On hearing her explanation, Gabriotto burst out laughing and told her that it was very silly to take any notice of dreams, since they were caused either by overeating or undereating, and they invariably turned out to be meaningless. Then he said:
‘If I were the sort of person who takes dreams seriously, I would not have come to see you, not so much because of your own dream but because of one that I too experienced on the night before last. In it, I seemed to be out hunting in a fine and pleasant wood, and I captured the most beautiful and fetching little doe you ever saw. It was whiter than the driven snow, and it quickly grew so attached to me that it followed me about everywhere. For my part, I was apparently so fond of the animal that I put a golden collar round its neck and kept it on a golden chain to prevent it from straying.
‘But then I dreamt that, whilst the doe was asleep, resting its head upon my chest, a coal-black greyhound appeared as if from nowhere, starving with hunger and quite terrifying to look upon. It advanced towards me, and I seemed powerless to resist, for it sank its teeth into my left side and gnawed away until it reached my heart, which it appeared to tear out and carry off in its jaws. The pain of it was so excruciating that I came to my senses, and the first thing I did on waking up was to run my hand over my left side just to make sure that it was still intact; but on discovering that I had come to no harm, I laughed at myself for being so credulous. But in any case, what does it signify? I have had the same kind of dream before, and much more terrifying ones, and they have never affected my life in the slightest degree, either one way or the other. So let us forget all about them and concentrate on enjoying ourselves.’
If the girl was already feeling frightened on account of her own dream, her fears were magnified on learning about Gabriotto’s. She did her best to conceal them, however, for she did not wish to upset him. Although she took some solace in returning his kisses and caresses, she was filled with mysterious forebodings and kept looking into his face more often than usual. And every so often she cast her eyes round the garden to make sure that there was no sign of any black thing approaching.
As they lingered there together, Gabriotto suddenly heaved a tremendous sigh, enfolded her in his arms, and said:
‘Alas, my dearest, comfort me, for I am dying.’ And so saying, he fell back to the ground and lay motionless upon the grass.
On seeing this, the girl drew her fallen lover to her bosom, and, choking back her tears with an effort, she exclaimed:
‘Oh, my precious husband! Alas! What is the matter?’
Gabriotto did not reply, but simply lay there gasping for breath and perspiring all over, and shortly thereafter he gave up the ghost.
You can all imagine the girl’s distress and agony, for she loved him more dearly than her very self. Bursting into floods of tears, she called out to him over and over again, but all to no avail; and eventually, having run her fingers over the whole of his body and discovered that he was completely cold, she was forced to acknowledge that he was dead. Stricken with anguish, not knowing what to do or say, her tears streaming down her cheeks, she ran to fetch her maidservant, who knew about her affair with Gabriotto, and poured out all the sorrow and misery she was feeling.
The two women wept for some time, gazing down together upon Gabriotto’s lifeless features, and then the girl said to her maidservant:
‘Now that God has taken this man away from me, I shall live no longer. But before I proceed to kill myself, I want us to do all things necessary to preserve my good name, to keep our love a secret, and to ensure that his body, from which his noble spirit has departed, will receive a proper burial.’
‘Do not talk of killing yourself, my daughter,’ said the maidservant. ‘For though you may have lost him in this life, if you kill yourself you will lose him in the next life as well, because you will end up in Hell, which is the last place I would expect to find the soul of so virtuous a youth as Gabriotto. It is far better that you should be of good cheer and give some thought to assisting his soul by means of prayers and other good works, just in case he needs them on account of some peccadillo he may have committed. As to burying his body, the quickest way would be to do it here and now in the garden. Nobody will ever find out, because nobody knows that he was ever here. But if you do not like this idea, let us carry him from the garden and leave him outside, where he will be found in the morning and taken to his own house to be buried by his kinsfolk.’
Though she was filled with despair and wept the whole time, the girl was not deaf to her maidservant’s advice. Rejecting the first of her suggestions, she seized upon the second, saying:
‘I am sure that God would not wish me to permit so precious a youth, a man whom I love so deeply and to whom I am married, to be buried like a dog or left lying in the street. I have given him my own tears, and I am determined that he shall have the tears of his kinsfolk. What is more, I am beginning to see how we can manage it.’
She promptly sent the maid to fetch a length of silk cloth which was kept in one of her strongboxes, and when she returned with it they spread it on the ground and placed Gabriotto’s body upon it. Then, weeping continuously, she rested his head on a cushion, closed his lips and his eyelids, made him a wreath out of roses, and filled all the space around him with the other roses they had gathered. And turning to her maidservant, she said:
‘It is not far from here to his house, and so you and I are going to carry him to his front-door and leave him there, just as we have arranged him. Soon it will be day, and they will take him indoors. It won’t be any consolation to his family, but for me at least, in whose arms he has died, it will bring some small pleasure.’
