The Decameron of Giovanni BoccaccioBoccaccio, Giovanni
History
The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio
Boccaccio, Giovanni
Allegories; Frame stories; Plague -- Europe -- History -- Fiction; Storytelling -- Fiction
The merchant his friend and the lady, hearing these words, wept, and
when he had made an end of his speech, they comforted him and promised
him upon their troth to do that which he asked, if it came to pass
that he died. He tarried not long, but presently departed this life
and was honourably interred of them. A few days after, the merchant
having despatched all his business in Rhodes and purposing to return
to Cyprus on board a Catalan carrack that was there, asked the fair
lady what she had a mind to do, for that it behoved him return to
Cyprus. She answered that, an it pleased him, she would gladly go with
him, hoping for Antiochus his love to be of him entreated and regarded
as a sister. The merchant replied that he was content to do her every
pleasure, and the better to defend her from any affront that might be
offered her, ere they came to Cyprus, he avouched that she was his
wife. Accordingly, they embarked on board the ship and were given a
little cabin on the poop, where, that the fact might not belie his
words, he lay with her in one very small bed. Whereby there came about
that which was not intended of the one or the other of them at
departing Rhodes, to wit, that--darkness and commodity and the heat of
the bed, matters of no small potency, inciting them,--drawn by equal
appetite and forgetting both the friendship and the love of Antiochus
dead, they fell to dallying with each other and before they reached
Baffa, whence the Cypriot came, they had clapped up an alliance
together.
At Baffa she abode some time with the merchant till, as chance would
have it, there came thither, for his occasions, a gentleman by name
Antigonus, great of years and greater yet of wit, but little of
wealth, for that, intermeddling in the affairs of the King of Cyprus,
fortune had in many things been contrary to him. Chancing one day to
pass by the house where the fair lady dwelt with the merchant, who was
then gone with his merchandise into Armenia, he espied her at a window
and seeing her very beautiful, fell to gazing fixedly upon her and
presently began to recollect that he must have seen her otherwhere,
but where he could on no wise call to mind. As for the lady, who had
long been the sport of fortune, but the term of whose ills was now
drawing near, she no sooner set eyes on Antigonus than she remembered
to have seen him at Alexandria in no mean station in her father's
service; wherefore, conceiving a sudden hope of yet by his aid
regaining her royal estate, and knowing her merchant to be abroad, she
let call him to her as quickliest she might and asked him, blushing,
an he were not, as she supposed, Antigonus of Famagosta. He answered
that he was and added, 'Madam, meseemeth I know you, but on no wise
can I remember me where I have seen you; wherefore I pray you, an it
mislike you not, put me in mind who you are.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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