Salvatore asks Alfredo for advice. The two walk the streets, and Alfredo carries on about why God created women.

They sit on the stoop of a doorway, and Alfredo spins a tale:

"A king gave a feast for the loveliest princesses of the realm.  A soldier standing guard saw the king's daughter go by.  She was the most beautiful of all, and he fell in love with her.  But what is a simple soldier next to the daughter of a king?  When he met her, he told her he could not live without her.

The princess, taken with his depth of feeling, told him, 'If you wait for 100 days and 100 nights under my balcony, I shall be yours.'

With that the soldier went and waited one day, ten days, twenty days. Each evening the princess looked out, and he never moved.  In wind and rain and snow he was always there.  At the end of 90 nights tears streamed from his eyes.  He didn't have the strength to sleep.  And all that while, the princess watched him.  Finally, it was the 99th night.  The soldier stood up, took his chair, and left."

Salvatore is stunned. "What happened then?"
"That is the end!" Salvatore exclaims.  "And don't ask what it means.

I don't know."  He stands.

"If you figure it out, you tell me."