The Decameron

by Giovanni Boccaccio

  On lapsing into silence, Fiammetta was congratulated by all present, and the queen, being anxious not to lose any time, promptly called upon Emilia to tell her story. So Emilia began:

  For my own part, I intend to return to our own city, from which the last two speakers chose to depart, and show you how a citizen of ours regained his lost mistress.

  In Florence, then, there once lived a noble youth named Tedaldo degli Elisei, who, having fallen passionately in love with the wife of a certain Aldobrandino Palermini,1 a lady of impeccable breeding called Monna Ermellina, duly earned the reward of his persistent devotion. But Fortune, the enemy of those who prosper, undermined his happiness, inasmuch as the lady, having already begun to grant her favours to Tedaldo, suddenly decided for no apparent reason to withhold them from him entirely. Not only would she not listen to any of the messages he caused her to receive, but she absolutely refused to acknowledge his existence, thus casting him into a state of profound and excruciating melancholy. Since, however, he had carefully concealed this love-affair of his, no one guessed the reason for his sorrow.

  Feeling that he had lost the lady’s favours through no fault of his own, he tried in every possible way to retrieve them, only to discover that all his efforts were unavailing. And because he had no wish to allow her the satisfaction of seeing him suffer on her account, he resolved to vanish from the scene. Having scraped together all the money he could obtain, he departed in secret without informing any of his friends or relatives except for one companion of his who knew all about the affair, and went to Ancona, assuming the name of Filippo di Sanlodeccio. In Ancona, he made the acquaintance of a wealthy merchant with whom he obtained employment, travelling with him to Cyprus on one of his ships, and the merchant was so impressed by his character and abilities that he not only paid him a handsome salary but gave him a share in the business and placed him in charge of a sizeable portion of his affairs. To these, he devoted so much skill and diligence that within a few years he had made a name for himself as an able and prosperous merchant. And whilst his thoughts frequently returned to his cruel mistress and he still experienced sharp pangs of love and longed to see her again, he was so strong-willed that for seven years he succeeded in conquering his feelings.

  But one day, in Cyprus, he happened to hear someone singing a song that he himself had composed, recounting the love that he bore to his mistress, her love for him, and the pleasure he had of her. And thinking it impossible that she should have forgotten him, he was stricken with such a burning desire to see her again that he could endure it no longer, and decided to return to Florence. Having wound up his affairs, he travelled with a servant as far as Ancona, where he waited for all his belongings to arrive and then shipped them to Florence, to a friend of his partner in Ancona, after which he himself followed with his servant, disguised as a pilgrim returning from the Holy Sepulchre; and when they arrived in Florence, they put up at a small inn run by two brothers, which was not far away from the lady’s house. The first thing he did was to hurry over to her house in the hope of seeing her, but he found that all the windows and doors were barred and bolted, which led him to fear that she might be dead, or that she had moved elsewhere.

  Deeply perturbed, he walked on until he reached the house of his kinsfolk, in front of which he saw four of his brothers, all of whom, to his great astonishment, were dressed in black. And knowing that he would not easily be recognized, on account of the marked changes in his clothing and physical appearance, he walked boldly up to the local shoemaker and asked him why these men were wearing black.

  ‘They are wearing black,’ replied the shoemaker, ‘because within the past fortnight a brother of theirs called Tedaldo, who disappeared from the neighbourhood many years ago, was found murdered. As far as I can gather, they have proved in court that his murderer was a certain Aldobrandino Palermini, who has now been arrested. It seems that the murdered man was in love with Paler-mini’s wife, and had returned here in disguise to be with her.’

