Page:The Pentamerone, or The Story of Stories.djvu/117

Rh 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 power to run away, expecting every moment the end of his days from a gulp of that ugly animal. But the lizard approaching him said, "Be not afraid, my good man, for I am not come here to do you any harm, but only for your good."

When Masaniello (for that was the name of the labourer) heard this, he fell on his knees and said, "Mistress What's-your-name, I am wholly in your power; act then worthily, and have compassion on this poor trunk that has twelve branches to support."

"It is on this very account," said the lizard, "that I am disposed to serve you; so bring me tomorrow morning the youngest of your daughters; for I will rear her up like my own child, and love her as my life."

At this the poor father was more confounded than a thief when the stolen goods are found on his back; for hearing the lizard ask him for one of his daughters, and that too the tenderest of them, he concluded that the cloak was not without wool on it, and that she wanted her for a tit-bit to stay her appetite. Then he said to himself, "If I give her my daughter, I give her my soul; if I refuse her, she will take this body of mine; if I yield