ said the peasant’s wife, ‘while I wasn’t looking, my sick daughter got up and killed the calf, and ate its heart.’Assuming an air of terrible authority, the beggar said: ‘Did not I warn you not to let the sick daughter get atthe calf? Now, either calf or maiden I must have; make haste with your choice; calf or maiden, one or the other!’4But the poor woman could not get back the calf, seeing it was dead, and she was resolved not to give up her daughter. So she said: ‘I can’t give you the calf, because it is dead. So I must give you my daughter, only if I went to take her now while she’s awake, she would make such a fuss you would never get her along; so leave me your sack, that while she’s asleep I may put her in it, and then when you come back you can have her.’So the beggar left his sack and went away. As soon as he was gone the peasant’s wife took the sack and put some stones at the bottom, to make it heavy, and thrust in a ferocious mad dog; then having made fast the mouth of the sack, she stood it up against the wall.Next day the beggar came back and asked for his sack.‘There it is against the wall,’ said the peasant’s wife.So the beggar put it on his shoulder and went away.As soon as he got home, he opened the sack to take out the maiden; but the ferocious mad dog rushed out upon him and killed him.1‘Il Poverello del Cece.’The termination of the word ‘Poverello’ is one of those which determine the sentiment of the speaker in a way it is impossible to put into English. We use ‘poor’ (e.g.joined to the name of a deceased friend) to express sympathy and endearment; if we put ‘poor’ in this sense before the expression ‘povero,’ ‘a poor man,’ ‘poverello,’ ‘apoorpoor man,’ we have the nearest rendering. Dante calls St. Francis, apostle of voluntary poverty, ‘Quel poverel’ di Dio.’ It is the common expression in Rome for a beggar. The ‘Poverello’ in this story, however, was not one that merited much compassion.↑2‘Cece,’ vetch, produces a very large pea in the south of Europe, and provides a staple article of food much liked among the lower orders. In Italy it is mostly eaten plain boiled, often cold, or else in soup and stews. All day long men go about the streets in Rome selling them (plain boiled) in wooden pails. Boys buy a handful as they would cherries, and eat them as they go along. In Spain, where it bears the name of ‘garbanzo,’ the favourite mode of cooking it is stewed in oil, with a large quantity of red pepper.↑3‘Coratella,’ nice little heart.↑4‘O la vitella,O la zitella.’‘Vitella,’ a calf; ‘zitella,’ an unmarried person.↑DOCTOR GRILLO.Doctor Grillo was a physician who had made himself a great name throughout his whole country, so that he was sent for and consulted from far and wide, and everybody looked up to him as a very wise man, whose word was final on any question of medicine. The discovery that ‘no man is a hero to his valet’ was made long before the idea so found expression in the seventeenth century; Doctor Grillo had a man-servant who chose to entertain a very different notion of his merits and powers from that of the rest of the world; and in time, from undervaluing his attainments, he came to conceive the belief that he could himself do just as well as his master.One day, when the Doctor was out, this serving-man took into his head to roll up into a great bundle his doctor’s gown and cap,1a number of prescriptions, and a quantity of bottles, and with these he stole away and betook himself to a far country, where he gave himself out for the famed Doctor Grillo.Just at the time he arrived, the queen of the country was in great suffering, nor could any native professor of medicine succeed in benefiting her. Naturally the services of the great Doctor Grillo were put in request in her behalf, as soon as his cunning servant had given himself out as the owner of his world-wide reputation, and fortune favoured him in his two earliest attempts. Suffice it to say, he succeeded in satisfying her requirements by a kind of luck and from that day forward his fortune was made, justifying the Italian saying, ‘An ounce of good fortune furthers one more than a pound of knowledge.’2Everywhere he was now called in, and though he prescribed his remedies all higgledypiggledy, without science or experience, not more of his patients died than those of other mediciners. The people were, therefore, quite satisfiedthat when Doctor Grillo had prescribed the best had been done that human skill could afford.By-and-by it came to the ears of the real Doctor Grillo that a quack and impostor was wearing his laurels; nor did he sooner hear the news than he set out to confront him.‘Beware good people! What are you doing?’ was his say. ‘This man knows no more of medicine than one of yourselves; you will all die if you trust to him. He is no Doctor Grillo. I am Doctor Grillo.’But all the people laughed in his face, filled as they were with the prepossession of their first impressions, and they began to drive him out of their midst; but he protested so loudly, ‘I am Doctor Grillo,’ that a wiseacre3in the crowd thought to win for himself a reputation for discernment by insisting that he should have a trial.It happened that the daughter of the Chief Judge was at that time stricken with fever, and as he had observed in the language and manners of the new Doctor Grillo more traces of learning and refinement4than in the first arrived of the name, he willingly agreed that the case should be submitted to him for treatment. His wife had, however, just before sent for the false Doctor Grillo, so that both arrived in the sick-room at the same moment; and loud and long was the dispute between husband wife, master and servant, as to which doctor should approach the patient. By the time the husband had carried his point, and the real physician entered upon his functions, the fever had got such hold of the sufferer that no medicine more availed, and the girl succumbed to the consequences of the delay in administering the most ordinary remedies.Nevertheless, it was in the hands of the real Doctor Grillo that she had died. The one proof of his identity which had been granted had gone against him, and the popular mind was quite satisfied that it was hewas the impostor. As the pompous funeral of the Judge’s daughter brought all the circumstances to the minds of the people, the feeling against him gathered and grew; and when at last one more mischievous and malicious than the rest proposed that he should be driven out of the community, the idea met with such a ready response that he would certainly not have escaped with his life from the yells and stone-throwing5of the infuriated populace, had not his retreat been protected by the more peaceably disposed citizens.But the false Doctor Grillo remained thenceforward in undisturbed possession of the fame and fortune attaching to the name he had filched.[This is probably a filtering of one of the many stories about Theophrastus Paracelsus. I think there was something verylike it in a little book of popular legends about him given me at Salzburg, but I have not got it at hand to refer to. Zingerle, ‘Sagen aus Tirol,’ p. 417, tells a story of his servant prying into the wise man’s penetralia, and getting a worse punishment for his pains than Gehazi.]1‘Berretta,’ (also written ‘biretta’) is used for any kind of cap worn by men or boys. It would appear that no kind of head-covering except a hood to the cloak, enabling the wearer to cover the head, or leave it bare at pleasure, was in common use in Italy before the sixteenth century, though the ‘berretta’ is mentioned in documents as part of ecclesiastical, particularly of the pontifical, dress, as early as the tenth century. The round ‘berretta’ coming to be commonly used by the people, their superiors adopted the quadrated form, which, with some modifications, is that still adopted by the Catholic clergy. Graduates and doctors were privileged to wear it, hence its use by Doctor Grillo; and though monks generally are not, some of those engaged in preaching and teaching have a special permission to do so. The Superior of the Theatine Convent of Naples alone, among all superiors of nuns, has the privilege of wearing the ‘berretta.’ Orsola Benincasa, the founder, was called to Rome that the Pope (Gregory XIII., 1576) might examine whether the reputation she had acquired for learning and piety was well founded. Not only was the Pope well satisfied with her, but St. Philip Neri also gave her many tokens of approval, and, among others, in his playful way, put his ‘berretta’ on her head. This honour has been commemorated by her successors retaining its use.↑2‘Vale più un oncia di fortuna che una libbra di sapere.’↑3‘Un saccentuzze.’↑4‘Garbatezza.’↑5‘Sassata,’ in Italian, has a more terrible significance than ‘stone-throwing,’ in English, conveys. The art of throwing and slinging stones with dexterity and accuracy of aim would seem to have been as favourite a pastime among the peasantry in Italy and Spain as archery among our own. For the purposes of the present volume, it needs only to allude to the Roman development of the practice. P. Bresciani, who has taken more pains than any writer of the present age in illustratingthe local customs of Rome, tells us the ‘sassate’ continued a favourite diversion of the youth of Rome almost down to our own day, and it was only by the most strenuous and vigorous measures that Cardinal Consalvi was enabled to put an end to it; being impelled thereto by the barbarous tone of feeling it engendered, and the frequent casualties resulting from it. The most idle and dissolute raggamuffins of the Monti and Trastevere quarters were among the most dexterous of marksmen. Whenever they aimed a throw, ‘fosse di fionda o fosse di soprammano’ (whether from a sling or from the hand) they were sure to hit the mark; so that any one of them might have written, like the Greek archer on his arrow, ‘for the right eye of Philip,’ on his ‘ciotto.’ (‘Ciotto’ is a stone such as would be used for throwing from a sling, and thus ‘ciottolo’ means equally a road made with rough stones and a ‘sassata.’ What is more to our present purpose is, that ‘ciotto’ means also ‘lame,’ suggesting how often persons may have been lamed by ‘sassate’). It is said that in the Balearic islands, it was the custom for mothers to tie the meals of their children to a branch of a tree, and none got anything to eat till he had hit the string with a stone, and thus they were trained to ‘fiondeggiare’ (to throw from a sling) perfectly. The Roman raggamuffins, instead of their food, used to have for their mark the features of donna Lucrezia and Marforio, and they ‘ciottolavanle’ (pelted them) with stones from far and near. At other times their aim would be directed against a tuft of herbage dangling down from the arches of the aqueducts of Nero or Claudius, nor would they rest from their aiming till they had rooted it out with their stones. Their highest ambition was to direct a stone right through one of the small window-openings in the loftiest range at the Coliseum. After such practice, we may well believe the stones fell true when they had a living adversary before them.‘And as it is the evil custom of the sons of Adam to strive one against the other, and for the excitement of contention every village loves to keep up warfare with its next neighbouring village, so the “Rioni” of Rome delighted in trials of skill one against the other. Thus on every holiday a hundred or two of Montegiani and Trasteverini were to be found arrayed against each other, and all arranged in due order of battle, with its skirmishers and reconnoitring parties, its van-guard and rear-guard. One side would take the Aventine for its base of operations, and another the Palatine....’ After describing very graphically the tactics in vogue, our author goes on to say, ‘The adults of both factions stood by the while and backed up the boys, and often the strife which had begun as boys’ pastime ended in serious maiming of grown up men. Hence, not a holiday passed but some mother had to mourn over a son brought home to her with a broken head or an eye knocked out; or some wife over a husband riddled (sforacchiato) with wounds....’ Hence it was that Cardinal Consalvi, as we have seen, put an end to such rough play.↑NINA.There was a miller who got into difficulties, and could not pay his rent. The landlord sent to him a great many times to say that if he could not pay his rent he must go out; but as he paid no attention to the notice, the landlord went himself at last, and told him he must go. The miller pleaded that his difficulties were only temporary, and that if he would give him but a little time he would make it all straight. The landlord, however, was pitiless, and said he had waited long enough, and now he had come to put an end to it; adding, ‘Mind, this is my last word: If you do not go out to-night peaceably, I shall send some one to-morrow to turn you out by force.’As he turned to leave, after pronouncing this sentence, he met the miller’s daughter coming back from the stream where she had been washing. ‘Who is this buxom lass?’ inquired the landlord.‘That is my daughter Nina,’ answered the miller.‘A fine girl she is too,’ replied the landlord. ‘And I tell you what, miller, listen to me; give Nina to me, and I will not only forgive you the debt, but will make over the mill and the homestead to you, to be your own property for ever.’‘Give me a proper document to that effect, duly signed by your own hand,’ replied the miller, with a twinkle in his eye, ‘and I will give you “Nina.”’The landlord went back into the house, and taking two sheets of paper drew up first a formal quittance ofthe back rent, and then a conveyance of the mill and homestead absolutely to the miller and to his heirs for ever. These he handed to the miller; and then he said, ‘To-night, an hour before sundown, I will send for “Nina.”’‘All right,’ said the miller; ‘you shall have “Nina,”’ and so they parted.‘An hour before sundown a servant came with a carriage to fetch “Nina”’‘Where’s “Nina”?’ said the servant. ‘Master has sent me to fetch “Nina.”’‘In the stable—take her!’ answered the miller.In the stable was nothing to be seen but a very lean old donkey.‘There’s nothing here but an old donkey,’ exclaimed the servant.‘All right, that’s “Nina,” so take her,’ replied the miller.‘But this can’t be what master meant me to fetch!’ expostulated the servant.‘What have you got to say to it?’ replied the miller. ‘Your master told you to fetch “Nina;” we always call our donkey “Nina;” so take her, and be off.’The servant saw there was nothing to be gained by disputing, so he took the donkey and went home. When he got back, his master had got company with him, so he did not know what to say about the donkey. But his master seeing he was come back, took it for granted the business was done; and calling him to him privately said, ‘Take “Nina” upstairs into the best bedroom and light a fire, and give her some supper.’‘Take her1upstairs into the best bedroom!’ exclaimed the man.‘Yes! do what you’re told, and don’t repeat my words.’The servant could not venture to say any more; so he took the donkey up into the best bedroom, and lit a fire,and put some supper there. As soon as his company was gone, the master called the servant—‘Is “Nina” upstairs?’ asked he.‘Si, Signore; she’s lying before the fire,’ answered the servant.‘Did you take some supper up? I’ll have my supper up there with “Nina.”’‘Si, Signore,’ replied the servant, and he turned away to laugh, for he thought his master had gone mad.The landlord went upstairs; but it had now grown dark, so he groped his way to the fireplace, and there sure enough was ‘Nina,’ the donkey, lying down, and as he stroked her he said, ‘What fine soft hair you’ve got, Nina!’Presently the servant brought the lights; and when he saw the dirty old worn-out donkey, and understood what a trick the miller had played off on him, it may be imagined how furious he was.The next day, as soon as the courts were opened, he went before the judge, and told all the tale. Then the miller came too, and told his; but the judge examined the documents, and pronounced that the miller was in the right; for his part of the contract was that he was to deliver over ‘Nina,’ and he had delivered over ‘Nina.’ There was no evidence that any other ‘Nina’ was intended but ‘Nina’ the donkey, and so the miller remained in undisputed possession of the mill.And that is the truth, for it actually happened as I have told you.1‘Quella,’ in the original, lends itself better to the purposed misunderstanding of the story, meaning ‘that one,’ ‘such an one as that!’ in the feminine gender; and the master would think the servant said it in contempt because he spoke of a miller’s daughter.↑THE GOOD GRACE OF THE HUNCHBACK.1A mother and daughter lived alone in a cottage. The mother was old and came to die; the daughter was turned out of house and home.2An ugly hunchback, who was a tailor, came by and said—‘What is your name, my pretty girl?’‘They call me la Buona Grazia,’3answered the girl.‘Well, la Buona Grazia, I’ve got twenty scudi a month, will you come with me and be my wife?’The girl was starving, and didn’t know where to set her foot, so she thought she could not afford to refuse; but she went along with a very bad grace, for she did not feel at all happy at the idea of marrying the ugly old hunchback.When the hunchback saw how unhappy she was, he thought, ‘This will never do. She’s too young and too pretty to care for me. I must keep her locked up, and then when she sees no one else at all, she will at last be glad even of my company.’ So he went all the errands himself, and never let her go out except to Mass, and then he took her to the church, and watched her all the time, and brought her back himself. The windows he whitened all over, so that she couldn’t see out into the street, and there he kept her with the door locked on her, and she was very miserable.So it went on for three years. But there was a dirty little window of a lumber room which, as it only gave a look out on to the court,4he had not whitened. As she happened to look out here one day a stranger stood leaning on the balcony of the court, for part of the house was an inn, and he had just arrived.‘What are you looking for, my pretty girl?’ said the stranger.‘O! nothing particular; only I’m locked up here, and I just looked out for a change.’‘Locked up! who has locked you up?’ asked the stranger.‘An old hunchback, who’s going to marry me,’ said the girl, almost crying.‘You don’t seem much pleased at the idea of being married,’ answered the stranger.‘It is not likely that I should, to such a husband!’ returned the girl.‘Would you like to get away from him?’ asked the stranger.‘Shouldn’t I!’ heartily exclaimed the girl; ‘but it’s impossible to manage that, as I’m locked in,’ she added sorrowfully.‘It’s not so difficult as you think,’ rejoined the stranger. ‘Most likely there’s some picture or other on your wall.’‘Oh, yes! a great big one with the fair Giuditta just ready with her pouch5to put Lofferno’s head in,’ answered the girl.‘All right. You make a big hole behind the picture on your side, and when I hear by the sound where you are, I’ll make one on mine. And when our two holes meet, you can come through.’‘Yes, that’s a capital plan; but the hunchback will soon come after me.’‘Never mind, I will see to that; let’s make the hole first?’‘Very well, I rely upon you, and will set to work immediately.’‘Tell me first how I am to call you?’‘They always call me Buona Grazia.’‘A very nice name. Good-bye, and we’ll set to work.’La Buona Grazia ran and unhooked the picture, and set to work to make a hole with all the available tools she could find; and the stranger, as soon as he had ascertained by the noise where she was at work, set to also. It turned out to be only a partition,6and not a regular wall, and the hole was soon cut.‘What fun!’ said the girl, as she jumped through. ‘Oh, how nice to be free! But,’ she added, ‘I can’t travel with you in these poor clothes.’‘No,’ said the stranger. ‘I’ll have a travelling dress made for you, by the hunchback himself.’‘Oh, take care!’ cried the girl, earnestly.‘Don’t be afraid,’ answered the stranger; ‘and above all don’t look frightened.’Then he sent his servant to call the hunchback, and when he came he said—‘I want a travelling dress made directly for my wife here, so please take her measure.’The hunchback started when he saw who it was he had to measure.‘Why, she’s exactly like my Buona Grazia!’ exclaimed he.‘Very likely. I have always observed there was a sort of likeness between the inhabitants of a town. She too is a Roman, though I am a stranger. But make haste and take the measure, I didn’t call you here to make remarks.’The hunchback got frightened at the stranger’s authoritative tone, and took the measure without saying any more; and the stranger then gave him something to go and have a breakfast at thecafféto give the girl time to get back and set the picture in its place again.When he came up into the room all looked right, and nothing seemed to have been moved.‘I’ve got to work hard to-day,’ said the hunchback, ‘to get a travelling dress ready for the wife of a gentleman staying in the inn, who is exactly like you.’‘Are they going to travel, then?’ asked la Buona Grazia.‘Yes, the gentleman said they should start as soon as the dress is done.’‘Oh, do let me see them drive off!’ said la Buona Grazia, coaxingly. ‘I should so like to see a lady who looked like me wearing a dress you had made.’‘Nonsense, nonsense!’ said the hunchback; ‘get on with your work.’And she did get on with her work, and stitched away, for she was anxious enough to help him to get the dress done; but she went on teazing him all the while to let her go to the window to see the gentleman and the lady, ‘who looked so like her,’ drive off, that at last the hunchback consented for that only day to take the whiting off the windows and let her look out.The travelling dress was finished and taken home; and while the hunchback was taking it up by the stairs, la Bella Grazia was getting in by the hole behind the picture; but she had first made a great doll,7and dressed it just like herself, and stuck it in the window. The gobbo, who stood down below to see the gentry drive off, looked up and saw her, as he thought, at the window, and made signs for her not to stay there too long.Presently the stranger and his lady came down; the hunchback was standing before the carriage door, as I have said, and two stablemen were standing by also.‘You give me your good grace?’8asked the stranger.‘Yes, yes!’ readily responded the hunchback, delighted to find a rich gentleman so civil to him.‘You say it sincerely, with all your heart?’ again asked the stranger.‘Yes, yes, yes! with all my heart,’ answered the hunchback.‘Then give me your hand upon it.’And the hunchback, more and more delighted, put out his hand, the two stablemen standing by looking on attentively all the time.As soon as the carriage had driven away, the hunchback’s first care was to look up at the window to see if the girl had gone in; but the doll was still there.‘Go in! go in!’ he cried, waving his hand. But the figure remained unmoved. Indignant, he took a stick and ran up to punish the girl for her disobedience, and whenthe blows fell thick and fast and no cries came, he discovered the trick that had been played.Without loss of time he ran off to the Court and laid a complaint before the judge, demanding that soldiers should be called out and sent after the fugitives; but the stablemen had their orders, and were there before him, and deposed that they were witnesses to his having given ‘his Good Grace’ up to the gentleman ‘with all his heart,’ and given him his hand upon the bargain.‘You see you have given her up of your own accord; there is nothing to be done!’ said the judge. So he got no redress.1‘La Buona Grazia del Gobbo.’↑2‘In mezzo alla strada.’↑3‘Good Grace,’ also the ‘good favour,’ the ‘good graces.’↑4‘Cortile,’ inner court of palaces and houses that are built in a quadrangle.↑5‘Saccoccia di polenta.’ ‘Polenta’ is a porridge made of Indian corn meal, which makes a staple article of food of the Italian peasantry. It is, however, used for the meal of which the porridge is going to be made, though that is more usually called ‘formentone,’ or ‘grano turco.’ ‘Saccroccia di polenta’ would be a large pouch in which poor country labourers carry a provision of meal, when going out to work in the Campagna. The girl takes Giuditta’s bag in the picture for such a ‘saccoccia’ as she had been used to see.↑6‘Tramezzo.’↑7‘Pupazza,’ a doll, a stuffed figure.↑8‘Mi date la vostra buona grazia,’ a common expression of no particular meaning; a compliment, equivalent to, ‘We part good friends,’ ‘Give me your good favour.’↑THE VALUE OF SALT.They say there was a king who had three daughters. He was very anxious to know which of them loved him most; he tried them in various ways, and it always seemed as if the youngest daughter came out best by the test. Yet he was never satisfied, becausehe wasprepossessed with the idea that the elder ones loved him most.One day he thought he would settle the matter once for all, by asking each separately how much she loved him. So he called the eldest by herself, and asked her how much she loved him.‘As much as the bread we eat,’ ran her reply; and he said within himself, ‘She must, as I thought, love me the most of all; for bread is the first necessary of our existence, without which we cannot live. She means, therefore, that she loves me so much she could not live without me.’Then he called the second daughter by herself, and said to her, ‘How much do you love me?’And she answered, ‘As much as wine!’‘That is a good answer too,’ said the king to himself. ‘It is true she does not seem to love me quite so much as the eldest; but still, scarcely can one live without wine,1so that there is not much difference.’Then he called the youngest by herself, and said to her, ‘And you, how much do you love me?’And she answered, ‘As much as salt!’Then the king said, ‘What a contemptible comparison! She only loves me as much as the cheapest and commonest thing that comes to table. This is as much as to say, she doesn’t love me at all. I always thought it was so. I will never see her again.’Then he ordered that a wing of the palace should be shut up from the rest, where she should be served with everything belonging to her condition in life, but where she should live by herself apart, and never come near him.Here she lived, then, all alone. But though her father fancied she did not care for him, she pined so much at being kept away from him, that at last she was worn out,2and could bear it no longer.The room that had been given her had no windows on to the street, that she might not have the amusement of seeing what was going on in the town, but they lookedupon an inner court-yard. Here she sometimes saw the cook come out and wash vegetables at the fountain.‘Cook! cook!’ she called one day, as she saw him pass thus under the window.The cook looked up with a good-natured face, which gave her encouragement.‘Don’t you think, cook, I must be very lonely and miserable up here all alone?’‘Yes, Signorina!’ he replied; ‘I often think I should like to help you to get out; but I dare not think of it, the king would be so angry.’‘No, I don’t want you to do anything to disobey the king,’ answered the princess; ‘but would you really do me a favour, which would make me very grateful indeed?’‘O! yes, Signorina, anything which I can do without disobeying the king,’ replied the faithful servant.‘Then this is it,’ said the princess. ‘Will you just oblige me so far as to cook papa’s dinner to-day without any salt in anything? Not the least grain in anything at all. Let it be as good a dinner as you like, but no salt in anything. Will you do that?’‘I see!’ replied the cook, with a knowing nod. ‘Yes, depend on me, I will do it.’That day at dinner the king had no salt in the soup, no salt in the boiled meat, no salt in the roast, no salt in the fried.‘What is the meaning of this?’ said the king, as he pushed dish after dish away from him. ‘There is not a single thing I can eat to-day. I don’t know what they have done to everything, but there is not a single thing that has got the least taste. Let the cook be called.’So the cook came before him.‘What have you done to the victuals to-day?’ said the king, sternly. ‘You have sent up a lot of dishes, and no one alive can tell one from another. They are all of themexactly alike, and there is not one of them can be eaten. Speak!’The cook answered:‘Hearing your Majesty say that salt was the commonest thing that comes to table, and altogether so worthless and contemptible, I considered in my mind whether it was a thing that at all deserved to be served up to the table of the king; and judging that it was not worthy, I abolished it from the king’s kitchen, and dressed all the meats without it. Barring this, the dishes are the same that are sent every day to the table of the king.’Then the king understood the value of salt, and he comprehended how great was the love of his youngest child for him; so he sent and had her apartment opened, and called her to him, never to go away any more.1In a wine country the idea of wine being almost a necessity of existence occurs more readily than in England, where, however general its use, it is still a luxury.↑2‘Era stufa,’ a way of saying, she was ‘worn out,’ ‘wearied out.’↑

