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The Decameron, Volume I

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Title: The Decameron, Volume I

Author: Giovanni Boccaccio

Translator: J. M. Rigg


        
Release date: February 1, 2003 [eBook #3726]
                Most recently updated: January 8, 2021

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3726

Credits: This etext was produced by Donna Holsten


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DECAMERON, VOLUME I ***
Ver.07/27/01*END*




This etext was produced by Donna Holsten.



The Decameron

of

Giovanni Boccaccio

Faithfully Translated

By J.M. Rigg

with illustrations by Louis Chalon


--CONTENTS--


INTRODUCTION

PROEM

- FIRST DAY -

NOVEL I. - Ser Ciappelletto cheats a holy friar by a false confession, and
dies; and, having lived as a very bad man, is, on his death, reputed a
saint, and called San Ciappelletto.

NOVEL II. - Abraham, a Jew, at the instance of Jehannot de Chevigny, goes to
the court of Rome, and having marked the evil life of clergy, returns to
Paris, and becomes a Christian.

NOVEL III. - Melchisedech, a Jew, by a story of three rings averts a danger
with which he was menaced by Saladin.

NOVEL IV. - A monk lapses into a sin meriting the most severe punishment,
justly censures the same fault in his abbot, and thus evades the penalty.

NOVEL V. - The Marchioness of Monferrato by a banquet of hens seasoned with
wit checks the mad passion of the King of France.

NOVEL VI. - A worthy man by an apt saying puts to shame the wicked hypocrisy
of the religious.

NOVEL VII. - Bergamino, with a story of Primasso and the Abbot of Cluny,
finely censures a sudden access of avarice in Messer Cane della Scala.

NOVEL VIII. - Guglielmo Borsiere by a neat retort sharply censures avarice
in Messer Ermino de' Grimaldi.

NOVEL IX. - The censure of a Gascon lady converts the King of Cyprus from a
churlish to an honourable temper.

NOVEL X. - Master Alberto da Bologna honourably puts to shame a lady who
sought occasion to put him to shame in that he was in love with her.

- SECOND DAY -

NOVEL I. - Martellino pretends to be a paralytic, and makes it appear as if
he were cured by being placed upon the body of St. Arrigo. His trick is
detected; he is beaten and arrested, and is in peril of hanging, but finally
escapes.

NOVEL II. - Rinaldo d'Asti is robbed, arrives at Castel Guglielmo, and is
entertained by a widow lady; his property is restored to him, and he returns
home safe and sound.

NOVEL III. - Three young men squander their substance and are reduced to
poverty. Their nephew, returning home a desperate man, falls in with an
abbot, in whom he discovers the daughter of the King of England. She marries
him, and he retrieves the losses and re-establishes the fortune of his
uncles.

NOVEL IV. - Landolfo Ruffolo is reduced to poverty, turns corsair, is
captured by Genoese, is shipwrecked, escapes on a chest full of jewels, and,
being cast ashore at Corfu, is hospitably entertained by a woman, and
returns home wealthy.

NOVEL V. - Andreuccio da Perugia comes to Naples to buy horses, meets with
three serious adventures in one night, comes safe out of them all, and
returns home with a ruby.

NOVEL VI. - Madam Beritola loses two sons, is found with two kids on an
island, goes thence to Lunigiana, where one of her sons takes service with
her master, and lies with his daughter, for which he is put in prison.
Sicily rebels against King Charles, the son is recognized by the mother,
marries the master's daughter, and, his brother being discovered, is
reinstated in great honour.

NOVEL VII. - The Soldan of Babylon sends one of his daughters overseas,
designing to marry her to the King of Algarve. By divers adventures she
comes in the space of four years into the hands of nine men in divers place.
At last she is restored to her father, whom she quits again in the guise of
a virgin, and, as was at first intended, is married to the King of Algarve.

NOVEL VIII. - The Count of Antwerp, labouring under a false accusation, goes
into exile. He leaves his two children in different places in England, and
takes service in Ireland. Returning to England an unknown man, he finds his
sons prosperous. He serves as a groom in the army of the King of France; his
innocence is established, and he is restored to his former honours.

NOVEL IX. - Bernabo of Genoa, deceived by Ambrogiuolo, loses his money and
commands his innocent wife to be put to death. She escapes, habits herself
as a man, and serves the Soldan. She discovers the deceiver, and brings
Bernabo to Alexandria, where the deceiver is punished. She then resumes the
garb of a woman, and with her husband returns wealthy to Genoa.

NOVEL X. - Paganino da Monaco carries off the wife of Messer Ricciardo di
Chinzica, who, having learned where she is, goes to Paganino and in a
friendly manner asks him to restore her. He consents, provided she be
willing. She refuses to go back with her husband. Messer Ricciardo dies, and
she marries Paganino.

- THIRD DAY -

NOVEL I. - Masetto da Lamporecchio feigns to be dumb, and obtains a
gardener's place at a convent of women, who with one accord make haste to
lie with him.

NOVEL II. - A groom lies with the wife of King Agilulf, who learns the fact,
keeps his own counsel, finds out the groom and shears him. The shorn shears
all his fellows, and so comes safe out of the scrape.

NOVEL III. - Under cloak of confession and a most spotless conscience, a
lady, enamoured of a young man, induces a booby friar unwittingly to provide
a means to the entire gratification of her passion.

NOVEL IV. - Dom Felice instructs Fra Puccio how to attain blessedness by
doing a penance. Fra Puccio does the penance, and meanwhile Dom Felice has a
good time with Fra Puccio's wife.

NOVEL V. - Zima gives a palfrey to Messer Francesco Vergellesi, who in
return suffers him to speak with his wife. She keeping silence, he answers
in her stead, and the sequel is in accordance with his answer.

NOVEL VI. - Ricciardo Minutolo loves the wife of Filippello Fighinolfi, and
knowing her to be jealous, makes her believe that his own wife is to meet
Filippello at a bagnio on the ensuing day; whereby she is induced to go
thither, where, thinking to have been with her husband, she discovers that
she has tarried with Ricciardo.

NOVEL VII. - Tedaldo, being in disfavour with his lady, departs from
Florence. He returns thither after a while in the guise of a pilgrim, has
speech of his lady, and makes her sensible of her fault. Her husband,
convicted of slaying him, he delivers from peril of death, reconciles him
with his brothers, and thereafter discreetly enjoys his lady.

NOVEL VIII. ź Ferondo, having taken a certain powder, is interred for dead;
is disinterred by the abbot, who enjoys his wife; is put in prison and
taught to believe that he is in purgatory; is then resuscitated, and rears
as his own a boy begotten by the abbot upon his wife.

NOVEL IX. - Gillette of Narbonne cures the King of France of a fistula,
craves for spouse Bertrand de Roussillon, who marries her against his will,
and hies him in despite to Florence, where, as he courts a young woman,
Gillette lies with him in her stead, and has two sons by him; for which
cause he afterwards takes her into favour and entreats her as his wife.

NOVEL X. - Alibech turns hermit, and is taught by Rustico, a monk, how the
Devil is put in hell. She is afterwards conveyed thence, and becomes the
wife of Neerbale.

- FOURTH DAY -

NOVEL I. - Tancred, Prince of Salerno, slays his daughter's lover, and sends
her his heart in a golden cup: she pours upon it a poisonous distillation,
which she drinks and dies.

NOVEL II. - Fra Alberto gives a lady to understand that she is beloved of
the Angel Gabriel, in whose shape he lies with her sundry times; afterward,
for fear of her kinsmen, he flings himself forth of her house, and finds
shelter in the house of a poor man, who on the morrow leads him in the guise
of a wild man into the piazza, where, being recognized, he is apprehended by
his brethren and imprisoned.

NOVEL III. - Three young men love three sisters, and flee with them to
Crete. The eldest of the sisters slays her lover for jealousy. The second
saves the life of the first by yielding herself to the Duke of Crete. Her
lover slays her, and makes off with the first: the third sister and her
lover are charged with the murder, are arrested and confess the crime. They
escape death by bribing the guards, flee destitute to Rhodes, and there in
destitution die.

NOVEL IV. - Gerbino, in breach of the plighted faith of his grandfather,
King Guglielmo, attacks a ship of the King of Tunis to rescue thence his
daughter. She being slain by those aboard the ship, he slays them, and
afterwards he is beheaded.

NOVEL V. - Lisabetta's brothers slay her lover: he appears to her in a
dream, and shews her where he is buried: she privily disinters the head, and
sets it in a pot of basil, whereon she daily weeps a great while. The pot
being taken from her by her brothers, she dies not long after.

NOVEL VI. - Andreuola loves Gabriotto: she tells him a dream that she has
had; he tells her a dream of his own, and dies suddenly in her arms. While
she and her maid are carrying his corpse to his house, they are taken by the
Signory. She tells how the matter stands, is threatened with violence by the
Podesta, but will not brook it. Her father hears how she is bested, and, her
innocence being established, causes her to be set at large; but she, being
minded to tarry no longer in the world, becomes a nun.

NOVEL VII. - Simona loves Pasquino; they are together in a garden, Pasquino
rubs a leaf of sage against his teeth, and dies; Simona is arrested, and,
with intent to shew the judge how Pasquino died, rubs one of the leaves of
the same plant against her teeth, and likewise dies.

NOVEL VIII. - Girolamo loves Salvestra: yielding to his mother's prayers he
goes to Paris; he returns to find Salvestra married; he enters her house by
stealth, lays himself by her side, and dies; he is borne to the church,
where Salvestra lays herself by his side, and dies.

Nova IX. - Sieur Guillaume de Roussillon slays his wife's paramour, Sieur
Guillaume de Cabestaing, and gives her his heart to eat. She, coming to wit
thereof, throws herself from a high window to the ground, and dies, and is
buried with her lover.

NOVEL X. - The wife of a leech, deeming her lover, who has taken an opiate,
to be dead, puts him in a chest, which, with him therein, two usurers carry
off to their house. He comes to himself, and is taken for a thief; but, the
lady's maid giving the Signory to understand that she had put him in the
chest which the usurers stole, he escapes the gallows, and the usurers are
mulcted in moneys for the theft of the chest.


ILLUSTRATIONS TO THE DECAMERON

VOLUME I.

The lady and the friar (third day, third story) - Frontispiece

The three rings (first day, third story)

The dinner of hens (first day, fifth story)

Rinaldo D'Asti and the widow lady (second day, second story)

Alatiel dancing (second day, seventh story)

The wedding party (fourth day, introduction)

The daughter of the King of Tunis (fourth day, fourth story)

Simona and Pasquino (fourth day, seventh story)


INTRODUCTION

Son of a merchant, Boccaccio di Chellino di Buonaiuto, of Certaldo in Val
d'Elsa, a little town about midway between Empoli and Siena, but within the
Florentine "contado," Giovanni Boccaccio was born, most probably at Paris,
in the year 1313. His mother, at any rate, was a Frenchwoman, whom his
father seduced during a sojourn at Paris, and afterwards deserted. So much
as this Boccaccio has himself told us, under a transparent veil of allegory,
in his Ameto. Of his mother we would fain know more, for his wit has in it
a quality, especially noticeable in the Tenth Novel of the Sixth Day of the
Decameron, which marks him out as the forerunner of Rabelais, and prompts us
to ask how much more his genius may have owed to his French ancestry. His
father was of sufficient standing in Florence to be chosen Prior in 1321;
but this brief term of office--but two months--was his last, as well as his
first experience of public life. Of Boccaccio's early years we know nothing
more than that his first preceptor was the Florentine grammarian, Giovanni
da Strada, father of the poet Zanobi da Strada, and that, when he was about
ten years old, he was bound apprentice to a merchant, with whom he spent
the next six years at Paris, whence he returned to Florence with an
inveterate repugnance to commerce. His father then proposed to make a
canonist of him; but the study of Gratian proved hardly more congenial than
the routine of the counting-house to the lad, who had already evinced a
taste for letters; and a sojourn at Naples, where under the regime of the
enlightened King Robert there were coteries of learned men, and even Greek
was not altogether unknown, decided his future career. According to Filippo
Villani his choice was finally fixed by a visit to the tomb of Vergil on the
Via Puteolana, and, though the modern critical spirit is apt to discount such
stories, there can be no doubt that such a pilgrimage would be apt to make a
deep, and perhaps enduring, impression upon a nature ardent and sensitive,
and already conscious of extraordinary powers. His stay at Naples was also in
another respect a turning point in his life; for it was there that, as we
gather from the Filocopo, he first saw the blonde beauty, Maria, natural
daughter of King Robert, whom he has immortalized as Fiammetta. The place was
the church of San Lorenzo, the day the 26th of March, 1334. Boccaccio's
admiring gaze was observed by the lady, who, though married, proved no Laura,
and forthwith returned his love in equal measure. Their liaison lasted several
years, during which Boccaccio recorded the various phases of their passion
with exemplary assiduity in verse and prose. Besides paying her due and
discreet homage in sonnet and canzone, he associated her in one way or another,
not only with the Filocopo (his prose romance of Florio and Biancofiore, which
he professes to have written to pleasure her), but with the Ameto, the Amorosa
Visione, the Teseide, and the Filostrato; and in L'Amorosa Fiammetta he wove
out of their relations a romance in which her lover, who is there called
Pamfilo, plays Aeneas to her Dido, though with somewhat less tragic
consequences. The Proem to the Decameron shews us the after-glow of his
passion; the lady herself appears as one of the "honourable company," and
her portrait, as in the act of receiving the laurel wreath at the close of
the Fourth Day, is a masterpiece of tender and delicate delineation.

Boccaccio appears to have been recalled to Florence by his father in 1341;
and it was probably in that year that he wrote L'Amorosa Fiammetta and the
allegorical prose pastoral (with songs interspersed) which he entitled
Ameto, and in which Fiammetta masquerades in green as one of the nymphs.
The Amorosa Visione, written about the same time, is not only an allegory but
an acrostic, the initial letters of its fifteen hundred triplets composing two
sonnets and a ballade in honour of Fiammetta, whom he here for once ventures
to call by her true name. Later came the Teseide, or romance of Palamon and
Arcite, the first extant rendering of the story, in twelve books, and the
Filostrato, nine books of the loves and woes of Troilus and Cressida. Both
these poems are in ottava rima, a metre which, if Boccaccio did not invent
it, he was the first to apply to such a purpose. Both works were dedicated
to Fiammetta. A graceful idyll in the same metre, Ninfale Fiesolano, was
written later, probably at Naples in 1345. King Robert was then dead, but
Boccaccio enjoyed the favour of Queen Joan, of somewhat doubtful memory, at
whose instance he hints in one of his later letters that he wrote the
Decameron. Without impugning Boccaccio's veracity we can hardly but think
that the Decameron would have seen the light, though Queen Joan had withheld
her encouragement. He had probably been long meditating it, and gathering
materials for it, and we may well suppose that the outbreak of the plague in
1348, by furnishing him with a sombre background to heighten the effect of
his motley pageant, had far more to do with accelerating the composition
than aught that Queen Joan may have said.

That Boccaccio was not at Florence during the pestilence is certain; but we
need not therefore doubt the substantial accuracy of his marvellous
description of the state of the stricken city, for the course and
consequences of the terrible visitation must have been much the same in all
parts of Italy, and as to Florence in particular, Boccaccio could have no
difficulty in obtaining detailed and abundant information from credible
eye-witnesses. The introduction of Fiammetta, who was in all probability at
Naples at the time, and in any case was not a Florentine, shews, however,
that he is by no means to be taken literally, and renders it extremely
probable that the facetious, irrepressible, and privileged Dioneo is no
other than himself. At the same time we cannot deem it either impossible,
or very unlikely, that in the general relaxation of morale, which the plague
brought in its train, refuge from care and fear was sought in the diversions
which he describes by some of those who had country-seats to which to
withdraw, and whether the "contado" was that of Florence or that of Naples
is a matter of no considerable importance. (1) It is probable that
Boccaccio's father was one of the victims of the pestilence; for he was dead
in 1350, when his son returned to Florence to live thenceforth on the modest
patrimony which he inherited. It must have been about this time that he
formed an intimacy with Petrarch, which, notwithstanding marked diversity
of temperament, character and pursuits, was destined to be broken only by
death. Despite his complaints of the malevolence of his critics in the Proem
to the Fourth Day of the Decameron, he had no lack of appreciation on the
part of his fellow-citizens, and was employed by the Republic on several
missions; to Bologna, probably with the view of averting the submission of
that city to the Visconti in 1350; to Petrarch at Padua in March 1351, with
a letter from the Priors announcing his restitution to citizenship, and
inviting him to return to Florence, and assume the rectorship of the newly
founded university; to Ludwig of Brandenburg with overtures for an alliance
against the Visconti in December of the same year; and in the spring of 1354
to Pope Innocent VI. at Avignon in reference to the approaching visit of the
Emperor Charles IV. to Italy. About this time, 1354-5, he threw off, in
striking contrast to his earlier works, an invective against women, entitled
Laberinto d'Amore, otherwise Corbaccio, a coarse performance occasioned by
resentment at what he deemed capricious treatment by a lady to whom he had
made advances. To the same period, though the date cannot be precisely fixed,
belongs his Life of Dante, a work of but mediocre merit. Somewhat later, it
would seem, he began the study of Greek under one Leontius Pilatus, a
Calabrian, who possessed some knowledge of that language, and sought to pass
himself off as a Greek by birth.

Leontius was of coarse manners and uncertain temper, but Boccaccio was his
host and pupil for some years, and eventually procured him the chair of
Greek in the university of Florence. How much Greek Boccaccio learned from
him, and how far he may have been beholden to him in the compilation of
his elaborate Latin treatise De Genealogia Deorum, in which he essayed with
very curious results to expound the inner meaning of mythology, it is
impossible to say. In 1361 he seems to have had serious thoughts of
devoting himself to religion, being prodigiously impressed by the menaces,
monitions and revelations of a dying Carthusian of Siena. One of the
revelations concerned a matter which Boccaccio had supposed to be known only
to Petrarch and himself. He accordingly confided his anxiety to Petrarch,
who persuaded him to amend his life without renouncing the world. In 1362
he revisited Naples, and in the following year spent three months with
Petrarch at Venice. In 1365 he was sent by the Republic of Florence on a
mission of conciliation to Pope Urban V. at Avignon. He was employed on a
like errand on the Pope's return to Rome in 1367. In 1368 he revisited
Venice, and in 1371 Naples; but in May 1372 he returned to Florence, where
on 25th August 1373 he was appointed lecturer on the Divina Commedia, with
a yearly stipend of 100 fiorini d'oro. His lectures, of which the first
was delivered in the church of San Stefano near the Ponte Vecchio, were
discontinued owing to ill health, doubtless aggravated by the distress which
the death of Petrarch (20th July 1374) could not but cause him, when he had
got no farther than the seventeenth Canto of the Inferno. His commentary is
still occasionally quoted. He died, perhaps in the odour of sanctity, for
in later life he was a diligent collector of relics, at Certaldo on 21st
December 1375, and was buried in the parish church. His tomb was desecrated,
and his remains were dispersed, owing, it is said, to a misunderstanding,
towards the close of the eighteenth century. His library, which by his
direction was placed in the Convent of Santo Spirito at Florence, was
destroyed by fire about a century after his death.

Besides the De Genealogia Deorum Boccaccio wrote other treatises in Latin,
which need not here be specified, and sixteen Eclogues in the same language,
of which he was by no means a master. As for his minor works in the
vernacular, the earlier of them shew that he had not as yet wrought himself
free from the conventionalism which the polite literature of Italy inherited
from the Sicilians. It is therefore inevitable that the twentieth century
should find the Filocopo, Ameto, and Amorosa Visione tedious reading. The
Teseide determined the form in which Pulci, Boiardo, Bello, Ariosto, Tasso,
and, with a slight modification, our own Spenser were to write, but its
readers are now few, and are not likely ever again to be numerous. Chaucer
drew upon it for the Knight's Tale, but it is at any rate arguable that his
retrenchment of its perhaps inordinate length was judicious, and that what
he gave was better than what he borrowed. Still, that it had such a redactor
as Chaucer is no small testimony to its merit; nor was it only in the
Knight's Tale that he was indebted to it: the description of the Temple of
Love in the Parlement of Foules is taken almost word for word from it. Even
more considerable and conspicuous is Chaucer's obligation to Boccaccio in
the Troilus and Criseyde, about a third of which is borrowed from the
Filostrato. Nor is it a little remarkable that the same man, that in the
Teseide and Filostrato founded the chivalrous epic, should also and in the
same period of his literary activity, have written the first and not the
least powerful and artistic of psychologic romances, for even such is
L'Amorosa Fiammetta.

