Tancred, prince of Salerno, was a most humane and generous lord, had he not, in his old age, defiled his hands in a lover's blood. He, through the whole course of his life, had one only daughter; and happy had he been not to have possessed her. No child could be more dear to a parent than she was, which made him loth to part with her in marriage: at length, not till she was a little advanced in years, he married her to the duke of Capoa, when she was soon left a widow, and came home again to her father. She was a lady of great beauty and understanding, and continuing thus in the court of her father, who took no care to marry her again, and it seeming not so modest in her to ask it, she resolved at last to have a lover privately. Accordingly, she made choice of a person of low parentage, but noble qualities, whose name was Guiscard, with whom she became violently in love; and by often seeing him, and evermore commending his manner and behaviour, he soon became sensible of it, and devoted himself entirely to the love of her. Affecting each other thus in secret, and she desiring nothing so much as to be with him, and not daring to trust any person with the affair, contrived a new stratagem in order to apprise him of the means. She wrote a letter, wherein she mentioned what she would have him do the next day for her; this she put into a hollow cane, and giving it to him one day, she said, pleasantly, "You may make a pair of bellows of this, for your servant to blow the fire with this evening." He received it, supposing, very justly, that it had some meaning, and, taking it home, found the letter; which, when he had thoroughly considered, and knew what he had to do, he was the most overjoyed man that could be; and he applied himself accordingly to answer her assignation, in the manner she had directed him. On one side of the palace, and under a mountain, was a grotto, which had been made time out of mind, and into which no light could come but through a little opening dug in the mountain, and which, as the grotto had been long in disuse, was now grown over with briers and thorns. Into this grotto was a passage, by a private stair-case, out of one of the rooms of the palace, which belonged to the lady's apartment, and was secured by a very strong door. This passage was so far out of every one's thoughts, having been disused for so long a time, that nobody remembered any thing about it; but love, whose notice nothing can escape, brought it fresh into the mind of the enamoured lady; who, to keep this thing entirely private, laboured some days before she could get the door open; when having gone down into the cave, and observed the opening, and how high it might be from thence to the bottom, she acquainted him with the fact. Guiscard then provided a ladder of cords; and casing himself well with leather, to be defended from the thorns, fixing one end of the ladder to the stump of a tree which was near, he