[3] Bacchettone di comando, suits this use of it better than does the English equivalent. [↑]
[4] ‘Ecco il vecchio!’ such abrupt interruptions, with change of tense, are often introduced with dramatic effect by the narrators. A similar one occurs at p. 133. ‘He sounds the horn and One comes.’ [↑]
[5] ‘E tutto andava benone;’ ‘bene,’ well; ‘benone,’ superlatively well. [↑]
THE TRANSFORMATION-DONKEY.[1]
There was once a poor chicory-seller: all chicory-sellers are poor, but this was a very poor one, and he had a large family of daughters and two sons. The daughters he left at home with their mother, but the two sons he took with him to gather chicory. While they were out gathering chicory one day, a great bird flew down before them and dropped an egg and then flew away again. The boys picked up the egg and brought it to their father, because there were some figures like strange writing on it which they could not read; but neither could the father read the strange writing, so he took the egg to a farmer.[2] The farmer read the writing, and it said:—
‘Whoso eats my head, he shall be an emperor.’
‘Whoso eats my heart, he shall never want for money.’
‘Ho, ho!’ said the farmer to himself, ‘it won’t do to tell the fellow this; I must manage to eat both the head and the heart myself.’ So he said, ‘The meaning of it is that whoever eats the bird will make a very good dinner; so to-morrow when the bird comes back, as she doubtless will to lay another egg, have a good stick ready and knock her down; then you can make a fire, and bake it between the stones, and I will come and eat it with you if you like.’
The poor chicory-seller thought his fortune was made when a farmer offered to dine with him, and the hours seemed long enough till next morning came.