Page:The Pentamerone, or The Story of Stories.djvu/259

Rh upshot of the affair. And when, at the trumpeting of the birds, the Sun whipped on the Night, who sat mounted on the jackass of the Shades, they returned to the field, where at the usual signal they fell to plying their heels. But if Ciannetella was like another Atalanta, Lightning had become no less like a shoulder-slipped ass and a foundered horse, for he could not stir a step. But Shootstraight, who saw his comrade's danger, and heard from Quickear how matters stood, laid hold on his crossbow, and shot a bolt so exactly that it hit Lightning's finger, and out flew the stone from the ring, in which the virtue of the charm lay; whereupon his legs, that had been tied, were set free, and with four goat-leaps he passed Cianuetella and won the race.

The king seeing this victory of a blockhead, the palm thus carried off by a simpleton, the triumph of a fool, bethought himself seriously whether or no he should give him his daughter; and taking counsel with the wiseacres of his court, they replied that Ciauuetella was not a mouthful for the tooth of such a miserable dog and lose-the-day bird, and that without breaking his word he might commute the promise of his daughter for a gift of crowns, which would be more to the taste