  Tedaldo was greatly astonished that anyone could resemble him so closely as to be mistaken for his own person, whilst the news of Aldobrandino’s plight distressed him deeply. On making further inquiries he discovered that the lady was alive and well, and since it was now dark, he returned to the inn, his mind in a positive whirl. After dining in the company of his servant, he was shown up to his sleeping quarters, which were situated almost at the very top of the building. But because his mind was so active and his bed so uncomfortable, and also perhaps because of the meagreness of his supper, Tedaldo was unable to drop off to sleep. He was still wide awake when, halfway through the night, he thought he could hear people entering the building by way of the roof; and shortly afterwards, through the cracks in the bedroom door, a glimmer of light could be seen.

  He therefore crept silently across to the door and began to peep through the crack in order to discover what was happening, and caught sight of a very pretty girl carrying the light and being met by three men who had descended from the roof. They all exchanged certain greetings, then one of the men addressed the girl as follows:

  ‘We’ve nothing more to fear, thank God, because we’ve learnt for certain that Tedaldo Elisei’s brothers have proved he was killed by Aldobrandino Palermini, who has made a confession. The sentence has already been signed, but all the same we’ll have to keep this thing quiet, because if it ever leaks out that we did it, we’ll be in the same sorry plight as Aldobrandino.’

  This announcement was greeted by the woman with evident relief, and they all retired to bed in the lower part of the house.

  Having overheard the whole of this, Tedaldo began to reflect how fatally easy it was for people to cram their heads with totally erroneous notions. His thoughts turned first of all to his brothers, who had gone into mourning and buried some stranger in his own stead, after which they had been impelled by their false suspicions to accuse this innocent man and fabricate evidence so as to have him brought under sentence of death. This in turn led him to reflect upon the blind severity of the law and its administrators, who in order to convey the impression that they are zealously seeking the truth, often have recourse to cruelty and cause falsehood to be accepted as proven fact, hence demonstrating, for all their proud claim to be the ministers of God’s justice, that their true allegiance is to the devil and his iniquities. Finally, Tedaldo turned his thoughts to the question of how he could save Aldobrandino, and decided upon the course of action he would have to adopt.

  When he got up next morning, he left his servant behind and made his way, at what seemed a suitable hour, to the house of his former mistress. Since the door happened to be open, he went in, and there, sitting on the floor in a little room downstairs, he found his lady-love, all tearful and forlorn. Scarcely able to restrain himself from crying at this piteous spectacle, he walked over to where she was sitting.

  ‘Madam,’ he said, ‘do not torment yourself: your troubles will soon be over.’

  On hearing his voice, the lady looked up at him and sobbed, saying:

  ‘Good sir, you appear to be a pilgrim and a stranger; how can you know anything of my troubles and torments?’

  ‘Madam,’ replied the pilgrim, ‘I come from Constantinople and I have just arrived in this city, to which I was sent by God to convert your tears into joy and deliver your husband from death.’

  ‘But if you come from Constantinople,’ said the woman, ‘and if you have only just arrived, how can you know anything of me or my husband?’

  Starting from the beginning, the pilgrim provided a full account of Aldobrandino’s predicament and told her exactly who she was, how long she had been married, and many other things that he knew concerning her private affairs. This recital greatly astonished the lady, who took him to be some kind of prophet and knelt down at his feet, beseeching him in God’s name, if he really had come to save Aldobrandino, to do so quickly before it was too late.

  ‘Stand up, my lady,’ said the pilgrim, assuming a very saintly air,
‘and cry no more. Listen closely to what I am about to say, and take good care never to repeat it to anyone. God has revealed to me that your tribulation arises from a certain sin you once committed, which He intends that you should purge, partially at any rate, by means of this present affliction. He is very anxious that you should make amends for it, because otherwise you would assuredly be plunged into much greater suffering.’

  ‘I have committed many sins, sir,’ said the lady, ‘and I do not know which particular one it is that the Lord God desires me to atone for out of all the rest. So if you know which one it is, please tell me, and I shall do whatever I can to make amends for it.’

  ‘I know very well what it is, madam,’ said the pilgrim. ‘And I shall now ask you a few questions about it, not for my own benefit, but merely to enable you to acknowledge the sin of your own free will, and repent more fully. But let us come to the point. Tell me, do you remember whether you ever had a lover?’

