THIRD TEN TALES



PROLOGUE

Certain persons have interrogated the author as to why there was such
a demand for these tales that no year passes without his giving an
instalment of them, and why he has lately taken to writing commas
mixed up with bad syllables, at which the ladies publicly knit their
brows, and have put to him other questions of a like character.

The author declares that these treacherous words, cast like pebbles in
his path, have touched him in the very depths of his heart, and he is
sufficiently cognisant of his duty not to fail to give to his special
audience in this prologue certain reasons other than the preceding
ones, because it is always necessary to reason with children until
they are grown up, understand things, and hold their tongues; and
because he perceives many mischievous fellows among the crowd of noisy
people, who ignore at pleasure the real object of these volumes.

In the first place know, that if certain virtuous ladies--I say
virtuous because common and low class women do not read these stories,
preferring those that are never published; on the contrary, other
citizens' wives and ladies, of high respectability and godliness,
although doubtless disgusted with the subject-matter, read them