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_Viola, envied by her sisters, plays many tricks upon a Prince and suffers many in return, but becomes his wife in spite of them._ _This tale delighted all who heard it to the very marrow of their bones. A thousand times they blessed the Prince, who had cut a coat to fit Nella’s sisters, and praised to the skies the young woman’s boundless love, which had found the means, through so many hardships, to cure the Prince’s own love. But Taddeo signaled for everyone to be quiet and commanded Meneca to take her turn, and she discharged her duty in this fashion._ Envy is a wind that blows so fiercely it brings down the pillars of good men’s glory and lays their crop of good fortune flat upon the ground. Yet very often, by Heaven’s judgment, when this wind thinks to dash someone face-first into the dirt, it only drives them all the sooner toward the happiness awaiting them, as you shall hear in the tale I am about to tell you.

Once upon a time there was a good, honest man named Col’Aniello, who had three daughters, Rosa, Garofana, and Viola. The youngest was so beautiful that she distilled sweet syrups of desire to purge every torment from the heart. For this reason Ciullone, the King’s son, was scorched and roasted with love for her, and whenever he passed the ground-floor room where the three sisters worked, he would take off his cap and say, “Good day, good day, Viola!” And she would answer, “Good day, King’s son! I can outdo you.” These words made the other two sisters swell with anger and grumble, saying, “You are ill-mannered, and you will make the Prince terribly angry.” But Viola tossed her sisters’ words behind her back, so out of spite they spoke against her to their father, telling him that she was far too bold and forward, and answered the Prince without respect, as though they were equals; one day she would find herself in trouble, and the innocent would suffer for the guilty. Col’Aniello, who was a sensible man, wished to remove the occasion for mischief, and sent Viola to stay with an aunt named Cuccepannella, so that she might learn needlework. But the Prince, passing the house and no longer seeing the target of his desires, spent several days like a nightingale that cannot find its young in the nest, flitting from bough to bough and lamenting its loss. He put his ear to so many keyholes that at last he learned where she was living, and went to see her aunt. “My good madam,” he said, “you know who I am, and what power and influence I have. Now, between ourselves, mum’s the word: do me a favor, and afterward spend me for whatever coin you please.” “If it is something I can do,” the old woman replied, “I am entirely at your service.” And the Prince said, “I ask nothing more than that you let me kiss Viola. Take these coins of mine.”

The old woman replied, “To serve you, I can do no more than hold the clothes of the man who goes swimming. But I do not want her to suspect that I have put the handle on this jug, or lent a hand in such shameful business, and so earn myself, at the end of my days, the title of blacksmith’s boy who works the bellows. What I can do to oblige you is this: go and hide in the ground-floor room by the garden, and on some pretext I shall send Viola down to you. Once you have the cloth and scissors in your hands, if you do not know how to use them, the fault will be yours.” Hearing how well disposed she was, the Prince lost no time in creeping into the room.

The old woman, pretending she wanted to cut out some piece of cloth or other, said to her niece, “Viola, if you love me, go downstairs and fetch my measuring rod.” Viola went into the room to oblige her aunt, but caught sight of the ambush and, snatching up the rod, sprang out as nimbly as a cat, leaving the Prince with his nose grown long for shame and his throat choked with vexation. When the old woman saw her come running back so quickly, she suspected that the Prince’s scheme had misfired. A little while later she said to the girl:

“Go, my niece, to the room downstairs and fetch me the ball of fine Brescian thread from the top of that cupboard.” Viola ran down, seized the thread, and slipped like an eel through the Prince’s hands. Before long, however, the old woman said again, “My dear Viola, unless you fetch me the scissors from downstairs, I am ruined!” Downstairs Viola faced the third assault, but struggled like a dog and escaped the trap. When she got upstairs, she cut off her aunt’s ear with those very scissors, saying, “Take this handsome tip for your matchmaking! Every labor deserves its reward: for a shred of honor, a slice of ear. And if I do not cut off your nose as well, it is so that you may smell the stench of your own reputation.”

“Bawd! Procurer for gentlemen! Poultry-carrier! Gobble-gobble! Corrupter of little girls!” With these words she was off in three bounds to her own home, leaving her aunt short of an ear and the Prince full of misery. But when he passed her father’s house again and saw her in her accustomed place, he struck up his old tune: “Good day, good day, Viola!” And she, prompt as a deacon with his response, answered, “Good day, King’s son! I can outdo you.” Her sisters could no longer endure her airs of superiority, and plotted together to put an end to her. Now they had a window overlooking an Ogre’s garden, and resolved to settle the business by that route. They let fall a little skein of thread with which they were embroidering a door-hanging for the Queen, and said, “Oh, poor us! We are ruined! We shall never finish the work in time unless Viola, who is the youngest and lightest of us, lets us lower her on a rope to fetch the fallen thread.” Rather than see them so distressed, Viola immediately offered to go down.

