Tales From the Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio

by Giovanni Boccaccio

‘Come now, don’t be afraid; I shall see you to your doorstep safe and sound, and then you can have some inquiries made, and discover what it is all about.’

  After they had all had supper together, the husband conveyed the young man back to Florence on horseback, and saw him to his own front door. Later that evening, in accordance with instructions he had received from the lady, Leonetto spoke privately with Messer Lambertuccio, and so arranged matters that even though many more words were spoken on the subject, the nobleman never came to know of the trick that his wife had played upon him.

  SEVENTH STORY

  Lodovico discloses to Madonna Beatrice how deeply he loves her, whereupon she persuades her husband, Egano, to impersonate her in a garden, and goes to bed with Lodovico, who in due course gets up, goes into the garden, and gives Egano a hiding.

  The stratagem adopted by Madonna Isabella, as recounted by Pampinea, drew gasps of astonishment from every member of the company. But the king now called upon Filomena to follow, and she said:

  Lovesome ladies, unless I am much mistaken I think I can offer you no less splendid a story, which will not take long to relate.

  You are to know, then, that in Paris there was once a Florentine nobleman, who on account of his straitened circumstances decided to become a merchant, in which capacity he was so successful that he made a huge fortune. His wife had borne him no more than a single child, to whom he had given the name of Lodovico, and because this child was more of a patrician’s son than the son of a merchant, instead of launching him on a career in business the father had secured him a place in the French royal household, where he was brought up with other young nobles and acquired the manners and attributes of a gentleman.

  One day, whilst Lodovico happened to be discussing with several other young men the rival merits of various beautiful ladies from France, England, and other parts of the world, they were joined by a number of knights who had recently returned from the Holy Sepulchre. And one of these latter began to maintain that of all the women he had ever seen in the numerous places he had visited, he had never encountered anyone so beautiful as Madonna Beatrice, the wife of Egano de’ Galluzzi,1 who lived in Bologna. Moreover, he claimed that those of his companions who, like himself, had seen the lady in Bologna, were entirely of the same opinion.

  Having listened to this gentleman’s words, Lodovico, who had never yet fallen in love, was inflamed with such a longing to see her that he could think of nothing else. And having firmly made up his mind to go to Bologna and see this lady, and to stay there for a while if she lived up to his expectations, he gave his father to understand that he wished to go to the Holy Sepulchre, and with the greatest of difficulty obtained his permission.

  He therefore assumed the name of Anichino, and came to Bologna, where, as luck would have it, on the day following his arrival he saw the lady at a banquet, and discovered that her beauty was even greater than he had been led to believe. Hence he was swept completely off his feet, and resolved never to leave Bologna until he had won her love. Having given some thought to various possible ways of achieving this object, he discarded them one by one, and concluded that his only hope lay in finding employment with the lady’s husband, who kept a large household of servants.

  He therefore sold all his horses and arranged for his servants to be comfortably lodged, having ordered them to pretend not to know him; and having struck up an acquaintance with the landlord of his inn, he explained that he would like, if possible, to enter the service of some gentleman of standing, whereupon the landlord said:

  ‘You are exactly the kind of attendant who would appeal to a nobleman, Egano by name, who lives in this city and keeps a great many servants. He makes a point of surrounding himself with good-looking fellows like yourself. I’ll mention your name to him.’

  The landlord was as good as his word, and by the time he had taken his leave of Egano, he had arranged for Anichino to enter his service, which suited Anichino down to the ground.

  Now that he was living under Egano’s roof, and frequently had occasion to see his lady, he began to serve his master so efficiently, and earned himself so high a place in his esteem, that Egano could do nothing without consulting him beforehand; and he placed not only his own person, but all of his affairs under Anichino’s control.

  Now one day Egano went out hawking, leaving Anichino at home, and Madonna Beatrice, who so far knew nothing of his love for her, albeit she had often had occasion to observe his ways and had formed a very good opinion of his character, invited him to play chess2 with her. Anichino, wishing to make her happy, played his pieces very skilfully and allowed her to beat him, which sent the lady into transports of joy. And when the lady’s attendants, who had been watching the game, had all drifted away and left them alone together, Anichino fetched an enormous sigh.

