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Nardiello is sent three times to market by his father, each time with a hundred ducats. The first time he buys a mouse, and then a cockroach and a cricket. His father kicks him out of the house and he ends up in a place where he cures the daughter of a king by means of the animals, and after various other adventures he becomes her husband. The prince and the slave heartily praised Sapia Liccarda’s wisdom, but they praised Tolla even more for her ability to present the story so well that everyone hearing it had seemed to be present. And since, following the order of the list, it was Popa’s turn to speak, she behaved like Orlando and began telling her tale in this fashion: “Fortune is a stubborn woman who avoids the faces of learned men because they pay more attention to the turning of pages than to the rotation of a wheel. For this reason she more willingly associates with ignorant and paltry people and—in order to receive plebeian glory—does not worry about dividing her goods among the big birds, as I will tell you about in the tale that follows.1 “There once was, on the Vomero hill,2 a very rich farmer named Miccone, who had a son named Nardiello, the most wretched blockhead you could ever find on any ship of fools.3 The poor father was embittered and miserable, for he knew of no way or means of inducing his son to lead a level-headed and useful life. If Nardiello went to the tavern to guzzle with his buddies he was cheated by crooks; if he associated with women of ill repute he was given 5 The Cockroach, the Mouse, and the Cricket Fifth Entertainment of the Third Day 246 AT 554: The Grateful Animals, and AT 559: The Dungbeetle. Besides the “grateful animals” motif, this tale also features one of the many foolish protagonists of The Tale of Tales (others appear in 1.1, 1.3, 1.4, 2.4, 3.8, 4.4), and yet another “princess who would not laugh.” 1. The theme of Fortune’s supposed predilection for the weak—in this case, the dim-witted— reiterates the Aristotelian affirmation, much quoted in these centuries, that those who have the fewest rational means for looking after themselves receive compensation in the form of better luck. 2. “A hilly area near Naples, in which at this time villas and country houses were beginning to appear” (Croce 574). 3. permonara (Neap.): “an old ship [kept at wet dock] that was used as a hospital” (Croce 282). the worst meat for the top price; if he played in gambling dens they kneaded him like a pizza and took him out when he was nice and hot. And so, in one way or another, he had dissipated half of his father’s wealth. “For this reason Miccone was always armed and ready to defend his castle and would shout and threaten, saying, ‘What do you think you’re doing, spendthrift? Can’t you see that my wealth is trickling away like water at low tide? Leave, leave those damned taverns,4 which start with the name of the enemy and end up signifying evil! Leave them, for they’re migraines to your head, dropsy to your throat, and diarrhea to your wallet! Leave, leave that godless gambling, which puts your life at risk and gnaws away at my fortune , which repels happiness and eats up cash, where the dice reduce you to zero and the words whittle you down to a peg!5 Leave, leave your bordello commerce with that evil race of the daughters of ugly sin, where you squander and spend! You consume pouches of money for a perch6 and you suffer agonies and reduce yourself to picking at a bone for a piece of rotten meat; they are not meretrices, but a Thracian sea7 where you are captured by the Turks! Keep away from the occasion, and you’ll give up the vice; if the cause is remote, said that fellow, the effect will be removed. So here are a hundred ducats: go to the Salerno fair8 and buy as many steer so that in three or four years we’ll have as many oxen; once we’ve got the oxen we’ll work the fields; once we’ve worked the fields we’ll start dealing in wheat, and if we...

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