But whatever may be the final verdict of criticism upon these minor works of
Boccaccio, it is impossible to imagine an age in which the Decameron will
fail of general recognition as, in point alike of invention as of style, one
of the most notable creations of human genius. Of few books are the sources
so recondite, insomuch that it seems to be certain that in the main they
must have be merely oral tradition, and few have exercised so wide and
mighty an influence. The profound, many-sided and intimate knowledge of
human nature which it evinces, its vast variety of incident, its wealth
of tears and laughter, its copious and felicitous diction, inevitably apt
for every occasion, and, notwithstanding the frequent harshness, and
occasional obscurity of its at times tangled, at times laboured periods,
its sustained energy and animation of style must ever ensure for this human
comedy unchallenged rank among the literary masterpieces that are truly
immortal.

The Decameron was among the earliest of printed books, Venice leading the
way with a folio edition in 1471, Mantua following suit in 1472, and
Vicenza in 1478. A folio edition, adorned, with most graceful wood-
engravings, was published at Venice in 1492. Notwithstanding the freedom
with which in divers passages Boccaccio reflected on the morals of the
clergy, the Roman Curia spared the book, which the austere Savonarola
condemned to the flames. The tradition that the Decameron was among the
pile of "vanities" burned by Savonarola in the Piazza della Signoria on
the last day of the Carnival of 1497, little more than a year before he
was himself burned there, is so intrinsically probable--and accords so
well with the extreme paucity of early copies of the work--that it would
be the very perversity of scepticism to doubt it. It is by no means to
the credit of our country that, except to scholars, it long remained in
England, an almost entirely closed book. (2) Indeed the first nominally
complete English translation, a sadly mutilated and garbled rendering of
the French version by Antoine Le Macon, did not appear till 1620, and
though successive redactions brought it nearer to the original, it
remained at the best but a sorry faute de mieux. Such as it was,
however, our forefathers were perforce fain to be content with it.

The first Englishman to render the whole Decameron direct from the Italian
was Mr. John Payne; but his work, printed for the Villon Society in 1886,
was only for private circulation, and those least inclined to disparage
its merits may deem its style somewhat too archaic and stilted adequately
to render the vigour and vivacity of the original. Accordingly in the
present version an attempt has been made to hit the mean between archaism
and modernism, and to secure as much freedom and spirit as is compatible
with substantial accuracy.

(1) As to the palaces in which the scene is laid, Manni (Istoria del
Decamerone, Par. ii. cap. ii.) identifies the first with a villa near
Fiesole, which can be no other than the Villa Palmieri, and the second (ib.
cap. lxxvi.) with the Podere della Fonte, or so-called Villa del Boccaccio,
near Camerata. Baldelli's theory, adopted by Mrs. Janet Ann Ross (Florentine
Villas, 1901), that the Villa di Poggio Gherardi was the first, and the
Villa Palmieri the second, retreat is not to be reconciled with Boccaccio's
descriptions. The Villa Palmieri is not remote enough for the second and
more sequestered retreat, nor is it, as that is said to have been, situate
on a low hill amid a plain, but on the lower Fiesolean slope. The most
rational supposition would seem to be that Boccaccio, who had seen many a
luxurious villa, freely combined his experiences in the description of his
palaces and pleasaunces, and never expected to be taken au pied de la
lettre.

(2) Nevertheless Shakespeare derived indirectly the plot of All's Well that
Ends Well from the Ninth Novel of the Third Day, and an element in the plot
of Cymbeline from the Ninth Novel of the Second Day.


--
Beginneth here the book called Decameron, otherwise Prince Galeotto, wherein
are contained one hundred novels told in ten days by seven ladies and three
young men.
--

PROEM

'Tis humane to have compassion on the afflicted and as it shews well in all,
so it is especially demanded of those who have had need of comfort and have
found it in others: among whom, if any had ever need thereof or found it
precious or delectable, I may be numbered; seeing that from my early youth
even to the present I was beyond measure aflame with a most aspiring and
noble love (1) more perhaps than, were I to enlarge upon it, would seem to
accord with my lowly condition. Whereby, among people of discernment to
whose knowledge it had come, I had much praise and high esteem, but
nevertheless extreme discomfort and suffering not indeed by reason of
cruelty on the part of the beloved lady, but through superabundant ardour
engendered in the soul by ill-bridled desire; the which, as it allowed me no
reasonable period of quiescence, frequently occasioned me an inordinate
distress. In which distress so much relief was afforded me by the delectable
discourse of a friend and his commendable consolations, that I entertain a
very solid conviction that to them I owe it that I am not dead. But, as it
pleased Him, who, being infinite, has assigned by immutable law an end to
all things mundane, my love, beyond all other fervent, and neither to be
broken nor bent by any force of determination, or counsel of prudence, or
fear of manifest shame or ensuing danger, did nevertheless in course of time
me abate of its own accord, in such wise that it has now left nought of
itself in my mind but that pleasure which it is wont to afford to him who
does not adventure too far out in navigating its deep seas; so that, whereas
it was used to be grievous, now, all discomfort being done away, I find that
which remains to be delightful. But the cessation of the pain has not
banished the memory of the kind offices done me by those who shared by
sympathy the burden of my griefs; nor will it ever, I believe, pass from me
except by death. And as among the virtues, gratitude is in my judgment most
especially to be commended, and ingratitude in equal measure to be censured,
therefore, that I show myself not ungrateful, I have resolved, now that I
may call myself to endeavour, in return for what I have received, to afford,
so far as in me lies, some solace, if not to those who succoured and who,
perchance, by reason of their good sense or good fortune, need it not, at
least to such as may be apt to receive it.

And though my support or comfort, so to say, may be of little avail to the
needy, nevertheless it seems to me meet to offer it most readily where the
need is most apparent, because it will there be most serviceable and also
most kindly received. Who will deny, that it should be given, for all that
it may be worth, to gentle ladies much rather than to men? Within their soft
bosoms, betwixt fear and shame, they harbour secret fires of love, and how
much of strength concealment adds to those fires, they know who have proved
it. Moreover, restrained by the will, the caprice, the commandment of
fathers, mothers, brothers, and husbands, confined most part of their time
within the narrow compass of their chambers, they live, so to say, a life of
vacant ease, and, yearning and renouncing in the same moment, meditate
divers matters which cannot all be cheerful. If thereby a melancholy bred of
amorous desire make entrance into their minds, it is like to tarry there to
their sore distress, unless it be dispelled by a change of ideas. Besides
which they have much less power to support such a weight than men. For, when
men are enamoured, their case is very different, as we may readily perceive.
They, if they are afflicted by a melancholy and heaviness of mood, have many
ways of relief and diversion; they may go where they will, may hear and see
many things, may hawk, hunt, fish, ride, play or traffic. By which means all
are able to compose their minds, either in whole or in part, and repair the
ravage wrought by the dumpish mood, at least for some space of time; and
shortly after, by one way or another, either solace ensues, or the dumps
become less grievous. Wherefore, in some measure to compensate the injustice
of Fortune, which to those whose strength is least, as we see it to be in
the delicate frames of ladies, has been most niggard of support, I, for the
succour and diversion of such of them as love (for others may find
sufficient solace in the needle and the spindle and the reel), do intend to
recount one hundred Novels or Fables or Parables or Stories, as we may
please to call them, which were recounted in ten days by an honourable
company of seven ladies and three young men in the time of the late mortal
pestilence, as also some canzonets sung by the said ladies for their
delectation. In which pleasant novels will be found some passages of love
rudely crossed, with other courses of events of which the issues are
felicitous, in times as well modern as ancient: from which stories the said
ladies, who shall read them, may derive both pleasure from the entertaining
matters set forth therein, and also good counsel, in that they may learn
what to shun, and likewise what to pursue. Which cannot, I believe, come to
pass unless the dumps be banished by diversion of mind. And if it so happen
(as God grant it may) let them give thanks to Love, who, liberating me from
his fetters, has given me the power to devote myself to their gratification.

(1) For Fiammetta, i. e. Maria, natural daughter of Robert, King of Naples.


--
Beginneth here the first day of the Decameron, in which, when the author has
set forth, how it came to pass that the persons, who appear hereafter met
together for interchange of discourse, they, under the rule of Pampinea,
discourse of such matters as most commend themselves to each in turn.
--

As often, most gracious ladies, as I bethink me, how compassionate you are
by nature one and all, I do not disguise from myself that the present work
must seem to you to have but a heavy and distressful prelude, in that it
bears upon its very front what must needs revive the sorrowful memory of the
late mortal pestilence, the course whereof was grievous not merely to eye-
witnesses but to all who in any other wise had cognisance of it. But I would
have you know, that you need not therefore be fearful to read further, as if
your reading were ever to be accompanied by sighs and tears. This horrid
beginning will be to you even such as to wayfarers is a steep and rugged
mountain, beyond which stretches a plain most fair and delectable, which the
toil of the ascent and descent does but serve to render more agreeable to
them; for, as the last degree of joy brings with it sorrow, so misery has
ever its sequel of happiness. To this brief exordium of woe--brief, I say,
inasmuch as it can be put within the compass of a few letters--succeed
forthwith the sweets and delights which I have promised you, and which,
perhaps, had I not done so, were not to have been expected from it. In
truth, had it been honestly possible to guide you whither I would bring you
by a road less rough than this will be, I would gladly have so done. But,
because without this review of the past, it would not be in my power to shew
how the matters, of which you will hereafter read, came to pass, I am almost
bound of necessity to enter upon it, if I would write of them at all.

I say, then, that the years of the beatific incarnation of the Son of God
had reached the tale of one thousand three hundred and forty-eight when in
the illustrious city of Florence, the fairest of all the cities of Italy,
there made its appearance that deadly pestilence, which, whether
disseminated by the influence of the celestial bodies, or sent upon us
mortals by God in His just wrath by way of retribution for our iniquities,
had had its origin some years before in the East, whence, after destroying
an innumerable multitude of living beings, it had propagated itself without
respite from place to place, and so, calamitously, had spread into the West.

In Florence, despite all that human wisdom and forethought could devise to
avert it, as the cleansing of the city from many impurities by officials
appointed for the purpose, the refusal of entrance to all sick folk, and the
adoption of many precautions for the preservation of health; despite also
humble supplications addressed to God, and often repeated both in public
procession and otherwise, by the devout; towards the beginning of the spring
of the said year the doleful effects of the pestilence began to be horribly
apparent by symptoms that shewed as if miraculous.

Not such were they as in the East, where an issue of blood from the nose was
a manifest sign of inevitable death; but in men and women alike it first
betrayed itself by the emergence of certain tumours in the groin or the
armpits, some of which grew as large as a common apple, others as an egg,
some more, some less, which the common folk called gavoccioli. From the two
said parts of the body this deadly gavocciolo soon began to propagate and
spread itself in all directions indifferently; after which the form of the
malady began to change, black spots or livid making their appearance in many
cases on the arm or the thigh or elsewhere, now few and large, now minute
and numerous. And as the gavocciolo had been and still was an infallible
token of approaching death, such also were these spots on whomsoever they
shewed themselves. Which maladies seemed to set entirely at naught both the
art of the physician and the virtues of physic; indeed, whether it was that
the disorder was of a nature to defy such treatment, or that the physicians
were at fault--besides the qualified there was now a multitude both of men
and of women who practised without having received the slightest tincture of
medical science--and, being in ignorance of its source, failed to apply the
proper remedies; in either case, not merely were those that recovered few,
but almost all within three days from the appearance of the said symptoms,
sooner or later, died, and in most cases without any fever or other
attendant malady.

Moreover, the virulence of the pest was the greater by reason that
intercourse was apt to convey it from the sick to the whole, just as fire
devours things dry or greasy when they are brought close to it. Nay, the
evil went yet further, for not merely by speech or association with the sick
was the malady communicated to the healthy with consequent peril of common
death; but any that touched the cloth of the sick or aught else that had
been touched or used by them, seemed thereby to contract the disease.

So marvellous sounds that which I have now to relate, that, had not many,
and I among them, observed it with their own eyes, I had hardly dared to
credit it, much less to set it down in writing, though I had had it from the
lips of a credible witness.

I say, then, that such was the energy of the contagion of the said
pestilence, that it was not merely propagated from man to man but, what is
much more startling, it was frequently observed, that things which had
belonged to one sick or dead of the disease, if touched by some other living
creature, not of the human species, were the occasion, not merely of
sickening, but of an almost instantaneous death. Whereof my own eyes (as I
said a little before) had cognisance, one day among others, by the following
experience. The rags of a poor man who had died of the disease being strewn
about the open street, two hogs came thither, and after, as is their wont,
no little trifling with their snouts, took the rags between their teeth and
tossed them to and fro about their chaps; whereupon, almost immediately,
they gave a few turns, and fell down dead, as if by poison, upon the rags
which in an evil hour they had disturbed.

In which circumstances, not to speak of many others of a similar or even
graver complexion, divers apprehensions and imaginations were engendered in
the minds of such as were left alive, inclining almost all of them to the
same harsh resolution, to wit, to shun and abhor all contact with the sick
and all that belonged to them, thinking thereby to make each his own health
secure. Among whom there were those who thought that to live temperately and
avoid all excess would count for much as a preservative against seizures of
this kind. Wherefore they banded together, and, dissociating themselves from
all others, formed communities in houses where there were no sick, and lived
a separate and secluded life, which they regulated with the utmost care,
avoiding every kind of luxury, but eating and drinking very moderately of
the most delicate viands and the finest wines, holding converse with none
but one another, lest tidings of sickness or death should reach them, and
diverting their minds with music and such other delights as they could
devise. Others, the bias of whose minds was in the opposite direction,
maintained, that to drink freely, frequent places of public resort, and take
their pleasure with song and revel, sparing to satisfy no appetite, and to
laugh and mock at no event, was the sovereign remedy for so great an evil:
and that which they affirmed they also put in practice, so far as they were
able, resorting day and night, now to this tavern, now to that, drinking
with an entire disregard of rule or measure, and by preference making the
houses of others, as it were, their inns, if they but saw in them aught that
was particularly to their taste or liking; which they were readily able to
do, because the owners, seeing death imminent, had become as reckless of
their property as of their lives; so that most of the houses were open to
all comers, and no distinction was observed between the stranger who
presented himself and the rightful lord. Thus, adhering ever to their
inhuman determination to shun the sick, as far as possible, they ordered
their life. In this extremity of our city's suffering and tribulation the
venerable authority of laws, human and divine, was abased and all but
totally dissolved, for lack of those who should have administered and
enforced them, most of whom, like the rest of the citizens, were either dead
or sick, or so hard bested for servants that they were unable to execute any
office; whereby every man was free to do what was right in his own eyes.

Not a few there were who belonged to neither of the two said parties, but
kept a middle course between them, neither laying the same restraint upon
their diet as the former, nor allowing themselves the same license in
drinking and other dissipations as the latter, but living with a degree of
freedom sufficient to satisfy their appetites, and not as recluses. They
therefore walked abroad, carrying in their hands flowers or fragrant herbs
or divers sorts of spices, which they frequently raised to their noses,
deeming it an excellent thing thus to comfort the brain with such perfumes,
because the air seemed to be everywhere laden and reeking with the stench
emitted by the dead and the dying and the odours of drugs.

Some again, the most sound, perhaps, in judgment, as they we also the most
harsh in temper, of all, affirmed that there was no medicine for the disease
superior or equal in efficacy to flight; following which prescription a
multitude of men and women, negligent of all but themselves, deserted their
city, their houses, their estate, their kinsfolk, their goods, and went into
voluntary exile, or migrated to the country parts, as if God in visiting men
with this pestilence in requital of their iniquities would not pursue them
with His wrath, wherever they might be, but intended the destruction of such
alone as remained within the circuit of the walls of the city; or deeming,
perchance, that it was now time for all to flee from it, and that its last
hour was come.

Of the adherents of these divers opinions not all died, neither did all
escape; but rather there were, of each sort and in every place, many that
sickened, and by those who retained their health were treated after the
example which they themselves, while whole, had set, being everywhere left
to languish in almost total neglect. Tedious were it to recount, how citizen
avoided citizen, how among neighbours was scarce found any that shewed
fellow-feeling for another, how kinsfolk held aloof, and never met, or but
rarely; enough that this sore affliction entered so deep into the minds of
men and women, that in the horror thereof brother was forsaken by brother,
nephew by uncle, brother by sister, and oftentimes husband by wife; nay,
what is more, and scarcely to be believed, fathers and mothers were found to
abandon their own children, untended, unvisited, to their fate, as if they
had been strangers. Wherefore the sick of both sexes, whose number could not
be estimated, were left without resource but in the charity of friends (and
few such there were), or the interest of servants, who were hardly to be had
at high rates and on unseemly terms, and being, moreover, one and all men
and women of gross understanding, and for the most part unused to such
offices, concerned themselves no farther than to supply the immediate and
expressed wants of the sick, and to watch them die; in which service they
themselves not seldom perished with their gains. In consequence of which
dearth of servants and dereliction of the sick by neighbours, kinsfolk and
friends, it came to pass--a thing, perhaps, never before heard of that no
woman, however dainty, fair or well-born she might be, shrank, when stricken
with the disease, from the ministrations of a man, no matter whether he were
young or no, or scrupled to expose to him every part of her body, with no
more shame than if he had been a woman, submitting of necessity to that
which her malady required; wherefrom, perchance, there resulted in after
time some loss of modesty in such as recovered. Besides which many
succumbed, who with proper attendance, would, perhaps, have escaped death;
so that, what with the virulence of the plague and the lack of due tendance
of the sick, the multitude of the deaths, that daily and nightly took place
in the city, was such that those who heard the tale--not to say witnessed
the fact--were struck dumb with amazement. Whereby, practices contrary to
the former habits of the citizens could hardly fail to grow up among the
survivors.

It had been, as to-day it still is, the custom for the women that were
neighbours and of kin to the deceased to gather in his house with the women
that were most closely connected with him, to wail with them in common,
while on the other hand his male kinsfolk and neighbours, with not a few of
the other citizens, and a due proportion of the clergy according to his
quality, assembled without, in front of the house, to receive the corpse;
and so the dead man was borne on the shoulders of his peers, with funeral
pomp of taper and dirge, to the church selected by him before his death.
Which rites, as the pestilence waxed in fury, were either in whole or in
great part disused, and gave way to others of a novel order. For not only
did no crowd of women surround the bed of the dying, but many passed from
this life unregarded, and few indeed were they to whom were accorded the
lamentations and bitter tears of sorrowing relations; nay, for the most
part, their place was taken by the laugh, the jest, the festal gathering;
observances which the women, domestic piety in large measure set aside, had
adopted with very great advantage to their health. Few also there were whose
bodies were attended to the church by more than ten or twelve of their
neighbours, and those not the honourable and respected citizens; but a sort
of corpse-carriers drawn from the baser ranks who called themselves becchini
(1) and performed such offices for hire, would shoulder the bier, and with
hurried steps carry it, not to the church of the dead man's choice, but to
that which was nearest at hand, with four or six priests in front and a
candle or two, or, perhaps, none; nor did the priests distress themselves
with too long and solemn an office, but with the aid of the becchini hastily
consigned the corpse to the first tomb which they found untenanted. The
condition of lower, and, perhaps, in great measure of the middle ranks, of
the people shewed even worse and more deplorable; for, deluded by hope or
constrained by poverty, they stayed in their quarters, in their houses,
where they sickened by thousands a day, and, being without service or help
of any kind, were, so to speak, irredeemably devoted to the death which
overtook them. Many died daily or nightly in the public streets; of many
others, who died at home, the departure was hardly observed by their
neighbours, until the stench of their putrefying bodies carried the tidings;
and what with their corpses and the corpses of others who died on every hand
the whole place was a sepulchre.

