‘Signor Lattanzio! Signor Lattanzio! Signor Lattanzio!’ cried the three fairies disdainfully, for now they began to suspect in right good earnest that at last one had come who was too strong for them. ‘The fact is you are afraid of us. If you are a man, show you have no fear, and come and talk with us.’
But the duke remained firm, though a vanity, which had nearly lost him, whispered that it would be a grander triumph to look them in the face and yet resist them, than to conquer without having ventured to look at them, yet prudence prevailed, and he remained firm.
So they went on, and the duke felt that the hour was drawing to a close. He took out his repeater and struck it, and the hour of trial was over.
‘Traitor!’ cried the three fairies, and in the same instant they were turned into cats. Then the duke went into their palace, and took their wand, and with it he could open the gates of the casino where the lady’s daughter was imprisoned.
When he saw her, he found her indeed fairer than the fairest; fairer even than his conception.
When, therefore, with the wand he had restored all the cats that were upon the mountain to their natural shapes as those that had failed in their enterprise, he took her home with him to be his wife.
[As this was told me, the sign by which the duke was to recognise the three fairies was, that they were to be sweeping the ground with their breasts. The incident seemed so extravagant, that I omitted it in writing out the story; I mention it, however, now because I find the same in Note 1, on an Albanian story, to p. 177, in Ralston’s ‘Russian Folk Tales’; I met the incident subsequently in another Roman story.
The idea which has prompted this tale is apparently the same as that which has given rise to the story of ‘Odysseus and the Seirens.’ See Cox’s ‘Aryan Mythology,’ II. 242.]