D'UNO MEDICO CHE CURAVA GLI ASINI.

"It was long ago--so long, Signore Carlo, that the oldest olive-tree in
Tuscany had not been planted, and when wolves sometimes came across the
Ponte Vecchio into the town to look into the shop-windows, and ghosts and
witches were as common by night as Christians by day, that there was a
man in Florence who hated work, and who had observed, early as the age
was, that those who laboured the least were the best paid. And he was
always repeating to himself:

"'Con arte e con inganno,
Si vive mezzo l'anno,
Con inganno, e con arte,
Si vive l'altra parte.'

"Or in English:

"'With tricks and cleverness, 'tis clear,
A man can live six months i' the year,
And then with cleverness and tricks
He'll live as well the other six.'

"Now having come across a recipe for making pills which were guaranteed
to cure everything, he resolved to set up for an universal doctor, and
that with nothing but the pills to aid. So he went forth from Florence,
wandering from one village to another, selling his pills, curing some
people, and getting, as often happens, fame far beyond his deserts, so
that the peasants began to believe he could remedy all earthly ills.

"And at last one day a stupid contadino, who had lost his ass, went to
the doctor and asked him whether by his art and learning he could recover
for him the missing animal. Whereupon the doctor gave him six pills at a
_quattrino_ (a farthing) each, and bade him wander forth thinking
intently all the time on the delinquent donkey, and, to perfect the
spell, to walk in all the devious ways and little travelled tracks,
solitary by-paths, and lonely _sentieri_, ever repeating solemnly,
'_Asino mio_! _asino mio_! _Tu che amo come un zio_!'

"'Oh my ass! my ass! my ass!
Whom I loved like an uncle,
Alas! alas!'

"And having done this for three days, it came to pass, and no great
wonder either, that he found Signore Somaro (or Don Key) comfortably
feasting in a dark lane on thistles. After which he praised to the skies
the virtue of the wonderful pills, by means of which one could find
strayed cattle. And from this dated the doctor's success, so that he
grew rich and founded the family of the Medici, who, in commemoration of
this their great ancestor, put the six pills into their shield, as you
may see all over Florence to this day."

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