  On hearing this question, the lady fetched a deep sigh and was greatly amazed, for she was under the impression that nobody had ever discovered her secret, albeit there had been a certain amount of gossip since the murder of the man who had been buried for Tedaldo, because of certain things which had been said, rather unwisely, by the friend in whom Tedaldo had confided.

  ‘It is obvious,’ she replied, ‘that God reveals all of men’s secrets to you, and I therefore see no reason for attempting to conceal my own. In my younger days, I was indeed deeply in love with the unfortunate young man whose death has been imputed to my husband. I was enormously grieved to hear that he was dead, and I have wept countless tears over him, for although I assumed an air of haughty indifference towards him before he went away, neither his departure nor his long absence nor even his unfortunate death has been able to dislodge him from my heart.’

  ‘You were never in love with this hapless youth who has died,’ said the pilgrim, ‘but with Tedaldo Elisei. However, tell me: what reason did you have for snubbing him? Did he ever offend you?’

  ‘Oh, no!’ replied the lady. ‘He certainly never offended me. My aloofness was prompted by the words of an accursed friar, to whom I once went for confession. When I told him how much I loved this man and described the intimacy of our relationship, he gave me such a severe scolding that I have never recovered from the shock to this day, for he told me that unless I mended my ways I would be consigned to the devil’s mouth at the bottom of the abyss2 and exposed to the torments of hellfire. I was so frightened by all this that I firmly made up my mind never to have anything more to do with him. So as to remove all temptation, I refused from then on to accept any of his letters or messages. I suppose he eventually gave up and went away in despair. But if he had persevered a little longer, I am sure I would have relented, for I could see that he was wasting away like snow in the rays of the sun, and I was longing to break my resolve.’

  ‘Madam,’ said the pilgrim, ‘it is this sin alone which lies at the root of all your suffering. I know for a fact that Tedaldo never coerced you in the slightest. When you fell in love with him, you did so of your own accord because you found him attractive. It was with your full consent that he began to visit you and enjoy your intimate favours, and your delight in him was so obvious from your words and deeds that, though he already loved you before, you intensified his love a thousandfold. And if this was so (as I know it was), what possible reason could prompt you to withdraw yourself so inflexibly from him? You should have thought about all these things beforehand, and if you felt it was wrong, if you felt you were going to have to repent, you should not have had anything to do with him in the first place. The point is this, that when he became yours, so you became his. Inasmuch as he belonged to you, you were perfectly free to discard him whenever you wished. But since, at the same time, you belonged to him, it was quite improper of you, indeed it was robbery on your part, to remove yourself from him against his will.

  ‘Now, I would have you know that I myself am a friar. I am therefore familiar with all their ways, and it is not unfitting for me, as it would be for a layman, to express myself somewhat freely about them for your benefit. I do this, and I do it willingly, so that you will know them better in the future than you appear to have done in the past.

  ‘There was once a time3 when friars were very saintly and worthy men, but those who lay claim nowadays to the title and reputation of friar have nothing of the friar about them except the habits they wear. Even these are not genuine friars’ habits, because whereas the people who invented friars decreed that the habit should be close-fitting, coarse, and shabby, and that, by clothing the body in humble apparel, it should symbolize the mind’s disdain for all the things of this world, your present-day friars prefer ample habits, generously cut and smooth of texture, and made from the finest of fabrics. Indeed, they now have elegant and pontifical habits, in which they strut like peacocks through the churches and the city squares without compunction, just as though they were members of the laity showing off their robes. And like the fisherman who tries to take a number of fish from the river with a single throw of his casting-net, so these fellows, as they wrap themselves in the capacious folds of their habits, endeavour to take in many an over-pious lady, many a widow, and many another simpleton of either sex, this being their one overriding concern. It would therefore be more exact for me to say that these fellows do not wear friars’ habits, but merely the colours of their habits.

