A poor fellow at Palermo, who got his living by salting tunny and selling it afterwards, dreamt one night that a person came to him and said that if he wished to find his fortune he would find it under the bridge of the Teste. Thither he goes and sees a man in rags, and is beginning to retire when the man calls him back, informs him that he is his fortune, and bids him go at midnight of that same night to the place where he had deposited his casks of tunny, dig there, and whatever he found was his own. The tunny-seller gets a pick-axe and at midnight begins to dig. He comes upon a large flat stone, which he raises and discovers a staircase; he descends, and at the bottom finds an immense treasure of gold. In brief, he becomes so rich that he lends the King of Spain “a million,” to enable him to carry on his wars; the King makes him Viceroy of Sicily, and by-and-by, being unable to repay the loan, raises him to the highest royal dignities. Johannes Fungerus, in his “Etymologicon Latino-Græcum,” published at Leyden in 1607, in art. _Somnus_, gravely relates the story, with a young Dutchman for the hero and as having happened “within the memory of our fathers, both as it has been handed down in truthful and honourable fashion as well as frequently told to me.”[127] His “true story” may thus be rendered: A certain young man of Dort, in Holland, had squandered his wealth and all his estate, and having contracted a debt, was unable to pay it. A certain one appeared to him in a dream, and advised him to betake himself to Kempen, and there on the bridge he would receive information from some one as to the way in which he should be extricated from his difficulties. He went there, and when he was in a sorrowful mood and thinking upon what had been told him and promenaded almost the whole day, a common beggar, who was asking alms, pitying his condition, sat down and asked him, “Why so sad?” Thereupon the dreamer explained to him his sad and mournful fate, and why he had come there: forsooth, under the impulse of a dream, he had set out thither, and was expecting God, as if by a wonder, to unravel this more than Gordian knot. The mendicant answered, “Good Heaven! are you so mad and foolish as to rely on a dream, which is emptier than nothing, and journey hither? I should betake myself to Dort, to dig up a treasure buried under such a tree in such a man’s garden (now this garden had belonged to the dreamer’s father), likewise revealed to me in a dream.” The other remained silent and pondering all that had been said to him, then hastened with all speed to Dort, and under the aforesaid tree found a great heap of money, which freed him from his obligations, and having paid off all his debts, he set up in a more sumptuous style than before.