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_Talia, struck dead by a splinter of flax, is left in a palace, where a king happens upon her and fathers two children by her. His jealous wife gets her into her power and orders the children to be cooked and served to their father, and Talia to be burned. The cook saves the children, and Talia is rescued by the king, who has his wife thrown into the very fire prepared for Talia._ _Though the fate of the ogres might have stirred some scrap of pity, it instead gave pleasure, for everyone rejoiced that Parmetella’s affairs had turned out so much better than expected. After this tale it fell to Popa to speak, and she, already with her feet in the stirrups, began as follows._ Experience teaches us that cruelty most often serves as executioner to the very person who practices it; nor has anyone ever spat at heaven without having it fall back into his face. On the other side of this coin, innocence is a shield of figwood upon which every sword of malice either breaks or leaves its point embedded. Thus, just when a poor soul believes himself dead and buried, he finds himself raised again in flesh and blood, as you shall hear in the tale I am about to draw from the cask of memory with the tap of this tongue.

There was once a great lord who, upon the birth of a daughter named Talia, summoned the wise men and soothsayers of his kingdom to foretell her future. After much deliberation, they concluded that she would be exposed to great danger from a splinter of flax. To prevent this misfortune, he therefore forbade flax, hemp, or anything of the kind from being brought into his house. But when Talia had grown into a young woman, she was standing at the window one day when she saw an old woman passing by, spinning. Never having seen either a distaff or a spindle, and being greatly delighted by its twirling, she grew so curious that she had the woman come upstairs, took the distaff in her hand, and began to draw out the thread. Unhappily, a splinter of flax slipped beneath her fingernail, and she fell dead to the ground. At the sight of this, the old woman went bounding down the stairs. When the wretched father learned of the disaster, he paid for this bucket of sour wine with barrels of tears, then placed his daughter in that same palace, which stood in the country, seated in a velvet chair beneath a canopy of brocade. He shut the doors and abandoned forever the palace that had caused him such sorrow, hoping to blot out every memory of his misfortune. Some time later, however, a king was out hunting when a falcon escaped him and flew through a window of that house. When it would not return to his call, he had someone knock at the door, supposing that people lived there. But after they had knocked for a good while, the king sent for a grape-gatherer’s ladder, determined to climb into the house himself and see what was inside. Having climbed up and searched everywhere, he stood like a mummy, finding not a living soul. At last he reached the chamber where Talia lay as though enchanted. Seeing her, and believing her asleep, the king called to her:

but when she did not come to herself, however much he tried and shouted, he grew inflamed by her beauty, carried her in his arms to a bed, and gathered the fruits of love. Leaving her lying there, he returned to his kingdom, where for some time he gave no further thought to what had happened. Nine months later, she was delivered of a pair of children, a boy and a girl, who looked like two handfuls of jewels. Two fairies appeared in the palace, tended them, and laid them at their mother’s breasts. Once, when the children wished to suck and could not find her nipples, they caught hold of her finger and sucked so hard that they drew out the splinter. At this she seemed to wake from a deep sleep. Finding those little jewels beside her, she gave them her breast and cherished them as dearly as her own life. Yet she could not understand what had happened to her, finding herself all alone in that palace with two children at her side, and seeing refreshments brought to her without ever seeing who brought them. Meanwhile the king remembered Talia and, taking the opportunity of going hunting, came to see her. Finding her awake and with two little marvels of beauty beside her, he was beside himself with delight. He told Talia who he was and how it had all happened, and they formed a close friendship and a firm bond. He stayed with her for several days, then took his leave, promising to return and bring her away with him. Back in his kingdom, he was forever speaking of Talia and the children: when he ate, Talia was on his lips, along with Sun and Moon—for those were the names he had given the children—and when he went to bed, he called for one or another of them.

