ABSTRACT

Once upon a time there was a miserly prince in Messina, and he was somiserly that he would skin a louse for a penny.134 This prince wasenormously rich, and he had his table set twice a day with a piece of bread pressed as thin as a wafer and a bottle of water. Although he was so very rich, he had only one servant, whom he paid two pennies a day, an egg, and as much bread as he could eat with the egg. But servants don’t put up with treatment like this, and after a week of such a life, they ask to be dismissed, and they leave. Now it so happened that a servant came to work for him, a very cunning man, and even though the prince was sly, this servant was so smart that he could manage to take off his shoes and socks while running. One day, after he saw how bad things were, this servant went to the coal mine near the palace, and he spoke with the owner who had a good deal of money and a beautiful daughter.