  ‘Moreover, whereas their predecessors desired the salvation of men, the friars of today desire riches and women. They have taken great pains, and still do, to strike terror into simple people’s hearts with their loud harangues and specious parables, and to show that sins may be purged through almsgiving and mass-offerings. In this way, having taken refuge in the priesthood more out of cowardice than piety and in order to escape hard work, they are supplied with bread by one man and wine by another, whilst a third is persuaded to part with donations for the souls of his departed ones.

  ‘It is of course true that prayers and almsgiving purge sins. But if only the donors were familiar with the sort of people to whom they were handing over their money, they would either keep it for themselves or cast it before a herd of swine. These so-called friars are well aware that the fewer the people who share a great treasure, the better off they are, and so each of them strives by blustering and intimidation to exclude others from whatever he is anxious to retain for his own exclusive use. They denounce men’s lust, so that when the denounced are out of the way, their women will be left to the denouncers. They condemn usury and ill-gotten gains, so that people will entrust them with their restitution, and this enables them to make their habits more capacious and procure bishoprics and the other major offices of the Church, using the very money which, according to them, would have led its owners to perdition.

  ‘Whenever anyone reproaches them with these and countless other wicked ways of theirs, they consider themselves acquitted from every charge, however serious, simply by replying: “Do as we say, not as we do” To hear them talk, one would think it was easier for the sheep to be strong-willed and law-abiding than it is for the shepherds. But this specious answer of theirs does not fool everyone by any means, and a great many of them know it.

  ‘The friars of today want you to do as they say, or in other words fill their purses with money, confide your secrets to them, remain chaste, practise patience, forgive all wrongs, and take care to speak no evil, all of which are good, seemly and edifying goals to pursue. But why? Simply so that they can do the things they will be prevented from doing if they are done by the laity. Who will deny that laziness cannot survive without money to support it? If we were to spend our money on our own pleasures, the friar would no longer be able to idle away his time in the cloisters; if we were to go pursuing the ladies, the friars would be put out of business; if we failed to practise patience and forgive all wrongs, the friar would no longer have the effrontery to call upon us in our own homes and corrupt our families. But why should I el
aborate every point in detail? Every time they come out with that hoary old excuse of theirs, they condemn themselves in the eyes of all intelligent men and women. Why do they not choose to remain within their own walls, if they feel themselves unable to behave in a chaste and godly manner? Or if they really must rub shoulders with the laity, why do they not follow that other holy text from the Gospel: “Then Christ began to act and to teach”? Let them set an example, before they start preaching to the rest of us. In my time I’ve seen a thousand of them laying siege, paying visits and making love, not only to ordinary women but to nuns in convents; and some of them were the ones who ranted loudest from the pulpit. Are these, then, the people whose advice we should follow? Anyone is free to do so if he likes, but God knows whether he will be acting wisely.

  ‘However, even supposing we granted that the friar who censured you was right in this instance, and that to break one’s marriage vows is a very grave offence, is it not far worse to steal? Is it not far worse to murder a man or send him wandering through the world in exile? Everyone will agree that it is, because after all, for a woman to have intimate relations with a man is a natural sin, but to rob him or to kill him or expel him is to act from evil intention.

  ‘That you did indeed rob Tedaldo I have already proved to you just now, for you removed yourself from him when you belonged to him of your own free will. Secondly, I would suggest that you did your utmost to murder him, for it would not have been surprising, in view of the cruel way you treated him, if he had taken his own life; and in the eyes of the law, the accessory to a crime is as guilty as the person who actually commits it. Finally, it cannot be denied that you were responsible for condemning him to wander through the world for seven whole years in exile. So that on any one of the three articles to which I have referred, you committed a far greater sin than by your intimacy with him. But let us consider the matter more closely. Could it be that Tedaldo deserved all he received? He certainly did not, as you yourself have already conceded; and besides, I know that he loves you more dearly than his very life.