And so saying, she threw herself upon him once again, her tears streaming freely down her cheeks. She lay there sobbing for a long while until eventually, heeding her maidservant’s repeated and anxious reminders that the dawn was approaching, she dragged herself to her feet. Then, removing from her finger the ring with which Gabriotto had married her, she threaded it on to his, saying through her tears:
‘Dear husband, if your spirit is witness to my tears, and if there is any consciousness or feeling left in the human body after its soul has departed, receive fondly this final gift from the woman you loved so greatly when you were living on earth.’
No sooner had she said this, than she swooned and fell yet again upon his body. After a while she came to her senses and stood up, and then she and the maidservant took up the piece of cloth upon which his body was lying, went form from the garden, and proceeded in the direction of his house. But as they were making their way along the street with his dead body, they had the misfortune to be discovered and stopped by the officers of the watch, who happened at that precise moment to be passing through the district on their way to investigate some other mishap.
After what had happened, Andreuola was more eager to die than to go on living, and, on recognizing the officers of the watch, she addressed them frankly and said:
‘I know who you are, and realize that it would be futile for me to try and escape. I am quite prepared to come with you and explain all this before the magistrates. But if any of you should venture to lay a finger on me, or to remove anything from this man’s body, you may rest assured that I shall denounce you.’
And so no hand was laid upon her, and she was led away with Gabriotto’s body to the palace of the podestà.
The podestà, in other words the chief magistrate, having been roused from sleep, ordered her to be brought to his private quarters, where he questioned her about the circumstances of the case. He then got certain physicians to carry out a post mortem so as to ascertain that the good man had not been murdered, whether by poison or by any other means, and they unanimously confirmed that he had died a natural death from asphyxia, caused by the bursting of an abscess located in the region of his heart.
Feeling that the girl was not entirely blameless, despite the physicians’ report, the magistrate made a pretence of offering her a favour that was not withi
n his power to bestow, telling her that if she would yield to his pleasures, he would set her at liberty. On getting no response from her, he exceeded all the bounds of decorum and attempted to take her by force. But Andreuola, seething with indignation and summoning every ounce of her strength, defended herself vigorously and hurled him aside with a torrent of haughty abuse.
When it was broad day, the affair was reported to Messer Negro, who, sick with anxiety, set out with numerous friends for the palace of the podestà, where, having heard the whole story from the lips of the chief magistrate himself, he protested about the seizure of his daughter and demanded her release.
The chief magistrate, thinking it preferable to make a clean breast of his attempt on the girl rather than to wait for her to denounce him, began by praising her for her constancy, in proof of which he went on to describe how he had behaved towards her. On discovering how resolute she was, he had fallen deeply in love with her. And if it was agreeable to Messer Negro, who was her father, and also to the young lady herself, he would gladly take her for his wife, notwithstanding the fact that she had previously been married to a man of lowly condition.
Whilst they were talking in this fashion, Andreuola came into her father’s presence, and, bursting into tears, threw herself on her knees before him.
‘Father,’ she cried, ‘I suppose it is quite unnecessary for me to tell you about my reckless behaviour and about the tragedy that has befallen me, for I am sure you will already have been informed about these things. My sole request – and it is one that I make in all humility – is that you should pardon my transgression in taking as my husband, and without your knowledge, the man who was more pleasing to me than any other. Nor do I crave this forgiveness in order that my life shall be spared, but so that I may die as your daughter and not as your enemy.’
She thereupon collapsed in tears at his feet, and Messer Negro too began to cry, for he was by nature generous and affectionate, and he was getting on in years. And so, with tears in his eyes, he helped her tenderly to her feet, saying:
‘My daughter, it was always my dearest wish that you should marry a man whom I considered worthy of you; and if you did indeed choose such a man, and he was pleasing to you, then I could have wished for nothing better. All the same, I am saddened to think that you did not trust me sufficiently to tell me about him, the more so on discovering that you have lost him even before I had any inkling of the matter. But still, since this is the way of it, I intend that he should be paid the same respect, now that he is dead, that I would willingly have paid to him for your sake if he were still alive; in other words, I intend to honour him as my son-in-law.’ And, turning to his sons and kinsfolk, he instructed them to see that suitably splendid and honourable arrangements were put in hand for Gabriotto’s funeral.
News of what had happened had meanwhile reached the ears of the young man’s kinsfolk, who had now arrived upon the scene together with nearly all the men and women in the city. The body was therefore laid upon Andreuola’s piece of silk cloth in the midst of all her roses and placed in the centre of the courtyard, where it publicly received the tears, not only of Andreuola and of Gabriotto’s kinswomen, but of nearly all the women in the city and many of the men. And it was from the palace yard, in the style not of a plebeian but of a patrician, that his remains were taken with very great reverence to their burial, borne on the shoulders of the highest nobles in the land.