It was the common practice of most of the neighbours, moved no less by fear
of contamination by the putrefying bodies than by charity towards the
deceased, to drag the corpses out of the houses with their own hands, aided,
perhaps, by a porter, if a porter was to be had, and to lay them in front of
the doors, where any one who made the round might have seen, especially in
the morning, more of them than he could count; afterwards they would have
biers brought up, or, in default, planks, whereon they laid them. Nor was it
once or twice only that one and the same bier carried two or three corpses
at once; but quite a considerable number of such cases occurred, one bier
sufficing for husband and wife, two or three brothers, father and son, and
so forth. And times without number it happened, that, as two priests,
bearing the cross, were on their way to perform the last office for some
one, three or four biers were brought up by the porters in rear of them, so
that, whereas the priests supposed that they had but one corpse to bury,
they discovered that there were six or eight, or sometimes more. Nor, for
all their number, were their obsequies honoured by either tears or lights or
crowds of mourners; rather, it was come to this, that a dead man was then of
no more account than a dead goat would be to-day. From all which it is
abundantly manifest, that that lesson of patient resignation, which the
sages were never able to learn from the slight and infrequent mishaps which
occur in the natural course of events, was now brought home even to the
minds of the simple by the magnitude of their disasters, so that they became
indifferent to them.

As consecrated ground there was not in extent sufficient to provide tombs
for the vast multitude of corpses which day and night, and almost every
hour, were brought in eager haste to the churches for interment, least of
all, if ancient custom were to be observed and a separate resting-place
assigned to each, they dug, for each graveyard, as soon as it was full, a
huge trench, in which they laid the corpses as they arrived by hundreds at a
time, piling them up as merchandise is stowed in the hold of a ship, tier
upon tier, each covered with a little earth, until the trench would hold no
more. But I spare to rehearse with minute particularity each of the woes
that came upon our city, and say in brief, that, harsh as was the tenor of
her fortunes, the surrounding country knew no mitigation, for there--not to
speak of the castles, each, as it were, a little city in itself--in
sequestered village, or on the open champaign, by the wayside, on the farm,
in the homestead, the poor hapless husbandmen and their families, forlorn of
physicians' care or servants' tendance, perished day and night alike, not as
men, but rather as beasts. Wherefore, they too, like the citizens, abandoned
all rule of life, all habit of industry, all counsel of prudence; nay, one
and all, as if expecting each day to be their last, not merely ceased to aid
Nature to yield her fruit in due season of their beasts and their lands and
their past labours, but left no means unused, which ingenuity could devise,
to waste their accumulated store; denying shelter to their oxen, asses,
sheep, goats, pigs, fowls, nay, even to their dogs, man's most faithful
companions, and driving them out into the fields to roam at large amid the
unsheaved, nay, unreaped corn. Many of which, as if endowed with reason,
took their fill during the day, and returned home at night without any
guidance of herdsman. But enough of the country! What need we add, but
(reverting to the city) that such and so grievous was the harshness of
heaven, and perhaps in some degree of man, that, what with the fury of the
pestilence, the panic of those whom it spared, and their consequent neglect
or desertion of not a few of the stricken in their need, it is believed
without any manner of doubt, that between March and the ensuing July upwards
of a hundred thousand human beings lost their lives within the walls of the
city of Florence, which before the deadly visitation would not have been
supposed to contain so many people! How many grand palaces, how many stately
homes, how many splendid residences, once full of retainers, of lords, of
ladies, were now left desolate of all, even to the meanest servant! How many
families of historic fame, of vast ancestral domains, and wealth proverbial,
found now no scion to continue the succession! How many brave men, how many
fair ladies, how many gallant youths, whom any physician, were he Galen,
Hippocrates, or Aesculapius himself, would have pronounced in the soundest
of health, broke fast with their kinsfolk, comrades and friends in the
morning, and when evening came, supped with their forefathers in the other
world.

Irksome it is to myself to rehearse in detail so sorrowful a history.
Wherefore, being minded to pass over so much thereof as I fairly can, I say,
that our city, being thus well-nigh depopulated, it so happened, as I
afterwards learned from one worthy of credit, that on a Tuesday morning
after Divine Service the venerable church of Santa Maria Novella was almost
deserted save for the presence of seven young ladies habited sadly in
keeping with the season. All were connected either by blood or at least as
friends or neighbours and fair and of good understanding were they all, as
also of noble birth, gentle manners, and a modest sprightliness. In age none
exceeded twenty-eight, or fell short of eighteen years. Their names I would
set down in due form, had I not good reason to with hold them, being
solicitous lest the matters which here ensue, as told and heard by them,
should in after time be occasion of reproach to any of them, in view of the
ample indulgence which was then, for the reasons heretofore set forth,
accorded to the lighter hours of persons of much riper years than they, but
which the manners of to-day have somewhat restricted; nor would I furnish
material to detractors, ever ready to bestow their bite where praise is due,
to cast by invidious speech the least slur upon the honour of these noble
ladies. Wherefore, that what each says may be apprehended without confusion,
I intend to give them names more or less appropriate to the character of
each. The first, then, being the eldest of the seven, we will call Pampinea,
the second Fiammetta, the third Filomena, the fourth Emilia, the fifth we
will distinguish as Lauretta, the sixth as Neifile, and the last, not
without reason, shall be named Elisa.

'Twas not of set purpose but by mere chance that these ladies met in the
same part of the church; but at length grouping themselves into a sort of
circle, after heaving a few sighs, they gave up saying paternosters, and
began to converse (among other topics) on the times.

So they continued for awhile, and then Pampinea, the rest listening in
silent attention, thus began:--"Dear ladies mine, often have I heard it
said, and you doubtless as well as I, that wrong is done to none by whoso
but honestly uses his reason. And to fortify, preserve, and defend his life
to the utmost of his power is the dictate of natural reason in everyone that
is born. Which right is accorded in such measure that in defence thereof men
have been held blameless in taking life. And if this be allowed by the laws,
albeit on their stringency depends the well-being of every mortal, how much
more exempt from censure should we, and all other honest folk, be in taking
such means as we may for the preservation of our life? As often as I bethink
me how we have been occupied this morning, and not this morning only, and
what has been the tenor of our conversation, I perceive--and you will
readily do the like--that each of us is apprehensive on her own account; nor
thereat do I marvel, but at this I do marvel greatly, that, though none of
us lacks a woman's wit, yet none of us has recourse to any means to avert
that which we all justly fear. Here we tarry, as if, methinks, for no other
purpose than to bear witness to the number of the corpses that are brought
hither for interment, or to hearken if the brothers there within, whose
number is now almost reduced to nought, chant their offices at the canonical
hours, or, by our weeds of woe, to obtrude on the attention of every one
that enters, the nature and degree of our sufferings.

"And if we quit the church, we see dead or sick folk carried about, or we
see those, who for their crimes were of late condemned to exile by the
outraged majesty of the public laws, but who now, in contempt of those laws,
well knowing that their ministers are a prey to death or disease, have
returned, and traverse the city in packs, making it hideous with their
riotous antics; or else we see the refuse of the people, fostered on our
blood, becchini, as they call themselves, who for our torment go prancing
about here and there and everywhere, making mock of our miseries in
scurrilous songs. Nor hear we aught but:--Such and such are dead; or, Such
and such art dying; and should hear dolorous wailing on every hand, were
there but any to wail. Or go we home, what see we there? I know not if you
are in like case with me; but there, where once were servants in plenty, I
find none left but my maid, and shudder with terror, and feel the very hairs
of my head to stand on end; and turn or tarry where I may, I encounter the
ghosts of the departed, not with their wonted mien, but with something
horrible in their aspect that appals me. For which reasons church and street
and home are alike distressful to me, and the more so that none, methinks,
having means and place of retirement as we have, abides here save only we;
or if any such there be, they are of those, as my senses too often have
borne witness, who make no distinction between things honourable and their
opposites, so they but answer the cravings of appetite, and, alone or in
company, do daily and nightly what things soever give promise of most
gratification. Nor are these secular persons alone; but such as live recluse
in monasteries break their rule, and give themselves up to carnal pleasures,
persuading themselves that they are permissible to them, and only forbidden
to others, and, thereby thinking to escape, are become unchaste and
dissolute. If such be our circumstances--and such most manifestly they
are--what do we here? what wait we for? what dream we of? why are we less
prompt to provide for our own safety than the rest of the citizens? Is life
less dear to us than to all other women? or think we that the bond, which
unites soul and body is stronger in us than in others, so that there is no
blow that may light upon it, of which we need be apprehensive? If so, we
err, we are deceived. What insensate folly were it in us so to believe! We
have but to call to mind the number and condition of those, young as we, and
of both sexes, who have succumbed to this cruel pestilence, to find therein
conclusive evidence to the contrary. And lest from lethargy or indolence we
fall into the vain imagination that by some lucky accident we may in some
way or another, when we would, escape--I know not if your opinion accord
with mine--I should deem it most wise in us, our case being what it is, if,
as many others have done before us, and are still doing, we were to quit
this place, and, shunning like death the evil example of others, betake
ourselves to the country, and there live as honourable women on one of the
estates, of which none of us has any lack, with all cheer of festal
gathering and other delights, so long as in no particular we overstep the
bounds of reason. There we shall hear the chant of birds, have sight of
verdant hills and plains, of cornfields undulating like the sea, of trees of
a thousand sorts; there also we shall have a larger view of the heavens,
which, however harsh to usward yet deny not their eternal beauty; things
fairer far for eye to rest on than the desolate walls of our city. Moreover,
we shall there breathe a fresher air, find ampler store of things meet for
such as live in these times, have fewer causes of annoy. For, though the
husbandmen die there, even as here the citizens, they are dispersed in
scattered homesteads, and 'tis thus less painful to witness. Nor, so far as
I can see, is there a soul here whom we shall desert; rather we may truly
say, that we are ourselves deserted; for, our kinsfolk being either dead or
fled in fear of death, no more regardful of us than if we were strangers, we
are left alone in our great affliction. No censure, then, can fall on us if
we do as I propose; and otherwise grievous suffering, perhaps death, may
ensue. Wherefore, if you agree, 'tis my advice, that, attended by our maids
with all things needful, we sojourn, now on this, now on the other estate,
and in such way of life continue, until we see--if death should not first
overtake us--the end which Heaven reserves for these events. And I remind
you that it will be at least as seemly in us to leave with honour, as in
others, of whom there are not a few, to stay with dishonour."

The other ladies praised Pampinea's plan, and indeed were so prompt to
follow it, that they had already begun to discuss the manner in some detail,
as if they were forthwith to rise from their seats and take the road, when
Filomena, whose judgment was excellent, interposed, saying:--"Ladies, though
Pampinea has spoken to most excellent effect, yet it were not well to be so
precipitate as you seem disposed to be. Bethink you that we are all women;
nor is there any here so young, but she is of years to understand how women
are minded towards one another, when they are alone together, and how ill
they are able to rule themselves without the guidance of some man. We are
sensitive, perverse, suspicious, pusillanimous and timid; wherefore I much
misdoubt, that, if we find no other guidance than our own, this company is
like to break up sooner, and with less credit to us, than it should. Against
which it were well to provide at the outset." Said then Elisa:--"Without
doubt man is woman's head, and, without man's governance, it is seldom that
aught that we do is brought to a commendable conclusion. But how are we to
come by the men? Every one of us here knows that her kinsmen are for the
most part dead, and that the survivors are dispersed, one here, one there,
we know not where, bent each on escaping the same fate as ourselves; nor
were it seemly to seek the aid of strangers; for, as we are in quest of
health, we must find some means so to order matters that, wherever we seek
diversion or repose, trouble and scandal do not follow us."

While the ladies were thus conversing, there came into the church three
young men, young, I say, but not so young that the age of the youngest was
less than twenty-five years; in whom neither the sinister course of events,
nor the loss of friends or kinsfolk, nor fear for their own safety, had
availed to quench, or even temper, the ardour of their love. The first was
called Pamfilo, the second Filostrato, and the third Dioneo. Very debonair
and chivalrous were they all; and in this troublous time they were seeking
if haply, to their exceeding great solace, they might have sight of their
fair friends, all three of whom chanced to be among the said seven ladies,
besides some that were of kin to the young men. At one and the same moment
they recognised the ladies and were recognised by them: wherefore, with a
gracious smile, Pampinea thus began:--"Lo, fortune is propitious to our
enterprise, having vouchsafed us the good offices of these young men, who
are as gallant as they are discreet, and will gladly give us their guidance
and escort, so we but take them into our service." Whereupon Neifile,
crimson from brow to neck with the blush of modesty, being one of those that
had a lover among the young men, said:--"For God's sake, Pampinea, have a
care what you say. Well assured am I that nought but good can be said of any
of them, and I deem them fit for office far more onerous than this which you
propose for them, and their good and honourable company worthy of ladies
fairer by far and more tenderly to be cherished than such as we. But 'tis no
secret that they love some of us here; wherefore I misdoubt that, if we take
them with us, we may thereby give occasion for scandal and censure merited
neither by us nor by them." "That," said Filomena, "is of no consequence; so
I but live honestly, my conscience gives me no disquietude; if others
asperse me, God and the truth will take arms in my defence. Now, should they
be disposed to attend us, of a truth we might say with Pampinea, that
fortune favours our enterprise." The silence which followed betokened
consent on the part of the other ladies, who then with one accord resolved
to call the young men, and acquaint them with their purpose, and pray them
to be of their company. So without further parley Pampinea, who had a
kinsman among the young men, rose and approached them where they stood
intently regarding them; and greeting them gaily, she opened to them their
plan, and besought them on the part of herself and her friends to join their
company on terms of honourable and fraternal comradeship. At first the young
men thought she did but trifle with them; but when they saw that she was in
earnest, they answered with alacrity that they were ready, and promptly,
even before they left the church, set matters in train for their departure.
So all things meet being first sent forward in due order to their intended
place of sojourn, the ladies with some of their maids, and the three young
men, each attended by a man-servant, sallied forth of the city on the
morrow, being Wednesday, about daybreak, and took the road; nor had they
journeyed more than two short miles when they arrived at their destination.
The estate (2) lay upon a little hill some distance from the nearest
highway, and, embowered in shrubberies of divers hues, and other greenery,
afforded the eye a pleasant prospect. On the summit of the hill was a palace
with galleries, halls and chambers, disposed around a fair and spacious
court, each very fair in itself, and the goodlier to see for the gladsome
pictures with which it was adorned; the whole set amidst meads and gardens
laid out with marvellous art, wells of the coolest water, and vaults of the
finest wines, things more suited to dainty drinkers than to sober and
honourable women. On their arrival the company, to their no small delight,
found their beds already made, the rooms well swept and garnished with
flowers of every sort that the season could afford, and the floors carpeted
with rushes. When they were seated, Dioneo, a gallant who had not his match
for courtesy and wit, spoke thus:--"My ladies, 'tis not our forethought so
much as your own mother-wit that has guided us hither. How you mean to
dispose of your cares I know not; mine I left behind me within the city-gate
when I issued thence with you a brief while ago. Wherefore, I pray you,
either address yourselves to make merry, to laugh and sing with me (so far,
I mean, as may consist with your dignity), or give me leave to hie me back
to the stricken city, there to abide with my cares." To whom blithely
Pampinea replied, as if she too had cast off all her cares:--"Well sayest
thou, Dioneo, excellent well; gaily we mean to live; 'twas a refuge from
sorrow that here we sought, nor had we other cause to come hither. But, as
no anarchy can long endure, I who initiated the deliberations of which this
fair company is the fruit, do now, to the end that our joy may be lasting,
deem it expedient, that there be one among us in chief authority, honoured
and obeyed by us as our superior, whose exclusive care it shall be to devise
how we may pass our time blithely. And that each in turn may prove the
weight of the care, as well as enjoy the pleasure, of sovereignty, and, no
distinction being made of sex, envy be felt by none by reason of exclusion
from the office; I propose, that the weight and honour be borne by each one
for a day; and let the first to bear sway be chosen by us all, those that
follow to be appointed towards the vesper hour by him or her who shall have
had the signory for that day; and let each holder of the signory be, for the
time, sole arbiter of the place and manner in which we are to pass our
time."

Pampinea's speech was received with the utmost applause, and with one accord
she was chosen queen for the first day. Whereupon Filomena hied her lightly
to a bay-tree, having often heard of the great honour in which its leaves,
and such as were deservedly crowned therewith, were worthy to be holden; and
having gathered a few sprays, she made thereof a goodly wreath of honour,
and set it on Pampinea's head; which wreath was thenceforth, while their
company endured, the visible sign of the wearer's sway and sovereignty.

No sooner was Queen Pampinea crowned than she bade all be silent. She then
caused summon to her presence their four maids, and the servants of the
three young men, and, all keeping silence, said to them:--"That I may shew
you all at once, how, well still giving place to better, our company may
flourish and endure, as long as it shall pleasure us, with order meet and
assured delight and without reproach, I first of all constitute Dioneo's
man, Parmeno, my seneschal, and entrust him with the care and control of all
our household, and all that belongs to the service of the hall. Pamfilo's
man, Sirisco, I appoint treasurer and chancellor of our exchequer; and be he
ever answerable to Parmeno. While Parmeno and Sirisco are too busy about
their duties to serve their masters, let Filostrato's man, Tindaro, have
charge of the chambers of all three. My maid, Misia, and Filomena's maid,
Licisca, will keep in the kitchen, and with all due diligence prepare such
dishes as Parmeno shall bid them. Lauretta's maid, Chimera, and Fiammetta's
maid, Stratilia we make answerable for the ladies' chambers, and wherever we
may take up our quarters, let them see that all is spotless. And now we
enjoin you, one and all alike, as you value our favour, that none of you, go
where you may, return whence you may, hear or see what you may, bring us any
tidings but such as be cheerful." These orders thus succinctly given were
received with universal approval. Whereupon Pampinea rose, and said
gaily:--"Here are gardens, meads, and other places delightsome enough, where
you may wander at will, and take your pleasure; but on the stroke of tierce,
(3) let all be here to breakfast in the shade."

Thus dismissed by their new queen the gay company sauntered gently through a
garden, the young men saying sweet things to the fair ladies, who wove fair
garlands of divers sorts of leaves and sang love-songs.

Having thus spent the time allowed them by the queen, they returned to the
house, where they found that Parmeno had entered on his office with zeal;
for in a hall on the ground-floor they saw tables covered with the whitest
of cloths, and beakers that shone like silver, and sprays of broom scattered
everywhere. So, at the bidding of the queen, they washed their hands, and
all took their places as marshalled by Parmeno. Dishes, daintily prepared,
were served, and the finest wines were at hand; the three serving-men did
their office noiselessly; in a word all was fair and ordered in a seemly
manner; whereby the spirits of the company rose, and they seasoned their
viands with pleasant jests and sprightly sallies. Breakfast done, the tables
were removed, and the queen bade fetch instruments of music; for all, ladies
and young men alike, knew how to tread a measure, and some of them played
and sang with great skill: so, at her command, Dioneo having taken a lute,
and Fiammetta a viol, they struck up a dance in sweet concert; and, the
servants being dismissed to their repast, the queen, attended by the other
ladies and the two young men, led off a stately carol; which ended they fell
to singing ditties dainty and gay. Thus they diverted themselves until the
queen, deeming it time to retire to rest, dismissed them all for the night.
So the three young men and the ladies withdrew to their several quarters,
which were in different parts of the palace. There they found the beds well
made, and abundance of flowers, as in the hall; and so they undressed, and
went to bed.

Shortly after none (4) the queen rose, and roused the rest of the ladies, as
also the young men, averring that it was injurious to health to sleep long
in the daytime. They therefore hied them to a meadow, where the grass grew
green and luxuriant, being nowhere scorched by the sun, and a light breeze
gently fanned them. So at the queen's command they all ranged themselves in
a circle on the grass, and hearkened while she thus spoke:--

"You mark that the sun is high, the heat intense, and the silence unbroken
save by the cicalas among the olive-trees. It were therefore the height of
folly to quit this spot at present. Here the air is cool and the prospect
fair, and here, observe, are dice and chess. Take, then, your pleasure as
you may be severally minded; but, if you take my advice, you will find
pastime for the hot hours before us, not in play, in which the loser must
needs be vexed, and neither the winner nor the onlooker much the better
pleased, but in telling of stories, in which the invention of one may afford
solace to all the company of his hearers. You will not each have told a
story before the sun will be low, and the heat abated, so that we shall be
able to go and severally take our pleasure where it may seem best to each.
Wherefore, if my proposal meet with your approval--for in this I am disposed
to consult your pleasure--let us adopt it; if not, divert yourselves as best
you may, until the vesper hour."

