fter crying "Hish,
hish," began to stamp with his feet; and after stamping with his feet
to throw his cap at her, and after the cap a cudgel which hit her just
upon the pate, and made her quickly stretch her legs.

When Vardiello saw this sad accident, he bethought himself how to
remedy the evil; and making a virtue of necessity, in order to prevent
the eggs growing cold, he set himself down upon the nest; but in doing
so, he gave the eggs an unlucky blow, and quickly made an omelet of
them. In despair at what he had done, he was on the point of knocking
his head against the wall; at last, however, as all grief turns to
hunger, feeling his stomach begin to grumble, he resolved to eat up the
hen. So he plucked her, and sticking her upon a spit, he made a great
fire, and set to work to roast her. And when she was cooked, Vardiello,
to do everything in due order, spread a clean cloth upon an old chest;
and then, taking a flagon, he went down into the cellar to draw some
wine. But just as he was in the midst of drawing the wine, he heard a
noise, a disturbance, an uproar in the house, which seemed like the
clattering of horses' hoofs. Whereat starting up in alarm and turning
his eyes, he saw a big tom-cat, which had run off with the hen, spit
and all; and another cat chasing after him, mewing, and crying out for
a part.

Vardiello, in order to set this mishap to rights, darted upon the cat
like an unchained lion, and in his haste he left the tap of the barrel
running. And after chasing the cat through every hole and corner of the
house, he recovered the hen; but the cask had meanwhile all run out;
and when Vardiello returned, and saw the wine running about, he let the
cask of his soul empty itself through the tap-holes of his eyes. But at
last judgment came to his aid and he hit upon a plan to remedy the
mischief, and prevent his mother's finding out what had happened; so,
taking a sack of flour, filled full to the mouth, he sprinkled it over
the wine on the floor.

But when he meanwhile reckoned up on his fingers all the disasters he
had met with, and thought to himself that, from the number of fooleries
he had committed, he must have lost the game in the good graces of
Grannonia, he resolved in his heart not to let his mother see him again
alive. So thrusting his hand into the jar of pickled walnuts which his
mother had said contained poison, he never stopped eating until he came
to the bottom; and when he had right we