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Sapia, the daughter of a great baroness, makes a wise man out of the king’s son Carluccio, who hadn’t even been able to learn the alphabet. When he receives a slap on the cheek from Sapia, Carluccio decides to take revenge by marrying her, and after a thousand torments he has three babies with her and, without realizing it, they are reconciled. The lord prince and the princess were full of joy when they saw Talia’s affairs come to a happy end, for they never would have believed that amid such a tempest she could find a safe port. And after they ordered Antonella1 to unsheathe her tale, she took hold of it in this manner: “There are three species of idiots in the world, each of which deserves more than the other to be put in the oven: the first is those who do not know, the second those who do not want to know, and the third those who think they know. The idiot about whom I am about to talk to you is of the second species, who does not want knowledge to enter his noggin and thus hates those who teach it to him, trying , like a modern-day Nero,2 to cut off their bread supply. “There once was a king, the king of Closed Castle, who had a son so thickheaded that there was no way to get him to learn the ABCs, and whenever anyone talked to him about reading or learning, he would blow up; neither screaming nor beatings nor threats served any purpose. And so his poor father was swollen like a toad with anger, and he didn’t know what to do to stimulate the wits of this wretch of a son so as not to have to leave his kingdom in the hands of Mamelukes,3 for he knew that it was impossible to fuse ignorance and the governance of a kingdom. 6 Sapia Sixth Entertainment of the Fifth Day 418 AT 891: The Man Who Deserts His Wife and Sets Her the Task of Bearing Him a Child. Penzer notes similarities with the frame of the Panchatantra, in which there are three ignorant sons, and discusses the “spite marriage” motif in Shakespeare’s All’s Well That Ends Well, Decameron 3.9, as well as other lesser-known variants (2:138). See also Straparola 7.1 (“Ortodosio Simeoni”) and Gonzenbach 36. 1. In the text, Ciulla. 2. Possibly a reference to Nero’s rejection of Seneca. 3. Originally slave soldiers, they were an important part of the armies that won control of vari- “During those same times there lived a daughter of the baroness Cenza, who, due to the great knowledge that she had accumulated in thirteen years, had acquired the name of Sapia. Word of her virtuous qualities got to the king, and he came up with the idea of entrusting his son to the baroness so that she could put him under the tutelage of her daughter, since he thought that the girl’s company and competence could have some positive effects. “And thus, once the prince was installed in the baroness’s house Sapia began to teach him the sign of the Holy Cross, but when she saw that he left all those lovely words behind and that all of her fine reasoning went in one ear and out the other, she couldn’t help but give him a nice slap on the face. Carluccio, for that was the name of the prince, was so humiliated by this slap that out of disgrace and spite he did what he had refused to do for caresses and kindness, and in a few months he not only knew how to read but had made so much progress in the study of grammar that he had learned all the rules. His father was so delighted that he was walking on air, and he removed Carluccio from that house and sent him off to study other, more important subjects, until he became the wisest man in the whole kingdom. But Sapia’s blow had left such an impression on him that when he was awake he saw it before his eyes and when he was asleep he dreamed of it, so that he decided either to die or to avenge himself. “In the meantime Sapia had reached a marriageable age and the prince, who was waiting with lighted fuse for an opportunity to take...

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