The queen's proposal being approved by all, ladies and men alike, she
added:--"So please you, then, I ordain, that, for this first day, we be free
to discourse of such matters as most commend themselves, to each in turn."
She then addressed Pamfilo, who sat on her right hand, bidding him with a
gracious air to lead off with one of his stories. And prompt at the word of
command, Pamfilo, while all listened intently, thus began:--

(1) Probably from the name of the pronged or hooked implement with which
they dragged the corpses out of the houses.

(2) Identified by tradition with the Villa Palmieri (now Crawford) on the
slope of Fiesole.

(3) The canonical hour following prime, roughly speaking about 9 a.m.

(4) The canonical hour following sext, i.e. 3 p.m.


NOVEL I.

--
Ser Ciappelletto cheats a holy friar by a false confession, and dies; and,
having lived as a very bad man, is, on his death, reputed a saint, and
called San Ciappelletto.
--

A seemly thing it is, dearest ladies, that whatever we do, it be begun in
the holy and awful name of Him who was the maker of all. Wherefore, as it
falls to me to lead the way in this your enterprise of story telling, I
intend to begin with one of His wondrous works, that, by hearing thereof,
our hopes in Him, in whom is no change, may be established, and His name be
by us forever lauded. 'Tis manifest that, as things temporal are all doomed
to pass and perish, so within and without they abound with trouble and
anguish and travail, and are subject to infinite perils; nor, save for the
especial grace of God, should we, whose being is bound up with and forms
part of theirs, have either the strength to endure or the wisdom to combat
their adverse influences. By which grace we are visited and penetrated (so
we must believe) not by reason of any merit of our own, but solely out of
the fulness of God's own goodness, and in answer to the prayers of those
who, being mortal like ourselves, did faithfully observe His ordinances
during their lives, and are now become blessed for ever with Him in heaven.
To whom, as to advocates taught by experience all that belongs to our
frailty, we, not daring, perchance, to present our petitions in the presence
of so great a judge, make known our requests for such things as we deem
expedient for us. And of His mercy richly abounding to usward we have
further proof herein, that, no keenness of mortal vision being able in any
degree to penetrate the secret counsels of the Divine mind, it sometimes,
perchance, happens, that, in error of judgment, we make one our advocate
before His Majesty, who is banished from His presence in eternal exile, and
yet He to whom nothing is hidden, having regard rather to the sincerity of
our prayers than to our ignorance or the banishment of the intercessor,
hears us no less than if the intercessor were in truth one of the blest who
enjoy the light of His countenance. Which the story that I am about to
relate may serve to make apparent; apparent, I mean, according to the
standard or the judgment of man, not of God.

The story goes, then, that Musciatto Franzesi, a great and wealthy merchant,
being made a knight in France, and being to attend Charles Sansterre,
brother of the King of France, when he came into Tuscany at the instance and
with the support of Pope Boniface, found his affairs, as often happens to
merchants, to be much involved in divers quarters, and neither easily nor
suddenly to be adjusted; wherefore he determined to place them in the hands
of commissioners, and found no difficulty except as to certain credits given
to some Burgundians, for the recovery of which he doubted whether he could
come by a competent agent; for well he knew that the Burgundians were
violent men and ill-conditioned and faithless; nor could he call to mind any
man so bad that he could with confidence oppose his guile to theirs. After
long pondering the matter, he recollected one Ser Ciapperello da Prato, who
much frequented his house in Paris. Who being short of stature and very
affected, the French who knew not the meaning of Cepparello, (1) but
supposed that it meant the same as Cappello, i. e. garland, in their
vernacular, called him not Cappello, but Ciappelletto by reason of his
diminutive size; and as Ciappelletto he was known everywhere, whereas few
people knew him as Ciapperello. Now Ciappelletto's manner of life was thus.
He was by profession a notary, and his pride was to make false documents; he
would have made them as often as he was asked, and more readily without fee
than another at a great price; few indeed he made that were not false, and,
great was his shame when they were discovered. False witness he bore,
solicited or unsolicited, with boundless delight; and, as oaths were in
those days had in very great respect in France, he, scrupling not to
forswear himself, corruptly carried the day in every case in which he was
summoned faithfully to attest the truth. He took inordinate delight, and
bestirred himself with great zeal, in fomenting ill-feeling, enmities,
dissensions between friends, kinsfolk and all other folk; and the more
calamitous were the consequences the better he was pleased. Set him on
murder, or any other foul crime, and he never hesitated, but went about it
with alacrity; he had been known on more than one occasion to inflict wounds
or death by preference with his own hands. He was a profuse blasphemer of
God and His saints, and that on the most trifling occasions, being of all
men the most irascible. He was never seen at Church, held all the sacraments
vile things, and derided them in language of horrible ribaldry. On the other
hand he resorted readily to the tavern and other places of evil repute, and
frequented them. He was as fond of women as a dog is of the stick: in the
use against nature he had not his match among the most abandoned. He would
have pilfered and stolen as a matter of conscience, as a holy man would make
an oblation. Most gluttonous he was and inordinately fond of his cups,
whereby he sometimes brought upon himself both shame and suffering. He was
also a practised gamester and thrower of false dice. But why enlarge so much
upon him? Enough that he was, perhaps, the worst man that ever was born.

The rank and power of Musciatto Franzesi had long been this reprobate's
mainstay, serving in many instances to secure him considerate treatment on
the part of the private persons whom he frequently, and the court which he
unremittingly, outraged. So Musciatto, having bethought him of this Ser
Cepparello, with whose way of life he was very well acquainted, judged him
to be the very sort of person to cope with the guile of the Burgundians. He
therefore sent for him, and thus addressed him:--"Ser Ciappelletto, I am, as
thou knowest, about to leave this place for good; and among those with whom
I have to settle accounts are certain Burgundians, very wily knaves; nor
know I the man whom I could more fitly entrust with the recovery of my money
than thyself. Wherefore, as thou hast nothing to do at present, if thou wilt
undertake this business, I will procure thee the favour of the court, and
give thee a reasonable part of what thou shalt recover." Ser Ciappelletto,
being out of employment, and by no means in easy circumstances, and about to
lose Musciatto, so long his mainstay and support, without the least demur,
for in truth he had hardly any choice, made his mind up and answered that he
was ready to go. So the bargain was struck. Armed with the power of attorney
and the royal letters commendatory, Ser Ciappelletto took leave of Messer
Musciatto and hied him to Burgundy, where he was hardly known to a soul. He
set about the business which had brought him thither, the recovery of the
money, in a manner amicable and considerate, foreign to his nature, as if he
were minded to reserve his severity to the last. While thus occupied, he was
frequently at the house of two Florentine usurers, who treated him with
great distinction out of regard for Messer Musciatto; and there it so
happened that he fell sick. The two brothers forthwith placed physicians and
servants in attendance upon him, and omitted no means meet and apt for the
restoration of his health. But all remedies proved unavailing; for being now
old, and having led, as the physicians reported, a disorderly life, he went
daily from bad to worse like one stricken with a mortal disease. This
greatly disconcerted the two brothers; and one day, hard by the room in
which Ser Ciappelletto lay sick, they began to talk about him; saying one to
the other:--"What shall we do with this man? We are hard bested indeed on
his account. If we turn him out of the house, sick as he is, we shall not
only incur grave censure, but shall evince a signal want of sense; for folk
must know the welcome we gave him in the first instance, the solicitude with
which we have had him treated and tended since his illness, during which
time he could not possibly do aught to displease us, and yet they would see
him suddenly turned out of our house sick unto death. On the other hand he
has been so bad a man that he is sure not to confess or receive any of the
Church's sacraments; and dying thus unconfessed, he will be denied burial in
church, but will be cast out into some ditch like a dog; nay, 'twill be all
one if he do confess, for such and so horrible have been his crimes that no
friar or priest either will or can absolve him; and so, dying without
absolution, he will still be cast out into the ditch. In which case the folk
of these parts, who reprobate our trade as iniquitous and revile it all day
long, and would fain rob us, will seize their opportunity, and raise a
tumult, and make a raid upon our houses, crying:--'Away with these Lombard
whom the Church excludes from her pale;' and will certainly strip us of our
goods, and perhaps take our lives also; so that in any case we stand to lose
if this man die."

Ser Ciappelletto, who, as we said, lay close at hand while they thus spoke,
and whose hearing was sharpened, as is often the case, by his malady,
overheard all that they said about him. So he called them to him, and said
to them:--"I would not have you disquiet yourselves in regard of me, or
apprehend loss to befall you by my death. I have heard what you have said of
me and have no doubt that 'twould be as you say, if matters took the course
you anticipate; but I am minded that it shall be otherwise. I have committed
so many offences against God in the course of my life, that one more in the
hour of my death will make no difference whatever to the account. So seek
out and bring hither the worthiest and most holy friar you can find, and
leave me to settle your affairs and mine upon a sound and solid basis, with
which you may rest satisfied." The two brothers had not much hope of the
result, but yet they went to a friary and asked for a holy and discreet man
to hear the confession of a Lombard that was sick in their house, and
returned with an aged man of just and holy life, very learned in the
Scriptures, and venerable and held in very great and especial reverence by
all the citizens. As soon as he had entered the room where Ser Ciappelletto
was lying, and had taken his place by his side, he began gently to comfort
him: then he asked him how long it was since he was confessed. Whereto Ser
Ciappelletto, who had never been confessed, answered:--"Father, it is my
constant practice to be confessed at least once a week, and many a week I am
confessed more often; but true it is, that, since I have been sick, now
eight days, I have made no confession, so sore has been my affliction.
"Son," said the friar, "thou hast well done, and well for thee, if so thou
continue to do; as thou dost confess so often, I see that my labour of
hearkening and questioning will be slight." "Nay but, master friar," said
Ser Ciappelletto, "I say not so; I have not confessed so often but that I
would fain make a general confession of all my sins that I have committed,
so far as I can recall them, from the day of my birth to the present time;
and therefore I pray you, my good father, to question me precisely in every
particular just as if I had never been confessed. And spare me not by reason
of my sickness, for I had far rather do despite to my flesh than, sparing
it, risk the perdition of my soul, which my Saviour redeemed with His
precious blood."

The holy man was mightily delighted with these words, which seemed to him to
betoken a soul in a state of grace. He therefore signified to Ser
Ciappelletto his high approval of this practice; and then began by asking
him whether he had ever sinned carnally with a woman. Whereto Ser
Ciappelletto answered with a sigh:--"My father, I scruple to tell you the
truth in this matter, fearing lest I sin in vain-glory." "Nay, but," said
the friar, "speak boldly; none ever sinned by telling the truth, either in
confession or otherwise." "Then," said Ser Ciappelletto, "as you bid me
speak boldly, I will tell you the truth of this matter. I am virgin even as
when I issued from my mother's womb." "Now God's blessing on thee," said the
friar, "well done; and the greater is thy merit in that, hadst thou so
willed, thou mightest have done otherwise far more readily than we who are
under constraint of rule." He then proceeded to ask, whether he had offended
God by gluttony. Whereto Ser Ciappelletto, heaving a heavy sigh, answered
that he had so offended for, being wont to fast not only in Lent like other
devout persons, but at least thrice days in every week, taking nothing but
bread and water, he had quaffed the water with as good a gusto and as much
enjoyment, more particularly when fatigued by devotion or pilgrimage, as
great drinkers quaff their wine; and oftentimes he had felt a craving for
such dainty dishes of herbs as ladies make when they go into the country,
and now and again he had relished his food more than seemed to him meet in
one who fasted, as he did, for devotion. "Son," said the friar, "these sins
are natural and very trifling; and therefore I would not have thee burden
thy conscience too much with them. There is no man, however holy he may be,
but must sometimes find it pleasant to eat after a long fast and to drink
after exertion." "O, my father," said Ser Ciappelletto, "say not this to
comfort me. You know well that I know, that the things which are done in the
service of God ought to be done in perfect purity of an unsullied spirit;
and whoever does otherwise sins." The friar, well content, replied:--"Glad I
am that thou dost think so, and I am mightily pleased with thy pure and good
conscience which therein appears; but tell me: hast thou sinned by avarice,
coveting more than was reasonable, or withholding more than was right? My
father," replied Ser Ciappelletto, "I would not have you disquiet yourself,
because I am in the house of these usurers: no part have I in their
concerns; nay, I did but come here to admonish and reprehend them, and wean
them from this abominable traffic; and so, I believe, I had done, had not
God sent me this visitation. But you must know, that my father left me a
fortune, of which I dedicated the greater part to God; and since then for my
own support and the relief of Christ's poor I have done a little trading,
whereof I have desired to make gain; and all that I have gotten I have
shared with God's poor, reserving one half for my own needs and giving the
other half to them; and so well has my Maker prospered me, that I have ever
managed my affairs to better and better account." "Well, done," said the
friar, "but how? hast thou often given way to anger?" "Often indeed, I
assure you," said Ser Ciappelletto. "And who could refrain therefrom, seeing
men doing frowardly all day long, breaking the commandments of God and
recking nought of His judgments? Many a time in the course of a single day I
had rather be dead than alive, to see the young men going after vanity,
swearing and forswearing themselves, haunting taverns, avoiding the
churches, and in short walking in the way of the world rather than in God's
way." "My son," said the friar, "this is a righteous wrath; nor could I find
occasion therein to lay a penance upon thee. But did anger ever by any
chance betray thee into taking human life, or affronting or otherwise
wronging any?" "Alas," replied Ser Ciappelletto, "alas, sir, man of God
though you seem to me, how come you to speak after this manner? If I had had
so much as the least thought of doing any of the things of which you speak,
should I believe, think you, that I had been thus supported of God? These
are the deeds of robbers and such like evil men, to whom I have ever said,
when any I saw:--'Go, God change your heart.'" Said then the friar:--"Now,
my son, as thou hopest to be blest of God, tell me, hast thou never borne
false witness against any, or spoken evil of another, or taken the goods of
another without his leave?" "Yes, master friar," answered Ser Ciappelletto,
"most true it is that I have spoken evil of another; for I had once a
neighbour who without the least excuse in the world was ever beating his
wife, and so great was my pity of the poor creature, whom, when he was in
his cups, he would thrash as God alone knows how, that once I spoke evil of
him to his wife's kinsfolk." "Well, well," said the friar, "thou tellest me
thou hast been a merchant; hast thou ever cheated any, as merchants use to
do?" "I'faith, yes, master friar," said Ser Ciappelletto; "but I know not
who he was; only that he brought me some money which he owed me for some
cloth that I had sold him, and I put it in a box without counting it, where
a month afterwards I found four farthings more than there should have been,
which I kept for a year to return to him, but not seeing him again, I
bestowed them in alms for the love of God." "This," said the friar, "was a
small matter; and thou didst well to bestow them as thou didst." The holy
friar went on to ask him many other questions, to which he made answer in
each case in this sort. Then, as the friar was about to give him absolution,
Ser Ciappelletto interposed:--"Sir, I have yet a sin to confess." "What?"
asked the friar. "I remember," he said, "that I once caused my servant to
sweep my house on a Saturday after none; and that my observance of Sunday
was less devout than it should have been." "O, my son," said the friar,
"this is a light matter." "No," said Ser Ciappelletto, "say not a light
matter; for Sunday is the more to be had in honour because on that day our
Lord rose from the dead." Then said the holy friar:--"Now is there aught
else that thou hast done?" "Yes, master friar," replied Ser Ciappelletto,
"once by inadvertence I spat in the church of God." At this the friar began
to smile, and said:--"My son, this is not a matter to trouble about; we, who
are religious, spit there all day long." "And great impiety it is when you
so do," replied Ser Ciappelletto, "for there is nothing that is so worthy to
be kept from all impurity as the holy temple in which sacrifice is offered
to God." More he said in the same strain, which I pass over; and then at
last he began to sigh, and by and by to weep bitterly, as he was well able
to do when he chose. And the friar demanding:--"My son, why weepest thou?"
"Alas, master friar" answered Ser Ciappelletto, "a sin yet remains, which I
have never confessed, such shame were it to me to tell it; and as often as I
call it to mind, I weep as you now see me weep, being well assured that God
will never forgive me this sin." Then said the holy friar:--"Come, come,
son, what is this that thou sayst? If all the sins of all the men, that ever
were or ever shall be, as long as the world shall endure, were concentrated
in one man, so great is the goodness of God that He would freely pardon them
all, were he but penitent and contrite as I see thou art, and confessed
them: wherefore tell me thy sin with a good courage." Then said Ser
Ciappelletto, still weeping bitterly:--"Alas, my father, mine is too great a
sin, and scarce can I believe, if your prayers do not co-operate, that God
will ever grant me His pardon thereof." "Tell it with a good courage," said
the friar; "I promise thee to pray God for thee." Ser Ciappelletto, however,
continued to weep, and would not speak, for all the friar's encouragement.
When he had kept him for a good while in suspense, he heaved a mighty sigh,
and said:--"My father, as you promise me to pray God for me, I will tell it
you. Know, then, that once, when I was a little child, I cursed my mother;"
and having so said he began again to weep bitterly. "O, my son," said the
friar, "does this seem to thee so great a sin? Men curse God all day long,
and he pardons them freely, if they repent them of having so done; and
thinkest thou he will not pardon thee this? Weep not, be comforted, for
truly, hadst thou been one of them that set Him on the Cross, with the
contrition that I see in thee, thou wouldst not fail of His pardon." "Alas!
my father," rejoined Ser Ciappelletto, "what is this you say? To curse my
sweet mother that carried me in her womb for nine months day and night, and
afterwards on her shoulder more than a hundred times! Heinous indeed was my
offence; 'tis too great a sin; nor will it be pardoned, unless you pray God
for me."

The friar now perceiving that Ser Ciappelletto had nothing more to say, gave
him absolution and his blessing, reputing him for a most holy man, fully
believing that all that he had said was true. And who would not have so
believed, hearing him so speak at the point of death? Then, when all was
done, he said:--"Ser Ciappelletto, if God so will, you will soon be well;
but should it so come to pass that God call your blessed soul to Himself in
this state of grace, is it well pleasing to you that your body be buried in
our convent?" "Yea, verily, master friar," replied Ser Ciappelletto; "there
would I be, and nowhere else, since you have promised to pray God for me;
besides which I have ever had a special devotion to your order. Wherefore I
pray you, that, on your return to your convent, you cause to be sent me that
very Body of Christ, which you consecrate in the morning on the altar;
because (unworthy though I be) I purpose with your leave to take it, and
afterwards the holy and extreme unction, that, though I have lived as a
sinner, I may die at any rate as a Christian." The holy man said that he was
greatly delighted, that it was well said of Ser Ciappelletto, and that he
would cause the Host to be forthwith brought to him; and so it was.

The two brothers, who much misdoubted Ser Ciappelletto's power to deceive
the friar, had taken their stand on the other side of a wooden partition
which divided the room in which Ser Ciappelletto lay from another, and
hearkening there they readily heard and understood what Ser Ciappelletto
said to the friar; and at times could scarce refrain their laughter as they
followed his confession; and now and again they said one to another:--"What
manner of man is this, whom neither age nor sickness, nor fear of death, on
the threshold of which he now stands, nor yet of God, before whose
judgment-seat he must soon appear, has been able to turn from his wicked
ways, that he die not even as he has lived?" But seeing that his confession
had secured the interment of his body in church, they troubled themselves no
further. Ser Ciappelletto soon afterwards communicated, and growing
immensely worse, received the extreme unction, and died shortly after
vespers on the same day on which he had made his good confession. So the two
brothers, having from his own moneys provided the wherewith to procure him
honourable sepulture, and sent word to the friars to come at even to observe
the usual vigil, and in the morning to fetch the corpse, set all things in
order accordingly. The holy friar who had confessed him, hearing that he was
dead, had audience of the prior of the friary; a chapter was convened and
the assembled brothers heard from the confessor's own mouth how Ser
Ciappelletto had been a holy man, as had appeared by his confession, and
were exhorted to receive the body with the utmost veneration and pious care,
as one by which there was good hope that God would work many miracles. To
this the prior and the rest of the credulous confraternity assenting, they
went in a body in the evening to the place where the corpse of Ser
Ciappelletto lay, and kept a great and solemn vigil over it; and in the
morning they made a procession habited in their surplices and copes with
books in their hands and crosses in front; and chanting as they went, they
fetched the corpse and brought it back to their church with the utmost pomp
and solemnity, being followed by almost all the folk of the city, men and
women alike. So it was laid in the church, and then the holy friar who had
heard the confession got up in the pulpit and began to preach marvellous
things of Ser Ciapelletto's life, his fasts, his virginity, his simplicity
and guilelessness and holiness; narrating among the other matters that of
which Ser Ciappelletto had made tearful confession as his greatest sin, and
how he had hardly been able to make him conceive that God would pardon him;
from which he took occasion to reprove his hearers; saying:--"And you,
accursed of God, on the least pretext, blaspheme God and His Mother, and all
the celestial court. And much beside he told of his loyalty and purity; and,
in short, so wrought upon the people by his words, to which they gave entire
credence, that they all conceived a great veneration for Ser Ciappelletto,
and at the close of the office came pressing forward with the utmost
vehemence to kiss the feet and the hands of the corpse, from which they tore
off the cerements, each thinking himself blessed to have but a scrap thereof
in his possession; and so it was arranged that it should be kept there all
day long, so as to be visible and accessible to all. At nightfall it was
honourably interred in a marble tomb in one of the chapels, where on the
morrow, one by one, folk came and lit tapers and prayed and paid their vows,
setting there the waxen images which they had dedicated. And the fame of
Ciappelletto's holiness and the devotion to him grew in such measure that
scarce any there was that in any adversity would vow aught to any saint but
he, and they called him and still call him San Ciappelletto affirming that
many miracles have been and daily are wrought by God through him for such as
devoutly crave his intercession.