THE BEGGAR AND THE CHICK-PEA.1There was once a poor man who went about from door to door begging his bread. He came to the cottage of a poor peasant and said: ‘Give me something, for the love of God.’The peasant’s wife said, ‘Good man, go away; I have nothing.’But the poor man said, ‘Leave me out something against I come again.’The peasant’s wife answered, ‘The most I can give you is a single chick-pea.’2‘Very well; that will do,’ replied the poor man; ‘only mind the hen doesn’t eat it.’The peasant’s wife was as good as her word, and put out a chick-pea on the dresser against the beggar came by next time. While her back was turned, however, the hen came in and gobbled it up. Presently after the beggar came by.‘Where’s the chick-pea you promised me?’ he asked.‘Ah! I put it out for you, but the hen gobbled it up!’At this he assumed an air of terrible authority, and said: ‘Did I not tell you to beware lest the hen should eat it? Now, you must give me either the pea or the hen!’As it was impossible for the peasant’s wife now to give him the pea, she was obliged to give him the hen.The beggar, therefore, took the hen, and went to another cottage.‘Good woman,’ he said to the peasant’s wife; ‘can you be so good as to take care of this hen for me?’‘Willingly enough!’ said the peasant’s wife.‘Here it is then,’ said the beggar; ‘but mind the pig doesn’t get it.’‘Never fear!’ said the peasant’s wife; and the poor man went his way.Next day the beggar came back and claimed his hen.‘Oh, dear me!’ said the peasant’s wife, ‘while my back was turned, the pig gobbled it up!’Assuming an air of terrible authority, the man said: ‘Didn’t I warn you to beware lest the pig gobbled it up? Now, you must give me either the hen or the pig.’As the peasant’s wife couldn’t give him the hen, she was obliged to give him the pig. So the poor man took the pig and went his way.He came now to another cottage, and said to the peasant’s wife: ‘Good woman, can you take care of this pig a little space for me?’‘Willingly!’ said the peasant’s wife; ‘put him in the yard.’‘Mind the calf doesn’t get at him,’ said the man.‘Never fear,’ said the peasant’s wife, and the beggar went his way.The next day he came back and claimed his pig.‘Oh, dear!’ answered the peasant’s wife; ‘while I wasn’t looking, the calf got at the pig, and seized it by the throat, and killed it, and trampled it all to pieces.’Assuming an air of terrible authority, the beggar said: ‘Did I not warn you to beware lest the calf got at it? Now you must give me the pig or the calf.’As the poor woman could not give him the pig, she was forced to give him the calf. The beggar took the calf and went away.He went on to another cottage, and said to the peasant’s wife: ‘Good woman, can you take care of this calf for me?’‘Willingly!’ said the peasant’s wife; ‘put it in the yard.’The poor man put the calf in the yard; but he said: ‘I see you have a sick daughter there in bed; mind she doesn’t desire the calf.’‘Never fear!’ said the peasant’s wife; and the man went his way.He was no sooner gone, however, than the sick daughter arose, and saying, ‘Little heart! little heart!3I must have you,’ she went down into the yard and killed the calf, and took out its heart and ate it.The next day the beggar man came back and claimed the calf.‘Oh, dear!’ said the peasant’s wife, ‘while I wasn’t looking, my sick daughter got up and killed the calf, and ate its heart.’Assuming an air of terrible authority, the beggar said: ‘Did not I warn you not to let the sick daughter get atthe calf? Now, either calf or maiden I must have; make haste with your choice; calf or maiden, one or the other!’4But the poor woman could not get back the calf, seeing it was dead, and she was resolved not to give up her daughter. So she said: ‘I can’t give you the calf, because it is dead. So I must give you my daughter, only if I went to take her now while she’s awake, she would make such a fuss you would never get her along; so leave me your sack, that while she’s asleep I may put her in it, and then when you come back you can have her.’So the beggar left his sack and went away. As soon as he was gone the peasant’s wife took the sack and put some stones at the bottom, to make it heavy, and thrust in a ferocious mad dog; then having made fast the mouth of the sack, she stood it up against the wall.Next day the beggar came back and asked for his sack.‘There it is against the wall,’ said the peasant’s wife.So the beggar put it on his shoulder and went away.As soon as he got home, he opened the sack to take out the maiden; but the ferocious mad dog rushed out upon him and killed him.1‘Il Poverello del Cece.’The termination of the word ‘Poverello’ is one of those which determine the sentiment of the speaker in a way it is impossible to put into English. We use ‘poor’ (e.g.joined to the name of a deceased friend) to express sympathy and endearment; if we put ‘poor’ in this sense before the expression ‘povero,’ ‘a poor man,’ ‘poverello,’ ‘apoorpoor man,’ we have the nearest rendering. Dante calls St. Francis, apostle of voluntary poverty, ‘Quel poverel’ di Dio.’ It is the common expression in Rome for a beggar. The ‘Poverello’ in this story, however, was not one that merited much compassion.↑2‘Cece,’ vetch, produces a very large pea in the south of Europe, and provides a staple article of food much liked among the lower orders. In Italy it is mostly eaten plain boiled, often cold, or else in soup and stews. All day long men go about the streets in Rome selling them (plain boiled) in wooden pails. Boys buy a handful as they would cherries, and eat them as they go along. In Spain, where it bears the name of ‘garbanzo,’ the favourite mode of cooking it is stewed in oil, with a large quantity of red pepper.↑3‘Coratella,’ nice little heart.↑4‘O la vitella,O la zitella.’‘Vitella,’ a calf; ‘zitella,’ an unmarried person.↑DOCTOR GRILLO.Doctor Grillo was a physician who had made himself a great name throughout his whole country, so that he was sent for and consulted from far and wide, and everybody looked up to him as a very wise man, whose word was final on any question of medicine. The discovery that ‘no man is a hero to his valet’ was made long before the idea so found expression in the seventeenth century; Doctor Grillo had a man-servant who chose to entertain a very different notion of his merits and powers from that of the rest of the world; and in time, from undervaluing his attainments, he came to conceive the belief that he could himself do just as well as his master.One day, when the Doctor was out, this serving-man took into his head to roll up into a great bundle his doctor’s gown and cap,1a number of prescriptions, and a quantity of bottles, and with these he stole away and betook himself to a far country, where he gave himself out for the famed Doctor Grillo.Just at the time he arrived, the queen of the country was in great suffering, nor could any native professor of medicine succeed in benefiting her. Naturally the services of the great Doctor Grillo were put in request in her behalf, as soon as his cunning servant had given himself out as the owner of his world-wide reputation, and fortune favoured him in his two earliest attempts. Suffice it to say, he succeeded in satisfying her requirements by a kind of luck and from that day forward his fortune was made, justifying the Italian saying, ‘An ounce of good fortune furthers one more than a pound of knowledge.’2Everywhere he was now called in, and though he prescribed his remedies all higgledypiggledy, without science or experience, not more of his patients died than those of other mediciners. The people were, therefore, quite satisfiedthat when Doctor Grillo had prescribed the best had been done that human skill could afford.By-and-by it came to the ears of the real Doctor Grillo that a quack and impostor was wearing his laurels; nor did he sooner hear the news than he set out to confront him.‘Beware good people! What are you doing?’ was his say. ‘This man knows no more of medicine than one of yourselves; you will all die if you trust to him. He is no Doctor Grillo. I am Doctor Grillo.’But all the people laughed in his face, filled as they were with the prepossession of their first impressions, and they began to drive him out of their midst; but he protested so loudly, ‘I am Doctor Grillo,’ that a wiseacre3in the crowd thought to win for himself a reputation for discernment by insisting that he should have a trial.It happened that the daughter of the Chief Judge was at that time stricken with fever, and as he had observed in the language and manners of the new Doctor Grillo more traces of learning and refinement4than in the first arrived of the name, he willingly agreed that the case should be submitted to him for treatment. His wife had, however, just before sent for the false Doctor Grillo, so that both arrived in the sick-room at the same moment; and loud and long was the dispute between husband wife, master and servant, as to which doctor should approach the patient. By the time the husband had carried his point, and the real physician entered upon his functions, the fever had got such hold of the sufferer that no medicine more availed, and the girl succumbed to the consequences of the delay in administering the most ordinary remedies.Nevertheless, it was in the hands of the real Doctor Grillo that she had died. The one proof of his identity which had been granted had gone against him, and the popular mind was quite satisfied that it was hewas the impostor. As the pompous funeral of the Judge’s daughter brought all the circumstances to the minds of the people, the feeling against him gathered and grew; and when at last one more mischievous and malicious than the rest proposed that he should be driven out of the community, the idea met with such a ready response that he would certainly not have escaped with his life from the yells and stone-throwing5of the infuriated populace, had not his retreat been protected by the more peaceably disposed citizens.But the false Doctor Grillo remained thenceforward in undisturbed possession of the fame and fortune attaching to the name he had filched.[This is probably a filtering of one of the many stories about Theophrastus Paracelsus. I think there was something verylike it in a little book of popular legends about him given me at Salzburg, but I have not got it at hand to refer to. Zingerle, ‘Sagen aus Tirol,’ p. 417, tells a story of his servant prying into the wise man’s penetralia, and getting a worse punishment for his pains than Gehazi.]1‘Berretta,’ (also written ‘biretta’) is used for any kind of cap worn by men or boys. It would appear that no kind of head-covering except a hood to the cloak, enabling the wearer to cover the head, or leave it bare at pleasure, was in common use in Italy before the sixteenth century, though the ‘berretta’ is mentioned in documents as part of ecclesiastical, particularly of the pontifical, dress, as early as the tenth century. The round ‘berretta’ coming to be commonly used by the people, their superiors adopted the quadrated form, which, with some modifications, is that still adopted by the Catholic clergy. Graduates and doctors were privileged to wear it, hence its use by Doctor Grillo; and though monks generally are not, some of those engaged in preaching and teaching have a special permission to do so. The Superior of the Theatine Convent of Naples alone, among all superiors of nuns, has the privilege of wearing the ‘berretta.’ Orsola Benincasa, the founder, was called to Rome that the Pope (Gregory XIII., 1576) might examine whether the reputation she had acquired for learning and piety was well founded. Not only was the Pope well satisfied with her, but St. Philip Neri also gave her many tokens of approval, and, among others, in his playful way, put his ‘berretta’ on her head. This honour has been commemorated by her successors retaining its use.↑2‘Vale più un oncia di fortuna che una libbra di sapere.’↑3‘Un saccentuzze.’↑4‘Garbatezza.’↑5‘Sassata,’ in Italian, has a more terrible significance than ‘stone-throwing,’ in English, conveys. The art of throwing and slinging stones with dexterity and accuracy of aim would seem to have been as favourite a pastime among the peasantry in Italy and Spain as archery among our own. For the purposes of the present volume, it needs only to allude to the Roman development of the practice. P. Bresciani, who has taken more pains than any writer of the present age in illustratingthe local customs of Rome, tells us the ‘sassate’ continued a favourite diversion of the youth of Rome almost down to our own day, and it was only by the most strenuous and vigorous measures that Cardinal Consalvi was enabled to put an end to it; being impelled thereto by the barbarous tone of feeling it engendered, and the frequent casualties resulting from it. The most idle and dissolute raggamuffins of the Monti and Trastevere quarters were among the most dexterous of marksmen. Whenever they aimed a throw, ‘fosse di fionda o fosse di soprammano’ (whether from a sling or from the hand) they were sure to hit the mark; so that any one of them might have written, like the Greek archer on his arrow, ‘for the right eye of Philip,’ on his ‘ciotto.’ (‘Ciotto’ is a stone such as would be used for throwing from a sling, and thus ‘ciottolo’ means equally a road made with rough stones and a ‘sassata.’ What is more to our present purpose is, that ‘ciotto’ means also ‘lame,’ suggesting how often persons may have been lamed by ‘sassate’). It is said that in the Balearic islands, it was the custom for mothers to tie the meals of their children to a branch of a tree, and none got anything to eat till he had hit the string with a stone, and thus they were trained to ‘fiondeggiare’ (to throw from a sling) perfectly. The Roman raggamuffins, instead of their food, used to have for their mark the features of donna Lucrezia and Marforio, and they ‘ciottolavanle’ (pelted them) with stones from far and near. At other times their aim would be directed against a tuft of herbage dangling down from the arches of the aqueducts of Nero or Claudius, nor would they rest from their aiming till they had rooted it out with their stones. Their highest ambition was to direct a stone right through one of the small window-openings in the loftiest range at the Coliseum. After such practice, we may well believe the stones fell true when they had a living adversary before them.‘And as it is the evil custom of the sons of Adam to strive one against the other, and for the excitement of contention every village loves to keep up warfare with its next neighbouring village, so the “Rioni” of Rome delighted in trials of skill one against the other. Thus on every holiday a hundred or two of Montegiani and Trasteverini were to be found arrayed against each other, and all arranged in due order of battle, with its skirmishers and reconnoitring parties, its van-guard and rear-guard. One side would take the Aventine for its base of operations, and another the Palatine....’ After describing very graphically the tactics in vogue, our author goes on to say, ‘The adults of both factions stood by the while and backed up the boys, and often the strife which had begun as boys’ pastime ended in serious maiming of grown up men. Hence, not a holiday passed but some mother had to mourn over a son brought home to her with a broken head or an eye knocked out; or some wife over a husband riddled (sforacchiato) with wounds....’ Hence it was that Cardinal Consalvi, as we have seen, put an end to such rough play.↑NINA.There was a miller who got into difficulties, and could not pay his rent. The landlord sent to him a great many times to say that if he could not pay his rent he must go out; but as he paid no attention to the notice, the landlord went himself at last, and told him he must go. The miller pleaded that his difficulties were only temporary, and that if he would give him but a little time he would make it all straight. The landlord, however, was pitiless, and said he had waited long enough, and now he had come to put an end to it; adding, ‘Mind, this is my last word: If you do not go out to-night peaceably, I shall send some one to-morrow to turn you out by force.’As he turned to leave, after pronouncing this sentence, he met the miller’s daughter coming back from the stream where she had been washing. ‘Who is this buxom lass?’ inquired the landlord.‘That is my daughter Nina,’ answered the miller.‘A fine girl she is too,’ replied the landlord. ‘And I tell you what, miller, listen to me; give Nina to me, and I will not only forgive you the debt, but will make over the mill and the homestead to you, to be your own property for ever.’‘Give me a proper document to that effect, duly signed by your own hand,’ replied the miller, with a twinkle in his eye, ‘and I will give you “Nina.”’The landlord went back into the house, and taking two sheets of paper drew up first a formal quittance ofthe back rent, and then a conveyance of the mill and homestead absolutely to the miller and to his heirs for ever. These he handed to the miller; and then he said, ‘To-night, an hour before sundown, I will send for “Nina.”’‘All right,’ said the miller; ‘you shall have “Nina,”’ and so they parted.‘An hour before sundown a servant came with a carriage to fetch “Nina”’‘Where’s “Nina”?’ said the servant. ‘Master has sent me to fetch “Nina.”’‘In the stable—take her!’ answered the miller.In the stable was nothing to be seen but a very lean old donkey.‘There’s nothing here but an old donkey,’ exclaimed the servant.‘All right, that’s “Nina,” so take her,’ replied the miller.‘But this can’t be what master meant me to fetch!’ expostulated the servant.‘What have you got to say to it?’ replied the miller. ‘Your master told you to fetch “Nina;” we always call our donkey “Nina;” so take her, and be off.’The servant saw there was nothing to be gained by disputing, so he took the donkey and went home. When he got back, his master had got company with him, so he did not know what to say about the donkey. But his master seeing he was come back, took it for granted the business was done; and calling him to him privately said, ‘Take “Nina” upstairs into the best bedroom and light a fire, and give her some supper.’‘Take her1upstairs into the best bedroom!’ exclaimed the man.‘Yes! do what you’re told, and don’t repeat my words.’The servant could not venture to say any more; so he took the donkey up into the best bedroom, and lit a fire,and put some supper there. As soon as his company was gone, the master called the servant—‘Is “Nina” upstairs?’ asked he.‘Si, Signore; she’s lying before the fire,’ answered the servant.‘Did you take some supper up? I’ll have my supper up there with “Nina.”’‘Si, Signore,’ replied the servant, and he turned away to laugh, for he thought his master had gone mad.The landlord went upstairs; but it had now grown dark, so he groped his way to the fireplace, and there sure enough was ‘Nina,’ the donkey, lying down, and as he stroked her he said, ‘What fine soft hair you’ve got, Nina!’Presently the servant brought the lights; and when he saw the dirty old worn-out donkey, and understood what a trick the miller had played off on him, it may be imagined how furious he was.The next day, as soon as the courts were opened, he went before the judge, and told all the tale. Then the miller came too, and told his; but the judge examined the documents, and pronounced that the miller was in the right; for his part of the contract was that he was to deliver over ‘Nina,’ and he had delivered over ‘Nina.’ There was no evidence that any other ‘Nina’ was intended but ‘Nina’ the donkey, and so the miller remained in undisputed possession of the mill.And that is the truth, for it actually happened as I have told you.1‘Quella,’ in the original, lends itself better to the purposed misunderstanding of the story, meaning ‘that one,’ ‘such an one as that!’ in the feminine gender; and the master would think the servant said it in contempt because he spoke of a miller’s daughter.↑THE GOOD GRACE OF THE HUNCHBACK.1A mother and daughter lived alone in a cottage. The mother was old and came to die; the daughter was turned out of house and home.2An ugly hunchback, who was a tailor, came by and said—‘What is your name, my pretty girl?’‘They call me la Buona Grazia,’3answered the girl.‘Well, la Buona Grazia, I’ve got twenty scudi a month, will you come with me and be my wife?’The girl was starving, and didn’t know where to set her foot, so she thought she could not afford to refuse; but she went along with a very bad grace, for she did not feel at all happy at the idea of marrying the ugly old hunchback.When the hunchback saw how unhappy she was, he thought, ‘This will never do. She’s too young and too pretty to care for me. I must keep her locked up, and then when she sees no one else at all, she will at last be glad even of my company.’ So he went all the errands himself, and never let her go out except to Mass, and then he took her to the church, and watched her all the time, and brought her back himself. The windows he whitened all over, so that she couldn’t see out into the street, and there he kept her with the door locked on her, and she was very miserable.So it went on for three years. But there was a dirty little window of a lumber room which, as it only gave a look out on to the court,4he had not whitened. As she happened to look out here one day a stranger stood leaning on the balcony of the court, for part of the house was an inn, and he had just arrived.‘What are you looking for, my pretty girl?’ said the stranger.‘O! nothing particular; only I’m locked up here, and I just looked out for a change.’‘Locked up! who has locked you up?’ asked the stranger.‘An old hunchback, who’s going to marry me,’ said the girl, almost crying.‘You don’t seem much pleased at the idea of being married,’ answered the stranger.‘It is not likely that I should, to such a husband!’ returned the girl.‘Would you like to get away from him?’ asked the stranger.‘Shouldn’t I!’ heartily exclaimed the girl; ‘but it’s impossible to manage that, as I’m locked in,’ she added sorrowfully.‘It’s not so difficult as you think,’ rejoined the stranger. ‘Most likely there’s some picture or other on your wall.’‘Oh, yes! a great big one with the fair Giuditta just ready with her pouch5to put Lofferno’s head in,’ answered the girl.‘All right. You make a big hole behind the picture on your side, and when I hear by the sound where you are, I’ll make one on mine. And when our two holes meet, you can come through.’‘Yes, that’s a capital plan; but the hunchback will soon come after me.’‘Never mind, I will see to that; let’s make the hole first?’‘Very well, I rely upon you, and will set to work immediately.’‘Tell me first how I am to call you?’‘They always call me Buona Grazia.’‘A very nice name. Good-bye, and we’ll set to work.’La Buona Grazia ran and unhooked the picture, and set to work to make a hole with all the available tools she could find; and the stranger, as soon as he had ascertained by the noise where she was at work, set to also. It turned out to be only a partition,6and not a regular wall, and the hole was soon cut.‘What fun!’ said the girl, as she jumped through. ‘Oh, how nice to be free! But,’ she added, ‘I can’t travel with you in these poor clothes.’‘No,’ said the stranger. ‘I’ll have a travelling dress made for you, by the hunchback himself.’‘Oh, take care!’ cried the girl, earnestly.‘Don’t be afraid,’ answered the stranger; ‘and above all don’t look frightened.’Then he sent his servant to call the hunchback, and when he came he said—‘I want a travelling dress made directly for my wife here, so please take her measure.’The hunchback started when he saw who it was he had to measure.‘Why, she’s exactly like my Buona Grazia!’ exclaimed he.‘Very likely. I have always observed there was a sort of likeness between the inhabitants of a town. She too is a Roman, though I am a stranger. But make haste and take the measure, I didn’t call you here to make remarks.’The hunchback got frightened at the stranger’s authoritative tone, and took the measure without saying any more; and the stranger then gave him something to go and have a breakfast at thecafféto give the girl time to get back and set the picture in its place again.When he came up into the room all looked right, and nothing seemed to have been moved.‘I’ve got to work hard to-day,’ said the hunchback, ‘to get a travelling dress ready for the wife of a gentleman staying in the inn, who is exactly like you.’‘Are they going to travel, then?’ asked la Buona Grazia.‘Yes, the gentleman said they should start as soon as the dress is done.’‘Oh, do let me see them drive off!’ said la Buona Grazia, coaxingly. ‘I should so like to see a lady who looked like me wearing a dress you had made.’‘Nonsense, nonsense!’ said the hunchback; ‘get on with your work.’And she did get on with her work, and stitched away, for she was anxious enough to help him to get the dress done; but she went on teazing him all the while to let her go to the window to see the gentleman and the lady, ‘who looked so like her,’ drive off, that at last the hunchback consented for that only day to take the whiting off the windows and let her look out.The travelling dress was finished and taken home; and while the hunchback was taking it up by the stairs, la Bella Grazia was getting in by the hole behind the picture; but she had first made a great doll,7and dressed it just like herself, and stuck it in the window. The gobbo, who stood down below to see the gentry drive off, looked up and saw her, as he thought, at the window, and made signs for her not to stay there too long.Presently the stranger and his lady came down; the hunchback was standing before the carriage door, as I have said, and two stablemen were standing by also.‘You give me your good grace?’8asked the stranger.‘Yes, yes!’ readily responded the hunchback, delighted to find a rich gentleman so civil to him.‘You say it sincerely, with all your heart?’ again asked the stranger.‘Yes, yes, yes! with all my heart,’ answered the hunchback.‘Then give me your hand upon it.’And the hunchback, more and more delighted, put out his hand, the two stablemen standing by looking on attentively all the time.As soon as the carriage had driven away, the hunchback’s first care was to look up at the window to see if the girl had gone in; but the doll was still there.‘Go in! go in!’ he cried, waving his hand. But the figure remained unmoved. Indignant, he took a stick and ran up to punish the girl for her disobedience, and whenthe blows fell thick and fast and no cries came, he discovered the trick that had been played.Without loss of time he ran off to the Court and laid a complaint before the judge, demanding that soldiers should be called out and sent after the fugitives; but the stablemen had their orders, and were there before him, and deposed that they were witnesses to his having given ‘his Good Grace’ up to the gentleman ‘with all his heart,’ and given him his hand upon the bargain.‘You see you have given her up of your own accord; there is nothing to be done!’ said the judge. So he got no redress.1‘La Buona Grazia del Gobbo.’↑2‘In mezzo alla strada.’↑3‘Good Grace,’ also the ‘good favour,’ the ‘good graces.’↑4‘Cortile,’ inner court of palaces and houses that are built in a quadrangle.↑5‘Saccoccia di polenta.’ ‘Polenta’ is a porridge made of Indian corn meal, which makes a staple article of food of the Italian peasantry. It is, however, used for the meal of which the porridge is going to be made, though that is more usually called ‘formentone,’ or ‘grano turco.’ ‘Saccroccia di polenta’ would be a large pouch in which poor country labourers carry a provision of meal, when going out to work in the Campagna. The girl takes Giuditta’s bag in the picture for such a ‘saccoccia’ as she had been used to see.↑6‘Tramezzo.’↑7‘Pupazza,’ a doll, a stuffed figure.↑8‘Mi date la vostra buona grazia,’ a common expression of no particular meaning; a compliment, equivalent to, ‘We part good friends,’ ‘Give me your good favour.’↑THE VALUE OF SALT.They say there was a king who had three daughters. He was very anxious to know which of them loved him most; he tried them in various ways, and it always seemed as if the youngest daughter came out best by the test. Yet he was never satisfied, becausehe wasprepossessed with the idea that the elder ones loved him most.One day he thought he would settle the matter once for all, by asking each separately how much she loved him. So he called the eldest by herself, and asked her how much she loved him.‘As much as the bread we eat,’ ran her reply; and he said within himself, ‘She must, as I thought, love me the most of all; for bread is the first necessary of our existence, without which we cannot live. She means, therefore, that she loves me so much she could not live without me.’Then he called the second daughter by herself, and said to her, ‘How much do you love me?’And she answered, ‘As much as wine!’‘That is a good answer too,’ said the king to himself. ‘It is true she does not seem to love me quite so much as the eldest; but still, scarcely can one live without wine,1so that there is not much difference.’Then he called the youngest by herself, and said to her, ‘And you, how much do you love me?’And she answered, ‘As much as salt!’Then the king said, ‘What a contemptible comparison! She only loves me as much as the cheapest and commonest thing that comes to table. This is as much as to say, she doesn’t love me at all. I always thought it was so. I will never see her again.’Then he ordered that a wing of the palace should be shut up from the rest, where she should be served with everything belonging to her condition in life, but where she should live by herself apart, and never come near him.Here she lived, then, all alone. But though her father fancied she did not care for him, she pined so much at being kept away from him, that at last she was worn out,2and could bear it no longer.The room that had been given her had no windows on to the street, that she might not have the amusement of seeing what was going on in the town, but they lookedupon an inner court-yard. Here she sometimes saw the cook come out and wash vegetables at the fountain.‘Cook! cook!’ she called one day, as she saw him pass thus under the window.The cook looked up with a good-natured face, which gave her encouragement.‘Don’t you think, cook, I must be very lonely and miserable up here all alone?’‘Yes, Signorina!’ he replied; ‘I often think I should like to help you to get out; but I dare not think of it, the king would be so angry.’‘No, I don’t want you to do anything to disobey the king,’ answered the princess; ‘but would you really do me a favour, which would make me very grateful indeed?’‘O! yes, Signorina, anything which I can do without disobeying the king,’ replied the faithful servant.‘Then this is it,’ said the princess. ‘Will you just oblige me so far as to cook papa’s dinner to-day without any salt in anything? Not the least grain in anything at all. Let it be as good a dinner as you like, but no salt in anything. Will you do that?’‘I see!’ replied the cook, with a knowing nod. ‘Yes, depend on me, I will do it.’That day at dinner the king had no salt in the soup, no salt in the boiled meat, no salt in the roast, no salt in the fried.‘What is the meaning of this?’ said the king, as he pushed dish after dish away from him. ‘There is not a single thing I can eat to-day. I don’t know what they have done to everything, but there is not a single thing that has got the least taste. Let the cook be called.’So the cook came before him.‘What have you done to the victuals to-day?’ said the king, sternly. ‘You have sent up a lot of dishes, and no one alive can tell one from another. They are all of themexactly alike, and there is not one of them can be eaten. Speak!’The cook answered:‘Hearing your Majesty say that salt was the commonest thing that comes to table, and altogether so worthless and contemptible, I considered in my mind whether it was a thing that at all deserved to be served up to the table of the king; and judging that it was not worthy, I abolished it from the king’s kitchen, and dressed all the meats without it. Barring this, the dishes are the same that are sent every day to the table of the king.’Then the king understood the value of salt, and he comprehended how great was the love of his youngest child for him; so he sent and had her apartment opened, and called her to him, never to go away any more.1In a wine country the idea of wine being almost a necessity of existence occurs more readily than in England, where, however general its use, it is still a luxury.↑2‘Era stufa,’ a way of saying, she was ‘worn out,’ ‘wearied out.’↑

