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Corvetto is envied by the king’s courtiers because of his virtuous qualities and is sent to face many dangers. When he pulls through with great honor he is given the princess for his wife, and his enemies’ ire is thus further fed. The listeners had been so transported by Belluccia’s adventures that when they saw her married they were as happy and jubilant as if she had been born from their own loins. But the desire to hear Ciulla gave pause to their applause, and their ears hung upon the movement of her lips, which spoke in this manner: “I once heard it said that Juno, in her search for lies, went to Candia.1 But if I were asked where one could really find feigning and fraud, I could indicate no better place than the court, where everyone dons a mask, and where Trastullo’s gossip, Graziano’s backbiting, Zanni’s betrayals, and Pulcinella’s2 roguery thrive, where at one and the same time people snip and sew, sting and salve, break and glue. And I’ll show you just a scrap of all of this in the tale that you’re about to hear. “There once was, in the service of the king of Wide River, a most respectable young man named Corvetto. His admirable behavior had earned him a place in his master’s heart, and for this reason he inspired hate and nausea in all of the king’s courtiers, who were bats of ignorance and thus incapable of beholding the shining virtue of Corvetto, who with the cash of his good actions bought the grace of his master. Indeed, the breezes of favor that the 7 Corvetto Seventh Entertainment of the Third Day 261 AT 328: The Boy Steals the Giant’s Treasure, and AT 1525: Master Thief. Penzer comments, “This tale includes the favorite ‘tasks’ motif which occurs several times in the present collection (III.5 and 7, IV.5, and V.4), but the kind of tasks imposed are closely allied to the ‘Master Thief’ tricks, while the jealousy of the favorite reminds us of Grimms 126” (“Faithful Ferdinand and Unfaithful Ferdinand”) (1:277). Penzer lists a number of variants; in Pitrè, Fiabe, nov. e racc. sic. 33 (also in Crane’s Italian Popular Tales), the hero uses his wits to steal an ogre’s coverlet, horse, and bolster, and then brings back the ogre himself, locked in a chest. 1. “An invention that derives from a saying of Epimenides, preserved by St. Paul in the First Epistle to Titus 12: ‘Cretenses semper mendaces, malae bestiae, ventre pigri’” (Croce 575). Basile spent some time in Candia (Crete) when he was in the service of Venice. 2. Trastullo . . . Pulcinella: well-known masks of the commedia dell’arte. king blew on him were siroccos to the hernias of those envy-bitten souls, who did nothing but gather in every corner of the palace at all hours to murmur, gossip, whisper, gripe, and cut the poor man to pieces, saying, ‘What sort of spell has this muttonhead cast on the king, who loves him so dearly? What kind of luck does he have that not even a day goes by without his receiving some new favor, while we are ever going backward, like rope makers, moving down to lower and lower rungs? And yet we serve him like dogs, and yet we sweat like fieldworkers and run like deer to make certain that the king’s every fancy is perfectly satisfied! How true it is that in this world you’ve got to be born lucky, and that if you lack good fortune you might as well throw yourself in the sea! At the end all you can do is watch it all and drop dead!’ “These and other words shot out of the bows of their mouths, and they were poisoned arrows directed at the target of Corvetto’s ruin. Oh, hapless is he who is condemned to live in that hell that goes by the name of court, where flattery is sold by the basket, malice and bad services measured by the quintal, and deceit and betrayal weighed by the bushel! And who can say how many melon rinds were put under his feet to make him slip?3 Who can describe the soap of falsehood used to lubricate the steps to the king’s ears so that Corvetto would tumble down and break his neck? Who can tell of the...

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