So lived, so died Ser Cepperello da Prato, and came to be reputed a saint,
as you have heard. Nor would I deny that it is possible that he is of the
number of the blessed in the presence of God, seeing that, though his life
was evil and depraved, yet he might in his last moments have made so
complete an act of contrition that perchance God had mercy on him and
received him into His kingdom. But, as this is hidden from us, I speak
according to that which appears, and I say that he ought rather to be in the
hands of the devil in hell than in Paradise. Which, if so it be, is a
manifest token of the superabundance of the goodness of God to usward,
inasmuch as he regards not our error but the sincerity of our faith, and
hearkens unto us when, mistaking one who is at enmity with Him for a friend,
we have recourse to him, as to one holy indeed, as our intercessor for His
grace. Wherefore, that we of this gay company may by His grace be preserved
safe and sound throughout this time of adversity, commend we ourselves in
our need to Him, whose name we began by invoking, with lauds and reverent
devotion and good confidence that we shall be heard.

And so he was silent.

(1) The diminutive of ceppo, stump or log: more commonly written cepperello
(cf. p. 32) or ceppatello. The form ciapperello seems to be found only here.


NOVEL II.

--
Abraham, a Jew, at the instance of Jehannot de Chevigny, goes to the court
of Rome, and having marked the evil life of the clergy, returns to Paris,
and becomes a Christian.
--

Pamfilo's story elicited the mirth of some of the ladies and the hearty
commendation of all, who listened to it with close attention until the end.
Whereupon the queen bade Neifile, who sat next her, to tell a story, that
the commencement thus made of their diversions might have its sequel.
Neifile, whose graces of mind matched the beauty of her person, consented
with a gladsome goodwill, and thus began:--

Pamfilo has shewn by his story that the goodness of God spares to regard our
errors when they result from unavoidable ignorance, and in mine I mean to
shew you how the same goodness, bearing patiently with the shortcomings of
those who should be its faithful witness in deed and word, draws from them
contrariwise evidence of His infallible truth; to the end that what we
believe we may with more assured conviction follow.

In Paris, gracious ladies, as I have heard tell, there was once a great
merchant, a large dealer in drapery, a good man, most loyal and righteous,
his name Jehannot de Chevigny, between whom and a Jew, Abraham by name, also
a merchant, and a man of great wealth, as also most loyal and righteous,
there subsisted a very close friendship. Now Jehannot, observing Abraham's
loyalty and rectitude, began to be sorely vexed in spirit that the soul of
one so worthy and wise and good should perish for want of faith. Wherefore
he began in a friendly manner to plead with him, that he should leave the
errors of the Jewish faith and turn to the Christian verity, which, being
sound and holy, he might see daily prospering and gaining ground, whereas,
on the contrary, his own religion was dwindling and was almost come to
nothing. The Jew replied that he believed that there was no faith sound and
holy except the Jewish faith, in which he was born, and in which he meant to
live and die; nor would anything ever turn him therefrom. Nothing daunted,
however, Jehannot some days afterwards began again to ply Abraham with
similar arguments, explaining to him in such crude fashion as merchants use
the reasons why our faith is better than the Jewish. And though the Jew was
a great master in the Jewish law, yet, whether it was by reason of his
friendship for Jehannot, or that the Holy Spirit dictated the words that the
simple merchant used, at any rate the Jew began to be much interested in
Jehannot's arguments, though still too staunch in his faith to suffer
himself to be converted. But Jehannot was no less assiduous in plying him
with argument than he was obstinate in adhering to his law, insomuch that at
length the Jew, overcome by such incessant appeals, said:--"Well, well,
Jehannot, thou wouldst have me become a Christian, and I am disposed to do
so, provided I first go to Rome and there see him whom thou callest God's
vicar on earth, and observe what manner of life he leads and his brother
cardinals with him; and if such it be that thereby, in conjunction with thy
words, I may understand that thy faith is better than mine, as thou hast
sought to shew me, I will do as I have said: otherwise, I will remain as I
am a Jew." When Jehannot heard this, he was greatly distressed, saying to
himself:--"I thought to have converted him; but now I see that the pains
which I took for so excellent a purpose are all in vain; for, if he goes to
the court of Rome and sees the iniquitous and foul life which the clergy
lead there, so far from turning Christian, had he been converted already, he
would without doubt relapse into Judaism." Then turning to Abraham he said:-
-"Nay, but, my friend, why wouldst thou be at all this labour and great
expense of travelling from here to Rome? to say nothing of the risks both by
sea and by land which a rich man like thee must needs run. Thinkest thou
not, to find here one that can give thee baptism? And as for any doubts that
thou mayst have touching the faith to which I point thee, where wilt thou
find greater masters and sages therein than here, to resolve thee of any
question thou mayst put to them? Wherefore in my opinion this journey of
thine is superfluous. Think that the prelates there are such as thou mayst
have seen here, nay, as much better as they are nearer to the Chief Pastor.
And so, by my advice thou wilt spare thy pains until some time of
indulgence, when I, perhaps, may be able to bear thee company." The Jew
replied:--"Jehannot, I doubt not that so it is as thou sayst; but once and
for all I tell thee that I am minded to go there, and will never otherwise
do that which thou wouldst have me and hast so earnestly besought me to do."
"Go then," said Jehannot, seeing that his mind was made up, "and good luck
go with thee;" and so he gave up the contest because nothing would be lost,
though he felt sure that he would never become a Christian after seeing the
court of Rome. The Jew took horse, and posted with all possible speed to
Rome; where on his arrival he was honourably received by his fellow Jews. He
said nothing to any one of the purpose for which he had come; but began
circumspectly to acquaint himself with the ways of the Pope and the
cardinals and the other prelates and all the courtiers; and from what he saw
for himself, being a man of great intelligence, or learned from others, he
discovered that without distinction of rank they were all sunk in the most
disgraceful lewdness, sinning not only in the way of nature but after the
manner of the men of Sodom, without any restraint of remorse or shame, in
such sort that, when any great favour was to be procured, the influence of
the courtesans and boys was of no small moment. Moreover he found them one
and all gluttonous, wine-bibbers, drunkards, and next after lewdness, most
addicted to the shameless service of the belly, like brute beasts. And, as
he probed the matter still further, he perceived that they were all so
greedy and avaricious that human, nay Christian blood, and things sacred of
what kind soever, spiritualities no less than temporalities, they bought and
sold for money; which traffic was greater and employed more brokers than the
drapery trade and all the other trades of Paris put together; open simony
and gluttonous excess being glosed under such specious terms as
"arrangement" and "moderate use of creature comforts," as if God could not
penetrate the thoughts of even the most corrupt hearts, to say nothing of
the signification of words, and would suffer Himself to be misled after the
manner of men by the names of things. Which matters, with many others which
are not to be mentioned, our modest and sober-minded Jew found by no means
to his liking, so that, his curiosity being fully satisfied, he was minded
to return to Paris; which accordingly he did. There, on his arrival, he was
met by Jehannot; and the two made great cheer together. Jehannot expected
Abraham's conversion least of all things, and allowed him some days of rest
before he asked what he thought of the Holy Father and the cardinals and the
other courtiers. To which the Jew forthwith replied:--"I think God owes them
all an evil recompense: I tell thee, so far as I was able to carry my
investigations, holiness, devotion, good works or exemplary living in any
kind was nowhere to be found in any clerk; but only lewdness, avarice,
gluttony, and the like, and worse, if worse may be, appeared to be held in
such honour of all, that (to my thinking) the place is a centre of
diabolical rather than of divine activities. To the best of my judgment,
your Pastor, and by consequence all that are about him devote all their zeal
and ingenuity and subtlety to devise how best and most speedily they may
bring the Christian religion to nought and banish it from the world. And
because I see that what they so zealously endeavour does not come to pass,
but that on the contrary your religion continually grows, and shines more
and more clear, therein I seem to discern a very evident token that it,
rather than any other, as being more true and holy than any other, has the
Holy Spirit for its foundation and support. For which cause, whereas I met
your exhortations in a harsh and obdurate temper, and would not become a
Christian, now I frankly tell you that I would on no account omit to become
such. Go we then to the church, and there according to the traditional rite
of your holy faith let me receive baptism." Jehannot, who had anticipated a
diametrically opposite conclusion, as soon as he heard him so speak, was the
best pleased man that ever was in the world. So taking Abraham with him to
Notre Dame he prayed the clergy there to baptise him. When they heard that
it was his own wish, they forthwith did so, and Jehannot raised him from the
sacred font, and named him Jean; and afterwards he caused teachers of great
eminence thoroughly to instruct him in our faith, which he readily learned,
and afterwards practised in a good, a virtuous, nay, a holy life.


NOVEL III.

--
Melchisedech, a Jew, by a story of three rings averts a great danger with
which he was menaced by Saladin.
--

When Neifile had brought her story to a close amid the commendations of all
the company, Filomena, at the queen's behest, thus began:--

The story told by Neifile brings to my mind another in which also Jew
appears, but this time as the hero of a perilous adventure; and as enough
has been said of God and of the truth our faith, it will not now be
inopportune if we descend to mundane events and the actions of men.
Wherefore I propose to tell you a story, which will perhaps dispose you to
be more circumspect than you have been wont to be in answering questions
addressed to you. Well ye know, or should know, loving gossips, that, as it
often happens that folk by their own folly forfeit a happy estate and are
plunged in most grievous misery, so good sense will extricate the wise from
extremity of peril, and establish them in complete and assured peace. Of the
change from good to evil fortune, which folly may effect, instances abound;
indeed, occurring as they do by the thousand day by day, they are so
conspicuous that their recital would be beside our present purpose. But that
good sense may be our succour in misfortune, I will now, as I promised, make
plain to you within the narrow compass of a little story.

Saladin, who by his great valour had from small beginnings made himself
Soldan of Egypt, and gained many victories over kings both Christian and
Saracen, having in divers wars and by divers lavish displays of magnificence
spent all his treasure, and in order to meet a certain emergency being in
need of a large sum of money, and being at a loss to raise it with a
celerity adequate to his necessity, bethought him of a wealthy Jew,
Melchisedech by name, who lent at usance in Alexandria, and who, were he but
willing, was, as he believed, able to accommodate him, but was so miserly
that he would never do so of his own accord, nor was Saladin disposed to
constrain him thereto. So great, however, was his necessity that, after
pondering every method whereby the Jew might be induced to be compliant, at
last he determined to devise a colourably reasonable pretext for extorting
the money from him. So he sent for him, received him affably, seated him by
his side, and presently said to him:--"My good man, I have heard from many
people that thou art very wise, and of great discernment in divine things;
wherefore I would gladly know of thee, which of the three laws thou reputest
the true law, the law of the Jews, the law of the Saracens, or the law of
the Christians?" The Jew, who was indeed a wise man, saw plainly enough that
Saladin meant to entangle him in his speech, that he might have occasion to
harass him, and bethought him that he could not praise any of the three laws
above another without furnishing Saladin with the pretext which he sought.
So, concentrating all the force of his mind to shape such an answer as might
avoid the snare, he presently lit on what he sought, saying:--"My lord, a
pretty question indeed is this which you propound, and fain would I answer
it; to which end it is apposite that I tell you a story, which, if you will
hearken, is as follows:--If I mistake not, I remember to have often heard
tell of a great and rich man of old time, who among other most precious
jewels had in his treasury a ring of extraordinary beauty and value, which
by reason of its value and beauty he was minded to leave to his heirs for
ever; for which cause he ordained, that, whichever of his sons was found in
possession of the ring as by his bequest, should thereby be designate his
heir, and be entitled to receive from the rest the honour and homage due to
a superior. The son, to whom he bequeathed the ring, left it in like manner
to his descendants, making the like ordinance as his predecessor. In short
the ring passed from hand to hand for many generations; and in the end came
to the hands of one who had three sons, goodly and virtuous all, and very
obedient to their father, so that he loved them all indifferently. The rule
touching the descent of the ring was known to the young men, and each
aspiring to hold the place of honour among them did all he could to persuade
his father, who was now old, to leave the ring to him at his death. The
worthy man, who loved them all equally, and knew not how to choose from
among them a sole legatee, promised the ring to each in turn, and in order
to satisfy all three, caused a cunning artificer secretly to make two other
rings, so like the first, that the maker himself could hardly tell which was
the true ring. So, before he died, he disposed of the rings, giving one
privily to each of his sons; whereby it came to pass, that after his decease
each of the sons claimed the inheritance and the place of honour, and, his
claim being disputed by his brothers, produced his ring in witness of right.
And the rings being found so like one to another that it was impossible to
distinguish the true one, the suit to determine the true heir remained
pendent, and still so remains. And so, my lord, to your question, touching
the three laws given to the three peoples by God the Father, I answer:--Each
of these peoples deems itself to have the true inheritance, the true law,
the true commandments of God; but which of them is justified in so
believing, is a question which, like that of the rings, remains pendent."
The excellent adroitness with which the Jew had contrived to evade the snare
which he had laid for his feet was not lost upon Saladin. He therefore
determined to let the Jew know his need, and did so, telling him at the same
time what he had intended to do, in the event of his answering less
circumspectly than he had done.

Thereupon the Jew gave the Soldan all the accommodation that he required,
which the Soldan afterwards repaid him in full. He also gave him most
munificent gifts with his lifelong amity and a great and honourable position
near his person.


NOVEL IV.

--
A monk lapses into a sin meriting the most severe punishment, justly
censures the same fault in his abbot, and thus evades the penalty.
--

The silence which followed the conclusion of Filomena's tale was broken by
Dioneo, who sate next her, and without waiting for the queen's word, for he
knew that by the rule laid down at the commencement it was now his turn to
speak, began on this wise:--Loving ladies, if I have well understood the
intention of you all, we are here to afford entertainment to one another by
story-telling; wherefore, provided only nought is done that is repugnant to
this end, I deem it lawful for each (and so said our queen a little while
ago) to tell whatever story seems to him most likely to be amusing. Seeing,
then, that we have heard how Abraham saved his soul by the good counsel of
Jehannot de Chevigny, and Melchisedech by his own good sense safe-guarded
his wealth against the stratagems of Saladin, I hope to escape your censure
in narrating a brief story of a monk, who by his address delivered his body
from imminent peril of most severe chastisement.

In the not very remote district of Lunigiana there flourished formerly a
community of monks more numerous and holy than is there to be found to-day,
among whom was a young brother, whose vigour and lustihood neither the fasts
nor the vigils availed to subdue. One afternoon, while the rest of the
confraternity slept, our young monk took a stroll around the church, which
lay in a very sequestered spot, and chanced to espy a young and very
beautiful girl, a daughter, perhaps, of one of the husbandmen of those
parts, going through the fields and gathering herbs as she went. No sooner
had he seen her than he was sharply assailed by carnal concupiscence,
insomuch that he made up to and accosted her; and (she hearkening) little by
little they came to an understanding, and unobserved by any entered his cell
together. Now it so chanced that, while they fooled it within somewhat
recklessly, he being overwrought with passion, the abbot awoke and passing
slowly by the young monk's cell, heard the noise which they made within, and
the better to distinguish the voices, came softly up to the door of the
cell, and listening discovered that beyond all doubt there was a woman
within. His first thought was to force the door open; but, changing his
mind, he returned to his chamber and waited until the monk should come out.

Delightsome beyond measure though the monk found his intercourse with the
girl, yet was he not altogether without anxiety. He had heard, as he
thought, the sound of footsteps in the dormitory, and having applied his eye
to a convenient aperture had had a good view of the abbot as he stood by the
door listening. He was thus fully aware that the abbot might have detected
the presence of a woman in the cell. Whereat he was exceedingly distressed,
knowing that he had a severe punishment to expect; but he concealed his
vexation from the girl while he busily cast about in his mind for some way
of escape from his embarrassment. He thus hit on a novel stratagem which was
exactly suited to his purpose. With the air of one who had had enough of the
girl's company he said to her:--"I shall now leave you in order that I may
arrange for your departure hence unobserved. Stay here quietly until I
return." So out he went, locking the door of the cell, and withdrawing the
key, which he carried straight to the abbot's chamber and handed to him, as
was the custom when a monk was going out, saying with a composed air:--"Sir,
I was not able this morning to bring in all the faggots which I had made
ready, so with your leave I will go to the wood and bring them in." The
abbot, desiring to have better cognisance of the monk's offence, and not
dreaming that the monk knew that he had been detected, was pleased with the
turn matters had taken, and received the key gladly, at the same time giving
the monk the desired leave. So the monk withdrew, and the abbot began to
consider what course it were best for him to take, whether to assemble the
brotherhood and open the door in their presence, that, being witnesses of
the delinquency, they might have no cause to murmur against him when he
proceeded to punish the delinquent, or whether it were not better first to
learn from the girl's own lips how it had come about. And reflecting that
she might be the wife or daughter of some man who would take it ill that she
should be shamed by being exposed to the gaze of all the monks, he
determined first of all to find out who she was, and then to make up his
mind. So he went softly to the cell, opened the door, and, having entered,
closed it behind him. The girl, seeing that her visitor was none other than
the abbot, quite lost her presence of mind, and quaking with shame began to
weep. Master abbot surveyed her from head to foot, and seeing that she was
fresh and comely, fell a prey, old though he was, to fleshly cravings no
less poignant and sudden than those which the young monk had experienced,
and began thus to commune with himself:--"Alas! why take I not my pleasure
when I may, seeing that I never need lack for occasions of trouble and
vexation of spirit? Here is a fair wench, and no one in the world to know.
If I can bring her to pleasure me, I know not why I should not do so. Who
will know? No one will ever know; and sin that is hidden is half forgiven;
this chance may never come again; so, methinks, it were the part of wisdom
to take the boon which God bestows." So musing, with an altogether different
purpose from that with which he had come, he drew near the girl, and softly
bade her to be comforted, and besought her not to weep; and so little by
little he came at last to show her what he would be at. The girl, being made
neither of iron nor of adamant, was readily induced to gratify the abbot,
who after bestowing upon her many an embrace and kiss, got upon the monk's
bed, where, being sensible, perhaps, of the disparity between his reverend
portliness and her tender youth, and fearing to injure her by his excessive
weight, he refrained from lying upon her, but laid her upon him, and in that
manner disported himself with her for a long time. The monk, who had only
pretended to go to the wood, and had concealed himself in the dormitory, no
sooner saw the abbot enter his cell than he was overjoyed to think that his
plan would succeed; and when he saw that he had locked the door, he was well
assured thereof. So he stole out of his hiding-place, and set his eye to an
aperture through which he saw and heard all that the abbot did and said. At
length the abbot, having had enough of dalliance with the girl, locked her
in the cell and returned to his chamber. Catching sight of the monk soon
afterwards, and supposing him to have returned from the wood, he determined
to give him a sharp reprimand and have him imprisoned, that he might thus
secure the prey for himself alone. He therefore caused him to be summoned,
chid him very severely and with a stern countenance, and ordered him to be
put in prison. The monk replied trippingly:--"I Sir, I have not been so long
in the order of St. Benedict as to have every particular of the rule by
heart; nor did you teach me before to-day in what posture it behoves the
monk to have intercourse with women, but limited your instruction to such
matters as fasts and vigils. As, however, you have now given me my lesson, I
promise you, if you also pardon my offence, that I will never repeat it, but
will always follow the example which you have set me."

