Page:The Pentamerone, or The Story of Stories.djvu/183

Rh the sight in the warehouses of the eyes, and planted admiration in the fields of the heart. The king was struck all of a heap at the sight, and knew not what had befallen him. But when the serpent sent again to let him know that he was expecting the performance of his promise, the king answered, "Oh! all that has been done is nothing, if he does not turn this palace into gold."

When Cola Matteo told the serpent this new fancy of the king's, the serpent said, "Go and get a bundle of herbs of different kinds, and rub the bottom of the palace walls with them: we shall see if we cannot satisfy this whim." Away went Cola Matteo that very moment, and made a great broom of cabbages, radishes, rockets, purslain, turnips and carrots; and when he had rubbed the lower part of the palace with it, instantly you might see it shining like a gilded pill to purge melancholy from a hundred houses that were ill-treated by fortune. And when the gardener came again to demand the princess to wife in the name of the serpent, the king, seeing all retreat cut off, called his daughter, and said to her, "My dear Grannonia, I have endeavoured to get rid of a suitor who asked you for his wife, by making such conditions as seemed to me impossible; but seeing myself foiled, and obliged to consent I know not how, I pray you, as you are a dutiful daughter, to enable me