It commonly happens that ill-gotten wealth, and indeed all riches which have been acquired by evil ways, are scattered abroad and dissipated in brief space of time, for by the divine will it has been decreed that, quickly as such riches come, quickly they shall depart. This, indeed, proved to be the case with a certain woman of Pistoia, who, had she been honest and wise in the same degree as she was dissolute and foolish, would never have given occasion for the story which I am now about to tell to you. And although perhaps this fable of mine is one hardly suitable for your ears, forasmuch as it comes to an end in a picture of shame and dishonour, which obscures and tarnishes the fame of those who live honest lives, nevertheless I will not hesitate to relate it to you, for at the right time and place it may serve (I speak here to those to whom it may apply) as a useful incentive for all to pursue the ways of uprightness and well-doing, and to eschew all wicked courses and lewd inclinations. I must first tell this worshipful company that, not far from these our days, there lived in Pistoia, an ancient city of Tuscany, a young woman called by name Madonna Modesta, but this name, on account of her reprehensible manner of life and the shameful courses she followed, was one in no wise befitting her. In person, indeed, this woman was very lovely and graceful, though she was of mean condition. She had a husband called Tristano Zanchetto[51] (a name as well suited to him as his wife’s was unfitting to her), a good-tempered fellow, given to merry company, and thinking of little else save of his business of buying and selling, whereby he gained a good living for himself. Madonna Modesta, who was by nature of a lecherous temper, and inclined for nought else but amorous sport, when she saw that her husband was given up heart and soul to commerce, and careful only about the matters appertaining thereto, took it into her head that she too would embark in merchandise and set up a new trade, concerning which her husband, Messer Tristano, should know nothing.