breathe, roses and jessamines may fall from your mouth; that when you comb your locks, pearls and garnets may fall from them, and when you set your foot on the ground, lilies and violets may spring up."
Marziella thanked the old woman, and went her way home, where her mother having cooked a bit of supper, they paid the natural debt to the body, and thus ended the day. And the next morning, when the Sun displayed in the market-place of the celestial fields the merchandize of light which he had brought from the East, as Marziella was combing her hair, she saw a shower of pearls and garnets fall from it into her lap; whereupon calling her mother with great joy, they put them all into a basket, and Luceta went to sell a great part of them to a usurer, who was a friend of hers. Meanwhile Troccola came to see her sister, and finding Marziella in great delight and busied with the pearls, she asked her how, when and where she had gotten them. But the maiden, who did not understand the ways of the world[1], and had perhaps never heard the proverb, "Do not all you are able, eat not all you wish, spend not all you have, and tell not all you know," related the whole affair to her aunt, who no longer cared to await her sister’s return, for every hour seemed to her a thousand years until she got home again. Then giving a cake to
- ↑ Literally—'how to muddy water.'
