r one's wife are alike hard to
bear, but are soon over," ere the Night had gone forth into the
place-of-arms in the sky to muster the bats he began to count upon his
fingers and to reflect thus to himself, "Here is my wife dead, and I am
left a wretched widower, with no hope of seeing any one but this poor
daughter whom she has left me. I must therefore try to discover some
means or other of having a son and heir. But where shall I look? Where
shall I find a woman equal in beauty to my wife? Every one appears a
witch in comparison with her; where, then, shall I find another with a
bit of stick, or seek another with the bell, if Nature made Nardella
(may she be in glory), and then broke the mould? Alas, in what a
labyrinth has she put me, in what a perplexity has the promise I made
her left me! But what do I say? I am running away before I have seen
the wolf; let me open my eyes and ears and look about; may there not be
some other as beautiful? Is it possible that the world should be lost
to me? Is there such a dearth of women, or is the race extinct?"

So saying he forthwith issued a proclamation and command that all the
handsome women in the world should come to the touch-stone of beauty,
for he would take the most beautiful to wife and endow her with a
kingdom. Now, when this news was spread abroad, there was not a woman
in the universe who did not come to try her luck--not a witch, however
ugly, who stayed behind; for when it is a question of beauty, no
scullion-wench will acknowledge herself surpassed; every one piques
herself on being the handsomest; and if the looking-glass tells her the
truth she blames the glass for being untrue, and the quicksilver for
being put on badly.

When the town was thus filled with women the King had them all drawn up
in a line, and he walked up and down from top to bottom, and as he
examined and measured each from head to foot one appeared to him
wry-browed, another long-nosed, another broad-mouthed, another
thick-lipped, another tall as a may-pole, another short and dumpy,
another too stout, another too slender; the Spaniard did not please him
on account of her dark colour, the Neopolitan was not to his fancy on
account of her gait, the German appeared cold and icy, the Frenchwoman
frivolous and giddy, the Venetian with her light hair looked like a
distaff of flax. At the end of the end, one for this cause and another
for that, he sent them all away, with one hand before and the oth