est-book,[12] it is, in effect, as
follows:

There once dwelt in Florence a noodle called Nigniaca, upon whom a party
of young men resolved to play a practical joke. Having arranged their
plans, one of them met him early one morning, and asked him if he was
not ill. "No," says the wittol. "I am well enough." "By my faith," quoth
the joker, "but you have a pale, sickly colour," and went his way.
Presently a second of the complotters came up to him, and asked him if
he was not suffering from an ague, for he certainly looked very ill. The
poor fellow now began to think that he was really sick, and was
convinced of this when a third man in passing told him that he should be
in his bed--he had evidently not an hour to live. Hearing this, Nigniaca
stood stock-still, saying to himself, "Verily, I have some sharp ague,"
when a fourth man came and bade him go home at once, for he was a dying
man. So the simpleton begged this fourth man to help him home, which he
did very willingly, and after laying him in his bed, the other jokers
came to see him, and one of them, pretending to be a physician, felt his
pulse and declared the patient would die within an hour.[13] Then,
standing all about his bed, they said to each other, "Now he is sinking
fast; his speech and sight have failed him; he will soon give up the
ghost. Let us therefore close his eyes, cross his hands on his breast,
and carry him forth to be buried." The simpleton lay as still as though
he was really dead, so they laid him on a bier and carried him through
the city. A great crowd soon gathered, when it was known that they were
carrying the corpse of Nigniaca to his grave. And among the crowd was a
taverner's boy, who cried out, "What a rascal and thief is dead! By the
mass, he should have been hanged long ago." When the wittol heard
himself thus vilified, he lifted up his head and exclaimed, "I wish, you
scoundrel, I were alive now, as I am dead, and I would prove thee a
false liar to thy face;" upon which the jokers burst into laughter, set
down the "body" and ran away--leaving Nigniaca to explain the whole
affair to the marvelling multitude.[14]

We read of another silly son, in the _Katha Manjari_, whose father
said to him one day, "My boy, you are now grown big, yet you don't seem
to have much sense. You must, however, do something for your living. Go,
therefore, to the tank, and catch fish and bring them home." The lad
accordingly went to the tank, and having cau