  The lady looked at him, and said:

  ‘What’s the matter, Anichino? Does it hurt you so much to be beaten?’

  ‘My lady,’ Anichino replied, ‘I sighed for a much stronger reason than that.’

  So the lady said:

  ‘Alas, if I hold any place in your affection, do tell me what it is.’

  At the mention of the place she held in his affection, Anichino, who loved her above everything else in the whole world, heaved a second sigh, much deeper than the first, whereupon the lady pleaded with him once again to explain the reason.

  ‘My lady,’ said Anichino, ‘I am greatly afraid that you might be offended, if I were to tell you; and for all I know you might repeat it to some other person.’

  ‘I shall certainly not take it amiss,’ said the lady, ‘and you may rest assured that no matter what you tell me, I shan’t repeat a word of it to anyone without your permission.’

  So Anichino said:

  ‘Since you give me this assurance, I shall tell you all about it.’ And controlling his tears with an effort, he told her who he was, the things he had heard about her, how and where he had fallen in love with her, how he had come to Bologna, and why he had entered her husband’s service. Then he humbly asked her whether she could bring herself to take pity on him, and grant him the secret desire that burned so fiercely in his heart. But if she was unwilling to do this, he begged her to be content that he should love her, and allow him to continue in her service.

  Ah, how singularly sweet is the blood of Bologna!3 How admirably you rise to the occasion in moments such as these! Sighs and tears were never to your liking: entreaties have always moved you, and you were ever susceptible to a lover’s yearnings. If only I could find words with which to commend you as you deserve, I should never grow tired of singing your praises!

  Whilst Anichino was speaking, the gentlewoman fixed her gaze upon him, and being fully convinced of his sincerity, she was so overcome by his protestations of love that she, too, began to sigh. And when her sighs had abated, she replied:

  ‘Anichino, my dearest, be of good cheer; many are those that have wooed me, and that woo me to this day, but neither gifts nor promises nor fine words have ever succeeded in persuading me to fall in love with a single one of my admirers, whether he was a nobleman or a mighty lord or any other man; yet within the brief space of these few words of yours, you have made me feel that I belong far more to you than to myself. I consider that you have well and truly earned my love. I therefore concede it to you, and before the coming night is over, I promise that it will be yours to enjoy. In order to bring this about, see that you come to my room towards midnight. I shall leave the door open. You know the side of the bed on which I sleep: come to me there, and if I should be asleep, touch me so that I wake up, and then I shall give you the solace that you have so long desired. So that you believe what I am saying, I want to give you a kiss by way of pledge.’ Whereupon, throwing her arms round his neck, she gave him an amorous kiss, and Anichino did the like to her.

  There, for the time being, the matter rested, and Anichino, having taken his leave of the lady, went off to attend to certain duties of his, ecstatically loo
king forward to the coming of the night. Egano returned home from his hawking, and as soon as he had supped, feeling weary, he retired to bed. The lady soon followed his example, and, as she had promised, she left the door of the bedroom ajar.

  Thither, at the appointed hour, Anichino came, and having crept quietly into the room and bolted the door behind him, he made his way to the side of the bed where the lady usually slept. Placing his hand on her bosom, he found that she was not asleep, for she promptly clasped his hand between both her own, and, holding it tightly, she twisted and turned in the bed until she succeeded in waking Egano, to whom she said:

  ‘I didn’t want to say anything of this last night, because you seemed so tired; but tell me truthfully, of all the servants you have in the house, which do you regard as the finest, the most loyal, and the most deeply attached to his master?’

  ‘My dear,’ Egano replied, ‘why do you ask such a question when you know very well that I have never had anyone I could trust so completely, or respect so profoundly, as I trust and respect Anichino?’

