lion-boy who had been taken to assist in the kitchen had made it, he ordered him to be brought before him. Then Filadoro, throwing herself at the feet of Nardo Aniello, and shedding a torrent of tears, said merely, "What have I done to you?" Whereupon the prince, struck by Filadoro's beauty, at once recalled to mind the engagement he had made with her, face to face in the court of Love; and instantly raising her up, he seated her by his side. And when he related to his mother the great obligation he was under to this beautiful maiden, and all that she had done for him, and how it was necessary that the promise he had given should be fulfilled, his mother, who had no other joy in life than her son, said to him, "Do as you please, so that you offend not the honour or the good pleasure of this lady whom I have given you to wife."
"Be not troubled," said the lady, "for, to tell the truth, I am very loth to remain in this country; with your kind permission, I wish to return to my dear Flanders, to find the grandfathers of the glasses which they use here in Naples[1], where, whilst I was thinking to light a lantern and set it before me[2], the lamp of my life has been nearly extinguished."
- ↑ Basile considers Flanders as part of Germany: he alludes here (as frequently elsewhere—see p. 83) to the old joke against the Germans of being strong drinkers. 'The grandfathers of the glasses' means that they were so much bigger.
- ↑ The light hung out at the end of the Molo at Naples was in Basile's thought.