The abbot, who was a shrewd man, saw at once that the monk was not only more
knowing than he, but had actually seen what he had done; nor,
conscience-stricken himself, could he for shame mete out to the monk a
measure which he himself merited. So pardon given, with an injunction to
bury what had been seen in silence, they decently conveyed the young girl
out of the monastery, whither, it is to be believed, they now and again
caused her to return.


NOVEL V.

--
The Marchioness of Monferrato by a banquet of hens seasoned with wit checks
the mad passion of the King of France.
--

The story told by Dioneo evoked at first some qualms of shame in the minds
of the ladies, as was apparent by the modest blush that tinged their faces:
then exchanging glances, and scarce able to refrain their mirth, they
listened to it with half-suppressed smiles. On its conclusion they bestowed
upon Dioneo a few words of gentle reprehension with intent to admonish him
that such stories were not to be told among ladies. The queen then turned to
Fiammetta, who was seated on the grass at her side, and bade her follow suit
and Fiammetta with a gay and gracious mien thus began:--

The line upon which our story-telling proceeds, to wit, to shew the virtue
that resides in apt and ready repartees, pleases me well; and as in affairs
of love men and women are in diverse case, for to aspire to the love of a
woman of higher lineage than his own is wisdom in man, whereas a woman's
good sense is then most conspicuous when she knows how to preserve herself
from becoming enamoured of a man, her superior in rank, I am minded, fair my
ladies, to shew you by the story which I am now to tell, how by deed and
word a gentlewoman both defended herself against attack, and weaned her
suitor from his love.

The Marquis of Monferrato, a paladin of distinguished prowess, was gone
overseas as gonfalonier of the Church in a general array of the Christian
forces. Whose merits being canvassed at the court of Philippe le Borgne, on
the eve of his departure from France on the same service, a knight observed,
that there was not under the stars a couple comparable to the Marquis and
his lady; in that, while the Marquis was a paragon of the knightly virtues,
his lady for beauty, and honour was without a peer among all the other
ladies of the world. These words made so deep an impression on the mind of
the King of France that, though he had never seen the lady, he fell ardently
in love with her, and, being to join the armada, resolved that his port of
embarcation should be no other than Genoa, in order that, travelling thither
by land, he might find a decent pretext for visiting the Marchioness, with
whom in the absence of the Marquis he trusted to have the success which he
desired; nor did he fail to put his design in execution. Having sent his
main army on before, he took the road himself with a small company of
gentlemen, and, as they approached the territory of the Marquis, he
despatched a courier to the Marchioness, a day in advance, to let her know
that he expected to breakfast with her the next morning. The lady, who knew
her part and played it well, replied graciously, that he would be indeed
welcome, and that his presence would be the greatest of all favours. She
then began to commune with herself, what this might import, that so great a
king should come to visit her in her husband's absence, nor was she so
deluded as not to surmise that it was the fame of her beauty that drew him
thither. Nevertheless she made ready to do him honour in a manner befitting
her high degree, summoning to her presence such of the retainers as remained
in the castle, and giving all needful directions with their advice, except
that the order of the banquet and the choice of the dishes she reserved
entirely to herself. Then, having caused all the hens that could be found in
the country-side to be brought with all speed into the castle, she bade her
cooks furnish forth the royal table with divers dishes made exclusively of
such fare. The King arrived on the appointed day, and was received by the
lady with great and ceremonious cheer. Fair and noble and gracious seemed
she in the eyes of the King beyond all that he had conceived from the
knight's words, so that he was lost in admiration and inly extolled her to
the skies, his passion being the more inflamed in proportion as he found the
lady surpass the idea which he had formed of her. A suite of rooms furnished
with all the appointments befitting the reception of so great a king, was
placed at his disposal, and after a little rest, breakfast-time being come,
he and the Marchioness took their places at the same table, while his suite
were honourably entertained at other boards according to their several
qualities. Many courses were served with no lack of excellent and rare
wines, whereby the King was mightily pleased, as also by the extraordinary
beauty of the Marchioness, on whom his eye from time to time rested.
However, as course followed course, the King observed with some surprise,
that, though the dishes were diverse, yet they were all but variations of
one and the same fare, to wit, the pullet. Besides which he knew that the
domain was one which could not but afford plenty of divers sorts of game,
and by forewarning the lady of his approach, he had allowed time for
hunting; yet, for all his surprise, he would not broach the question more
directly with her than by a reference to her hens; so, turning to her with a
smile, he said:--"Madam, do hens grow in this country without so much as a
single cock?" The Marchioness, who perfectly apprehended the drift of the
question, saw in it an opportunity, sent her by God, of evincing her
virtuous resolution; so casting a haughty glance upon the King she answered
thus:--"Sire, no; but the women, though they may differ somewhat from others
in dress and rank, are yet of the same nature here as elsewhere." The
significance of the banquet of pullets was made manifest to the King by
these words, as also the virtue which they veiled. He perceived that on a
lady of such a temper words would be wasted, and that force was out of the
question. Wherefore, yielding to the dictates of prudence and honour, he was
now as prompt to quench, as he had been inconsiderate in conceiving, his
unfortunate passion for the lady; and fearing her answers, he refrained from
further jesting with her, and dismissing his hopes devoted himself to his
breakfast, which done, he disarmed suspicion of the dishonourable purpose of
his visit by an early departure, and thanking her for the honour she had
conferred upon him, and commending her to God, took the road to Genoa.


NOVEL VI.

--
A worthy man by an apt saying puts to shame the wicked hypocrisy of the
religious.
--

When all had commended the virtue of the Marchioness and the spirited
reproof which she administered to the King of France, Emilia, who sate next
to Fiammetta, obeyed the queen's behest, and with a good courage thus
began:--

My story is also of a reproof, but of one administered by a worthy man, who
lived the secular life, to a greedy religious, by a jibe as merry as
admirable. Know then, dear ladies, that there was in our city, not long ago,
a friar minor, an inquisitor in matters of heresy, who, albeit he strove
might and main to pass himself off as a holy man and tenderly solicitous for
the integrity of the Christian Faith, as they all do, yet he had as keen a
scent for a full purse as for a deficiency of faith. Now it so chanced that
his zeal was rewarded by the discovery of a good man far better furnished
with money than with sense, who in an unguarded moment, not from defect of
faith, but rather, perhaps from excess of hilarity, being heated with wine,
had happened to say to his boon companions, that he had a wine good enough
for Christ Himself to drink. Which being reported to the inquisitor, he,
knowing the man to be possessed of large estates and a well-lined purse, set
to work in hot haste, "cum gladiis et fustibus," to bring all the rigour of
the law to bear upon him, designing thereby not to lighten the load of his
victim's misbelief, but to increase the weight of his own purse by the
florins, which he might, as he did, receive from him. So he cited him to his
presence, and asked him whether what was alleged against him were true. The
good man answered in the affirmative, and told him how it had happened.
"Then," said our most holy and devout inquisitor of St. John Goldenbeard,
(1) "then hast thou made Christ a wine-bibber, and a lover of rare vintages,
as if he were a sot, a toper and a tavern-haunter even as one of you. And
thinkest thou now by a few words of apology to pass this off as a light
matter? It is no such thing as thou supposest. Thou hast deserved the fire;
and we should but do our duty, did we inflict it upon thee." With these and
the like words in plenty he upbraided him, bending on him meanwhile a
countenance as stern as if Epicurus had stood before him denying the
immortality of the soul. In short he so terrified him that the good man was
fain to employ certain intermediaries to anoint his palms with a liberal
allowance of St. John Goldenmouth's grease, an excellent remedy for the
disease of avarice which spreads like a pestilence among the clergy, and
notably among the friars minors, who dare not touch a coin, that he might
deal gently with him. And great being the virtue of this ointment, albeit no
mention is made thereof by Galen in any part of his Medicines, it had so
gracious an effect that the threatened fire gave place to a cross, which he
was to wear as if he were bound for the emprise over seas; and to make the
ensign more handsome the inquisitor ordered that it should be yellow upon a
black ground. Besides which, after pocketing the coin, he kept him dangling
about him for some days, bidding him by way of penance hear mass every
morning at Santa Croce, and afterwards wait upon him at the breakfast-hour,
after which he was free to do as he pleased for the rest of the day. All
which he most carefully observed; and so it fell out that one of these
mornings there were chanted at the mass at which he assisted the following
words of the Gospel:--You shall receive an hundredfold and shall possess
eternal life. With these words deeply graven in his memory, he presented
himself, as he was bidden, before the inquisitor, where he sate taking his
breakfast, and being asked whether he had heard mass that morning, he
promptly answered:--"Yes, sir." And being further asked:--"Heardest thou
aught therein, as to which thou art in doubt, or hast thou any question to
propound?" the good man responded:--"Nay indeed, doubt have I none of aught
that I heard; but rather assured faith in the verity of all. One thing,
however, I heard, which caused me to commiserate you and the rest of you
friars very heartily, in regard of the evil plight in which you must find
yourselves in the other world." "And what," said the inquisitor, "was the
passage that so moved thee to commiserate us?" "Sir," rejoined the good man,
"it was that passage in the Gospel which says:--"You shall receive an
hundredfold." "You heard aright," said the inquisitor; "but why did the
passage so affect you?" "Sir," replied the good man, "I will tell you. Since
I have been in attendance here, I have seen a crowd of poor folk receive a
daily dole, now of one, now of two, huge tureens of swill, being the refuse
from your table, and that of the brothers of this convent; whereof if you
are to receive an hundredfold in the other world, you will have so much that
it will go hard but you are all drowned therein." This raised a general
laugh among those who sat at the inquisitor's table, whereat the inquisitor,
feeling that their gluttony and hypocrisy had received a home-thrust, was
very wroth, and, but that what he had already done had not escaped censure,
would have instituted fresh proceedings against him in revenge for the
pleasantry with which he had rebuked the baseness of himself and his brother
friars; so in impotent wrath he bade him go about his business and shew
himself there no more.

(1) The fiorino d'oro bore the effigy of St. John.


NOVEL VII.

--
Bergamino, with a story of Primasso and the Abbot of Cluny, finely censures
a sudden access of avarice in Messer Cane della Scala.
--

Emilia's charming manner and her story drew laughter and commendation from
the queen and all the company, who were much tickled by her new type of
crusader. When the laughter had subsided, and all were again silent,
Filostrato, on whom the narration now fell, began on this wise:--

A fine thing it is, noble ladies, to hit a fixed mark; but if, on the sudden
appearance of some strange object, it be forthwith hit by the bowman, 'tis
little short of a miracle. The corrupt and filthy life of the clergy offers
on many sides a fixed mark of iniquity at which, whoever is so minded, may
let fly, with little doubt that they will reach it, the winged words of
reproof and reprehension. Wherefore, though the worthy man did well to
censure in the person of the inquisitor the pretended charity of the friars
who give to the poor what they ought rather to give to the pigs or throw
away, higher indeed is the praise which I accord to him, of whom, taking my
cue from the last story, I mean to speak; seeing that by a clever apologue
he rebuked a sudden and unwonted access of avarice in Messer Cane della
Scala, conveying in a figure what he had at heart to say touching Messer
Cane and himself; which apologue is to follow.

Far and wide, almost to the ends of the earth, is borne the most illustrious
renown of Messer Cane della Scala, in many ways the favoured child of
fortune, a lord almost without a peer among the notables and magnificoes of
Italy since the time of the Emperor Frederic II. Now Messer Cane, being
minded to hold high festival at Verona, whereof fame should speak marvellous
things, and many folk from divers parts, of whom the greater number were
jesters of every order, being already arrived, Messer Cane did suddenly (for
some cause or another) abandon his design, and dismissed them with a partial
recompense. One only, Bergamino by name, a speaker ready and polished in a
degree credible only to such as heard him, remained, having received no
recompense or conge, still cherishing the hope that this omission might yet
turn out to his advantage. But Messer Cane was possessed with the idea that
whatever he might give Bergamino would be far more completely thrown away
than if he had tossed it into the fire; so never a word of the sort said he
or sent he to him. A few days thus passed, and then Bergamino, seeing that
he was in no demand or request for aught that belonged to his office, and
being also at heavy charges at his inn for the keep of his horses and
servants, fell into a sort of melancholy; but still he waited a while, not
deeming it expedient to leave. He had brought with him three rich and goodly
robes, given him by other lords, that he might make a brave show at the
festival, and when his host began to press for payment he gave him one of
the robes; afterwards, there being still much outstanding against him, he
must needs, if he would tarry longer at the inn, give the host the second
robe; after which he began to live on the third, being minded remain there,
as long as it would hold out, in expectation of better luck, and then to
take his departure. Now, while he was thus living on the third robe, it
chanced that Messer Cane encountered him one day as he sate at breakfast
with a very melancholy visage. Which Messer Cane observing, said, rather to
tease him than expecting to elicit from him any pleasant retort:--"What ails
thee, Bergamino, that thou art still so melancholy? Let me know the reason
why." Whereupon Bergamino, without a moment's reflection, told the following
story, which could not have fitted his own case more exactly if it had been
long premeditated.

My lord, you must know that Primasso was a grammarian of great eminence, and
excellent and quick beyond all others in versifying; whereby he waxed so
notable and famous that, albeit he was not everywhere known by sight, yet
there were scarce any that did not at least by name and report know who
Primasso was. Now it so happened that, being once at Paris in straitened
circumstances, as it was his lot to be most of his time by reason that
virtue is little appreciated by the powerful, he heard speak of the Abbot of
Cluny, who, except the Pope, is supposed to be the richest prelate, in
regard of his vast revenues, that the Church of God can shew; and marvellous
and magnificent things were told him of the perpetual court which the abbot
kept, and how, wherever he was, he denied not to any that came there either
meat or drink, so only that he preferred his request while the abbot was at
table. Which when Primasso heard, he determined to go and see for himself
what magnificent state this abbot kept, for he was one that took great
delight in observing the ways of powerful and lordly men; wherefore he asked
how far from Paris was the abbot then sojourning. He was informed that the
abbot was then at one of his places distant perhaps six miles; which
Primasso concluded he could reach in time for breakfast, if he started early
in the morning. When he had learned the way, he found that no one else was
travelling by it, and fearing lest by mischance he should lose it, and so
find himself where it would not be easy for him to get food, he determined
to obviate so disagreeable a contingency by taking with him three loaves of
bread--as for drink, water, though not much to his taste, was, he supposed,
to be found everywhere. So, having disposed the loaves in the fold of his
tunic, he took the road and made such progress that he reached the abbot's
place of sojourn before the breakfast-hour. Having entered, he made the
circuit of the entire place, observing everything, the vast array of tables,
and the vast kitchen well-appointed with all things needful for the
preparation and service of the breakfast, and saying to himself:--"In very
truth this man is even such a magnifico as he is reported to be." While his
attention was thus occupied, the abbot's seneschal, it being now
breakfast-time, gave order to serve water for the hands, which being washen,
they sat them all down to breakfast. Now it so happened that Primasso was
placed immediately in front of the door by which the abbot must pass from
his chamber, into the hall, in which, according to rule of his court,
neither wine, nor bread, nor aught else drinkable or eatable was ever set on
the tables before he made his appearance and was seated. The seneschal,
therefore, having set the tables, sent word to the abbot, that all was now
ready, and they waited only his pleasure. So the abbot gave the word, the
door of his chamber was thrown open, and he took a step or two forward
towards the hall, gazing straight in front of him as he went. Thus it fell
out that the first man on whom he set eyes was Primasso, who was in very
sorry trim. The abbot, who knew him not by sight, no sooner saw him, than,
surprised by a churlish mood to which he had hitherto been an entire
stranger, he said to himself:--"So it is to such as this man that I give my
hospitality;" and going back into the chamber he bade lock the door, and
asked of his attendants whether the vile fellow that sate at table directly
opposite the door was known to any of them, who, one and all, answered in
the negative. Primasso waited a little, but he was not used to fast, and his
journey had whetted his appetite. So, as the abbot did not return, he drew
out one of the loaves which he had brought with him, and began to eat. The
abbot, after a while, bade one of his servants go see whether Primasso were
gone. The servant returned with the answer:--"No, sir, and (what is more) he
is eating a loaf of bread, which he seems to have brought with him." "Be it
so then," said the abbot, who was vexed that he was not gone of his own
accord, but was not disposed to turn him out; "let him eat his own bread, if
he have any, for he shall have none of ours today." By and by Primasso,
having finished his first loaf, began, as the abbot did not make his
appearance, to eat the second; which was likewise reported to the abbot, who
had again sent to see if he were gone. Finally, as the abbot still delayed
his coming, Primasso, having finished the second loaf, began upon the third;
whereof, once more, word was carried to the abbot, who now began to commune
with himself and say:--"Alas! my soul, what unwonted mood harbourest thou
to-day? What avarice? what scorn? and of whom? I have given my hospitality,
now for many a year, to whoso craved it, without looking to see whether he
were gentle or churl, poor or rich, merchant or cheat, and mine eyes have
seen it squandered on vile fellows without number; and nought of that which
I feel towards this man ever entered my mind. Assuredly it cannot be that he
is a man of no consequence, who is the occasion of this access of avarice in
me. Though he seem to me a vile fellow, he must be some great man, that my
mind is thus obstinately averse to do him honour." Of which musings the
upshot was that he sent to inquire who the vile fellow was, and learning
that he was Primasso, come to see if what he had heard of his magnificent
state were true, he was stricken with shame, having heard of old Primasso's
fame, and knowing him to be a great man. Wherefore, being zealous to make
him the amend, he studied to do him honour in many ways; and after
breakfast, that his garb might accord with his native dignity, he caused him
to be nobly arrayed, and setting him upon a palfrey and filling his purse,
left it to his own choice, whether to go or to stay. So Primasso, with a
full heart, thanked him for his courtesy in terms the amplest that he could
command, and, having left Paris afoot, returned thither on horseback."

Messer Cane was shrewd enough to apprehend Bergamino's meaning perfectly
well without a gloss, and said with a smile:--"Bergamino, thy parable is
apt, and declares to me very plainly thy losses, my avarice, and what thou
desirest of me. And in good sooth this access of avarice, of which thou art
the occasion, is the first that I have experienced. But I will expel the
intruder with the baton which thou thyself hast furnished." So he paid
Bergamino's reckoning, habited him nobly in one of his own robes, gave him
money and a palfrey, and left it for the time at his discretion, whether to
go or to stay.


NOVEL VIII.

--
Guglielmo Borsiere by a neat retort sharply censures avarice in Messer
Ermino de' Grimaldi.
--

Next Filostrato was seated Lauretta, who, when the praises bestowed on
Bergamino's address had ceased, knowing that it was now her turn to speak,
waited not for the word of command, but with a charming graciousness thus
began:--

The last novel, dear gossips, prompts me to relate how a worthy man,
likewise a jester, reprehended not without success the greed of a very
wealthy merchant; and, though the burden of my story is not unlike the last,
yet, perchance, it may not on that account be the less appreciated by you,
because it has a happy termination.

Know then that in Genoa there dwelt long ago a gentleman, who was known as
Messer Ermino de' Grimaldi, and whose wealth, both in lands and money, was
generally supposed to be far in excess of that of any other burgher then in
Italy, and as in wealth he was without a rival in Italy, so in meanness and
avarice there was not any in the entire world, however richly endowed with
those qualities, whom he did not immeasurably surpass, insomuch that, not
only did he keep a tight grip upon his purse when honour was to be done to
another, but in his personal expenditure, even upon things meet and proper,
contrary to the general custom of the Genoese, whose wont is to array
themselves nobly, he was extremely penurious, as also in his outlay upon his
table. Wherefore, not without just cause, folk had dropped his surname de'
Grimaldi, and called him instead Messer Ermino Avarizia. While thus by
thrift his wealth waxed greater and greater, it so chanced that there came
to Genoa a jester of good parts, a man debonair and ready of speech, his
name Guglielmo Borsiere, whose like is not to be found to-day when jesters
(to the great reproach be it spoken of those that claim the name and
reputation of gentlemen) are rather to be called asses, being without
courtly breeding, and formed after the coarse pattern of the basest of
churls. And whereas in the days of which I speak they made it their
business, they spared no pains, to compose quarrels, to allay
heart-burnings, between gentlemen, or arrange marriages, or leagues of
amity, ministering meanwhile relief to jaded minds and solace to courts by
the sprightly sallies of their wit, and with keen sarcasm, like fathers,
censuring churlish manners, being also satisfied with very trifling
guerdons; nowadays all their care is to spend their time in
scandal-mongering, in sowing discord, in saying, and (what is worse) in
doing in the presence of company things churlish and flagitious, in bringing
accusations, true or false, of wicked, shameful or flagitious conduct
against one another; and in drawing gentlemen into base and nefarious
practices by sinister and insidious arts. And by these wretched and depraved
lords he is held most dear and best rewarded whose words and deeds are the
most atrocious, to the great reproach and scandal of the world of to-day;
whereby it is abundantly manifest that virtue has departed from the earth,
leaving a degenerate generation to wallow in the lowest depths of vice.