  On learning that Egano had woken up, and hearing his own name being mentioned, Anichino made several attempts to withdraw his hand so that he could make good his escape, for he strongly suspected that the lady was going to give him away. But she was clasping his hand so firmly that it was impossible for him to retrieve it.

  ‘I’ll tell you why,’ said the lady, in reply to Egano’s question. ‘My own opinion of Anichino was the same as yours; I too considered him the most faithful of your servants. But he has undeceived me, for yesterday, when you were out hawking and he stayed behind, he had the impudence, thinking it a good opportunity, to propose that I should minister to his pleasures. And so that I should have no difficulty in providing you with tangible and visible evidence of all this, I gave him my consent and told him that I would go into the garden, shortly after midnight, and wait for him at the foot of the pine-tree. I personally have no intention of going there, of course: but if you desire to know what a trustworthy servant he is, you can easily slip into one of my skirts, cover your head in a veil, and go down there to see whether he turns up, as I am certain he will.’

  ‘I must certainly look into this,’ said Egano. So he got out of bed, and, groping around in the darkness, he struggled into one of his wife’s skirts as best he could and covered his head in a veil. Then he made his way down to the garden and stood at the foot of the pine-tree, waiting for Anichino to turn up.

  As soon as she heard him leaving the bedroom, the lady got up and bolted the door from the inside.

  After experiencing the biggest fright that he had ever had in his life, and struggling with all his might to free himself from the lady’s grasp, and silently heaping a hundred thousand curses upon the lady and upon himself for loving her and trusting her, Anichino was positively overjoyed when, at the end of it all, he saw what she had done. As soon as the lady had returned to her bed, she urged him to strip off his clothes and get in beside her, and there they lay for quite some time together, to their mutual pleasure and delight.

  When the lady thought it was time for Anichino to go, she persuaded him to get up and put on his clothes, saying:

  ‘My darling treasure, find yourself a good stout stick and go down to the garden. Make it appear that you were putting my fidelity to the test, pretend to think that Egano is me, shower him with abuse, and give him a sound thrashing4 with the stick. Just think of the wonderful joy and amusement it’ll bring to us both!’

  So Anichino got up and made his way to the garden with a switch of silver willow in his hand, and just as he was approaching the pine-tree, Egano, seeing him coming, stood up and came to meet him, as though with the intention of bidding him a most cordial welcome. But Anichino said:

  ‘So you came after all, did you, you filthy little whore? You thought me capable of wronging my master, did you? A thousand curses upon you!’ And raising his stick, he began to beat him.

  On hearing this outburst and catching sight of the stick, Egano took to his heels without saying a word, being closely pursued by Anichino, who kept on saying:

  ‘Take that, you shameless hussy, and may God punish you as you deserve! Mark my words, I shall tell Egano of this tomorrow!’

  Bruised and battered all over, Egano returned as fast as he could to his bedroom, and his wife asked him whether Anichino had come to the garden.

  ‘Would to God that he hadn’t,’ said Egano, ‘for he mistook me for you, beat me black and blue with a cudgel, and addressed me by the foulest names that any wicked woman was ever called. I must say I thought it very strange that he should have spoken to you as he did with the intention of dishonouring me. But I see now that, finding you so gay and sociable, he simply wanted to put you to the test.’

  Then the lady said:

  ‘Thanks be to God that he tested me with words, and saved his deeds for you! At least it can be said that his words tried my patience less severely than his deeds tried yours. But since he is so loyal to you, we should do him honour and hold him high in our esteem.’

  ‘I agree with you entirely,’ said Egano.

  In view of what had happened, Egano came to the conclusion that he was blessed with the most faithful wife and the most loyal servant that any nobleman had ever possessed. And for this reason, whilst on many a future occasion they all three had a good laugh over the events of that particular night, at the same time it became far easier than it would otherwise have been for Anichino and the lady to do the thing that brought them pleasure and delight, at any rate for as long as Anichino chose to remain with Egano in Bologna.

