shake.' 'Have no care for that,' answered the lady; 'I know what I am about; do you but well, you, and I will do as well as I may.' Fra Puccio, accordingly, held his peace and betook himself anew to his Paternosters; and after that night my lord monk and the lady let make a bed in another part of the house, wherein they abode in the utmost joyance what while Fra Puccio's penance lasted. At one and the same hour the monk took himself off and the lady returned to her own bed, whereto a little after came Fra Puccio from his penance; and on this wise the latter continued to do penance, whilst his wife did her delight with the monk, to whom quoth she merrily, now and again, 'Thou hast put Fra Puccio upon performing a penance, whereby we have gotten Paradise.' Indeed, the lady, finding herself in good case, took such a liking to the monk's fare, having been long kept on low diet by her husband, that, whenas Fra Puccio's penance was accomplished, she still found means to feed her fill with him elsewhere and using discretion, long took her pleasure thereof. Thus, then, that my last words may not be out of accord with my first, it came to pass that, whereas Fra Puccio, by doing penance, thought to win Paradise for himself, he put therein the monk, who had shown him the speedy way thither, and his wife, who lived with him in great lack of that whereof Dom Felice, like a charitable man as he was, vouchsafed her great plenty." [Footnote 160: _i.e._ a lay brother or affiliate.] [Footnote 161: _i.e._ the canticles of praise chanted by certain lay confraternities, established for that purpose and answering to our præ-Reformation Laudsingers.] [Footnote 162: An order of lay penitents, who were wont at certain times to go masked about the streets, scourging themselves in expiation of the sins of the people. This expiatory practice was particularly prevalent in Italy in the middle of the thirteenth century.] [Footnote 163: Contraction of Elisabetta.] [Footnote 164: _Dom_, contraction of Dominus (lord), the title commonly given to the beneficed clergy in the middle ages, answering to our _Sir_ as used by Shakespeare (_e.g._ Sir Hugh Evans the Welsh Parson, Sir Topas the Curate, etc.). The expression survives in the title _Dominie_ (_i.e._ Domine, voc. of Dominus) still familiarly applied to schoolmasters, who were of course originally invariably clergymen.] [Footnote 165: A Conventual is a member of some monastic order attached to the regular service of a church, or (as would nowadays be said) a "beneficed" monk.] [Footnote 166: _Sic._ This confusion of persons constantly occurs in Boccaccio, especially in the conversational parts of the Decameron, in which he makes the freest use of the various forms of enallage and of other rhetorical figures, such as hyperbaton, synecdoche, etc., to the no small detriment of his style in the matter of clearness.] [Footnote 167: _i.e._ nine o'clock p.m.] THE FIFTH STORY [Day the Third]