Page:The Pentamerone, or The Story of Stories.djvu/192

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166
THE PENTAMERONE.

the table of life, than play such a trick or make this exchange."

Grannonia could no longer remain in the trammels of disguise, and discovered to the prince who she was; for the chamber being darkened on account of the wounds in his head, and she being disguised, he had not known her. But the prince, now that he recognized her, embraced her with a joy that would amaze you, telling his father who she was, and what he had done and suffered for her. Then they sent to invite her parents, the king and queen of Long-Field, and they celebrated the wedding with wonderful festivity, making great sport of the ninny of a fox, and concluding at the last of the last, that

"Pain doth indeed a seasoning prove
Unto the joys of constant love."


From beginning to end Popa's story made the women laugh outright; but where it spoke of their cunning, which was sufficient to outwit a fox, they were near bursting their sides. And truly woman has artful devices strung like beads by hundreds on every hair of her head: fraud is her mother, falsehood is her nurse,