homea poetic rendition of
THE TWO BROTHERS
Day 4, Tale 2
Virtue's Gift
Marcuccio, Parmiero, my sons, listen well.
The time left your father is short.
I love you and leave you with this good advice
to help you to reach a good port.
It may seem like nothing, but what I will say
is a treasure that cannot be lost,
a house that no earthquake will ever knock down,
a field that no pests will accost.
Thank Heaven above from which everything comes.
Never shun honest work if there’s need.
If you work for a master, then do so with verve.
In the end it’s yourself you must feed.
When you’ve something to save it’s your duty to save.
Big money is made cent by cent.
A house filled with friends and relations is good.
Without them you can’t be content.
With money one builds, as with wind one can sail,
or you’ll find yourself prey to much pain.
Do nothing, however, of which you’re ashamed.
Spend only as much as you gain.
Do not be too talkative. Hear all and see
but be silent. Do not wag your tongue.
It may have no bones, but it still has the strength
to do harm like a club that’s been swung.
It is better to dine on a meal made of beans
which will last, than on sweets quickly flown.
If you cannot have meat, drink the broth. And likewise,
if you cannot have flesh, gnaw the bone.
He who walks with the lame will be limping himself.
He who lies down with dogs will get fleas.
Bad company leads to the gallows, my sons.
Let the thief go wherever he please.
He who walks slowly will relish the trip.
Think and then act. Swallow pride.
A table needs more than a fancy white cloth.
He who meddles gets muddled inside.
With sense in your heads you will always survive.
A thousand more things I’d impart ......
but his breath failed him then, and before he could speak
there came the last beat of his heart.
Marcuccio devoted himself to his books.
He took heed of his father’s advice.
He was known as the wisest of men all around,
but his money would hardly suffice.
He was hungry, for poverty sticks like a tick.
His brother Palmiero did well.
With drinking and gambling he grew big and tall
and was known as that rich infidel.
Marcuccio concluded that he’d lost his way,
that famine was all Virtue brought
while knavery fattened Palmiero’s estate.
He went there for help. So he thought.
We are, after all, flesh and blood, he explained,
but Palmiero was stingy and mean.
Go gnaw on your books. Every man for himself,
he replied, and would not intervene.
Treated so cruelly, with no help in sight,
Marcuccio determined to die.
He climbed a steep road between crags and high cliffs
up a mountain that reached to the sky.
Farewell, he lamented, when he reached the top.
He was ready to cast himself down
when a beautiful woman took hold of his arm.
A laurel wreath served as her crown.
What are you doing poor man? Are you mad?
Heaven's assigned you to me.
I am Virtue herself, whom you’ve wrongly maligned,
and Virtue can cure poverty.
Wake up. Be of comfort. I give you this gift.
It’s a powder with powers to heal.
In the very next city, you’ll find there’s a king
with a daughter whose breath death would steal.
You must give her this powder inside of an egg
freshly laid. She’ll be cured by no other.
You’ll receive a reward which will make you so rich
you will not have to beg from your brother.
Marcuccio, repentant, then fell at her feet
but the lady called Virtue was gone.
He slid down the mountain to do what she said.
I will speak in her praise from now on.
The unhappy princess was all skin and bones.
Marcuccio shed tears at the sight.
Her eyes were deep sunk. Her lower lip sagged.
She was in a most desolate plight.
She swallowed the powder along with the egg.
By night she was asking for food.
She was cured in a week and the king, overjoyed,
showed Marcuccio a king’s gratitude.
.
He made of Marcuccio a baron with land,
and found him an heiress to wed,
and made him prime minister of the king’s court.
While Palmiero found ruin instead.
His luck had turned bad, as a gambler’s luck will.
Every cent that he once owned was gone.
Poor and disgraced he decided to walk
to someplace where he might carry on.
He reached the same city Marcuccio was in
where he found an abandoned old shed.
Hunger gnawed at his innards. His clothes hung in rags.
Well, he thought, I’d be better off dead.
He fashioned a rope with a noose at one end
which he tied to a rafter above.
From a pile of stones, with his neck in the noose,
he pushed off with a desperate shove.
But the rafter was rotten. It broke with his weight.
He fell down, and to his surprise
gold chains and jewels and a fine leather purse
lay scattered in front of his eyes.
Filling his pockets, he ran to an inn
where he ordered fine victuals and wine.
But, unknown to him, thieves had stolen the goods
from the inn where he’d chosen to dine.
They’d hidden the jewels in the rafter and meant
to dispose of them one at a time.
The innkeeper, seeing the purse that he’d lost,
said, Arrest him! This man did the crime!
He was searched, and convicted, and led to be hanged
though he shrieked and protested in vain.
It happened Marcuccio was just passing by.
He stopped and said, Let him explain.
Palmiero insisted, My two hands are clean.
You see here an upstanding man.
Had I heeded the words of my brother Marcuccio,
I’d not be in this frying pan.
Hearing his name, Marcuccio was torn
between feelings of shame and of care,
between justice and pity and honor and flesh.
What to do with his kin standing there?
Honor demanded that justice be paid,
but pity urged that he be freed.
And as he was weighing the pros and the cons
a herald ran in at full speed
crying, Stop! Do not hang him! The judge says forbear.
An incredible thing has occurred.
Two thieves sought their booty inside an old shed.
It was gone and they fought word by word
each blaming the other, and then blow by blow
it resulted in both being killed,
but before they expired, they confessed to the judge!
So this hanging must not be fulfilled.
Marcuccio revealed who he was at these words,
allowing Palmiero to see.
Through gaming and vice you have ruined your life.
Now I want you to come home with me.
You’ll learn that it’s Virtue that makes a man blessed.
You will taste of her fruits year by year.
I’ve forgotten the scorn that you showed long ago.
Come, my brother, I still hold you dear.