After the funeral, the chief magistrate repeated his previous offer and Messer Negro talked the matter over with his daughter, but she would have nothing to do with it. And within the space of a few days, it being her father’s will that her own wishes should be scrupulously observed in this respect, she and her maidservant entered a convent of great renown for its sanctity, where they thenceforth lived long and virtuous lives as nuns.
SEVENTH STORY
Simona loves Pasquino; they are together in a garden; Pasquino rubs a sage-leaf against his teeth, and dies. Simona is arrested, and, with the intention of showing the judge how Pasquino met his death, she rubs one of the same leaves against her own teeth, and dies in identical fashion.
When Panfilo had dispatched his tale, the king, showing no trace of compassion for Andreuola, made it clear by looking towards Emilia that he wished her to add her tale to the ones already told; and without pausing in the least, she began:
My dear companions, having heard Panfilo’s story I am impelled to narrate one that is dissimilar to his in every respect, except that, just as Andreuola lost her lover in a garden, so did the girl of whom I am obliged to speak. Like Andreuola, she too was arrested, but she freed herself from the arm of the law, not through physical strength or unwavering virtue, but by her untimely and unexpected death. As we have already had occasion to remark, whilst Love readily sets up house in the mansions of the aristocracy, this is no reason for concluding that he declines to govern the dwellings of the poor. On the contrary, he sometimes chooses such places for a display of strength no less awe-inspiring than that used by a mighty overlord to intimidate the richest of his subjects. Though the proof will not be conclusive, this assertion will in large measure be confirmed by my story, which offers me the pleasing prospect of returning to your fair city, whence, in the course of the present day, ranging widely over diverse subjects and directing our steps to various parts of the world, we have strayed so far afield.
*
Not so very long ago, then, there lived in Florence a young woman called Simona, a poor man’s daughter,1 who, due allowance being made for her social condition, was exceedingly gracious and beautiful. Although she was obliged to earn every morsel that passed her lips by working with her hands, and obtained her livelihood by spinning wool, she was not so faint-hearted as to close her mind to Love, which for some time had been showing every sign of wishing to enter her thoughts via the agreeable words and deeds of a youth no more highly placed than herself, who was employed by a wool-merchant to go round and distribute wool for spinning. Having thus admitted Love to her thoughts in the pleasing shape of this young man, whose name was Pasquino, she was filled with powerful yearnings but was too timid to do anything about them. And as she sat at her spinning and recalled who had given her the wool, she heaved a thousand sighs more torrid than fire for every yard of woollen thread that she wound round her spindle. For his part, Pasquino developed a special interest in seeing that his master’s wool was properly spun, and, acting as though the finished cloth was to consist solely of the wool that Simona was spinning, and no other, he encouraged her far more assiduously than any of the other girls. The young woman responded well to Pasquino’s encouragement. She cast aside a good deal of her accustomed modesty and reserve, whilst he acquired greater daring than was usual for him, so that eventually, to their mutual pleasure and delight, their physical union was achieved. This sport they found so much to their liking that neither waited to be asked to play it by the other, but it was rather a question whenever they met of who was going to be first to suggest it.
With their pleasure thus continuing from one day to the next and waxing more impassioned in the process, Pasquino chanced to say to Simona that he would dearly like her to contrive some way of meeting him in a certain garden, whither he was anxious for her to come so that they could feel more relaxed together and less apprehensive of discovery.
Simona agreed to do it, and one Sunday, immediately after lunch, having given her father to understand that she was going to the pardoning at San Gallo,2 she made her way with a companion of hers called Lagina to the garden Pasquino had mentioned. When she got there, she found him with a friend of his whose name was Puccino, but who was better known as Stramba, or Dotty Joe. Stramba hit it off with Lagina from the very beginning, and so Simona and Pasquino left them together in one part of the garden and withdrew to another to pursue their own pleasures.
In that part of the garden to which Simona and Pasquino had retired, there was a splendid and very large clump of sage,3 at the foot of which they settled dow
n to amuse themselves at their leisure. Some time later, having made frequent mention of a picnic they were intending to take, there in the garden, after they had rested from their exertions, Pasquino turned to the huge clump of sage and detached one of its leaves, with which he began to rub his teeth and gums, claiming that sage prevented food from sticking to the teeth after a meal.
After rubbing them thus for a while, he returned to the subject of the picnic about which he had been talking earlier. But before he had got very far, a radical change came over his features, and very soon afterwards he lost all power of sight and speech. A few minutes later he was dead, and Simona, having witnessed the whole episode, started crying and shrieking and calling out to Stramba and Lagina. They promptly rushed over to the spot, and when Stramba saw that not only was Pasquino dead, but his face and body were already covered with swellings and dark blotches, he exclaimed:
Tales From the Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio Page 56