ardener's wife) heaved a deep sigh, and said, "Alas!
even the serpents have their little serpents; but I brought ill-luck
with me into this world." At these words, the little serpent spoke, and
said, "Well, then, since you cannot have children, take me for a child,
and you will make a good bargain, for I shall love you better than my
mother." Sapatella, hearing a serpent speak thus, nearly fainted; but,
plucking up courage, she said, "If it were for nothing else than the
affection which you offer, I am content to take you, and treat you as
if you were really my own child." So saying, she assigned him a hole in
a corner of the house for a cradle, and gave him for food a share of
what she had with the greatest goodwill in the world.

The serpent increased in size from day to day; and when he had grown
pretty big, he said to Cola Matteo, the gardener, whom he looked on as
his father, "Daddy, I want to get married." "With all my heart," said
Cola Matteo. "We must look out for another serpent like yourself, and
try to make up a match between you." "What serpent are you talking of?"
said the little serpent. "I suppose, forsooth, we are all the same with
vipers and adders! It is easy to see you are nothing but a country
bumpkin, and make a nosegay of every plant. I want the King's daughter;
so go this very instant and ask the King for her, and tell him it is a
serpent who demands her." Cola Matteo, who was a plain, straightforward
kind of man, and knew nothing about matters of this sort, went
innocently to the King and delivered his message, saying--

"The messenger should not be beaten more
Than are the sands upon the shore!"

"Know then that a serpent wants your daughter for his wife, and I am
come to try if we can make a match between a serpent and a dove!" The
King, who saw at a glance that he was a blockhead, to get rid of him,
said, "Go and tell the serpent that I will give him my daughter if he
turns all the fruit of this orchard into gold." And so saying, he burst
out a-laughing, and dismissed him.

When Cola Matteo went home and delivered the answer to the serpent, he
said, "Go to-morrow morning and gather up all the fruit-stones you can
find in the city, and sow them in the orchard, and you will see pearls
strung on rushes!" Cola Mateo, who was no conjurer, neither knew how to
comply nor refuse; so next morning, as soon as the Sun with his golden
broom had swept away the dirt of the Night from the fields