By the time their visit to the country was at an end, and when they returned to the capital, everybody found their naughty queen had become the most angelic being imaginable.
[After people’s bad tempers, their follies form the most prolific subject of the Ciarpe.]
THE SIMPLE WIFE.[1]
There was a man and his wife who had a young daughter to marry; and there was a man who was seeking a wife. So the man who was seeking a wife came to the man who had a daughter to marry, and said, ‘Give me your daughter for a wife.’
‘Yes,’ said the man who had a daughter to marry;[2] ‘you’ll do very well; you’re just about the sort of son-in-law I want.’ And then he added: ‘If our daughter is to be betrothed to-day, it is the occasion for a feast.’ So to the wife he said, ‘Prepare the table;’ and to the daughter he said, ‘Draw the wine.’
The daughter went down into the cellar to draw the wine. But as she drew the wine she began to cry, saying: ‘If I am to be married I shall have a child, and the child will be a son, and the son will be a priest, and the priest will be a bishop, and the bishop will be a cardinal, and the cardinal will be a pope.’ And she cried and cried, and the wine was running all the time, so that the bottle[3] she was filling ran over, and went on running over.
Then said the father and mother: ‘What can the girl be doing down in the cellar so long?’ But the mother said: ‘I must go and see.’