The king’s wife, who had already begun to suspect something because her husband had stayed away so long on his hunt, grew hotter than the sun itself at all this calling for Talia, Moon, and Sun. Summoning the secretary, she said to him, “Listen here, my good fellow: you are caught between Scylla and Charybdis, between the doorpost and the door, between the battering ram and the gate. If you tell me whom my husband is in love with, I shall make you rich; if you hide the truth from me, I shall see that you are never found, dead or alive.” The fellow, shaken by fear on the one hand and overcome on the other by self-interest—which is a blindfold over the eyes of honor, a fog upon justice, and a shoe-puller that unshoes fidelity—called bread bread and wine wine, and told her everything plainly. The queen then sent this same secretary to Talia in the king’s name, saying that he wished to see the children. Talia sent them with great joy, but that heart of Medea ordered the cook to cut their throats and make them into various little soups and savory dishes to feed to her unhappy husband. The cook, who was tenderhearted, took pity on those two beautiful golden apples and gave them to his wife to hide. In their place he prepared two young goats in a hundred different ways. When the king arrived, the queen had the dishes brought in with great pleasure, and while he ate with a hearty appetite, saying:

“Oh, how good this is, by the life of Lanfusa! And how excellent that other dish is, by my grandfather’s soul!” she kept saying, “Eat, for you are eating what is your own.” Two or three times the king paid no heed to her refrain, but at last, hearing the same tune go on and on, he answered, “I know I am eating what is mine, for you brought nothing into this house!” Rising in a fury, he went off to a country house a short distance away to vent his anger. Meanwhile the queen, not satisfied with what she had done, summoned the secretary again and sent him to fetch Talia, on the pretext that the king was waiting for her. Talia came at once, longing to find the light of her life, not knowing that a fire awaited her. But when she appeared before the queen, that woman, with the face of a Nero and all the fury of a viper, said to her:

“Welcome, Madam Strumpet! So you are the fine piece of goods, the poisonous weed, who takes her pleasure with my husband! You are the mangy bitch who has set my head spinning so! Well, you have come to purgatory, where I shall make you pay for the harm you have done me.” Hearing this, Talia began to plead that it was no fault of hers, and that the queen’s husband had taken possession of her territory while she lay unconscious. But the queen would hear no excuses. She had a great fire kindled in the palace courtyard and ordered Talia to be thrown into it. Seeing how badly matters stood, Talia fell on her knees before her and begged that she might at least be given time to take off the clothes she was wearing. The queen, less out of pity for the poor young woman than from a desire to save those garments embroidered with gold and pearls, said, “Undress, then; I consent.” Talia began to undress, giving a shriek with every garment she took off. She had removed her robe, her skirt, and her bodice, and as she came to take off her petticoat, she uttered one last scream. They were already dragging her away to make ashes for the warming pan of Charon’s breeches when the king came running up. Finding this spectacle before him, he demanded to know the whole story. When he asked after the children, his wife herself, reproaching him for his betrayal, told him how she had made him devour them. At this the wretched king gave himself over to despair and cried, “Then I myself have been the werewolf that devoured my own little lambs! Alas, why did my very flesh not recognize the fountain of its own blood? Ah, you faithless Turk, what bestial cruelty is this? Away with you—you shall pay for it! I shall not merely send that tyrant’s face of yours to the Colosseum to do penance!”

So saying, he ordered her thrown into the very fire kindled for Talia, and with her the secretary, who had been the instrument of this bitter business and the weaver of this wicked plot. He meant to do the same to the cook, whom he believed had butchered his children, but the man threw himself at the king’s feet and said, “Truly, my lord, for the service I have done you I ought to have no other pension than a furnace full of coals, no other allowance than a stake at my back, no other entertainment than to stretch and shrivel in the fire, no other distinction than to have a cook’s ashes mingled with a queen’s! Yet this is hardly the great reward I hoped for after saving your children in spite of that bitch’s gall, who wished to kill them and return to your body what had been part of that same body.” At these words the king was beside himself. He thought he must be dreaming and could scarcely believe his ears. Turning to the cook, he said, “If it is true that you have saved my children, rest assured that I shall take you away from turning spits and set you in the kitchen of this breast, to turn my desires whichever way you please. I shall reward you so well that you will call yourself the happiest man in the world.” While the king was speaking, the cook’s wife, seeing her husband’s danger, brought Moon and Sun before their father. Then the king, playing a three-handed game with his wife and children, made a whirligig of kisses, now upon one, now upon another. He gave the cook a handsome gratuity and made him a gentleman of his bedchamber, then took Talia for his wife. She enjoyed a long life with her husband and children, learning at every turn that _For those whom fortune favors,_ _Good things rain down even while they sleep._