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Parmetella, daughter of a poor peasant, encounters good fortune, but due to her excessive curiosity she lets it get away. After a thousand torments she finds her husband at the house of his mother, an ogress, and after undergoing great dangers they live together happily. There was more than one of them who would have given a finger of their hand to be able to have the power to make a husband or wife just as they desired; the prince in particular would have liked some sugar paste next to him instead of the pile of venom that was sitting there. But since it was Tolla’s turn to play the game, she didn’t wait for the official summons to pay her debt but began to speak in this manner: “When people are too curious and want to know too much, the fuse that blows up the powder magazine of their fortunes is always lit. Quite often those who mind other people’s business fail at their own, and more times than not those who go digging for treasure with excessive curiosity find themselves with their faces pushed into the sewer, like what happened to the daughter of a vegetable farmer, in the manner that follows. “There once was a vegetable farmer who was so terribly poor that for all he sweat and toiled he was barely able to buy his bread.1 One day he purchased three little sows for his three daughters, so that they could raise them and have a little something for their dowries. Pascuzza and Cice, the older daughters, took their sows to graze in a lovely pasture, but they didn’t want Parmetella, the youngest daughter, to go with them, so they sent her off to graze her animal elsewhere. 4 The Golden Trunk Fourth Entertainment of the Fifth Day 404 AT 425A: The Monster (Animal) as Bridegroom. See Penzer for motifs in common with Grimm 88 (“The Singing, Springing Lark”) and other tales (2:128). See also Gonzenbach 15. This is one of several tales of The Tale of Tales that bear close resemblance to the story of Cupid and Psyche, as told by Apuleius in The Golden Ass. 1. scire da pane a vennere (Neap.): a play on words (“to go from Pan to Venus”) (Rak 942) vs., perhaps, “to go from [consuming] bread to selling it.” “Parmetella took her little animal into a wood—where the shadows heroically resisted the Sun’s assault—and upon arriving at some pasture land in the middle of which flowed a little fountain—innkeeper of cool water that with its silvery tongue invited the passersby to drink half a measure—she came across a tree with golden leaves. She took one and brought it back to her father, who with great joy sold it for more than twenty ducats, which allowed him to stop up a few holes. And when he asked her where she had found it, she said, ‘Take it, sir, and ask no more, or your fortune will be ruined !’ The following day she returned and did the same thing, and she went on stripping the tree of its leaves for so long that at the end it was completely plucked, as if it had been sacked by the winds. “When autumn had passed and she realized that the tree had a great golden trunk that she wouldn’t be able to pull up with her hands, she went home and returned with a hatchet, and set to work baring the roots all around the base of the tree. Then she lifted up the trunk as best she could and found a beautiful porphyry staircase underneath, and since she was immeasurably curious she followed it down to the bottom. After walking through a large, terribly dark cave she came to a lovely plain on which stood a splendid palace , where your feet trod on nothing but gold and silver and you saw nothing before you but pearls and precious stones. Parmetella stared at all of those lavish riches as if she were in a daze, and, not seeing any sign of movement on such beautiful premises, she went into a room hung with a number of pictures in which were painted many beautiful things: in particular, the ignorance of men considered wise, the injustice of those who hold the scales of justice, and the crimes punished by the heavens, all things that seemed so real and alive that it was...

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