When hope and love and strong desire Are born to set the world on fire, That self-same hour a beast is born, All savage, meagre, and forlorn. Sometimes, with seeming soft and kind, Like ivy round an elm-tree twined, It clips us close with bine and leaf, But feeds on heartache, woe, and grief. Ever in mourning garb it goes, In anguish lives, in sorrow grows. And worse than worst the fate of him Who falls beneath its talons grim. Here Vicenza brought her enigma to an end. The interpretations of its meaning were diverse, and no one of the company was found clever enough to fathom its true import. When Vicenza saw this, she sighed a little impatiently, and then, with a smiling face, spake as follows: “The enigma I have set you to guess means nothing else than chilling jealousy, which, all lean and faded, is born at the same birth with love itself, and winds itself round men and women as well, just as the gently-creeping ivy embraces the trunk so dear to it. This jealousy feeds on heartache, seeing that a jealous one always lives in anguish and moves about in sombre garb on account of the continual melancholy that torments him.” This explication of the enigma gave great pleasure to all, and especially to Signora Chiara, whose husband had a temper somewhat jealous. But, to let no one say to himself that Vicenza’s enigma had been framed to fit his case, the Signora bade them at once put a stop to their laughter, and signed to Lodovica, whose turn it was to tell the next story, that she should forthwith begin, and the damsel opened her fable in the following words. THE THIRD FABLE. =Ancilotto, King of Provino, takes to wife the daughter of a baker, and has by her three children. These, after much persecution at the hands of the king’s mother, are made known to their father through the strange working of certain water, and of an apple, and of a bird.= I have always understood, lovesome and gracious ladies, that man is the noblest and most capable of the living creatures fashioned by nature, seeing that God made him in His own image and similitude, and willed that he should rule and not be ruled. And on this account it is said that man is the perfect animal, and of greater excellence than any of the others, because all these, not even excepting woman, are subject to him. Therefore, those who by deceit and cunning compass the death of so noble a creature commit a foul crime. And there is no wonder if sometimes those who work for the bane of others run heedlessly into destruction themselves, as did four women I have to tell of, who, in trying to destroy others, were themselves cut off and made a wretched end. All this you will readily understand from the fable I purpose to tell you.