  EIGHTH STORY

  A husband grows suspicious of his wife, and discovers that her lover comes to her at night, forewarning her of his arrival by means of a string attached to her toe. Whilst the husband is giving chase to the lover, his wife gets out of bed and puts another woman in her place, who receives a beating from the husband and has her tresses cut off. The husband then goes to fetch his wife’s brothers, who, on discovering that his story is untrue, subject him to a torrent of abuse.

  Filomena’s listeners were all of the opinion that Madonna Beatrice had adopted a curiously subtle means of duping her husband, and everyone declared that Anichino must have had a terrible fright when the lady was holding him so tightly and he heard her saying that he had made advances to her. The king, however, seeing that Filomena had finished, turned to Neifile and said:

  ‘Now it’s your turn.’

  Neifile smiled a little, then began:

  Fair ladies, if I am to entertain you with a story as excellent as the ones with which you have been regaled by my predecessors, my task will indeed be difficult; but I hope, with God’s aid, to give a good account of myself.

  You are to know, then, that in our fair city there once lived a very rich merchant called Arriguccio Berlinghieri,1 who, like many of his counterparts of the present day, foolishly decided to marry into the aristocracy, and took to wife a young gentlewoman, quite unsuited to him, whose name was Monna Sismonda. And since, as is commonly the way with merchants, he was always going out and about and rarely stayed at home with his wife, she fell in love with a young man called Ruberto, who had been courting her for some little time.

  Having become his mistress, she took such a delight in his company that she possibly grew a little careless, for Arriguccio, either because he had got wind of the affair or for some other reason, suddenly became exceedingly jealous, and, having stopped going out and about, he left all his other affairs hanging in abeyance, and devoted almost the whole of his time to keeping her under close surveillance. Nor would he ever drop off to sleep until he saw that she was safely abed. Consequently the lady was utterly mortified, because it was now quite impossible for her to be with her Ruberto.

  But having given a great deal of thought to devising some means of consorting with her lover, and being under constant pressure from Ruberto himself to find a way out of this impasse, she eventually hit upon the following expedient: since h
er bedroom overlooked the street, and she had frequently had occasion to observe that Arriguccio, once he was asleep, slept like a log, she would ask Ruberto to come to the front door towards midnight and she would go and let him in. In this way she could spend some time in his arms whilst her husband was soundly asleep. But so that she would know that he had come, she contrived, in such a way that nobody would notice, to dangle a length of string from the bedroom window with its end almost touching the ground; at its other end, the string ran along the floor of the room to the bed, finishing up under the bedclothes, and as soon as she was in bed, she tied it to her big toe.

  Ruberto was duly informed beforehand, and she further directed him that, on arriving at the house, he was to give the string a tug, and if her husband was asleep, she would release it and go downstairs to let him in; but if her husband was still awake, she would hold on to the string and haul it in, to let him know that he was to go away. This arrangement suited Ruberto down to the ground, and he made regular use of it, sometimes being able to see her and sometimes not.

  They continued to use this ingenious device until one night, when the lady was asleep, Arriguccio happened to stretch his leg down the bed and catch his foot in the string. Having groped for it with his hand and discovered that it was attached to the lady’s toe, he said to himself: ‘This must clearly be some devilish trick or other.’ On observing that the string passed out by the window, he was quite convinced of it; so he gently detached it from the lady’s toe, tied it to his own, and waited, alert and vigilant, to see what would happen.

  Shortly afterwards, Ruberto came along and jerked the string as usual, giving Arriguccio a start. He had not tied it on properly, and so Ruberto, who had given it a good tug and was left with the string in his hands, assumed that he was to wait, which is what in fact he did.

  Arriguccio, having leapt out of bed and buckled on his sword and dagger, rushed to the door to find out who this fellow was, and do him an injury. Now, for all that he was a merchant, Arriguccio was as strong and as fierce as a bull, and in opening the door he made a lot of noise, whereas his wife always opened it quietly. On hearing this, Ruberto, as he waited outside, rightly concluded that the person opening the door was Arriguccio, and so he promptly took to his heels, with Arriguccio in hot pursuit.