THE BEGGAR AND THE CHICK-PEA.1There was once a poor man who went about from door to door begging his bread. He came to the cottage of a poor peasant and said: ‘Give me something, for the love of God.’The peasant’s wife said, ‘Good man, go away; I have nothing.’But the poor man said, ‘Leave me out something against I come again.’The peasant’s wife answered, ‘The most I can give you is a single chick-pea.’2‘Very well; that will do,’ replied the poor man; ‘only mind the hen doesn’t eat it.’The peasant’s wife was as good as her word, and put out a chick-pea on the dresser against the beggar came by next time. While her back was turned, however, the hen came in and gobbled it up. Presently after the beggar came by.‘Where’s the chick-pea you promised me?’ he asked.‘Ah! I put it out for you, but the hen gobbled it up!’At this he assumed an air of terrible authority, and said: ‘Did I not tell you to beware lest the hen should eat it? Now, you must give me either the pea or the hen!’As it was impossible for the peasant’s wife now to give him the pea, she was obliged to give him the hen.The beggar, therefore, took the hen, and went to another cottage.‘Good woman,’ he said to the peasant’s wife; ‘can you be so good as to take care of this hen for me?’‘Willingly enough!’ said the peasant’s wife.‘Here it is then,’ said the beggar; ‘but mind the pig doesn’t get it.’‘Never fear!’ said the peasant’s wife; and the poor man went his way.Next day the beggar came back and claimed his hen.‘Oh, dear me!’ said the peasant’s wife, ‘while my back was turned, the pig gobbled it up!’Assuming an air of terrible authority, the man said: ‘Didn’t I warn you to beware lest the pig gobbled it up? Now, you must give me either the hen or the pig.’As the peasant’s wife couldn’t give him the hen, she was obliged to give him the pig. So the poor man took the pig and went his way.He came now to another cottage, and said to the peasant’s wife: ‘Good woman, can you take care of this pig a little space for me?’‘Willingly!’ said the peasant’s wife; ‘put him in the yard.’‘Mind the calf doesn’t get at him,’ said the man.‘Never fear,’ said the peasant’s wife, and the beggar went his way.The next day he came back and claimed his pig.‘Oh, dear!’ answered the peasant’s wife; ‘while I wasn’t looking, the calf got at the pig, and seized it by the throat, and killed it, and trampled it all to pieces.’Assuming an air of terrible authority, the beggar said: ‘Did I not warn you to beware lest the calf got at it? Now you must give me the pig or the calf.’As the poor woman could not give him the pig, she was forced to give him the calf. The beggar took the calf and went away.He went on to another cottage, and said to the peasant’s wife: ‘Good woman, can you take care of this calf for me?’‘Willingly!’ said the peasant’s wife; ‘put it in the yard.’The poor man put the calf in the yard; but he said: ‘I see you have a sick daughter there in bed; mind she doesn’t desire the calf.’‘Never fear!’ said the peasant’s wife; and the man went his way.He was no sooner gone, however, than the sick daughter arose, and saying, ‘Little heart! little heart!3I must have you,’ she went down into the yard and killed the calf, and took out its heart and ate it.The next day the beggar man came back and claimed the calf.‘Oh, dear!’ said the peasant’s wife, ‘while I wasn’t looking, my sick daughter got up and killed the calf, and ate its heart.’Assuming an air of terrible authority, the beggar said: ‘Did not I warn you not to let the sick daughter get atthe calf? Now, either calf or maiden I must have; make haste with your choice; calf or maiden, one or the other!’4But the poor woman could not get back the calf, seeing it was dead, and she was resolved not to give up her daughter. So she said: ‘I can’t give you the calf, because it is dead. So I must give you my daughter, only if I went to take her now while she’s awake, she would make such a fuss you would never get her along; so leave me your sack, that while she’s asleep I may put her in it, and then when you come back you can have her.’So the beggar left his sack and went away. As soon as he was gone the peasant’s wife took the sack and put some stones at the bottom, to make it heavy, and thrust in a ferocious mad dog; then having made fast the mouth of the sack, she stood it up against the wall.Next day the beggar came back and asked for his sack.‘There it is against the wall,’ said the peasant’s wife.So the beggar put it on his shoulder and went away.As soon as he got home, he opened the sack to take out the maiden; but the ferocious mad dog rushed out upon him and killed him.1‘Il Poverello del Cece.’The termination of the word ‘Poverello’ is one of those which determine the sentiment of the speaker in a way it is impossible to put into English. We use ‘poor’ (e.g.joined to the name of a deceased friend) to express sympathy and endearment; if we put ‘poor’ in this sense before the expression ‘povero,’ ‘a poor man,’ ‘poverello,’ ‘apoorpoor man,’ we have the nearest rendering. Dante calls St. Francis, apostle of voluntary poverty, ‘Quel poverel’ di Dio.’ It is the common expression in Rome for a beggar. The ‘Poverello’ in this story, however, was not one that merited much compassion.↑2‘Cece,’ vetch, produces a very large pea in the south of Europe, and provides a staple article of food much liked among the lower orders. In Italy it is mostly eaten plain boiled, often cold, or else in soup and stews. All day long men go about the streets in Rome selling them (plain boiled) in wooden pails. Boys buy a handful as they would cherries, and eat them as they go along. In Spain, where it bears the name of ‘garbanzo,’ the favourite mode of cooking it is stewed in oil, with a large quantity of red pepper.↑3‘Coratella,’ nice little heart.↑4‘O la vitella,O la zitella.’‘Vitella,’ a calf; ‘zitella,’ an unmarried person.↑