They tied a rope around her and lowered her, then let go of the rope. At that very moment the Ogre came out to take a look at his garden. Having absorbed a great deal of dampness from the ground, he let fly a fart so tremendous, with such a roar and thunder, that Viola cried out in terror, “Oh, Mother, help me!” The Ogre turned and saw a beautiful girl behind him. Remembering that he had once heard some scholars say that Spanish mares were made pregnant by the wind, he imagined that the reek of his fart had got some tree with child, and that this lovely creature had sprung from it. He therefore embraced her most lovingly and said, “My daughter, part of my own body, breath of my spirit! Who would ever have told me that a puff of wind could give shape to so fair a face? Who would have told me that an effect of coldness could kindle such a fire of love?” With these and other tender, loving words, he entrusted her to three Fairies, to care for her and rear her on the choicest dainties. Meanwhile, the Prince, who no longer saw Viola and could get no news of her, old or new, was so distressed that his eyes grew hollow, his face turned deathly pale, and his lips became the color of ashes. No morsel he ate put flesh on his bones, and no sleep brought him rest. He made inquiries and promised rewards, asking here and there until he learned where she was. Then he sent for the Ogre and told him that, being ill, as the Ogre could see, he would take it as a kindness if he might spend just one day and one night in his garden: a single room would be enough for him to refresh his spirits. The Ogre, being a subject of the Prince’s father, could not refuse so small a favor, and offered him, if one room were not enough, every room he had, and his very life besides. The Prince thanked him and had a room made ready which, by good fortune, stood next to the Ogre’s own, where he slept in the same bed as Viola. And when Night came out to play spread-my-curtain with the stars, the Prince found the Ogre’s door open, for it was summer, and, being in a safe place, the Ogre liked to enjoy the cool air. The Prince slipped quietly inside, felt for Viola’s side of the bed, and gave her two pinches. She woke and began to cry, “Oh, Father, what a lot of fleas!” The Ogre immediately moved the girl to another bed, and the Prince returned to do the same thing.

Viola cried out in the same way, and the Ogre kept changing now her mattress, now her sheets, until the whole night had passed in this bustle. At last Dawn brought word that the Sun had been found alive, and the mourning draperies were taken down from all around the sky. As soon as it was day, the Prince went walking through the house, and, seeing the girl by the door, said as usual, “Good day, good day, Viola!” And Viola answered, “Good day, King’s son! I can outdo you.”

The Prince retorted, “Oh, Father, what a lot of fleas!” At this thrust Viola immediately guessed that the night’s disturbance had been the Prince’s doing, and went to the Fairies to tell them what had happened. “If that is so,” said the Fairies, “we shall meet corsair with corsair, and sailor with galley-slave! If this dog has bitten you, let us get a hair of him. He has played you one trick, and we shall play him a trick and a half. Have the Ogre make you a pair of slippers covered in little bells, and then leave the rest to us: we mean to pay him in good coin.” Eager for revenge, Viola had the Ogre make the slippers at once. They waited until the sky, like a Genoese woman, wrapped black taffeta about its face; then all four went together to the Prince’s house, where the Fairies and Viola entered his chamber unseen. Just as the Prince began to close his eyes, the Fairies raised a tremendous uproar, while Viola stamped her feet so hard that the clatter of her heels and the jingling of the bells woke the Prince in a great fright. “Oh, Mother, Mother, help me!” he cried. After doing this two or three times, they slipped away home. In the morning, after the Prince had taken citron juice and wormseed to settle his fright, he went walking in the garden, unable to spend a moment without the sight of that Viola who was the guiding spirit of his own flowering desires.

Seeing her in the doorway, he said, “Good day, good day, Viola!” And Viola answered, “Good day, King’s son! I can outdo you.” “Oh, Father, what a lot of fleas!” said the Prince. And she replied, “Oh, Mother, Mother, help me!” At this the Prince said, “You have done it! You have got the better of me! I yield: you have won. And since I truly see that you know more than I do, I will have you for my wife, without another word.” So he summoned the Ogre and asked for her hand. The Ogre would not meddle with another man’s sheaves, for that very morning he had learned that she was Col’Aniello’s daughter, and that his rear eye had deceived him when he imagined this fragrant vision to be the offspring of a stinking zephyr. He therefore sent for her father and told him of the good fortune awaiting his daughter. With great rejoicing they celebrated the wedding, proving the truth of the saying, _A pretty bride finds a husband in the public square._