ove to you that I have done the deed and not this rascal,
order the heads to be produced. None of them can speak to the proof
without a tongue, and these I have brought with me as witnesses to
convince you of the truth."

So saying he pulled the tongues out of his pocket, while the countryman
was struck all of a heap, not knowing what would be the end of it; and
the more so when Menechella added, "This is the man! Ah, you dog of a
countryman, a pretty trick you have played me!" When the King heard
this, he took the crown from the head of that false loon and placed it
on that of Cienzo; and he was on the point of sending the imposter to
the galleys, but Cienzo begged the King to have mercy on him and to
confound his wickedness with courtesy. Then he married Menechella, and
the tables were spread and a royal banquet was set forth; and in the
morning they sent for Antoniello with all his family; and Antoniello
soon got into great favour with the King, and saw in the person of his
son the saying verified--

"A straight port to a crooked ship."

VIII

GOAT-FACE

All the ill-deeds that a man commits have some colour of excuse--either
contempt which provokes, need which compels, love which blinds, or
anger which breaks the neck. But ingratitude is a thing that has no
excuse, true or false, upon which it can fix; and it is therefore the
worst of vices, since it dries up the fountain of compassion,
extinguishes the fire of love, closes the road to benefits, and causes
vexation and repentance to spring up in the hearts of the ungrateful.
As you will see in the story which I am about to relate.

A peasant had twelve daughters, not one of whom was a head taller than
the next; for every year their mother presented him with a little girl;
so that the poor man, to support his family decently, went early every
morning as a day labourer and dug hard the whole day long. With what
his labour produced he just kept his little ones from dying of hunger.

He happened, one day, to be digging at the foot of a mountain, the spy
of other mountains, that thrust its head above the clouds to see what
they were doing up in the sky, and close to a cavern so deep and dark
that the sun was afraid to enter it. Out of this cavern there came a
green lizard as big as a crocodile; and the poor man was so terrified
that he had not the power to run away, expecting every moment the end
of his days from a gulp of that ugly animal. But the lizard