THE BEGGAR AND THE CHICK-PEA.1

There was once a poor man who went about from door to door begging his bread. He came to the cottage of a poor peasant and said: ‘Give me something, for the love of God.’The peasant’s wife said, ‘Good man, go away; I have nothing.’But the poor man said, ‘Leave me out something against I come again.’The peasant’s wife answered, ‘The most I can give you is a single chick-pea.’2‘Very well; that will do,’ replied the poor man; ‘only mind the hen doesn’t eat it.’The peasant’s wife was as good as her word, and put out a chick-pea on the dresser against the beggar came by next time. While her back was turned, however, the hen came in and gobbled it up. Presently after the beggar came by.‘Where’s the chick-pea you promised me?’ he asked.‘Ah! I put it out for you, but the hen gobbled it up!’At this he assumed an air of terrible authority, and said: ‘Did I not tell you to beware lest the hen should eat it? Now, you must give me either the pea or the hen!’As it was impossible for the peasant’s wife now to give him the pea, she was obliged to give him the hen.The beggar, therefore, took the hen, and went to another cottage.‘Good woman,’ he said to the peasant’s wife; ‘can you be so good as to take care of this hen for me?’‘Willingly enough!’ said the peasant’s wife.‘Here it is then,’ said the beggar; ‘but mind the pig doesn’t get it.’‘Never fear!’ said the peasant’s wife; and the poor man went his way.Next day the beggar came back and claimed his hen.‘Oh, dear me!’ said the peasant’s wife, ‘while my back was turned, the pig gobbled it up!’Assuming an air of terrible authority, the man said: ‘Didn’t I warn you to beware lest the pig gobbled it up? Now, you must give me either the hen or the pig.’As the peasant’s wife couldn’t give him the hen, she was obliged to give him the pig. So the poor man took the pig and went his way.He came now to another cottage, and said to the peasant’s wife: ‘Good woman, can you take care of this pig a little space for me?’‘Willingly!’ said the peasant’s wife; ‘put him in the yard.’‘Mind the calf doesn’t get at him,’ said the man.‘Never fear,’ said the peasant’s wife, and the beggar went his way.The next day he came back and claimed his pig.‘Oh, dear!’ answered the peasant’s wife; ‘while I wasn’t looking, the calf got at the pig, and seized it by the throat, and killed it, and trampled it all to pieces.’Assuming an air of terrible authority, the beggar said: ‘Did I not warn you to beware lest the calf got at it? Now you must give me the pig or the calf.’As the poor woman could not give him the pig, she was forced to give him the calf. The beggar took the calf and went away.He went on to another cottage, and said to the peasant’s wife: ‘Good woman, can you take care of this calf for me?’‘Willingly!’ said the peasant’s wife; ‘put it in the yard.’The poor man put the calf in the yard; but he said: ‘I see you have a sick daughter there in bed; mind she doesn’t desire the calf.’‘Never fear!’ said the peasant’s wife; and the man went his way.He was no sooner gone, however, than the sick daughter arose, and saying, ‘Little heart! little heart!3I must have you,’ she went down into the yard and killed the calf, and took out its heart and ate it.The next day the beggar man came back and claimed the calf.‘Oh, dear!’ said the peasant’s wife, ‘while I wasn’t looking, my sick daughter got up and killed the calf, and ate its heart.’Assuming an air of terrible authority, the beggar said: ‘Did not I warn you not to let the sick daughter get atthe calf? Now, either calf or maiden I must have; make haste with your choice; calf or maiden, one or the other!’4But the poor woman could not get back the calf, seeing it was dead, and she was resolved not to give up her daughter. So she said: ‘I can’t give you the calf, because it is dead. So I must give you my daughter, only if I went to take her now while she’s awake, she would make such a fuss you would never get her along; so leave me your sack, that while she’s asleep I may put her in it, and then when you come back you can have her.’So the beggar left his sack and went away. As soon as he was gone the peasant’s wife took the sack and put some stones at the bottom, to make it heavy, and thrust in a ferocious mad dog; then having made fast the mouth of the sack, she stood it up against the wall.Next day the beggar came back and asked for his sack.‘There it is against the wall,’ said the peasant’s wife.So the beggar put it on his shoulder and went away.As soon as he got home, he opened the sack to take out the maiden; but the ferocious mad dog rushed out upon him and killed him.

There was once a poor man who went about from door to door begging his bread. He came to the cottage of a poor peasant and said: ‘Give me something, for the love of God.’

The peasant’s wife said, ‘Good man, go away; I have nothing.’

But the poor man said, ‘Leave me out something against I come again.’

The peasant’s wife answered, ‘The most I can give you is a single chick-pea.’2

‘Very well; that will do,’ replied the poor man; ‘only mind the hen doesn’t eat it.’

The peasant’s wife was as good as her word, and put out a chick-pea on the dresser against the beggar came by next time. While her back was turned, however, the hen came in and gobbled it up. Presently after the beggar came by.

‘Where’s the chick-pea you promised me?’ he asked.

‘Ah! I put it out for you, but the hen gobbled it up!’

At this he assumed an air of terrible authority, and said: ‘Did I not tell you to beware lest the hen should eat it? Now, you must give me either the pea or the hen!’

As it was impossible for the peasant’s wife now to give him the pea, she was obliged to give him the hen.

The beggar, therefore, took the hen, and went to another cottage.

‘Good woman,’ he said to the peasant’s wife; ‘can you be so good as to take care of this hen for me?’

‘Willingly enough!’ said the peasant’s wife.

‘Here it is then,’ said the beggar; ‘but mind the pig doesn’t get it.’

‘Never fear!’ said the peasant’s wife; and the poor man went his way.

Next day the beggar came back and claimed his hen.

‘Oh, dear me!’ said the peasant’s wife, ‘while my back was turned, the pig gobbled it up!’

Assuming an air of terrible authority, the man said: ‘Didn’t I warn you to beware lest the pig gobbled it up? Now, you must give me either the hen or the pig.’

As the peasant’s wife couldn’t give him the hen, she was obliged to give him the pig. So the poor man took the pig and went his way.

He came now to another cottage, and said to the peasant’s wife: ‘Good woman, can you take care of this pig a little space for me?’

‘Willingly!’ said the peasant’s wife; ‘put him in the yard.’

‘Mind the calf doesn’t get at him,’ said the man.

‘Never fear,’ said the peasant’s wife, and the beggar went his way.

The next day he came back and claimed his pig.

‘Oh, dear!’ answered the peasant’s wife; ‘while I wasn’t looking, the calf got at the pig, and seized it by the throat, and killed it, and trampled it all to pieces.’

Assuming an air of terrible authority, the beggar said: ‘Did I not warn you to beware lest the calf got at it? Now you must give me the pig or the calf.’

As the poor woman could not give him the pig, she was forced to give him the calf. The beggar took the calf and went away.

He went on to another cottage, and said to the peasant’s wife: ‘Good woman, can you take care of this calf for me?’

‘Willingly!’ said the peasant’s wife; ‘put it in the yard.’

The poor man put the calf in the yard; but he said: ‘I see you have a sick daughter there in bed; mind she doesn’t desire the calf.’

‘Never fear!’ said the peasant’s wife; and the man went his way.

He was no sooner gone, however, than the sick daughter arose, and saying, ‘Little heart! little heart!3I must have you,’ she went down into the yard and killed the calf, and took out its heart and ate it.

The next day the beggar man came back and claimed the calf.

‘Oh, dear!’ said the peasant’s wife, ‘while I wasn’t looking, my sick daughter got up and killed the calf, and ate its heart.’

Assuming an air of terrible authority, the beggar said: ‘Did not I warn you not to let the sick daughter get atthe calf? Now, either calf or maiden I must have; make haste with your choice; calf or maiden, one or the other!’4

But the poor woman could not get back the calf, seeing it was dead, and she was resolved not to give up her daughter. So she said: ‘I can’t give you the calf, because it is dead. So I must give you my daughter, only if I went to take her now while she’s awake, she would make such a fuss you would never get her along; so leave me your sack, that while she’s asleep I may put her in it, and then when you come back you can have her.’

So the beggar left his sack and went away. As soon as he was gone the peasant’s wife took the sack and put some stones at the bottom, to make it heavy, and thrust in a ferocious mad dog; then having made fast the mouth of the sack, she stood it up against the wall.

Next day the beggar came back and asked for his sack.

‘There it is against the wall,’ said the peasant’s wife.

So the beggar put it on his shoulder and went away.

As soon as he got home, he opened the sack to take out the maiden; but the ferocious mad dog rushed out upon him and killed him.

1‘Il Poverello del Cece.’The termination of the word ‘Poverello’ is one of those which determine the sentiment of the speaker in a way it is impossible to put into English. We use ‘poor’ (e.g.joined to the name of a deceased friend) to express sympathy and endearment; if we put ‘poor’ in this sense before the expression ‘povero,’ ‘a poor man,’ ‘poverello,’ ‘apoorpoor man,’ we have the nearest rendering. Dante calls St. Francis, apostle of voluntary poverty, ‘Quel poverel’ di Dio.’ It is the common expression in Rome for a beggar. The ‘Poverello’ in this story, however, was not one that merited much compassion.↑2‘Cece,’ vetch, produces a very large pea in the south of Europe, and provides a staple article of food much liked among the lower orders. In Italy it is mostly eaten plain boiled, often cold, or else in soup and stews. All day long men go about the streets in Rome selling them (plain boiled) in wooden pails. Boys buy a handful as they would cherries, and eat them as they go along. In Spain, where it bears the name of ‘garbanzo,’ the favourite mode of cooking it is stewed in oil, with a large quantity of red pepper.↑3‘Coratella,’ nice little heart.↑4‘O la vitella,O la zitella.’‘Vitella,’ a calf; ‘zitella,’ an unmarried person.↑

1‘Il Poverello del Cece.’The termination of the word ‘Poverello’ is one of those which determine the sentiment of the speaker in a way it is impossible to put into English. We use ‘poor’ (e.g.joined to the name of a deceased friend) to express sympathy and endearment; if we put ‘poor’ in this sense before the expression ‘povero,’ ‘a poor man,’ ‘poverello,’ ‘apoorpoor man,’ we have the nearest rendering. Dante calls St. Francis, apostle of voluntary poverty, ‘Quel poverel’ di Dio.’ It is the common expression in Rome for a beggar. The ‘Poverello’ in this story, however, was not one that merited much compassion.↑

2‘Cece,’ vetch, produces a very large pea in the south of Europe, and provides a staple article of food much liked among the lower orders. In Italy it is mostly eaten plain boiled, often cold, or else in soup and stews. All day long men go about the streets in Rome selling them (plain boiled) in wooden pails. Boys buy a handful as they would cherries, and eat them as they go along. In Spain, where it bears the name of ‘garbanzo,’ the favourite mode of cooking it is stewed in oil, with a large quantity of red pepper.↑

3‘Coratella,’ nice little heart.↑

4

‘O la vitella,O la zitella.’

