THE SEVEN DOVES.
He who gives pleasure meets with it: kindness is the bond of friendship and the hook of love: he who sows not reaps not; of which truth Ciulla has given you the foretaste of example, and I will give you the dessert, if you will bear in mind what Cato says, "Speak little at table." Therefore have the kindness to lend me your ears awhile; and may Heaven cause them to stretch continually, to listen to pleasant and amusing things.
There was once in the county of Arzano a good woman who every year gave birth to a son, until at length there were seven of them, who looked like a syrinx of the god Pan, with seven reeds, one larger than another. And when they had changed their first teeth, they said to Jannetella their mother, who was again in the family way, "Hark-ye, mother, if, after so many sons, you do not this time have a daughter, we are resolved to leave