But reverting to the point at which I started, wherefrom under stress of
just indignation I have deviated somewhat further than I intended, I say
that the said Guglielmo was had in honour, and was well received by all the
gentlemen of Genoa; and tarrying some days in the city, heard much of the
meanness and avarice of Messer Ermino, and was curious to see him. Now
Messer Ermino had heard that this Guglielmo Borsiere was a man of good
parts, and, notwithstanding his avarice, having in him some sparks of good
breeding, received him with words of hearty greeting and a gladsome mien,
and conversed freely with him and of divers matters, and so conversing, took
him with other Genoese that were of his company to a new and very beautiful
house which he had built, and after shewing him over the whole of it, said
to him:--"Now, Messer Guglielmo, you have seen and heard many things; could
you suggest to me something, the like of which has not hitherto been seen,
which I might have painted here in the saloon of this house?" To which
ill-judged question Guglielmo replied:--"Sir, it would not, I think, be in
my power to suggest anything the like of which has never been seen, unless
it were a sneeze or something similar; but if it so please you, I have
something to suggest, which, I think, you have never seen." "Prithee, what
may that be?" said Messer Ermino, not expecting to get the answer which he
got. For Guglielmo replied forthwith:--"Paint Courtesy here;" which Messer
Ermino had no sooner heard, than he was so stricken with shame that his
disposition underwent a complete change, and he said:--"Messer, Guglielmo, I
will see to it that Courtesy is here painted in such wise that neither you
nor any one else shall ever again have reason to tell me that I have not
seen or known that virtue." And henceforward (so enduring was the change
wrought by Guglielmo's words) there was not in Genoa, while he lived, any
gentleman so liberal and so gracious and so lavish of honour both to
strangers and to his fellow-citizens as Messer Ermino de' Grimaldi.


NOVEL IX.

--
The censure of a Gascon lady converts the King of Cyprus from a churlish to
an honourable temper.
--

Except Elisa none now remained to answer the call of the queen, and she
without waiting for it, with gladsome alacrity thus began:--

Bethink you, damsels, how often it has happened that men who have been
obdurate to censures and chastisements have been reclaimed by some
unpremeditated casual word. This is plainly manifest by the story told by
Lauretta; and by mine, which will be of the briefest, I mean further to
illustrate it; seeing that, good stories, being always pleasurable, are
worth listening to with attention, no matter by whom they may be told.

'Twas, then, in the time of the first king of Cyprus, after the conquest
made of the Holy Land by Godfrey de Bouillon, that a lady of Gascony made a
pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulchre, and on her way home, having landed at
Cyprus, met with brutal outrage at the hands of certain ruffians.
Broken-hearted and disconsolate she determined to make her complaint to the
king; but she was told that it would be all in vain, because so spiritless
and faineant was he that he not only neglected to avenge affronts put upon
others, but endured with a reprehensible tameness those which were offered
to himself, insomuch that whoso had any ill-humour to vent, took occasion to
vex or mortify him. The lady, hearing this report, despaired of redress, and
by way of alleviation of her grief determined to make the king sensible of
his baseness. So in tears she presented herself before him and said:--"Sire,
it is not to seek redress of the wrong done me that I come here before you:
but only that, so please you, I may learn of you how it is that you suffer
patiently the wrongs which, as I understand, are done you; that thus
schooled by you in patience I may endure my own, which, God knows, I would
gladly, were it possible, transfer to you, seeing that you are so well
fitted to bear them." These words aroused the hitherto sluggish and
apathetic king as it were from sleep. He redressed the lady's wrong, and
having thus made a beginning, thenceforth meted out the most rigorous
justice to all that in any wise offended against the majesty of his crown.


NOVEL X.

--
Master Alberto da Bologna honourably puts to shame a lady who sought
occasion to put him to shame in that he was in love with her.
--

After Elisa had done, it only remained for the queen to conclude the day's
story-telling, and thus with manner debonair did she begin:--

As stars in the serene expanse of heaven, as in spring-time flowers in the
green pastures, so, honourable damsels, in the hour of rare and excellent
converse is wit with its bright sallies. Which, being brief, are much more
proper for ladies than for men, seeing that prolixity of speech, when
brevity is possible, is much less allowable to them; albeit (shame be to us
all and all our generation) few ladies or none are left to-day who
understand aught that is wittily said, or understanding are able to answer
it. For the place of those graces of the spirit which distinguished the
ladies of the past has now been usurped by adornments of the person; and she
whose dress is most richly and variously and curiously dight, accounts
herself more worthy to be had in honour, forgetting, that, were one but so
to array him, an ass would carry a far greater load of finery than any of
them, and for all that be not a whit the more deserving of honour. I blush
to say this, for in censuring others I condemn myself. Tricked out,
bedecked, bedizened thus, we are either silent and impassive as statues, or,
if we answer aught that is said to us, much better were it we had held our
peace. And we make believe, forsooth, that our failure to acquit ourselves
in converse with our equals of either sex does but proceed from
guilelessness; dignifying stupidity by the name of modesty, as if no lady
could be modest and converse with other folk than her maid or laundress or
bake-house woman; which if Nature had intended, as we feign she did, she
would have set other limits to our garrulousness. True it is that in this,
as in other matters, time and place and person are to be regarded; because
it sometimes happens that a lady or gentleman thinking by some sally of wit
to put another to shame, has rather been put to shame by that other, having
failed duly to estimate their relative powers. Wherefore, that you may be on
your guard against such error, and, further, that in you be not exemplified
the common proverb, to wit, that women do ever and on all occasions choose
the worst, I trust that this last of to-day's stories, which falls to me to
tell, may serve you as a lesson; that, as you are distinguished from others
by nobility of nature, so you may also shew yourselves separate from them by
excellence of manners.

There lived not many years ago, perhaps yet lives, in Bologna, a very great
physician, so great that the fame of his skill was noised abroad throughout
almost the entire world.

Now Master Alberto (such was his name) was of so noble a temper that, being
now nigh upon seventy years of age, and all but devoid of natural heat of
body, he was yet receptive of the flames of love; and having at an assembly
seen a very beautiful widow lady, Madonna Malgherida de' Ghisolieri, as some
say, and being charmed with her beyond measure, was, notwithstanding his
age, no less ardently enamoured than a young man, insomuch that he was not
well able to sleep at night, unless during the day he had seen the fair
lady's lovely and delicate features. Wherefore he began to frequent the
vicinity of her house, passing to and fro in front of it, now on foot now on
horseback, as occasion best served. Which she and many other ladies
perceiving, made merry together more than once, to see a man of his years
and discretion in love, as if they deemed that this most delightful passion
of love were only fit for empty-headed youths, and could not in men be
either harboured or engendered. Master Alberto thus continuing to haunt the
front of the house, it so happened that one feast-day the lady with other
ladies was seated before her door, and Master Alberto's approach being thus
observed by them for some time before he arrived, they complotted to receive
him and shew him honour, and then to rally him on his love; and so they did,
rising with one accord to receive him, bidding him welcome, and ushering him
into a cool courtyard, where they regaled him with the finest wines and
comfits; which done, in a tone of refined and sprightly banter they asked
him how it came about that he was enamoured of this fair lady, seeing that
she was beloved of many a fine gentleman of youth and spirit. Master
Alberto, being thus courteously assailed, put a blithe face on it, and
answered:--"Madam, my love for you need surprise none that is conversant
with such matters, and least of all you that are worthy of it. And though
old men, of course, have lost the strength which love demands for its full
fruition, yet are they not therefore without the good intent and just
appreciation of what beseems the accepted lover, but indeed understand it
far better than young men, by reason that they have more experience. My hope
in thus old aspiring to love you, who are loved by so many young men, is
founded on what I have frequently observed of ladies' ways at lunch, when
they trifle with the lupin and the leek. In the leek no part is good, but
the head is at any rate not so bad as the rest, and indeed not unpalatable;
you, however, for the most part, following a depraved taste, hold it in your
hand and munch the leaves, which are not only of no account but actually
distasteful. How am I to know, madam, that in your selection of lovers, you
are not equally eccentric? In which case I should be the man of your choice,
and the rest would be cast aside." Whereto the gentle lady, somewhat
shame-stricken, as were also her fair friends, thus made answer:--"Master
Alberto, our presumption has received from you a most just and no less
courteous reproof; but your love is dear to me, as should ever be that of a
wise and worthy man. And therefore, saving my honour, I am yours, entirely
and devotedly at your pleasure and command." This speech brought Master
Alberto to his feet, and the others also rising, he thanked the lady for her
courtesy, bade her a gay and smiling adieu, and so left the house. Thus the
lady, not considering on whom she exercised her wit, thinking to conquer was
conquered herself--against which mishap you, if you are discreet, will ever
be most strictly on your guard.

As the young ladies and the three young men finished their storytelling the
sun was westering and the heat of the day in great measure abated. Which
their queen observing, debonairly thus she spoke:--"Now, dear gossips, my
day of sovereignty draws to a close, and nought remains for me to do but to
give you a new queen, by whom on the morrow our common life may be ordered
as she may deem best in a course of seemly pleasure; and though there seems
to be still some interval between day and night, yet, as whoso does not in
some degree anticipate the course of time, cannot well provide for the
future; and in order that what the new queen shall decide to be meet for the
morrow may be made ready beforehand, I decree that from this time forth the
days begin at this hour. And so in reverent submission to Him in whom is the
life of all beings, for our comfort and solace we commit the governance of
our realm for the morrow into the hands of Queen Filomena, most discreet of
damsels." So saying she arose, took the laurel wreath from her brow, and
with a gesture of reverence set it on the brow of Filomena, whom she then,
and after her all the other ladies and the young men, saluted as queen,
doing her due and graceful homage.

Queen Filomena modestly blushed a little to find herself thus invested with
the sovereignty; but, being put on her mettle by Pampinea's recent
admonitions, she was minded not to seem awkward, and soon recovered her
composure. She then began by confirming all the appointments made by
Pampinea, and making all needful arrangements for the following morning and
evening, which they were to pass where they then were. Whereupon she thus
spoke:--"Dearest gossips, though, thanks rather to Pampinea's courtesy than
to merit of mine, I am made queen of you all, yet I am not on that account
minded to have respect merely to my own judgment in the governance of our
life, but to unite your wisdom with mine; and that you may understand what I
think of doing, and by consequence may be able to amplify or curtail it at
your pleasure, I will in few words make known to you my purpose. The course
observed by Pampinea to-day, if I have judged aright, seems to be alike
commendable and delectable; wherefore, until by lapse of time, or for some
other cause, it grow tedious, I purpose not to alter it. So when we have
arranged for what we have already taken in hand, we will go hence and enjoy
a short walk; at sundown we will sup in the cool; and we will then sing a
few songs and otherwise divert ourselves, until it is time to go to sleep.
To-morrow we will rise in the cool of the morning, and after enjoying
another walk, each at his or her sweet will, we will return, as to-day, and
in due time break our fast, dance, sleep, and having risen, will here resume
our story-telling, wherein, methinks, pleasure and profit unite in
superabundant measure. True it is that Pampinea, by reason of her late
election to the sovereignty, neglected one matter, which I mean to
introduce, to wit, the circumscription of the topic of our story-telling,
and its preassignment, that each may be able to premeditate some apt story
bearing upon the theme; and seeing that from the beginning of the world
Fortune has made men the sport of divers accidents, and so it will continue
until the end, the theme, so please you, shall in each case be the same; to
wit, the fortune of such as after divers adventures have at last attained a
goal of unexpected felicity.

The ladies and the young men alike commended the rule thus laid down, and
agreed to follow it. Dioneo, however, when the rest had done speaking,
said:--"Madam, as all the rest have said, so say I, briefly, that the rule
prescribed by you is commendable and delectable; but of your especial grace
I crave a favour, which, I trust, may be granted and continued to me, so
long as our company shall endure; which favour is this: that I be not bound
by the assigned theme if I am not so minded, but that I have leave to choose
such topic as best shall please me. And lest any suppose that I crave this
grace as one that has not stories ready to hand, I am henceforth content
that mine be always the last." The queen, knowing him to be a merry and
facetious fellow, and feeling sure that he only craved this favour in order
that, if the company were jaded, he might have an opportunity to recreate
them by some amusing story, gladly, with the consent of the rest, granted
his petition. She then rose, and attended by the rest sauntered towards a
stream, which, issuing clear as crystal from a neighbouring hill,
precipitated itself into a valley shaded by trees close set amid living rock
and fresh green herbage. Bare of foot and arm they entered the stream, and
roving hither and thither amused themselves in divers ways till in due time
they returned to the palace, and gaily supped. Supper ended, the queen sent
for instruments of music, and bade Lauretta lead a dance, while Emilia was
to sing a song accompanied by Dioneo on the lute.

Accordingly Lauretta led a dance, while Emilia with passion sang the
following song:

So fain I am of my own loveliness,
    I hope, nor think not e'er
  The weight to feel of other amorousness.

When in the mirror I my face behold,
  That see I there which doth my mind content,
  Nor any present hap or memory old
  May me deprive of such sweet ravishment.
  Where else, then, should I find such blandishment
     Of sight and sense that e'er
  My heart should know another amorousness?

Nor need I fear lest the fair thing retreat,
  When fain I am my solace to renew;
  Rather, I know, 'twill me advance to meet,
  To pleasure me, and shew so sweet a view
  That speech or thought of none its semblance true
     Paint or conceive may e'er,
  Unless he burn with ev'n such amorousness.

Thereon as more intent I gaze, the fire
  Waxeth within me hourly, more and more,
  Myself I yield thereto, myself entire,
  And foretaste have of what it hath in store,
  And hope of greater joyance than before,
    Nay, such as ne'er
  None knew; for ne'er was felt such amorousness.

This ballade, to which all heartily responded, albeit its words furnished
much matter of thought to some, was followed by some other dances, and part
of the brief night being thus spent, the queen proclaimed the first day
ended, and bade light the torches that all might go to rest until the
following morning; and so, seeking their several chambers, to rest they
went.


--
Endeth here the first day of the Decameron; beginneth the second, in which,
under the rule of Filomena, they discourse of the fortunes of such as after
divers misadventures have at last attained a goal of unexpected felicity.
--

The sun was already trailing the new day in his wake of light, and the
birds, blithely chanting their lays among the green boughs, carried the
tidings to the ear, when with one accord all the ladies and the three young
men arose, and entered the gardens, where for no little time they found
their delight in sauntering about the dewy meads, straying hither and
thither, culling flowers, and weaving them into fair garlands. The day
passed like its predecessor; they breakfasted in the shade, and danced and
slept until noon, when they rose, and, at their queen's behest, assembled in
the cool meadow, and sat them down in a circle about her. Fair and very
debonair she shewed, crowned with her laurel wreath, as for a brief space
she scanned the company, and then bade Neifile shew others the way with a
story. Neifile made no excuse, and gaily thus began.


NOVEL I.

--
Martellino pretends to be a paralytic, and makes it appear as if he were
cured by being placed upon the body of St. Arrigo. His trick is detected; he
is beaten and arrested, and is in peril of hanging, but finally escapes.
--

Often has it happened, dearest ladies, that one who has studied to raise a
laugh at others' expense, especially in regard of things worthy to be had in
reverence, has found the laugh turn against himself, and sometimes to his
loss: as, in obedience to the queen's command, and by way of introducing our
theme, I am about to shew you, by the narrative of an adventure which befell
one of our own citizens, and after a course of evil fortune had an entirely
unexpected and very felicitous issue.

Not long ago there was at Treviso a German, named Arrigo, a poor man who got
his living as a common hired porter, but though of so humble a condition,
was respected by all, being accounted not only an honest but a most holy
man; insomuch that, whether truly or falsely I know not, the Trevisans
affirm, that on his decease all the bells of the cathedral of Treviso began
to toll of their own accord. Which being accounted a miracle, this Arrigo
was generally reputed a saint; and all the people of the city gathered
before the house where his body lay, and bore it, with a saint's honours,
into the cathedral, and brought thither the halt and paralytic and blind,
and others afflicted with disease or bodily defects, as hoping that by
contact with this holy body they would all be healed. The people thus
tumultuously thronging the church, it so chanced that there arrived in
Treviso three of our own citizens, of whom one was named Stecchi, another
Martellino, and the third Marchese; all three being men whose habit it was
to frequent the courts of the nobles and afford spectators amusement by
assuming disguises and personating other men. Being entire strangers to the
place, and seeing everybody running to and fro, they were much astonished,
and having learned the why and wherefore, were curious to go see what was to
be seen. So at the inn, where they put up, Marchese began:--"We would fain
go see this saint; but for my part I know not how we are to reach the spot,
for I hear the piazza is full of Germans and other armed men, posted there
by the Lord who rules here to prevent an uproar, and moreover the church, so
far as one may learn, is so full of folk that scarce another soul may enter
it." Whereupon Martellino, who was bent on seeing what was to be seen,
said:--"Let not this deter us; I will assuredly find a way of getting to the
saint's body." "How?" rejoined Marchese. "I will tell you," replied
Martellino; "I will counterfeit a paralytic, and thou wilt support me on one
side and Stecchi on the other, as if I were not able to go alone, and so you
will enter the church, making it appear as if you were leading me up to the
body of the saint that he may heal me, and all that see will make way and
give us free passage." Marchese and Stecchi approved the plan; so all three
forthwith left the inn and repaired to a lonely place, where Martellino
distorted his hands, his fingers, his arms, his legs, and also his mouth and
eyes and his entire face in a manner horrible to contemplate; so that no
stranger that saw him could have doubted that he was impotent and paralysed
in every part of his body. In this guise Marchese and Stecchi laid hold of
him, and led him towards the church, assuming a most piteous air, and humbly
beseeching everybody for God's sake to make way for them. Their request was
readily granted; and, in short, observed by all, and crying out at almost
every step, "make way, make way," they reached the place where St. Arrigo's
body was laid. Whereupon some gentlemen who stood by, hoisted Martellino on
to the saint's body, that thereby he might receive the boon of health. There
he lay still for a while, the eyes of all in the church being riveted upon
him in expectation of the result; then, being a very practised performer, he
stretched, first, one of his fingers, next a hand, afterwards an arm, and so
forth, making as if he gradually recovered the use of all his natural
powers. Which the people observing raised such a clamour in honour of St.
Arrigo that even thunder would have been inaudible. Now it chanced that hard
by stood a Florentine, who knew Martellino well, though he had failed to
recognise him, when, in such strange guise, he was led into the church; but
now, seeing him resume his natural shape, the Florentine recognised him, and
at once said with a laugh°"God's curse upon him. Who that saw him come but
would have believed that he was really paralysed?" These words were
overheard by some of the Trevisans, who began forthwith to question the
Florentine. "How?" said they; "was he then not paralysed? No, by God
returned the Florentine he has always been as straight as any of us; he has
merely shewn you that he knows better than any man alive how to play this
trick of putting on any counterfeit semblance that he chooses." Thereupon
the Trevisans, without further parley, made a rush, clearing the way and
crying out as they went:--"Seize this traitor who mocks at God and His
saints; who, being no paralytic, has come hither in the guise of a paralytic
to deride our patron saint and us." So saying, they laid hands on him,
dragged him down from where he stood, seized him by the hair, tore the
clothes from his back, and fell to beating and kicking him, so that it
seemed to him as if all the world were upon him. He cried out:--"Pity, for
God's sake," and defended himself as best he could: all in vain, however;
the press became thicker and thicker moment by moment. Which Stecchi and
Marchese observing began to say one to the other that 'twas a bad business;
yet, being apprehensive on their own account, they did not venture to come
to his assistance, but cried out with the rest that he ought to die, at the
same time, however, casting about how they might find the means to rescue
him from the hands of the people, who would certainly have killed him, but
for a diversion which Marchese hastily effected. The entire posse of the
signory being just outside, he ran off at full speed to the Podesta's
lieutenant, and said to him:--"Help, for God's sake; there is a villain here
that has cut my purse with full a hundred florins of gold in it; prithee
have him arrested that I may have my own again." Whereupon, twelve sergeants
or more ran forthwith to the place where hapless Martellino was being carded
without a comb, and, forcing their way with the utmost difficulty through
the throng, rescued him all bruised and battered from their hands, and led
him to the palace; whither he was followed by many who, resenting what he
had done, and hearing that he was arrested as a cutpurse, and lacking better
pretext for harassing him, began one and all to charge him with having cut
their purses. All which the deputy of the Podesta had no sooner heard, than,
being a harsh man, he straightway took Martellino aside and began to examine
him. Martellino answered his questions in a bantering tone, making light of
the arrest; whereat the deputy, losing patience, had him bound to the
strappado, and caused him to receive a few hints of the cord with intent to
extort from him a confession of his guilt, by way of preliminary to hanging
him. Taken down from the strappado, and questioned by the deputy if what his
accusers said were true, Martellino, as nothing was to be gained by denial,
answered:--"My lord, I am ready to confess the truth; let but my accusers
say, each of them, when and where I cut his purse, and I will tell you what
I have and what I have not done." "So be it," said the deputy, and caused a
few of them to be summoned. Whereupon Martellino, being charged with having
cut this, that or the other man's purse eight, six or four days ago, while
others averred that he had cut their purses that very day, answered thus:--
"My lord, these men lie in the throat, and for token that I speak true, I
tell you that, so far from having been here as long as they make out, it is
but very lately that I came into these parts, where I never was before; and
no sooner was I come, than, as my ill-luck would have it, I went to see the
body of this saint, and so have been carded as you see; and that what I say
is true, his Lordship's intendant of arrivals, and his book, and also my
host may certify. Wherefore, if you find that even so it is as I say,
hearken not to these wicked men, and spare me the torture and death which
they would have you inflict." In this posture of affairs Marchese and
Stecchi, learning that the Podesta's deputy was dealing rigorously with
Martellino, and had already put him to the strappado, grew mightily alarmed.
"We have made a mess of it," they said to themselves; "we have only taken
him out of the frying-pan to toss him into the fire." So, hurrying hither
and thither with the utmost zeal, they made diligent search until they found
their host, and told him how matters stood. The host had his laugh over the
affair, and then brought them to one Sandro Agolanti, who dwelt in Treviso
and had great interest with the Lord of the place. The host laid the whole
matter before Sandro, and, backed by Marchese and Stecchi, besought him to
undertake Martellino's cause. Sandro, after many a hearty laugh, hied him to
the Lord, who at his instance sent for Martellino. The messengers found
Martellino still in his shirt before the deputy, at his wits' end, and all
but beside himself with fear, because the deputy would hear nothing that he
said in his defence. Indeed, the deputy, having a spite against Florentines,
had quite made up his mind to have him hanged; he was therefore in the last
degree reluctant to surrender him to the Lord, and only did so upon
compulsion. Brought at length before the Lord, Martellino detailed to him
the whole affair, and prayed him as the greatest of favours to let him
depart in peace. The Lord had a hearty laugh over the adventure, and
bestowed a tunic on each of the three. So, congratulating themselves on
their unexpected deliverance from so great a peril, they returned home safe
and sound.