‘O la vitella,O la zitella.’

‘O la vitella,O la zitella.’

‘O la vitella,O la zitella.’

‘O la vitella,

O la zitella.’

‘Vitella,’ a calf; ‘zitella,’ an unmarried person.↑

DOCTOR GRILLO.Doctor Grillo was a physician who had made himself a great name throughout his whole country, so that he was sent for and consulted from far and wide, and everybody looked up to him as a very wise man, whose word was final on any question of medicine. The discovery that ‘no man is a hero to his valet’ was made long before the idea so found expression in the seventeenth century; Doctor Grillo had a man-servant who chose to entertain a very different notion of his merits and powers from that of the rest of the world; and in time, from undervaluing his attainments, he came to conceive the belief that he could himself do just as well as his master.One day, when the Doctor was out, this serving-man took into his head to roll up into a great bundle his doctor’s gown and cap,1a number of prescriptions, and a quantity of bottles, and with these he stole away and betook himself to a far country, where he gave himself out for the famed Doctor Grillo.Just at the time he arrived, the queen of the country was in great suffering, nor could any native professor of medicine succeed in benefiting her. Naturally the services of the great Doctor Grillo were put in request in her behalf, as soon as his cunning servant had given himself out as the owner of his world-wide reputation, and fortune favoured him in his two earliest attempts. Suffice it to say, he succeeded in satisfying her requirements by a kind of luck and from that day forward his fortune was made, justifying the Italian saying, ‘An ounce of good fortune furthers one more than a pound of knowledge.’2Everywhere he was now called in, and though he prescribed his remedies all higgledypiggledy, without science or experience, not more of his patients died than those of other mediciners. The people were, therefore, quite satisfiedthat when Doctor Grillo had prescribed the best had been done that human skill could afford.By-and-by it came to the ears of the real Doctor Grillo that a quack and impostor was wearing his laurels; nor did he sooner hear the news than he set out to confront him.‘Beware good people! What are you doing?’ was his say. ‘This man knows no more of medicine than one of yourselves; you will all die if you trust to him. He is no Doctor Grillo. I am Doctor Grillo.’But all the people laughed in his face, filled as they were with the prepossession of their first impressions, and they began to drive him out of their midst; but he protested so loudly, ‘I am Doctor Grillo,’ that a wiseacre3in the crowd thought to win for himself a reputation for discernment by insisting that he should have a trial.It happened that the daughter of the Chief Judge was at that time stricken with fever, and as he had observed in the language and manners of the new Doctor Grillo more traces of learning and refinement4than in the first arrived of the name, he willingly agreed that the case should be submitted to him for treatment. His wife had, however, just before sent for the false Doctor Grillo, so that both arrived in the sick-room at the same moment; and loud and long was the dispute between husband wife, master and servant, as to which doctor should approach the patient. By the time the husband had carried his point, and the real physician entered upon his functions, the fever had got such hold of the sufferer that no medicine more availed, and the girl succumbed to the consequences of the delay in administering the most ordinary remedies.Nevertheless, it was in the hands of the real Doctor Grillo that she had died. The one proof of his identity which had been granted had gone against him, and the popular mind was quite satisfied that it was hewas the impostor. As the pompous funeral of the Judge’s daughter brought all the circumstances to the minds of the people, the feeling against him gathered and grew; and when at last one more mischievous and malicious than the rest proposed that he should be driven out of the community, the idea met with such a ready response that he would certainly not have escaped with his life from the yells and stone-throwing5of the infuriated populace, had not his retreat been protected by the more peaceably disposed citizens.But the false Doctor Grillo remained thenceforward in undisturbed possession of the fame and fortune attaching to the name he had filched.[This is probably a filtering of one of the many stories about Theophrastus Paracelsus. I think there was something verylike it in a little book of popular legends about him given me at Salzburg, but I have not got it at hand to refer to. Zingerle, ‘Sagen aus Tirol,’ p. 417, tells a story of his servant prying into the wise man’s penetralia, and getting a worse punishment for his pains than Gehazi.]1‘Berretta,’ (also written ‘biretta’) is used for any kind of cap worn by men or boys. It would appear that no kind of head-covering except a hood to the cloak, enabling the wearer to cover the head, or leave it bare at pleasure, was in common use in Italy before the sixteenth century, though the ‘berretta’ is mentioned in documents as part of ecclesiastical, particularly of the pontifical, dress, as early as the tenth century. The round ‘berretta’ coming to be commonly used by the people, their superiors adopted the quadrated form, which, with some modifications, is that still adopted by the Catholic clergy. Graduates and doctors were privileged to wear it, hence its use by Doctor Grillo; and though monks generally are not, some of those engaged in preaching and teaching have a special permission to do so. The Superior of the Theatine Convent of Naples alone, among all superiors of nuns, has the privilege of wearing the ‘berretta.’ Orsola Benincasa, the founder, was called to Rome that the Pope (Gregory XIII., 1576) might examine whether the reputation she had acquired for learning and piety was well founded. Not only was the Pope well satisfied with her, but St. Philip Neri also gave her many tokens of approval, and, among others, in his playful way, put his ‘berretta’ on her head. This honour has been commemorated by her successors retaining its use.↑2‘Vale più un oncia di fortuna che una libbra di sapere.’↑3‘Un saccentuzze.’↑4‘Garbatezza.’↑5‘Sassata,’ in Italian, has a more terrible significance than ‘stone-throwing,’ in English, conveys. The art of throwing and slinging stones with dexterity and accuracy of aim would seem to have been as favourite a pastime among the peasantry in Italy and Spain as archery among our own. For the purposes of the present volume, it needs only to allude to the Roman development of the practice. P. Bresciani, who has taken more pains than any writer of the present age in illustratingthe local customs of Rome, tells us the ‘sassate’ continued a favourite diversion of the youth of Rome almost down to our own day, and it was only by the most strenuous and vigorous measures that Cardinal Consalvi was enabled to put an end to it; being impelled thereto by the barbarous tone of feeling it engendered, and the frequent casualties resulting from it. The most idle and dissolute raggamuffins of the Monti and Trastevere quarters were among the most dexterous of marksmen. Whenever they aimed a throw, ‘fosse di fionda o fosse di soprammano’ (whether from a sling or from the hand) they were sure to hit the mark; so that any one of them might have written, like the Greek archer on his arrow, ‘for the right eye of Philip,’ on his ‘ciotto.’ (‘Ciotto’ is a stone such as would be used for throwing from a sling, and thus ‘ciottolo’ means equally a road made with rough stones and a ‘sassata.’ What is more to our present purpose is, that ‘ciotto’ means also ‘lame,’ suggesting how often persons may have been lamed by ‘sassate’). It is said that in the Balearic islands, it was the custom for mothers to tie the meals of their children to a branch of a tree, and none got anything to eat till he had hit the string with a stone, and thus they were trained to ‘fiondeggiare’ (to throw from a sling) perfectly. The Roman raggamuffins, instead of their food, used to have for their mark the features of donna Lucrezia and Marforio, and they ‘ciottolavanle’ (pelted them) with stones from far and near. At other times their aim would be directed against a tuft of herbage dangling down from the arches of the aqueducts of Nero or Claudius, nor would they rest from their aiming till they had rooted it out with their stones. Their highest ambition was to direct a stone right through one of the small window-openings in the loftiest range at the Coliseum. After such practice, we may well believe the stones fell true when they had a living adversary before them.‘And as it is the evil custom of the sons of Adam to strive one against the other, and for the excitement of contention every village loves to keep up warfare with its next neighbouring village, so the “Rioni” of Rome delighted in trials of skill one against the other. Thus on every holiday a hundred or two of Montegiani and Trasteverini were to be found arrayed against each other, and all arranged in due order of battle, with its skirmishers and reconnoitring parties, its van-guard and rear-guard. One side would take the Aventine for its base of operations, and another the Palatine....’ After describing very graphically the tactics in vogue, our author goes on to say, ‘The adults of both factions stood by the while and backed up the boys, and often the strife which had begun as boys’ pastime ended in serious maiming of grown up men. Hence, not a holiday passed but some mother had to mourn over a son brought home to her with a broken head or an eye knocked out; or some wife over a husband riddled (sforacchiato) with wounds....’ Hence it was that Cardinal Consalvi, as we have seen, put an end to such rough play.↑

DOCTOR GRILLO.

Doctor Grillo was a physician who had made himself a great name throughout his whole country, so that he was sent for and consulted from far and wide, and everybody looked up to him as a very wise man, whose word was final on any question of medicine. The discovery that ‘no man is a hero to his valet’ was made long before the idea so found expression in the seventeenth century; Doctor Grillo had a man-servant who chose to entertain a very different notion of his merits and powers from that of the rest of the world; and in time, from undervaluing his attainments, he came to conceive the belief that he could himself do just as well as his master.One day, when the Doctor was out, this serving-man took into his head to roll up into a great bundle his doctor’s gown and cap,1a number of prescriptions, and a quantity of bottles, and with these he stole away and betook himself to a far country, where he gave himself out for the famed Doctor Grillo.Just at the time he arrived, the queen of the country was in great suffering, nor could any native professor of medicine succeed in benefiting her. Naturally the services of the great Doctor Grillo were put in request in her behalf, as soon as his cunning servant had given himself out as the owner of his world-wide reputation, and fortune favoured him in his two earliest attempts. Suffice it to say, he succeeded in satisfying her requirements by a kind of luck and from that day forward his fortune was made, justifying the Italian saying, ‘An ounce of good fortune furthers one more than a pound of knowledge.’2Everywhere he was now called in, and though he prescribed his remedies all higgledypiggledy, without science or experience, not more of his patients died than those of other mediciners. The people were, therefore, quite satisfiedthat when Doctor Grillo had prescribed the best had been done that human skill could afford.By-and-by it came to the ears of the real Doctor Grillo that a quack and impostor was wearing his laurels; nor did he sooner hear the news than he set out to confront him.‘Beware good people! What are you doing?’ was his say. ‘This man knows no more of medicine than one of yourselves; you will all die if you trust to him. He is no Doctor Grillo. I am Doctor Grillo.’But all the people laughed in his face, filled as they were with the prepossession of their first impressions, and they began to drive him out of their midst; but he protested so loudly, ‘I am Doctor Grillo,’ that a wiseacre3in the crowd thought to win for himself a reputation for discernment by insisting that he should have a trial.It happened that the daughter of the Chief Judge was at that time stricken with fever, and as he had observed in the language and manners of the new Doctor Grillo more traces of learning and refinement4than in the first arrived of the name, he willingly agreed that the case should be submitted to him for treatment. His wife had, however, just before sent for the false Doctor Grillo, so that both arrived in the sick-room at the same moment; and loud and long was the dispute between husband wife, master and servant, as to which doctor should approach the patient. By the time the husband had carried his point, and the real physician entered upon his functions, the fever had got such hold of the sufferer that no medicine more availed, and the girl succumbed to the consequences of the delay in administering the most ordinary remedies.Nevertheless, it was in the hands of the real Doctor Grillo that she had died. The one proof of his identity which had been granted had gone against him, and the popular mind was quite satisfied that it was hewas the impostor. As the pompous funeral of the Judge’s daughter brought all the circumstances to the minds of the people, the feeling against him gathered and grew; and when at last one more mischievous and malicious than the rest proposed that he should be driven out of the community, the idea met with such a ready response that he would certainly not have escaped with his life from the yells and stone-throwing5of the infuriated populace, had not his retreat been protected by the more peaceably disposed citizens.But the false Doctor Grillo remained thenceforward in undisturbed possession of the fame and fortune attaching to the name he had filched.[This is probably a filtering of one of the many stories about Theophrastus Paracelsus. I think there was something verylike it in a little book of popular legends about him given me at Salzburg, but I have not got it at hand to refer to. Zingerle, ‘Sagen aus Tirol,’ p. 417, tells a story of his servant prying into the wise man’s penetralia, and getting a worse punishment for his pains than Gehazi.]

Doctor Grillo was a physician who had made himself a great name throughout his whole country, so that he was sent for and consulted from far and wide, and everybody looked up to him as a very wise man, whose word was final on any question of medicine. The discovery that ‘no man is a hero to his valet’ was made long before the idea so found expression in the seventeenth century; Doctor Grillo had a man-servant who chose to entertain a very different notion of his merits and powers from that of the rest of the world; and in time, from undervaluing his attainments, he came to conceive the belief that he could himself do just as well as his master.

One day, when the Doctor was out, this serving-man took into his head to roll up into a great bundle his doctor’s gown and cap,1a number of prescriptions, and a quantity of bottles, and with these he stole away and betook himself to a far country, where he gave himself out for the famed Doctor Grillo.

Just at the time he arrived, the queen of the country was in great suffering, nor could any native professor of medicine succeed in benefiting her. Naturally the services of the great Doctor Grillo were put in request in her behalf, as soon as his cunning servant had given himself out as the owner of his world-wide reputation, and fortune favoured him in his two earliest attempts. Suffice it to say, he succeeded in satisfying her requirements by a kind of luck and from that day forward his fortune was made, justifying the Italian saying, ‘An ounce of good fortune furthers one more than a pound of knowledge.’2Everywhere he was now called in, and though he prescribed his remedies all higgledypiggledy, without science or experience, not more of his patients died than those of other mediciners. The people were, therefore, quite satisfiedthat when Doctor Grillo had prescribed the best had been done that human skill could afford.

By-and-by it came to the ears of the real Doctor Grillo that a quack and impostor was wearing his laurels; nor did he sooner hear the news than he set out to confront him.

‘Beware good people! What are you doing?’ was his say. ‘This man knows no more of medicine than one of yourselves; you will all die if you trust to him. He is no Doctor Grillo. I am Doctor Grillo.’

But all the people laughed in his face, filled as they were with the prepossession of their first impressions, and they began to drive him out of their midst; but he protested so loudly, ‘I am Doctor Grillo,’ that a wiseacre3in the crowd thought to win for himself a reputation for discernment by insisting that he should have a trial.

It happened that the daughter of the Chief Judge was at that time stricken with fever, and as he had observed in the language and manners of the new Doctor Grillo more traces of learning and refinement4than in the first arrived of the name, he willingly agreed that the case should be submitted to him for treatment. His wife had, however, just before sent for the false Doctor Grillo, so that both arrived in the sick-room at the same moment; and loud and long was the dispute between husband wife, master and servant, as to which doctor should approach the patient. By the time the husband had carried his point, and the real physician entered upon his functions, the fever had got such hold of the sufferer that no medicine more availed, and the girl succumbed to the consequences of the delay in administering the most ordinary remedies.

Nevertheless, it was in the hands of the real Doctor Grillo that she had died. The one proof of his identity which had been granted had gone against him, and the popular mind was quite satisfied that it was hewas the impostor. As the pompous funeral of the Judge’s daughter brought all the circumstances to the minds of the people, the feeling against him gathered and grew; and when at last one more mischievous and malicious than the rest proposed that he should be driven out of the community, the idea met with such a ready response that he would certainly not have escaped with his life from the yells and stone-throwing5of the infuriated populace, had not his retreat been protected by the more peaceably disposed citizens.

But the false Doctor Grillo remained thenceforward in undisturbed possession of the fame and fortune attaching to the name he had filched.

[This is probably a filtering of one of the many stories about Theophrastus Paracelsus. I think there was something verylike it in a little book of popular legends about him given me at Salzburg, but I have not got it at hand to refer to. Zingerle, ‘Sagen aus Tirol,’ p. 417, tells a story of his servant prying into the wise man’s penetralia, and getting a worse punishment for his pains than Gehazi.]

