Allegories; Frame stories; Plague -- Europe -- History -- Fiction; Storytelling -- Fiction
But God forbid that fare of such high excellence as the heart
of a knight so true and courteous as Sieur Guillaume de Cabestaing be
followed by aught else." So saying she started to her feet, and stepping
back to a window that was behind her, without a moment's hesitation let
herself drop backwards therefrom. The window was at a great height from the
ground, so that the lady was not only killed by the fall, but almost reduced
to atoms. Stunned and conscience-stricken by the spectacle, and fearing the
vengeance of the country folk, and the Count of Provence, Sieur Guillaume
had his horses saddled and rode away. On the morrow the whole countryside
knew how the affair had come about; wherefore folk from both of the castles
took the two bodies, and bore them with grief and lamentation exceeding
great to the church in the lady's castle, and laid them in the same tomb,
and caused verses to be inscribed thereon signifying who they were that were
there interred, and the manner and occasion of their death.
(1) Boccaccio writes Guardastagno, but the troubadour, Cabestaing, or
Cabestany, is the hero of the story.
NOVEL X.
--
The wife of a leech, deeming her lover, who has taken an opiate, to be dead,
puts him in a chest, which, with him therein, two usurers carry off to their
house. He comes to himself, and is taken for a thief; but, the lady's maid
giving the Signory to understand that she had put him in the chest which the
usurers stole, he escapes the gallows, and the usurers are mulcted in moneys
for the theft of the chest.
--
Now that the king had told his tale, it only remained for Dioneo to do his
part, which he witting, and being thereto bidden by the king, thus began:--
Sore have I--to say nought of you, my ladies--been of eyne and heart to hear
the woeful histories of ill-starred love, insomuch that I have desired of
all things that they might have an end. Wherefore, now that, thank God,
ended they are, unless indeed I were minded, which God forbid, to add to
such pernicious stuff a supplement of the like evil quality, no such
dolorous theme do I purpose to ensue, but to make a fresh start with
somewhat of a better and more cheerful sort, which perchance may serve to
suggest to-morrow's argument.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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