NOVEL II.

--
Rinaldo d'Asti is robbed, arrives at Castel Guglielmo, and is entertained by
a widow lady; his property is restored to him, and he returns home safe and
sound.
--

The ladies and the young men, especially Filostrato, laughed inordinately at
Neifile's narrative of Martellino's misadventures. Then Filostrato, who sate
next Neifile, received the queen's command to follow her, and promptly thus
began:--

Fair ladies, 'tis on my mind to tell you a story in which are mingled things
sacred and passages of adverse fortune and love, which to hear will
perchance be not unprofitable, more especially to travellers in love's
treacherous lands; of whom if any fail to say St. Julian's paternoster, it
often happens that, though he may have a good bed, he is ill lodged.

Know, then, that in the time of the Marquis Azzo da Ferrara, a merchant,
Rinaldo d'Asti by name, having disposed of certain affairs which had brought
him to Bologna, set his face homeward, and having left Ferrara behind him
was on his way to Verona, when he fell in with some men that looked like
merchants, but were in truth robbers and men of evil life and condition,
whose company he imprudently joined, riding and conversing with them. They,
perceiving that he was a merchant, and judging that he must have money about
him, complotted to rob him on the first opportunity; and to obviate
suspicion they played the part of worthy and reputable men, their discourse
of nought but what was seemly and honourable and leal, their demeanour at
once as respectful and as cordial as they could make it; so that he deemed
himself very lucky to have met with them, being otherwise alone save for a
single mounted servant. Journeying thus, they conversed after the desultory
manner of travellers, of divers matters, until at last they fell a talking
of the prayers which men address to God, and one of the robbers--there were
three of them--said to Rinaldo:--"And you, gentle sir, what is your wonted
orison when you are on your travels?" Rinaldo answered:--"Why, to tell the
truth, I am a man unskilled, unlearned in such matters, and few prayers have
I at my command, being one that lives in the good old way and lets two soldi
count for twenty-four deniers; nevertheless it has always been my custom in
journeying to say of a morning, as I leave the inn, a paternoster and an
avemaria for the souls of the father and mother of St. Julian, after which I
pray God and St. Julian to provide me with a good inn for the night. And
many a time in the course of my life have I met with great perils by the
way, and evading them all have found comfortable quarters for the night:
whereby my faith is assured, that St. Julian, in whose honour I say my
paternoster, has gotten me this favour of God; nor should I look for a
prosperous journey and a safe arrival at night, if I had not said it in the
morning." Then said his interrogator:--"And did you say it this morning?"
Whereto Rinaldo answered, "Troth, did I," which caused the other, who by
this time knew what course matters would take, to say to himself:--"'Twill
prove to have been said in the nick of time; for if we do not miscarry, I
take it thou wilt have but a sorry lodging." Then turning to Rinaldo he
said:--"I also have travelled much, and never a prayer have I said though I
have heard them much, commended by many, nor has it ever been my lot to find
other than good quarters for the night; it may be that this very evening you
will be able to determine which of us has the better lodging, you that have
said the paternoster, or I that have not said it. True, however, it is that
in its stead I am accustomed to say the 'Dirupisti,' or the 'Intemerata,' or
the 'De profundis,' which, if what my grandmother used to say is to be
believed, are of the greatest efficacy." So, talking of divers matters, and
ever on the look-out for time and place suited to their evil purpose, they
continued their journey, until towards evening, some distance from Castel
Guglielmo, as they were about to ford a stream, these three ruffians,
profiting by the lateness of the hour, and the loneliness and straitness of
the place, set upon Rinaldo and robbed him, and leaving him afoot and in his
shirt, said by way of adieu:--"Go now, and see if thy St. Julian will
provide thee with good lodging to-night; our saint, we doubt not, will do as
much by us;" and so crossing the stream, they went their way. Rinaldo's
servant, coward that he was, did nothing to help his master when he saw him
attacked, but turned his horse's head, and was off at a smart pace; nor did
he draw rein until he was come to Castel Guglielmo; where, it being now
evening, he put up at an inn and gave himself no further trouble. Rinaldo,
left barefoot, and stripped to his shirt, while the night closed in very
cold and snowy, was at his wits' end, and shivering so that his teeth
chattered in his head, began to peer about, if haply he might find some
shelter for the night, that so he might not perish with the cold; but,
seeing none (for during a recent war the whole country had been wasted by
fire), he set off for Castel Guglielmo, quickening his pace by reason of the
cold. Whether his servant had taken refuge in Castel Guglielmo or elsewhere,
he knew not, but he thought that, could he but enter the town, God would
surely send him some succour. However, dark night overtook him while he was
still about a mile from the castle; so that on his arrival he found the
gates already locked and the bridges raised, and he could not pass in. Sick
at heart, disconsolate and bewailing his evil fortune, he looked about for
some place where he might ensconce himself, and at any rate find shelter
from the snow. And by good luck he espied a house, built with a balcony a
little above the castle-wall, under which balcony he purposed to shelter
himself until daybreak. Arrived at the spot, he found beneath the balcony a
postern, which, however, was locked; and having gathered some bits of straw
that lay about, he placed them in front of the postern, and there in sad and
sorrowful plight took up his quarters, with many a piteous appeal to St.
Julian, whom he reproached for not better rewarding the faith which he
reposed in him. St. Julian, however, had not abandoned him, and in due time
provided him with a good lodging.

There was in the castle a widow lady of extraordinary beauty (none fairer)
whom Marquis Azzo loved as his own life, and kept there for his pleasure.
She lived in the very same house beneath the balcony of which Rinaldo had
posted himself. Now it chanced that that very day the Marquis had come to
Castel Guglielmo to pass the night with her, and had privily caused a bath
to be made ready, and a supper suited to his rank, in the lady's own house.
The arrangements were complete; and only the Marquis was stayed for, when a
servant happened to present himself at the castle-gate, bringing tidings for
the Marquis which obliged him suddenly to take horse. He therefore sent word
to the lady that she must not wait for him, and forthwith took his
departure. The lady, somewhat disconsolate, found nothing better to do than
to get into the bath which had been intended for the Marquis, sup and go to
bed: so into the bath she went. The bath was close to the postern on the
other side of which hapless Rinaldo had ensconced himself, and, thus the
mournful and quavering music which Rinaldo made as he shuddered in the cold,
and which seemed rather to proceed from a stork's beak than from the mouth
of a human being, was audible to the lady in the bath. She therefore called
her maid, and said to her:--"Go up and look out over the wall and down at
the postern, and mark who is there, and what he is, and what he does there."
The maid obeyed, and, the night being fine, had no difficulty in making out
Rinaldo as he sate there, barefoot, as I have, said, and in his shirt, and
trembling in every limb. So she called out to him, to know who he was.
Rinaldo, who could scarcely articulate for shivering, told as briefly as he
could, who he was, and how and why he came to be there; which done, he began
piteously to, beseech her not, if she could avoid it, to leave him there all
night to perish of cold. The maid went back to her mistress full of pity for
Rinaldo, and told her all she had seen and heard. The lady felt no less pity
for Rinaldo; and bethinking her that she had the key of the postern by which
the Marquis sometimes entered when he paid her a secret visit, she said to
the maid:--"Go, and let him in softly; here is this supper, and there will
be none to eat it; and we can very well put him up for the night." Cordially
commending her mistress's humanity, the maid went and let Rinaldo in, and
brought him to the lady, who, seeing that he was all but dead with cold,
said to him:--"Quick, good man, get into that bath, which is still warm."
Gladly he did so, awaiting no second invitation, and was so much comforted
by its warmth that he seemed to have passed from death to life. The lady
provided him with a suit of clothes, which had been worn by her husband
shortly before his death, and which, when he had them on, looked as if they
had been made for him. So he recovered heart, and, while he awaited the
lady's commands, gave thanks to God and St. Julian for delivering him from a
woful night and conducting him, as it seemed, to comfortable quarters.

The lady meanwhile took a little rest, after which she had a roaring fire
put in one of her large rooms, whither presently she came, and asked her
maid how the good man did. The maid replied:--"Madam, he has put on the
clothes, in which he shews to advantage, having a handsome person, and
seeming to be a worthy man, and well-bred." "Go, call him then," said the
lady, "tell him to come hither to the fire, and we will sup; for I know that
he has not supped." Rinaldo, on entering the room and seeing the lady, took
her to be of no small consequence. He therefore made her a low bow, and did
his utmost to thank her worthily for the service she had rendered him. His
words pleased her no less than his person, which accorded with what the maid
had said: so she made him heartily welcome, installed him at his ease by her
side before the fire, and questioned him of the adventure which had brought
him thither. Rinaldo detailed all the circumstances, of which the lady had
heard somewhat when Rinaldo's servant made his appearance at the castle. She
therefore gave entire credence to what he said, and told him what she knew
about his servant, and how he might easily find him on the morrow. She then
bade set the table, which done, Rinaldo and she washed their hands and sate
down together to sup. Tall he was and comely of form and feature, debonair
and gracious of mien and manner, and in his lusty prime. The lady had eyed
him again and again to her no small satisfaction, and, her wantonness being
already kindled for the Marquis, who was to have come to lie with her, she
had let Rinaldo take the vacant place in her mind. So when supper was done,
and they were risen from the table, she conferred with her maid, whether,
after the cruel trick played upon her by the Marquis, it were not well to
take the good gift which Fortune had sent her. The maid knowing the bent of
her mistress's desire, left no word unsaid that might encourage her to
follow it. Wherefore the lady, turning towards Rinaldo, who was standing
where she had left him by the fire, began thus:--"So! Rinaldo, why still so
pensive? Will nothing console you for the loss of a horse and a few clothes?
Take heart, put a blithe face on it, you are at home; nay more, let me tell
you that, seeing you in those clothes which my late husband used to wear,
and taking you for him, I have felt, not once or twice, but perhaps a
hundred times this evening, a longing to throw my arms round you and kiss
you; and, in faith, I had so done, but that I feared it might displease
you." Rinaldo, hearing these words, and marking the flame which shot from
the lady's eyes, and being no laggard, came forward with open arms, and
confronted her and said:--"Madam, I am not unmindful that I must ever
acknowledge that to you I owe my life, in regard of the peril whence you
rescued me. If then there be any way in which I may pleasure you, churlish
indeed were I not to devise it. So you may even embrace and kiss me to your
heart's content, and I will embrace and kiss you with the best of good
wills." There needed no further parley. The lady, all aflame with amorous
desire, forthwith threw herself into his arms, and straining him to her
bosom with a thousand passionate embraces, gave and received a thousand
kisses before they sought her chamber. There with all speed they went to
bed, nor did day surprise them until again and again and in full measure
they had satisfied their desire. With the first streaks of dawn they rose,
for the lady was minded that none should surmise aught of the affair. So,
having meanly habited Rinaldo, and replenished his purse, she enjoined him
to keep the secret, shewed him the way to the castle, where he was to find
his servant, and let him out by the same postern by which he had entered.
When it was broad day the gates were opened, and Rinaldo, passing himself
off as a traveller from distant parts, entered the castle, and found his
servant. Having put on the spare suit which was in his valise, he was about
to mount the servant's horse, when, as if by miracle, there were brought
into the castle the three gentlemen of the road who had robbed him the
evening before, having been taken a little while after for another offence.
Upon their confession Rinaldo's horse was restored to him, as were also his
clothes and money; so that he lost nothing except a pair of garters, of
which the robbers knew not where they had bestowed them. Wherefore Rinaldo,
giving thanks to God and St. Julian, mounted his horse, and returned home
safe and sound, and on the morrow the three robbers kicked heels in the
wind.


NOVEL III.

--
Three young men squander their substance and are reduced to poverty. Their
nephew, returning home a desperate man, falls in with an abbot, in whom he
discovers the daughter of the King of England. She marries him, and he
retrieves the losses and reestablishes the fortune of his uncles.
--

The ladies marvelled to hear the adventures of Rinaldo d'Asti, praised his
devotion, and gave thanks to God and St. Julian for the succour lent him in
his extreme need. Nor, though the verdict was hardly outspoken, was the lady
deemed unwise to take the boon which God had sent her. So they tittered and
talked of her night of delight, while Pampinea, being seated by Filostrato,
and surmising that her turn would, as it did, come next, was lost in
meditation on what she was to say. Roused from her reverie by the word of
the queen, she put on a cheerful courage, and thus began:--

Noble ladies, discourse as we may of Fortune's handiwork, much still remains
to be said if we but scan events aright, nor need we marvel thereat, if we
but duly consider that all matters, which we foolishly call our own, are in
her hands and therefore subject, at her inscrutable will, to every variety
of chance and change without any order therein by us discernible. Which is
indeed signally manifest everywhere and all day long; yet, as 'tis our
queen's will that we speak thereof, perhaps 'twill not be unprofitable to
you, if, notwithstanding it has been the theme of some of the foregoing
stories, I add to them another, which, I believe, should give you pleasure.

There was formerly in our city a knight, by name Messer Tedaldo, of the
Lamberti, according to some, or, as others say, of the Agolanti family,
perhaps for no better reason than that the occupation of his sons was
similar to that which always was and is the occupation of the Agolanti.
However, without professing to determine which of the two houses he belonged
to, I say, that he was in his day a very wealthy knight, and had three sons,
the eldest being by name Lamberto, the second Tedaldo, and the third
Agolante. Fine, spirited young men were they all, though the eldest was not
yet eighteen years old when their father, Messer Tedaldo, died very rich,
leaving to them as his lawful heirs the whole of his property both movable
and immovable. Finding themselves thus possessed of great wealth, both in
money and in lands and chattels, they fell to spending without stint or
restraint, indulging their every desire, maintaining a great establishment,
and a large and well-filled stable, besides dogs and hawks, keeping ever
open house, scattering largesses, jousting, and, not content with these and
the like pastimes proper to their condition, indulging every appetite
natural to their youth. They had not long followed this course of life
before the cash left them by their father was exhausted; and, their rents
not sufficing to defray their expenditure, they began to sell and pledge
their property, and disposing of it by degrees, one item to-day and another
to-morrow, they hardly perceived that they were approaching the verge of
ruin, until poverty opened the eyes which wealth had fast sealed. So one day
Lamberto called his brothers to him, reminded them of the position of wealth
and dignity which had been theirs and their father's before them, and shewed
them the poverty to which their extravagance had reduced them, and adjured
them most earnestly that, before their destitution was yet further manifest,
they should all three sell what little remained to them and depart thence;
which accordingly they did. Without leave-taking, or any ceremony, they
quitted Florence; nor did they rest until they had arrived in England and
established themselves in a small house in London, where, by living with
extreme parsimony and lending at exorbitant usances, they prospered so well
that in the course of a few years they amassed a fortune; and so, one by
one, they returned to Florence, purchased not a few of their former estates
besides many others, and married. The management of their affairs in
England, where they continued their business of usurers, they left to a
young nephew, Alessandro by name, while, heedless alike of the teaching of
experience and of marital and parental duty, they all three launched out at
Florence into more extravagant expenditure than before, and contracted debts
on all hands and to large amounts. This expenditure they were enabled for
some years to support by the remittances made by Alessandro, who, to his
great profit, had lent money to the barons on the security of their castles
and rents.

While the three brothers thus continued to spend freely, and, when short of
money, to borrow it, never doubting of help from England, it so happened
that, to the surprise of everybody, there broke out in England a war between
the King and his son, by which the whole island was divided into two camps;
whereby Alessandro lost all his mortgages, of the baronial castles and every
other source of income whatsoever. However, in the daily expectation that
peace would be concluded between the King and his son, Alessandro, hoping
that in that event all would be restored to him, principal and interest,
tarried in the island; and the three brothers at Florence in no degree
retrenched their extravagant expenditure, but went on borrowing from day to
day. Several years thus passed; and, their hopes being frustrated, the three
brothers not only lost credit, but, being pressed for payment by their
creditors, were suddenly arrested, and, their property proving deficient,
were kept in prison for the balance, while their wives and little children
went into the country parts, or elsewhere, wretchedly equipped, and with no
other prospect than to pass the rest of their days in destitution.
Alessandro, meanwhile, seeing that the peace, which he had for several years
awaited in England, did not come, and deeming that he would hazard his life
to no purpose by tarrying longer in the country, made up his mind to return
to Italy. He travelled at first altogether alone; but it so chanced that he
left Bruges at the same time with an abbot, habited in white, attended by a
numerous retinue, and preceded by a goodly baggage-train. Behind the abbot
rode two greybeard knights, kinsmen of the King, in whom Alessandro
recognised acquaintances, and, making himself known to them, was readily
received into their company. As thus they journeyed together, Alessandro
softly asked them who the monks were that rode in front with so great a
train, and whither they were bound. "The foremost rider," replied one of the
knights, "is a young kinsman of ours, the newly-elected abbot of one of the
greatest abbeys of England,; and as he is not of legal age for such a
dignity, we are going with him to Rome to o

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