The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio (best classic books of all time txt) 📕

how deem you of this dish?’ ‘In good sooth, my lord,’ answered she, ‘it liketh me exceedingly.’ Whereupon, ‘So God be mine aid,’ quoth Roussillon; ‘I do indeed believe it you, nor do I marvel if that please you, dead, which, alive, pleased you more than aught else.’ The lady, hearing this, hesitated awhile, then said, ‘How? What have you made me eat?’ ‘This that you have eaten,’ answered the knight, ‘was in very truth the heart of Sir Guillaume de Guardestaing, whom you, disloyal wife as you are, so loved; and know for certain that it is his very heart, for that I tore it from his breast with these hands a little before my return.’

It needeth not to ask if the lady were woebegone, hearing this of him whom she loved more than aught else; and after awhile she said, ‘You have done the deed of a disloyal and base knight, as you are; for, if I, unenforced of him, made him lord of my love and therein offended against you, not he, but I should have borne the penalty thereof. But God forfend that ever other victual should follow upon such noble meat the heart of so valiant and so courteous a gentleman as was Sir Guillaume de Guardestaing!’ Then, rising to her feet, without any manner of hesitation, she let herself fall backward through a window which was behind her and which was exceeding high above the ground; wherefore, as she fell, she was not only killed, but well nigh broken in pieces.

Sir Guillaume, seeing this, was sore dismayed and himseemed he had done ill; wherefore, being adread of the country people and of the Count of Provence, he let saddle his horses and made off. On the morrow it was known all over the country how the thing had passed; whereupon the two bodies were, with the utmost grief and lamentation, taken up by Guardestaing’s people and those of the lady and laid in one same sepulchre in the chapel of the latter’s own castle; and thereover were verses written, signifying who these were that were buried therewithin and the manner and occasion of their death.”258

The Tenth Story

A physician’s wife putteth her lover for dead in a chest, which two usurers carry off to their own house, gallant and all. The latter, who is but drugged, cometh presently to himself and being discovered, is taken for a thief; but the lady’s maid avoucheth to the seignory that she herself had put him into the chest stolen by the two usurers, whereby he escapeth the gallows and the thieves are amerced in certain monies.

Filostrato having made an end of his telling, it rested only with Dioneo to accomplish his task, who, knowing this and it being presently commanded him of the king, began as follows: “The sorrows that have been this day related of ill fortuned loves have saddened not only your eyes and hearts, ladies, but mine also; wherefore I have ardently longed for an end to be made thereof. Now that, praised be God, they are finished (except I should choose to make an ill addition to such sorry ware, from which God keep me!), I will, without farther ensuing so dolorous a theme, begin with something blither and better, thereby perchance affording a good argument for that which is to be related on the ensuing day.

You must know, then, fairest lasses, that there was in Salerno, no great while since, a very famous doctor in surgery, by name Master Mazzeo della Montagna, who, being already come to extreme old age, took to wife a fair and gentle damsel of his city and kept better furnished with sumptuous and rich apparel and jewels and all that can pleasure a lady than any woman of the place. True it is she went a-cold most of her time, being kept of her husband ill covered abed; for, like as Messer Ricardo di Chinzica (of whom we already told) taught his wife to observe saints’ days and holidays, even so the doctor pretended to her that once lying with a woman necessitated I know not how many days’ study to recruit the strength and the like toys; whereof she abode exceeding ill content and like a discreet and high-spirited woman as she was, bethought herself, so she might the better husband the household good, to betake herself to the highway and seek to spend others’ gear. To this end, considering diverse young men, at last she found one to her mind and on him she set all her hope; whereof he becoming aware and she pleasing him mightily, he in like manner turned all his love upon her.

The spark in question was called Ruggieri da Jeroli, a man of noble birth, but of lewd life and blameworthy carriage, insomuch that he had left himself neither friend nor kinsman who wished him well or cared to see him and was defamed throughout all Salerno for thefts and other knaveries of the vilest; but of this the lady recked little, he pleasing her for otherwhat, and with the aid of a maid of hers, she wrought on such wise that they came together. After they had taken some delight, the lady proceeded to blame his past way of life and to pray him, for the love of her, to desist from these ill fashions; and to give him the means of doing this, she fell to succouring him, now with one sum of money and now with another. On this wise they abode together, using the utmost discretion, till it befell that a sick man was put into the doctor’s hands, who had a gangrened leg, and Master Mazzeo, having examined the case, told the patient’s kinsfolk that, except a decayed bone he had in his leg were taken out, needs must he have the whole limb cut off or die, and that, by taking out the bone, he might recover, but