“YOU WON’T GET ANY CHERRIES, YOU WON’T!”
A prince had a jester who kept a book of fools, in which he put everybody deserving that title. One day at table the prince asked the jester to bring him the book, and opening it saw his own name, and below, “His Highness, on such a day, gave fifty ducats to an alchemist with which to go to Italy and bring back materials for making gold and silver.” “And what if he returns?” said the Prince. “Oh, then she will scratch out your Highness and put him in.”
A collegian of the Archbishop of Seville’s college was one day at table overlooked by the prebendary who doles out everybody’s rations. Somewhat embarrassed as to how he should ask for his food, he suddenly observed a cat mewing in front of him, which he addressed in a loud voice so that the prebendary might hear, “Why the deuce are you mewing and licking your chops at me? I have not yet got my rations, and you must needs already begin bothering me for the bones.”
A Biscayan, just finished working on the belfry in a small town, where there chanced to be a man condemned to death, was told by the authorities that, as they had no executioner, they would give him a ducat and the condemned man’s clothes to do the job, with which our Biscayan was well content. A few months after, finding himself penniless, and remembering how much he had gained by so light a task, he climbed the belfry, and when the townsfolk hurried by upon the pealing of the bells, he looked down at them, saying: “Gentlemen, it is I have called your worships. You must know I have not a blessed farthing, and you remember you gave me a ducat the other day to hang a man. Now I have been thinking that, from the smallest to the biggest of your worships, I should like to hang the whole town at half a ducat each.”
A blind man hid some money at the foot of a tree in a field belonging to a rich farmer. Visiting it one day he found it gone, and suspecting the farmer, went to him and said, “Sir, as you seem an honest man, I have come to ask your advice. I have a sum of money in a very safe place, and now I have just as much more, and do not know if I should hide it where the other is, or somewhere else.” The farmer replied, “Truly, if I were you, I would not change the place, it being as safe as you say.” “That’s just what I thought,” said the blind man, and took his leave. The farmer hurriedly put back the money, hoping to get it doubled, and the blind man in his turn dug it up, greatly rejoicing at recovering what he had lost.
Juan de Timoneda (fl. 1590).