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Due to a favor granted by a fairy, the daughter of a peasant becomes wife to a king. But when she shows herself ungrateful to the one who had done her so much good, the fairy turns her face into that of a goat. For this reason she is scorned by her husband and receives a thousand abuses; but then through the intervention of a kind old man she humbles herself and gets back her original face, and thus enters once again into her husband’s good graces. When Ciulla had finished telling her sugary tale, Paola, whose turn it was to enter the dance, began to speak: “All the evils committed by man are colored in some way: either by disdain that provokes, or by need that presses, or by love that blinds or fury that shatters; only ingratitude has no reason, either false or true, to which it can cling. Indeed, this vice is so terrible that it dries up the fountain of mercy, puts out the fire of love, blocks the road to favors, and, in the person who has been poorly recognized, gives rise to disgust and regret, as you will see in the tale that you are about to hear. “A peasant had twelve daughters, and one barely had the time to hold the next in her arms, since every year that good lady of the house Ceccuzza, their mother, gave birth to another little fart of a girl. Every morning the poor husband went off to dig his day’s worth of earth so that his household might get by honorably, and it was hard to know whether there was more of the sweat he dripped on the ground or the spit he rubbed in his hands. In any case, with this little bit of labor he kept all those frogs and urchins from dying of hunger. “Now one day while he was digging at the foot of a mountain—a spy for the other mountains, which kept its head above the clouds to see what was going on in the air—he came across a grotto so deep and dark that the Sun was afraid to enter, from which a green lizard as big as a crocodile crawled out. The poor peasant was so terrified that he didn’t have the force to beat it 8 Goat-Face Eighth Entertainment of the First Day 101 AT 710: Our Lady’s Child. See also Grimm 3 (“The Virgin Mary’s Child”) and Gonzenbach 20. out of there, and when the hideous animal opened its mouth he expected his days to come to a close. But the lizard went over to him and said, ‘Don’t be afraid, my good man; I’m not here to do you any harm. I come only for your good.’ When Masaniello heard this—for this was the name of the laborer—he got down on his knees in front of the animal and said, ‘Madam what’s-yourname , I am under your power. Behave like a decent person and have mercy on this poor fellow, who has twelve whiny brats to support.’ ‘That’s why,’ answered the lizard, ‘I’m moved to help you. So then, tomorrow morning bring me the youngest of your daughters, for I want to raise her as my own, and I’ll hold her as dear as life.’ “When he heard this, the miserable father was left more confused than a thief discovered with the stolen goods on him, for the fact that a lizard was asking him for one of his daughters, and the most tender of them besides, led him to conclude that this mantle was not without stiff hairs, and that the lizard wanted her as an aggregate pill1 to evacuate his hunger. And he said to himself, ‘If I give the animal my daughter, I give it my soul; if I deny it my daughter, it’ll take this body of mine; if I allow it to take her, I’m deprived of the pupil of my eye; if I contradict it, it’ll suck this blood of mine; if I give my consent, it will take away a part of my own self; if I refuse, it’ll take the whole thing. How should I decide? What choice should I make? What expedient should I come up with? Oh, what a terrible day it’s been! What a disaster has rained down on me from the heavens...

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