1‘Berretta,’ (also written ‘biretta’) is used for any kind of cap worn by men or boys. It would appear that no kind of head-covering except a hood to the cloak, enabling the wearer to cover the head, or leave it bare at pleasure, was in common use in Italy before the sixteenth century, though the ‘berretta’ is mentioned in documents as part of ecclesiastical, particularly of the pontifical, dress, as early as the tenth century. The round ‘berretta’ coming to be commonly used by the people, their superiors adopted the quadrated form, which, with some modifications, is that still adopted by the Catholic clergy. Graduates and doctors were privileged to wear it, hence its use by Doctor Grillo; and though monks generally are not, some of those engaged in preaching and teaching have a special permission to do so. The Superior of the Theatine Convent of Naples alone, among all superiors of nuns, has the privilege of wearing the ‘berretta.’ Orsola Benincasa, the founder, was called to Rome that the Pope (Gregory XIII., 1576) might examine whether the reputation she had acquired for learning and piety was well founded. Not only was the Pope well satisfied with her, but St. Philip Neri also gave her many tokens of approval, and, among others, in his playful way, put his ‘berretta’ on her head. This honour has been commemorated by her successors retaining its use.↑2‘Vale più un oncia di fortuna che una libbra di sapere.’↑3‘Un saccentuzze.’↑4‘Garbatezza.’↑5‘Sassata,’ in Italian, has a more terrible significance than ‘stone-throwing,’ in English, conveys. The art of throwing and slinging stones with dexterity and accuracy of aim would seem to have been as favourite a pastime among the peasantry in Italy and Spain as archery among our own. For the purposes of the present volume, it needs only to allude to the Roman development of the practice. P. Bresciani, who has taken more pains than any writer of the present age in illustratingthe local customs of Rome, tells us the ‘sassate’ continued a favourite diversion of the youth of Rome almost down to our own day, and it was only by the most strenuous and vigorous measures that Cardinal Consalvi was enabled to put an end to it; being impelled thereto by the barbarous tone of feeling it engendered, and the frequent casualties resulting from it. The most idle and dissolute raggamuffins of the Monti and Trastevere quarters were among the most dexterous of marksmen. Whenever they aimed a throw, ‘fosse di fionda o fosse di soprammano’ (whether from a sling or from the hand) they were sure to hit the mark; so that any one of them might have written, like the Greek archer on his arrow, ‘for the right eye of Philip,’ on his ‘ciotto.’ (‘Ciotto’ is a stone such as would be used for throwing from a sling, and thus ‘ciottolo’ means equally a road made with rough stones and a ‘sassata.’ What is more to our present purpose is, that ‘ciotto’ means also ‘lame,’ suggesting how often persons may have been lamed by ‘sassate’). It is said that in the Balearic islands, it was the custom for mothers to tie the meals of their children to a branch of a tree, and none got anything to eat till he had hit the string with a stone, and thus they were trained to ‘fiondeggiare’ (to throw from a sling) perfectly. The Roman raggamuffins, instead of their food, used to have for their mark the features of donna Lucrezia and Marforio, and they ‘ciottolavanle’ (pelted them) with stones from far and near. At other times their aim would be directed against a tuft of herbage dangling down from the arches of the aqueducts of Nero or Claudius, nor would they rest from their aiming till they had rooted it out with their stones. Their highest ambition was to direct a stone right through one of the small window-openings in the loftiest range at the Coliseum. After such practice, we may well believe the stones fell true when they had a living adversary before them.‘And as it is the evil custom of the sons of Adam to strive one against the other, and for the excitement of contention every village loves to keep up warfare with its next neighbouring village, so the “Rioni” of Rome delighted in trials of skill one against the other. Thus on every holiday a hundred or two of Montegiani and Trasteverini were to be found arrayed against each other, and all arranged in due order of battle, with its skirmishers and reconnoitring parties, its van-guard and rear-guard. One side would take the Aventine for its base of operations, and another the Palatine....’ After describing very graphically the tactics in vogue, our author goes on to say, ‘The adults of both factions stood by the while and backed up the boys, and often the strife which had begun as boys’ pastime ended in serious maiming of grown up men. Hence, not a holiday passed but some mother had to mourn over a son brought home to her with a broken head or an eye knocked out; or some wife over a husband riddled (sforacchiato) with wounds....’ Hence it was that Cardinal Consalvi, as we have seen, put an end to such rough play.↑

1‘Berretta,’ (also written ‘biretta’) is used for any kind of cap worn by men or boys. It would appear that no kind of head-covering except a hood to the cloak, enabling the wearer to cover the head, or leave it bare at pleasure, was in common use in Italy before the sixteenth century, though the ‘berretta’ is mentioned in documents as part of ecclesiastical, particularly of the pontifical, dress, as early as the tenth century. The round ‘berretta’ coming to be commonly used by the people, their superiors adopted the quadrated form, which, with some modifications, is that still adopted by the Catholic clergy. Graduates and doctors were privileged to wear it, hence its use by Doctor Grillo; and though monks generally are not, some of those engaged in preaching and teaching have a special permission to do so. The Superior of the Theatine Convent of Naples alone, among all superiors of nuns, has the privilege of wearing the ‘berretta.’ Orsola Benincasa, the founder, was called to Rome that the Pope (Gregory XIII., 1576) might examine whether the reputation she had acquired for learning and piety was well founded. Not only was the Pope well satisfied with her, but St. Philip Neri also gave her many tokens of approval, and, among others, in his playful way, put his ‘berretta’ on her head. This honour has been commemorated by her successors retaining its use.↑

2‘Vale più un oncia di fortuna che una libbra di sapere.’↑

3‘Un saccentuzze.’↑

4‘Garbatezza.’↑

5‘Sassata,’ in Italian, has a more terrible significance than ‘stone-throwing,’ in English, conveys. The art of throwing and slinging stones with dexterity and accuracy of aim would seem to have been as favourite a pastime among the peasantry in Italy and Spain as archery among our own. For the purposes of the present volume, it needs only to allude to the Roman development of the practice. P. Bresciani, who has taken more pains than any writer of the present age in illustratingthe local customs of Rome, tells us the ‘sassate’ continued a favourite diversion of the youth of Rome almost down to our own day, and it was only by the most strenuous and vigorous measures that Cardinal Consalvi was enabled to put an end to it; being impelled thereto by the barbarous tone of feeling it engendered, and the frequent casualties resulting from it. The most idle and dissolute raggamuffins of the Monti and Trastevere quarters were among the most dexterous of marksmen. Whenever they aimed a throw, ‘fosse di fionda o fosse di soprammano’ (whether from a sling or from the hand) they were sure to hit the mark; so that any one of them might have written, like the Greek archer on his arrow, ‘for the right eye of Philip,’ on his ‘ciotto.’ (‘Ciotto’ is a stone such as would be used for throwing from a sling, and thus ‘ciottolo’ means equally a road made with rough stones and a ‘sassata.’ What is more to our present purpose is, that ‘ciotto’ means also ‘lame,’ suggesting how often persons may have been lamed by ‘sassate’). It is said that in the Balearic islands, it was the custom for mothers to tie the meals of their children to a branch of a tree, and none got anything to eat till he had hit the string with a stone, and thus they were trained to ‘fiondeggiare’ (to throw from a sling) perfectly. The Roman raggamuffins, instead of their food, used to have for their mark the features of donna Lucrezia and Marforio, and they ‘ciottolavanle’ (pelted them) with stones from far and near. At other times their aim would be directed against a tuft of herbage dangling down from the arches of the aqueducts of Nero or Claudius, nor would they rest from their aiming till they had rooted it out with their stones. Their highest ambition was to direct a stone right through one of the small window-openings in the loftiest range at the Coliseum. After such practice, we may well believe the stones fell true when they had a living adversary before them.

‘And as it is the evil custom of the sons of Adam to strive one against the other, and for the excitement of contention every village loves to keep up warfare with its next neighbouring village, so the “Rioni” of Rome delighted in trials of skill one against the other. Thus on every holiday a hundred or two of Montegiani and Trasteverini were to be found arrayed against each other, and all arranged in due order of battle, with its skirmishers and reconnoitring parties, its van-guard and rear-guard. One side would take the Aventine for its base of operations, and another the Palatine....’ After describing very graphically the tactics in vogue, our author goes on to say, ‘The adults of both factions stood by the while and backed up the boys, and often the strife which had begun as boys’ pastime ended in serious maiming of grown up men. Hence, not a holiday passed but some mother had to mourn over a son brought home to her with a broken head or an eye knocked out; or some wife over a husband riddled (sforacchiato) with wounds....’ Hence it was that Cardinal Consalvi, as we have seen, put an end to such rough play.↑

NINA.There was a miller who got into difficulties, and could not pay his rent. The landlord sent to him a great many times to say that if he could not pay his rent he must go out; but as he paid no attention to the notice, the landlord went himself at last, and told him he must go. The miller pleaded that his difficulties were only temporary, and that if he would give him but a little time he would make it all straight. The landlord, however, was pitiless, and said he had waited long enough, and now he had come to put an end to it; adding, ‘Mind, this is my last word: If you do not go out to-night peaceably, I shall send some one to-morrow to turn you out by force.’As he turned to leave, after pronouncing this sentence, he met the miller’s daughter coming back from the stream where she had been washing. ‘Who is this buxom lass?’ inquired the landlord.‘That is my daughter Nina,’ answered the miller.‘A fine girl she is too,’ replied the landlord. ‘And I tell you what, miller, listen to me; give Nina to me, and I will not only forgive you the debt, but will make over the mill and the homestead to you, to be your own property for ever.’‘Give me a proper document to that effect, duly signed by your own hand,’ replied the miller, with a twinkle in his eye, ‘and I will give you “Nina.”’The landlord went back into the house, and taking two sheets of paper drew up first a formal quittance ofthe back rent, and then a conveyance of the mill and homestead absolutely to the miller and to his heirs for ever. These he handed to the miller; and then he said, ‘To-night, an hour before sundown, I will send for “Nina.”’‘All right,’ said the miller; ‘you shall have “Nina,”’ and so they parted.‘An hour before sundown a servant came with a carriage to fetch “Nina”’‘Where’s “Nina”?’ said the servant. ‘Master has sent me to fetch “Nina.”’‘In the stable—take her!’ answered the miller.In the stable was nothing to be seen but a very lean old donkey.‘There’s nothing here but an old donkey,’ exclaimed the servant.‘All right, that’s “Nina,” so take her,’ replied the miller.‘But this can’t be what master meant me to fetch!’ expostulated the servant.‘What have you got to say to it?’ replied the miller. ‘Your master told you to fetch “Nina;” we always call our donkey “Nina;” so take her, and be off.’The servant saw there was nothing to be gained by disputing, so he took the donkey and went home. When he got back, his master had got company with him, so he did not know what to say about the donkey. But his master seeing he was come back, took it for granted the business was done; and calling him to him privately said, ‘Take “Nina” upstairs into the best bedroom and light a fire, and give her some supper.’‘Take her1upstairs into the best bedroom!’ exclaimed the man.‘Yes! do what you’re told, and don’t repeat my words.’The servant could not venture to say any more; so he took the donkey up into the best bedroom, and lit a fire,and put some supper there. As soon as his company was gone, the master called the servant—‘Is “Nina” upstairs?’ asked he.‘Si, Signore; she’s lying before the fire,’ answered the servant.‘Did you take some supper up? I’ll have my supper up there with “Nina.”’‘Si, Signore,’ replied the servant, and he turned away to laugh, for he thought his master had gone mad.The landlord went upstairs; but it had now grown dark, so he groped his way to the fireplace, and there sure enough was ‘Nina,’ the donkey, lying down, and as he stroked her he said, ‘What fine soft hair you’ve got, Nina!’Presently the servant brought the lights; and when he saw the dirty old worn-out donkey, and understood what a trick the miller had played off on him, it may be imagined how furious he was.The next day, as soon as the courts were opened, he went before the judge, and told all the tale. Then the miller came too, and told his; but the judge examined the documents, and pronounced that the miller was in the right; for his part of the contract was that he was to deliver over ‘Nina,’ and he had delivered over ‘Nina.’ There was no evidence that any other ‘Nina’ was intended but ‘Nina’ the donkey, and so the miller remained in undisputed possession of the mill.And that is the truth, for it actually happened as I have told you.1‘Quella,’ in the original, lends itself better to the purposed misunderstanding of the story, meaning ‘that one,’ ‘such an one as that!’ in the feminine gender; and the master would think the servant said it in contempt because he spoke of a miller’s daughter.↑

NINA.

There was a miller who got into difficulties, and could not pay his rent. The landlord sent to him a great many times to say that if he could not pay his rent he must go out; but as he paid no attention to the notice, the landlord went himself at last, and told him he must go. The miller pleaded that his difficulties were only temporary, and that if he would give him but a little time he would make it all straight. The landlord, however, was pitiless, and said he had waited long enough, and now he had come to put an end to it; adding, ‘Mind, this is my last word: If you do not go out to-night peaceably, I shall send some one to-morrow to turn you out by force.’As he turned to leave, after pronouncing this sentence, he met the miller’s daughter coming back from the stream where she had been washing. ‘Who is this buxom lass?’ inquired the landlord.‘That is my daughter Nina,’ answered the miller.‘A fine girl she is too,’ replied the landlord. ‘And I tell you what, miller, listen to me; give Nina to me, and I will not only forgive you the debt, but will make over the mill and the homestead to you, to be your own property for ever.’‘Give me a proper document to that effect, duly signed by your own hand,’ replied the miller, with a twinkle in his eye, ‘and I will give you “Nina.”’The landlord went back into the house, and taking two sheets of paper drew up first a formal quittance ofthe back rent, and then a conveyance of the mill and homestead absolutely to the miller and to his heirs for ever. These he handed to the miller; and then he said, ‘To-night, an hour before sundown, I will send for “Nina.”’‘All right,’ said the miller; ‘you shall have “Nina,”’ and so they parted.‘An hour before sundown a servant came with a carriage to fetch “Nina”’‘Where’s “Nina”?’ said the servant. ‘Master has sent me to fetch “Nina.”’‘In the stable—take her!’ answered the miller.In the stable was nothing to be seen but a very lean old donkey.‘There’s nothing here but an old donkey,’ exclaimed the servant.‘All right, that’s “Nina,” so take her,’ replied the miller.‘But this can’t be what master meant me to fetch!’ expostulated the servant.‘What have you got to say to it?’ replied the miller. ‘Your master told you to fetch “Nina;” we always call our donkey “Nina;” so take her, and be off.’The servant saw there was nothing to be gained by disputing, so he took the donkey and went home. When he got back, his master had got company with him, so he did not know what to say about the donkey. But his master seeing he was come back, took it for granted the business was done; and calling him to him privately said, ‘Take “Nina” upstairs into the best bedroom and light a fire, and give her some supper.’‘Take her1upstairs into the best bedroom!’ exclaimed the man.‘Yes! do what you’re told, and don’t repeat my words.’The servant could not venture to say any more; so he took the donkey up into the best bedroom, and lit a fire,and put some supper there. As soon as his company was gone, the master called the servant—‘Is “Nina” upstairs?’ asked he.‘Si, Signore; she’s lying before the fire,’ answered the servant.‘Did you take some supper up? I’ll have my supper up there with “Nina.”’‘Si, Signore,’ replied the servant, and he turned away to laugh, for he thought his master had gone mad.The landlord went upstairs; but it had now grown dark, so he groped his way to the fireplace, and there sure enough was ‘Nina,’ the donkey, lying down, and as he stroked her he said, ‘What fine soft hair you’ve got, Nina!’Presently the servant brought the lights; and when he saw the dirty old worn-out donkey, and understood what a trick the miller had played off on him, it may be imagined how furious he was.The next day, as soon as the courts were opened, he went before the judge, and told all the tale. Then the miller came too, and told his; but the judge examined the documents, and pronounced that the miller was in the right; for his part of the contract was that he was to deliver over ‘Nina,’ and he had delivered over ‘Nina.’ There was no evidence that any other ‘Nina’ was intended but ‘Nina’ the donkey, and so the miller remained in undisputed possession of the mill.And that is the truth, for it actually happened as I have told you.

There was a miller who got into difficulties, and could not pay his rent. The landlord sent to him a great many times to say that if he could not pay his rent he must go out; but as he paid no attention to the notice, the landlord went himself at last, and told him he must go. The miller pleaded that his difficulties were only temporary, and that if he would give him but a little time he would make it all straight. The landlord, however, was pitiless, and said he had waited long enough, and now he had come to put an end to it; adding, ‘Mind, this is my last word: If you do not go out to-night peaceably, I shall send some one to-morrow to turn you out by force.’

As he turned to leave, after pronouncing this sentence, he met the miller’s daughter coming back from the stream where she had been washing. ‘Who is this buxom lass?’ inquired the landlord.

‘That is my daughter Nina,’ answered the miller.

‘A fine girl she is too,’ replied the landlord. ‘And I tell you what, miller, listen to me; give Nina to me, and I will not only forgive you the debt, but will make over the mill and the homestead to you, to be your own property for ever.’

‘Give me a proper document to that effect, duly signed by your own hand,’ replied the miller, with a twinkle in his eye, ‘and I will give you “Nina.”’

The landlord went back into the house, and taking two sheets of paper drew up first a formal quittance ofthe back rent, and then a conveyance of the mill and homestead absolutely to the miller and to his heirs for ever. These he handed to the miller; and then he said, ‘To-night, an hour before sundown, I will send for “Nina.”’

‘All right,’ said the miller; ‘you shall have “Nina,”’ and so they parted.

‘An hour before sundown a servant came with a carriage to fetch “Nina”’

‘Where’s “Nina”?’ said the servant. ‘Master has sent me to fetch “Nina.”’

‘In the stable—take her!’ answered the miller.

In the stable was nothing to be seen but a very lean old donkey.

‘There’s nothing here but an old donkey,’ exclaimed the servant.

‘All right, that’s “Nina,” so take her,’ replied the miller.

‘But this can’t be what master meant me to fetch!’ expostulated the servant.

‘What have you got to say to it?’ replied the miller. ‘Your master told you to fetch “Nina;” we always call our donkey “Nina;” so take her, and be off.’

The servant saw there was nothing to be gained by disputing, so he took the donkey and went home. When he got back, his master had got company with him, so he did not know what to say about the donkey. But his master seeing he was come back, took it for granted the business was done; and calling him to him privately said, ‘Take “Nina” upstairs into the best bedroom and light a fire, and give her some supper.’

‘Take her1upstairs into the best bedroom!’ exclaimed the man.

‘Yes! do what you’re told, and don’t repeat my words.’

The servant could not venture to say any more; so he took the donkey up into the best bedroom, and lit a fire,and put some supper there. As soon as his company was gone, the master called the servant—

‘Is “Nina” upstairs?’ asked he.

‘Si, Signore; she’s lying before the fire,’ answered the servant.

‘Did you take some supper up? I’ll have my supper up there with “Nina.”’

‘Si, Signore,’ replied the servant, and he turned away to laugh, for he thought his master had gone mad.

The landlord went upstairs; but it had now grown dark, so he groped his way to the fireplace, and there sure enough was ‘Nina,’ the donkey, lying down, and as he stroked her he said, ‘What fine soft hair you’ve got, Nina!’

Presently the servant brought the lights; and when he saw the dirty old worn-out donkey, and understood what a trick the miller had played off on him, it may be imagined how furious he was.

The next day, as soon as the courts were opened, he went before the judge, and told all the tale. Then the miller came too, and told his; but the judge examined the documents, and pronounced that the miller was in the right; for his part of the contract was that he was to deliver over ‘Nina,’ and he had delivered over ‘Nina.’ There was no evidence that any other ‘Nina’ was intended but ‘Nina’ the donkey, and so the miller remained in undisputed possession of the mill.

And that is the truth, for it actually happened as I have told you.

1‘Quella,’ in the original, lends itself better to the purposed misunderstanding of the story, meaning ‘that one,’ ‘such an one as that!’ in the feminine gender; and the master would think the servant said it in contempt because he spoke of a miller’s daughter.↑

1‘Quella,’ in the original, lends itself better to the purposed misunderstanding of the story, meaning ‘that one,’ ‘such an one as that!’ in the feminine gender; and the master would think the servant said it in contempt because he spoke of a miller’s daughter.↑

THE GOOD GRACE OF THE HUNCHBACK.1A mother and daughter lived alone in a cottage. The mother was old and came to die; the daughter was turned out of house and home.2An ugly hunchback, who was a tailor, came by and said—‘What is your name, my pretty girl?’‘They call me la Buona Grazia,’3answered the girl.‘Well, la Buona Grazia, I’ve got twenty scudi a month, will you come with me and be my wife?’The girl was starving, and didn’t know where to set her foot, so she thought she could not afford to refuse; but she went along with a very bad grace, for she did not feel at all happy at the idea of marrying the ugly old hunchback.When the hunchback saw how unhappy she was, he thought, ‘This will never do. She’s too young and too pretty to care for me. I must keep her locked up, and then when she sees no one else at all, she will at last be glad even of my company.’ So he went all the errands himself, and never let her go out except to Mass, and then he took her to the church, and watched her all the time, and brought her back himself. The windows he whitened all over, so that she couldn’t see out into the street, and there he kept her with the door locked on her, and she was very miserable.So it went on for three years. But there was a dirty little window of a lumber room which, as it only gave a look out on to the court,4he had not whitened. As she happened to look out here one day a stranger stood leaning on the balcony of the court, for part of the house was an inn, and he had just arrived.‘What are you looking for, my pretty girl?’ said the stranger.‘O! nothing particular; only I’m locked up here, and I just looked out for a change.’‘Locked up! who has locked you up?’ asked the stranger.‘An old hunchback, who’s going to marry me,’ said the girl, almost crying.‘You don’t seem much pleased at the idea of being married,’ answered the stranger.‘It is not likely that I should, to such a husband!’ returned the girl.‘Would you like to get away from him?’ asked the stranger.‘Shouldn’t I!’ heartily exclaimed the girl; ‘but it’s impossible to manage that, as I’m locked in,’ she added sorrowfully.‘It’s not so difficult as you think,’ rejoined the stranger. ‘Most likely there’s some picture or other on your wall.’‘Oh, yes! a great big one with the fair Giuditta just ready with her pouch5to put Lofferno’s head in,’ answered the girl.‘All right. You make a big hole behind the picture on your side, and when I hear by the sound where you are, I’ll make one on mine. And when our two holes meet, you can come through.’‘Yes, that’s a capital plan; but the hunchback will soon come after me.’‘Never mind, I will see to that; let’s make the hole first?’‘Very well, I rely upon you, and will set to work immediately.’‘Tell me first how I am to call you?’‘They always call me Buona Grazia.’‘A very nice name. Good-bye, and we’ll set to work.’La Buona Grazia ran and unhooked the picture, and set to work to make a hole with all the available tools she could find; and the stranger, as soon as he had ascertained by the noise where she was at work, set to also. It turned out to be only a partition,6and not a regular wall, and the hole was soon cut.‘What fun!’ said the girl, as she jumped through. ‘Oh, how nice to be free! But,’ she added, ‘I can’t travel with you in these poor clothes.’‘No,’ said the stranger. ‘I’ll have a travelling dress made for you, by the hunchback himself.’‘Oh, take care!’ cried the girl, earnestly.‘Don’t be afraid,’ answered the stranger; ‘and above all don’t look frightened.’Then he sent his servant to call the hunchback, and when he came he said—‘I want a travelling dress made directly for my wife here, so please take her measure.’The hunchback started when he saw who it was he had to measure.‘Why, she’s exactly like my Buona Grazia!’ exclaimed he.‘Very likely. I have always observed there was a sort of likeness between the inhabitants of a town. She too is a Roman, though I am a stranger. But make haste and take the measure, I didn’t call you here to make remarks.’The hunchback got frightened at the stranger’s authoritative tone, and took the measure without saying any more; and the stranger then gave him something to go and have a breakfast at thecafféto give the girl time to get back and set the picture in its place again.When he came up into the room all looked right, and nothing seemed to have been moved.‘I’ve got to work hard to-day,’ said the hunchback, ‘to get a travelling dress ready for the wife of a gentleman staying in the inn, who is exactly like you.’‘Are they going to travel, then?’ asked la Buona Grazia.‘Yes, the gentleman said they should start as soon as the dress is done.’‘Oh, do let me see them drive off!’ said la Buona Grazia, coaxingly. ‘I should so like to see a lady who looked like me wearing a dress you had made.’‘Nonsense, nonsense!’ said the hunchback; ‘get on with your work.’And she did get on with her work, and stitched away, for she was anxious enough to help him to get the dress done; but she went on teazing him all the while to let her go to the window to see the gentleman and the lady, ‘who looked so like her,’ drive off, that at last the hunchback consented for that only day to take the whiting off the windows and let her look out.The travelling dress was finished and taken home; and while the hunchback was taking it up by the stairs, la Bella Grazia was getting in by the hole behind the picture; but she had first made a great doll,7and dressed it just like herself, and stuck it in the window. The gobbo, who stood down below to see the gentry drive off, looked up and saw her, as he thought, at the window, and made signs for her not to stay there too long.Presently the stranger and his lady came down; the hunchback was standing before the carriage door, as I have said, and two stablemen were standing by also.‘You give me your good grace?’8asked the stranger.‘Yes, yes!’ readily responded the hunchback, delighted to find a rich gentleman so civil to him.‘You say it sincerely, with all your heart?’ again asked the stranger.‘Yes, yes, yes! with all my heart,’ answered the hunchback.‘Then give me your hand upon it.’And the hunchback, more and more delighted, put out his hand, the two stablemen standing by looking on attentively all the time.As soon as the carriage had driven away, the hunchback’s first care was to look up at the window to see if the girl had gone in; but the doll was still there.‘Go in! go in!’ he cried, waving his hand. But the figure remained unmoved. Indignant, he took a stick and ran up to punish the girl for her disobedience, and whenthe blows fell thick and fast and no cries came, he discovered the trick that had been played.Without loss of time he ran off to the Court and laid a complaint before the judge, demanding that soldiers should be called out and sent after the fugitives; but the stablemen had their orders, and were there before him, and deposed that they were witnesses to his having given ‘his Good Grace’ up to the gentleman ‘with all his heart,’ and given him his hand upon the bargain.‘You see you have given her up of your own accord; there is nothing to be done!’ said the judge. So he got no redress.1‘La Buona Grazia del Gobbo.’↑2‘In mezzo alla strada.’↑3‘Good Grace,’ also the ‘good favour,’ the ‘good graces.’↑4‘Cortile,’ inner court of palaces and houses that are built in a quadrangle.↑5‘Saccoccia di polenta.’ ‘Polenta’ is a porridge made of Indian corn meal, which makes a staple article of food of the Italian peasantry. It is, however, used for the meal of which the porridge is going to be made, though that is more usually called ‘formentone,’ or ‘grano turco.’ ‘Saccroccia di polenta’ would be a large pouch in which poor country labourers carry a provision of meal, when going out to work in the Campagna. The girl takes Giuditta’s bag in the picture for such a ‘saccoccia’ as she had been used to see.↑6‘Tramezzo.’↑7‘Pupazza,’ a doll, a stuffed figure.↑8‘Mi date la vostra buona grazia,’ a common expression of no particular meaning; a compliment, equivalent to, ‘We part good friends,’ ‘Give me your good favour.’↑

THE GOOD GRACE OF THE HUNCHBACK.1

A mother and daughter lived alone in a cottage. The mother was old and came to die; the daughter was turned out of house and home.2An ugly hunchback, who was a tailor, came by and said—‘What is your name, my pretty girl?’‘They call me la Buona Grazia,’3answered the girl.‘Well, la Buona Grazia, I’ve got twenty scudi a month, will you come with me and be my wife?’The girl was starving, and didn’t know where to set her foot, so she thought she could not afford to refuse; but she went along with a very bad grace, for she did not feel at all happy at the idea of marrying the ugly old hunchback.When the hunchback saw how unhappy she was, he thought, ‘This will never do. She’s too young and too pretty to care for me. I must keep her locked up, and then when she sees no one else at all, she will at last be glad even of my company.’ So he went all the errands himself, and never let her go out except to Mass, and then he took her to the church, and watched her all the time, and brought her back himself. The windows he whitened all over, so that she couldn’t see out into the street, and there he kept her with the door locked on her, and she was very miserable.So it went on for three years. But there was a dirty little window of a lumber room which, as it only gave a look out on to the court,4he had not whitened. As she happened to look out here one day a stranger stood leaning on the balcony of the court, for part of the house was an inn, and he had just arrived.‘What are you looking for, my pretty girl?’ said the stranger.‘O! nothing particular; only I’m locked up here, and I just looked out for a change.’‘Locked up! who has locked you up?’ asked the stranger.‘An old hunchback, who’s going to marry me,’ said the girl, almost crying.‘You don’t seem much pleased at the idea of being married,’ answered the stranger.‘It is not likely that I should, to such a husband!’ returned the girl.‘Would you like to get away from him?’ asked the stranger.‘Shouldn’t I!’ heartily exclaimed the girl; ‘but it’s impossible to manage that, as I’m locked in,’ she added sorrowfully.‘It’s not so difficult as you think,’ rejoined the stranger. ‘Most likely there’s some picture or other on your wall.’‘Oh, yes! a great big one with the fair Giuditta just ready with her pouch5to put Lofferno’s head in,’ answered the girl.‘All right. You make a big hole behind the picture on your side, and when I hear by the sound where you are, I’ll make one on mine. And when our two holes meet, you can come through.’‘Yes, that’s a capital plan; but the hunchback will soon come after me.’‘Never mind, I will see to that; let’s make the hole first?’‘Very well, I rely upon you, and will set to work immediately.’‘Tell me first how I am to call you?’‘They always call me Buona Grazia.’‘A very nice name. Good-bye, and we’ll set to work.’La Buona Grazia ran and unhooked the picture, and set to work to make a hole with all the available tools she could find; and the stranger, as soon as he had ascertained by the noise where she was at work, set to also. It turned out to be only a partition,6and not a regular wall, and the hole was soon cut.‘What fun!’ said the girl, as she jumped through. ‘Oh, how nice to be free! But,’ she added, ‘I can’t travel with you in these poor clothes.’‘No,’ said the stranger. ‘I’ll have a travelling dress made for you, by the hunchback himself.’‘Oh, take care!’ cried the girl, earnestly.‘Don’t be afraid,’ answered the stranger; ‘and above all don’t look frightened.’Then he sent his servant to call the hunchback, and when he came he said—‘I want a travelling dress made directly for my wife here, so please take her measure.’The hunchback started when he saw who it was he had to measure.‘Why, she’s exactly like my Buona Grazia!’ exclaimed he.‘Very likely. I have always observed there was a sort of likeness between the inhabitants of a town. She too is a Roman, though I am a stranger. But make haste and take the measure, I didn’t call you here to make remarks.’The hunchback got frightened at the stranger’s authoritative tone, and took the measure without saying any more; and the stranger then gave him something to go and have a breakfast at thecafféto give the girl time to get back and set the picture in its place again.When he came up into the room all looked right, and nothing seemed to have been moved.‘I’ve got to work hard to-day,’ said the hunchback, ‘to get a travelling dress ready for the wife of a gentleman staying in the inn, who is exactly like you.’‘Are they going to travel, then?’ asked la Buona Grazia.‘Yes, the gentleman said they should start as soon as the dress is done.’‘Oh, do let me see them drive off!’ said la Buona Grazia, coaxingly. ‘I should so like to see a lady who looked like me wearing a dress you had made.’‘Nonsense, nonsense!’ said the hunchback; ‘get on with your work.’And she did get on with her work, and stitched away, for she was anxious enough to help him to get the dress done; but she went on teazing him all the while to let her go to the window to see the gentleman and the lady, ‘who looked so like her,’ drive off, that at last the hunchback consented for that only day to take the whiting off the windows and let her look out.The travelling dress was finished and taken home; and while the hunchback was taking it up by the stairs, la Bella Grazia was getting in by the hole behind the picture; but she had first made a great doll,7and dressed it just like herself, and stuck it in the window. The gobbo, who stood down below to see the gentry drive off, looked up and saw her, as he thought, at the window, and made signs for her not to stay there too long.Presently the stranger and his lady came down; the hunchback was standing before the carriage door, as I have said, and two stablemen were standing by also.‘You give me your good grace?’8asked the stranger.‘Yes, yes!’ readily responded the hunchback, delighted to find a rich gentleman so civil to him.‘You say it sincerely, with all your heart?’ again asked the stranger.‘Yes, yes, yes! with all my heart,’ answered the hunchback.‘Then give me your hand upon it.’And the hunchback, more and more delighted, put out his hand, the two stablemen standing by looking on attentively all the time.As soon as the carriage had driven away, the hunchback’s first care was to look up at the window to see if the girl had gone in; but the doll was still there.‘Go in! go in!’ he cried, waving his hand. But the figure remained unmoved. Indignant, he took a stick and ran up to punish the girl for her disobedience, and whenthe blows fell thick and fast and no cries came, he discovered the trick that had been played.Without loss of time he ran off to the Court and laid a complaint before the judge, demanding that soldiers should be called out and sent after the fugitives; but the stablemen had their orders, and were there before him, and deposed that they were witnesses to his having given ‘his Good Grace’ up to the gentleman ‘with all his heart,’ and given him his hand upon the bargain.‘You see you have given her up of your own accord; there is nothing to be done!’ said the judge. So he got no redress.

A mother and daughter lived alone in a cottage. The mother was old and came to die; the daughter was turned out of house and home.2An ugly hunchback, who was a tailor, came by and said—

‘What is your name, my pretty girl?’

‘They call me la Buona Grazia,’3answered the girl.

‘Well, la Buona Grazia, I’ve got twenty scudi a month, will you come with me and be my wife?’

The girl was starving, and didn’t know where to set her foot, so she thought she could not afford to refuse; but she went along with a very bad grace, for she did not feel at all happy at the idea of marrying the ugly old hunchback.

When the hunchback saw how unhappy she was, he thought, ‘This will never do. She’s too young and too pretty to care for me. I must keep her locked up, and then when she sees no one else at all, she will at last be glad even of my company.’ So he went all the errands himself, and never let her go out except to Mass, and then he took her to the church, and watched her all the time, and brought her back himself. The windows he whitened all over, so that she couldn’t see out into the street, and there he kept her with the door locked on her, and she was very miserable.

So it went on for three years. But there was a dirty little window of a lumber room which, as it only gave a look out on to the court,4he had not whitened. As she happened to look out here one day a stranger stood leaning on the balcony of the court, for part of the house was an inn, and he had just arrived.

‘What are you looking for, my pretty girl?’ said the stranger.

‘O! nothing particular; only I’m locked up here, and I just looked out for a change.’

‘Locked up! who has locked you up?’ asked the stranger.

‘An old hunchback, who’s going to marry me,’ said the girl, almost crying.

‘You don’t seem much pleased at the idea of being married,’ answered the stranger.

‘It is not likely that I should, to such a husband!’ returned the girl.

‘Would you like to get away from him?’ asked the stranger.

‘Shouldn’t I!’ heartily exclaimed the girl; ‘but it’s impossible to manage that, as I’m locked in,’ she added sorrowfully.

‘It’s not so difficult as you think,’ rejoined the stranger. ‘Most likely there’s some picture or other on your wall.’

‘Oh, yes! a great big one with the fair Giuditta just ready with her pouch5to put Lofferno’s head in,’ answered the girl.

‘All right. You make a big hole behind the picture on your side, and when I hear by the sound where you are, I’ll make one on mine. And when our two holes meet, you can come through.’

‘Yes, that’s a capital plan; but the hunchback will soon come after me.’

‘Never mind, I will see to that; let’s make the hole first?’

‘Very well, I rely upon you, and will set to work immediately.’

‘Tell me first how I am to call you?’

‘They always call me Buona Grazia.’

‘A very nice name. Good-bye, and we’ll set to work.’

La Buona Grazia ran and unhooked the picture, and set to work to make a hole with all the available tools she could find; and the stranger, as soon as he had ascertained by the noise where she was at work, set to also. It turned out to be only a partition,6and not a regular wall, and the hole was soon cut.

‘What fun!’ said the girl, as she jumped through. ‘Oh, how nice to be free! But,’ she added, ‘I can’t travel with you in these poor clothes.’

‘No,’ said the stranger. ‘I’ll have a travelling dress made for you, by the hunchback himself.’

‘Oh, take care!’ cried the girl, earnestly.

‘Don’t be afraid,’ answered the stranger; ‘and above all don’t look frightened.’

Then he sent his servant to call the hunchback, and when he came he said—

‘I want a travelling dress made directly for my wife here, so please take her measure.’

The hunchback started when he saw who it was he had to measure.

‘Why, she’s exactly like my Buona Grazia!’ exclaimed he.

‘Very likely. I have always observed there was a sort of likeness between the inhabitants of a town. She too is a Roman, though I am a stranger. But make haste and take the measure, I didn’t call you here to make remarks.’

The hunchback got frightened at the stranger’s authoritative tone, and took the measure without saying any more; and the stranger then gave him something to go and have a breakfast at thecafféto give the girl time to get back and set the picture in its place again.

When he came up into the room all looked right, and nothing seemed to have been moved.

‘I’ve got to work hard to-day,’ said the hunchback, ‘to get a travelling dress ready for the wife of a gentleman staying in the inn, who is exactly like you.’

‘Are they going to travel, then?’ asked la Buona Grazia.

‘Yes, the gentleman said they should start as soon as the dress is done.’

‘Oh, do let me see them drive off!’ said la Buona Grazia, coaxingly. ‘I should so like to see a lady who looked like me wearing a dress you had made.’

‘Nonsense, nonsense!’ said the hunchback; ‘get on with your work.’

And she did get on with her work, and stitched away, for she was anxious enough to help him to get the dress done; but she went on teazing him all the while to let her go to the window to see the gentleman and the lady, ‘who looked so like her,’ drive off, that at last the hunchback consented for that only day to take the whiting off the windows and let her look out.

The travelling dress was finished and taken home; and while the hunchback was taking it up by the stairs, la Bella Grazia was getting in by the hole behind the picture; but she had first made a great doll,7and dressed it just like herself, and stuck it in the window. The gobbo, who stood down below to see the gentry drive off, looked up and saw her, as he thought, at the window, and made signs for her not to stay there too long.

Presently the stranger and his lady came down; the hunchback was standing before the carriage door, as I have said, and two stablemen were standing by also.

‘You give me your good grace?’8asked the stranger.

‘Yes, yes!’ readily responded the hunchback, delighted to find a rich gentleman so civil to him.

‘You say it sincerely, with all your heart?’ again asked the stranger.

‘Yes, yes, yes! with all my heart,’ answered the hunchback.

‘Then give me your hand upon it.’

And the hunchback, more and more delighted, put out his hand, the two stablemen standing by looking on attentively all the time.

As soon as the carriage had driven away, the hunchback’s first care was to look up at the window to see if the girl had gone in; but the doll was still there.

‘Go in! go in!’ he cried, waving his hand. But the figure remained unmoved. Indignant, he took a stick and ran up to punish the girl for her disobedience, and whenthe blows fell thick and fast and no cries came, he discovered the trick that had been played.

Without loss of time he ran off to the Court and laid a complaint before the judge, demanding that soldiers should be called out and sent after the fugitives; but the stablemen had their orders, and were there before him, and deposed that they were witnesses to his having given ‘his Good Grace’ up to the gentleman ‘with all his heart,’ and given him his hand upon the bargain.

‘You see you have given her up of your own accord; there is nothing to be done!’ said the judge. So he got no redress.

1‘La Buona Grazia del Gobbo.’↑2‘In mezzo alla strada.’↑3‘Good Grace,’ also the ‘good favour,’ the ‘good graces.’↑4‘Cortile,’ inner court of palaces and houses that are built in a quadrangle.↑5‘Saccoccia di polenta.’ ‘Polenta’ is a porridge made of Indian corn meal, which makes a staple article of food of the Italian peasantry. It is, however, used for the meal of which the porridge is going to be made, though that is more usually called ‘formentone,’ or ‘grano turco.’ ‘Saccroccia di polenta’ would be a large pouch in which poor country labourers carry a provision of meal, when going out to work in the Campagna. The girl takes Giuditta’s bag in the picture for such a ‘saccoccia’ as she had been used to see.↑6‘Tramezzo.’↑7‘Pupazza,’ a doll, a stuffed figure.↑8‘Mi date la vostra buona grazia,’ a common expression of no particular meaning; a compliment, equivalent to, ‘We part good friends,’ ‘Give me your good favour.’↑

1‘La Buona Grazia del Gobbo.’↑

2‘In mezzo alla strada.’↑

3‘Good Grace,’ also the ‘good favour,’ the ‘good graces.’↑

4‘Cortile,’ inner court of palaces and houses that are built in a quadrangle.↑

5‘Saccoccia di polenta.’ ‘Polenta’ is a porridge made of Indian corn meal, which makes a staple article of food of the Italian peasantry. It is, however, used for the meal of which the porridge is going to be made, though that is more usually called ‘formentone,’ or ‘grano turco.’ ‘Saccroccia di polenta’ would be a large pouch in which poor country labourers carry a provision of meal, when going out to work in the Campagna. The girl takes Giuditta’s bag in the picture for such a ‘saccoccia’ as she had been used to see.↑

6‘Tramezzo.’↑

7‘Pupazza,’ a doll, a stuffed figure.↑

8‘Mi date la vostra buona grazia,’ a common expression of no particular meaning; a compliment, equivalent to, ‘We part good friends,’ ‘Give me your good favour.’↑

THE VALUE OF SALT.They say there was a king who had three daughters. He was very anxious to know which of them loved him most; he tried them in various ways, and it always seemed as if the youngest daughter came out best by the test. Yet he was never satisfied, becausehe wasprepossessed with the idea that the elder ones loved him most.One day he thought he would settle the matter once for all, by asking each separately how much she loved him. So he called the eldest by herself, and asked her how much she loved him.‘As much as the bread we eat,’ ran her reply; and he said within himself, ‘She must, as I thought, love me the most of all; for bread is the first necessary of our existence, without which we cannot live. She means, therefore, that she loves me so much she could not live without me.’Then he called the second daughter by herself, and said to her, ‘How much do you love me?’And she answered, ‘As much as wine!’‘That is a good answer too,’ said the king to himself. ‘It is true she does not seem to love me quite so much as the eldest; but still, scarcely can one live without wine,1so that there is not much difference.’Then he called the youngest by herself, and said to her, ‘And you, how much do you love me?’And she answered, ‘As much as salt!’Then the king said, ‘What a contemptible comparison! She only loves me as much as the cheapest and commonest thing that comes to table. This is as much as to say, she doesn’t love me at all. I always thought it was so. I will never see her again.’Then he ordered that a wing of the palace should be shut up from the rest, where she should be served with everything belonging to her condition in life, but where she should live by herself apart, and never come near him.Here she lived, then, all alone. But though her father fancied she did not care for him, she pined so much at being kept away from him, that at last she was worn out,2and could bear it no longer.The room that had been given her had no windows on to the street, that she might not have the amusement of seeing what was going on in the town, but they lookedupon an inner court-yard. Here she sometimes saw the cook come out and wash vegetables at the fountain.‘Cook! cook!’ she called one day, as she saw him pass thus under the window.The cook looked up with a good-natured face, which gave her encouragement.‘Don’t you think, cook, I must be very lonely and miserable up here all alone?’‘Yes, Signorina!’ he replied; ‘I often think I should like to help you to get out; but I dare not think of it, the king would be so angry.’‘No, I don’t want you to do anything to disobey the king,’ answered the princess; ‘but would you really do me a favour, which would make me very grateful indeed?’‘O! yes, Signorina, anything which I can do without disobeying the king,’ replied the faithful servant.‘Then this is it,’ said the princess. ‘Will you just oblige me so far as to cook papa’s dinner to-day without any salt in anything? Not the least grain in anything at all. Let it be as good a dinner as you like, but no salt in anything. Will you do that?’‘I see!’ replied the cook, with a knowing nod. ‘Yes, depend on me, I will do it.’That day at dinner the king had no salt in the soup, no salt in the boiled meat, no salt in the roast, no salt in the fried.‘What is the meaning of this?’ said the king, as he pushed dish after dish away from him. ‘There is not a single thing I can eat to-day. I don’t know what they have done to everything, but there is not a single thing that has got the least taste. Let the cook be called.’So the cook came before him.‘What have you done to the victuals to-day?’ said the king, sternly. ‘You have sent up a lot of dishes, and no one alive can tell one from another. They are all of themexactly alike, and there is not one of them can be eaten. Speak!’The cook answered:‘Hearing your Majesty say that salt was the commonest thing that comes to table, and altogether so worthless and contemptible, I considered in my mind whether it was a thing that at all deserved to be served up to the table of the king; and judging that it was not worthy, I abolished it from the king’s kitchen, and dressed all the meats without it. Barring this, the dishes are the same that are sent every day to the table of the king.’Then the king understood the value of salt, and he comprehended how great was the love of his youngest child for him; so he sent and had her apartment opened, and called her to him, never to go away any more.1In a wine country the idea of wine being almost a necessity of existence occurs more readily than in England, where, however general its use, it is still a luxury.↑2‘Era stufa,’ a way of saying, she was ‘worn out,’ ‘wearied out.’↑

THE VALUE OF SALT.

They say there was a king who had three daughters. He was very anxious to know which of them loved him most; he tried them in various ways, and it always seemed as if the youngest daughter came out best by the test. Yet he was never satisfied, becausehe wasprepossessed with the idea that the elder ones loved him most.One day he thought he would settle the matter once for all, by asking each separately how much she loved him. So he called the eldest by herself, and asked her how much she loved him.‘As much as the bread we eat,’ ran her reply; and he said within himself, ‘She must, as I thought, love me the most of all; for bread is the first necessary of our existence, without which we cannot live. She means, therefore, that she loves me so much she could not live without me.’Then he called the second daughter by herself, and said to her, ‘How much do you love me?’And she answered, ‘As much as wine!’‘That is a good answer too,’ said the king to himself. ‘It is true she does not seem to love me quite so much as the eldest; but still, scarcely can one live without wine,1so that there is not much difference.’Then he called the youngest by herself, and said to her, ‘And you, how much do you love me?’And she answered, ‘As much as salt!’Then the king said, ‘What a contemptible comparison! She only loves me as much as the cheapest and commonest thing that comes to table. This is as much as to say, she doesn’t love me at all. I always thought it was so. I will never see her again.’Then he ordered that a wing of the palace should be shut up from the rest, where she should be served with everything belonging to her condition in life, but where she should live by herself apart, and never come near him.Here she lived, then, all alone. But though her father fancied she did not care for him, she pined so much at being kept away from him, that at last she was worn out,2and could bear it no longer.The room that had been given her had no windows on to the street, that she might not have the amusement of seeing what was going on in the town, but they lookedupon an inner court-yard. Here she sometimes saw the cook come out and wash vegetables at the fountain.‘Cook! cook!’ she called one day, as she saw him pass thus under the window.The cook looked up with a good-natured face, which gave her encouragement.‘Don’t you think, cook, I must be very lonely and miserable up here all alone?’‘Yes, Signorina!’ he replied; ‘I often think I should like to help you to get out; but I dare not think of it, the king would be so angry.’‘No, I don’t want you to do anything to disobey the king,’ answered the princess; ‘but would you really do me a favour, which would make me very grateful indeed?’‘O! yes, Signorina, anything which I can do without disobeying the king,’ replied the faithful servant.‘Then this is it,’ said the princess. ‘Will you just oblige me so far as to cook papa’s dinner to-day without any salt in anything? Not the least grain in anything at all. Let it be as good a dinner as you like, but no salt in anything. Will you do that?’‘I see!’ replied the cook, with a knowing nod. ‘Yes, depend on me, I will do it.’That day at dinner the king had no salt in the soup, no salt in the boiled meat, no salt in the roast, no salt in the fried.‘What is the meaning of this?’ said the king, as he pushed dish after dish away from him. ‘There is not a single thing I can eat to-day. I don’t know what they have done to everything, but there is not a single thing that has got the least taste. Let the cook be called.’So the cook came before him.‘What have you done to the victuals to-day?’ said the king, sternly. ‘You have sent up a lot of dishes, and no one alive can tell one from another. They are all of themexactly alike, and there is not one of them can be eaten. Speak!’The cook answered:‘Hearing your Majesty say that salt was the commonest thing that comes to table, and altogether so worthless and contemptible, I considered in my mind whether it was a thing that at all deserved to be served up to the table of the king; and judging that it was not worthy, I abolished it from the king’s kitchen, and dressed all the meats without it. Barring this, the dishes are the same that are sent every day to the table of the king.’Then the king understood the value of salt, and he comprehended how great was the love of his youngest child for him; so he sent and had her apartment opened, and called her to him, never to go away any more.

They say there was a king who had three daughters. He was very anxious to know which of them loved him most; he tried them in various ways, and it always seemed as if the youngest daughter came out best by the test. Yet he was never satisfied, becausehe wasprepossessed with the idea that the elder ones loved him most.

One day he thought he would settle the matter once for all, by asking each separately how much she loved him. So he called the eldest by herself, and asked her how much she loved him.

‘As much as the bread we eat,’ ran her reply; and he said within himself, ‘She must, as I thought, love me the most of all; for bread is the first necessary of our existence, without which we cannot live. She means, therefore, that she loves me so much she could not live without me.’

Then he called the second daughter by herself, and said to her, ‘How much do you love me?’

And she answered, ‘As much as wine!’

‘That is a good answer too,’ said the king to himself. ‘It is true she does not seem to love me quite so much as the eldest; but still, scarcely can one live without wine,1so that there is not much difference.’

Then he called the youngest by herself, and said to her, ‘And you, how much do you love me?’

And she answered, ‘As much as salt!’

Then the king said, ‘What a contemptible comparison! She only loves me as much as the cheapest and commonest thing that comes to table. This is as much as to say, she doesn’t love me at all. I always thought it was so. I will never see her again.’

Then he ordered that a wing of the palace should be shut up from the rest, where she should be served with everything belonging to her condition in life, but where she should live by herself apart, and never come near him.

Here she lived, then, all alone. But though her father fancied she did not care for him, she pined so much at being kept away from him, that at last she was worn out,2and could bear it no longer.

The room that had been given her had no windows on to the street, that she might not have the amusement of seeing what was going on in the town, but they lookedupon an inner court-yard. Here she sometimes saw the cook come out and wash vegetables at the fountain.

‘Cook! cook!’ she called one day, as she saw him pass thus under the window.

The cook looked up with a good-natured face, which gave her encouragement.

‘Don’t you think, cook, I must be very lonely and miserable up here all alone?’

‘Yes, Signorina!’ he replied; ‘I often think I should like to help you to get out; but I dare not think of it, the king would be so angry.’

‘No, I don’t want you to do anything to disobey the king,’ answered the princess; ‘but would you really do me a favour, which would make me very grateful indeed?’

‘O! yes, Signorina, anything which I can do without disobeying the king,’ replied the faithful servant.

‘Then this is it,’ said the princess. ‘Will you just oblige me so far as to cook papa’s dinner to-day without any salt in anything? Not the least grain in anything at all. Let it be as good a dinner as you like, but no salt in anything. Will you do that?’

‘I see!’ replied the cook, with a knowing nod. ‘Yes, depend on me, I will do it.’

That day at dinner the king had no salt in the soup, no salt in the boiled meat, no salt in the roast, no salt in the fried.

‘What is the meaning of this?’ said the king, as he pushed dish after dish away from him. ‘There is not a single thing I can eat to-day. I don’t know what they have done to everything, but there is not a single thing that has got the least taste. Let the cook be called.’

So the cook came before him.

‘What have you done to the victuals to-day?’ said the king, sternly. ‘You have sent up a lot of dishes, and no one alive can tell one from another. They are all of themexactly alike, and there is not one of them can be eaten. Speak!’

The cook answered:

‘Hearing your Majesty say that salt was the commonest thing that comes to table, and altogether so worthless and contemptible, I considered in my mind whether it was a thing that at all deserved to be served up to the table of the king; and judging that it was not worthy, I abolished it from the king’s kitchen, and dressed all the meats without it. Barring this, the dishes are the same that are sent every day to the table of the king.’

Then the king understood the value of salt, and he comprehended how great was the love of his youngest child for him; so he sent and had her apartment opened, and called her to him, never to go away any more.

1In a wine country the idea of wine being almost a necessity of existence occurs more readily than in England, where, however general its use, it is still a luxury.↑2‘Era stufa,’ a way of saying, she was ‘worn out,’ ‘wearied out.’↑

1In a wine country the idea of wine being almost a necessity of existence occurs more readily than in England, where, however general its use, it is still a luxury.↑

2‘Era stufa,’ a way of saying, she was ‘worn out,’ ‘wearied out.’↑

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