Tales From the Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio

  Fair young ladies, having been absorbed for a while in distant reverie, I shall now bestir myself to obey the queen’s command, and recount a tale, much shorter perhaps than the one I would have told you if I had had all my wits about me, concerning the foolish error of a young woman, and how it was corrected by an amusing remark of her uncle’s, though she was far too dense to appreciate its significance.

  There was once a certain gentleman called Fresco da Celatico, and he had a niece whose pet-name was Cesca.1 Whilst she had a good figure and a pretty face (though it was far from being one of those angelic faces that we not infrequently come across), she had such a high opinion of herself and gave herself so many airs that she fell into the habit of criticizing everything and everyone she ever set eyes upon, never thinking for a moment of her own defects, even though she was the most disagreeable, petulant, and insipid young woman imaginable, and nothing could be done to please her. Moreover, her pride was so enormous that even in a scion of the French royal family it would have been excessive. And whenever she walked along the street, she was continually wrinkling up her nose in disgust, as though a nasty smell was assailing her nostrils every time she saw or met anyone.

  Now, leaving aside her many other tiresome and disagreeable mannerisms, and coming to the point, she happened one day to return from a walk, and, finding Fresco at home, she flounced into a chair at his side, simpering like a spoilt child, and fretting and fuming. Fresco cast her a quizzical look, and said:

  ‘Cesca, why do you come home so early, when today is a feast day?’

  ‘The truth is,’ Cesca replied, affecting a thoroughly world-weary air, ‘that I have come home early because I doubt whether I have ever seen such a tiresome and disagreeable set of people as the ones who are walking our streets today. Every man and woman that I meet is utterly repellent to me, and I don’t believe there is a woman anywhere in the world who is so upset by the sight of horrid people as I am. So I came home early to spare myself the torment of looking at them.’

  Whereupon Fresco, who found the fastidious airs of his niece highly distasteful, said to her:

  ‘If you can’t bear the sight of horrid people, my girl, I advise you, for your own peace of mind, never to look at yourself in the glass.’2

  But the girl, whose head was emptier than a hollow reed even though she imagined herself to be as wise as Solomon, might have been a carcase of mutton for all she understood of Fresco’s real meaning, and she told him that she intended to look in the glass just like any other woman. So she remained as witless as before, and she is still the same to this day.

  NINTH STORY

  With a barbed saying, Guido Cavalcanti politely delivers an insult to certain Florentine gentlemen who had taken him by surprise.

  The queen, perceiving that Emilia had dashed off her story and that she herself was the sole remaining speaker apart from the person who was privileged to speak last of all, began to address the company as follows:

  Sweet ladies, although you have deprived me of at least two of the stories that I had thought of telling you today, I still have another in reserve, towards the end of which there occurs a bon mot that is more subtle, perhaps, than any of the ones we have heard so far.

  I must first of all remind you that in days gone by, our city was noted for certain excellent and commendable customs, all of which have now disappeared, thanks to the avarice which, increasing as it does with the growing prosperity of the city, has driven them all away. One of these customs was that in various parts of Florence a limited number of the gentlemen in each quarter of the city would meet regularly together in one another’s houses for their common amusement. Only those people who could afford to entertain on a suitably lavish scale were admitted to these coteries, and they took it in turn to play the host to their companions, each of them being allotted his own special day for the purpose. Distinguished visitors to Florence were frequently invited to these gatherings, and so too were a number of the citizens. At least once every year they all wore the same kind of dress, whilst on all the more important anniversaries they rode together through the city, and sometimes they tilted together, especially on the principal feasts or when the news of some happy event had reached the city, such as a victory in the field.

  Among these various companies, there was one that was led by Messer Betto Brunelleschi,1 into whose ranks Messer Betto and his associates had striven might and main to attract Messer Cavalcante de’ Cavalcanti’s son, Guido.2 And not without reason, for apart from the fact that he was one of the finest logicians in the world and an expert natural philosopher (to none of which Betto and his friends attributed very much importance), Guido was an exceedingly charming and sophisticated man, with a marked gift for conversation, and he outshone all of his contemporaries in every activity pertaining to a gentleman that he chose to undertake. But above and beyond all this he was extremely rich, and could entertain most sumptuously those people whom he happened to consider worthy of his hospitality.

  However, Messer Betto had never succeeded in winning him over, and he and his companions thought this was because of his passion for speculative reasoning, which occasionally made him appear some-what remote from his fellow beings. And since he tended to subscribe to the opinions of the Epicureans, it was said among the common herd that these speculations of his were exclusively concerned with whether it could be shown that God did not exist.

  Now, one day, Guido had walked from Orsammichele along the Corso degli Adimari as far as San Giovanni, which was a favourite walk of his because it took him past those great marble tombs, now to be found in Santa Reparata,3 and the numerous other graves that lie all around San Giovanni. As he was threading his way among the tombs, between the porphyry columns that stand in that spot and the door of San Giovanni, which was locked, Messer Betto and his friends came riding through the piazza of Santa Reparata, and on seeing Guido among all these tombs, they said:

  ‘Let’s go and torment him.’

  And so, spurring their horses and making a mock charge, they were upon him almost before he had time to notice, and they began to taunt him, saying:

  ‘Guido, you spurn our company; but supposing you find that God doesn’t exist, what good will it do you?’

  Finding himself surrounded, Guido promptly replied:

  ‘Gentlemen, in your own house you may say whatever you like to me.’

  Then, placing a hand on one of the tombstones, which were very tall,4 he vaulted over the top of it, being very light and nimble, and landed on the other side, whence, having escaped from their clutches, he proceeded on his way.

  Betto and his companions were left staring at one another, then they began to declare that he was out of his mind, and that his remark was meaningless, because neither they themselves nor any of the other citizens, Guido included, owned the ground on which their horses were standing. But Messer Betto turned to them, and said:

  ‘You’re the ones who are out of your minds, if you can’t see what he meant. In a few words he has neatly paid us the most back-handed compliment I ever heard, because when you come to consider it, these tombs are the houses of the dead, this being the place where the dead are laid to rest and where they take up their abode. By describing it as our house, he wanted to show us that, by comparison with himself and other men of learning, all men who are as uncouth and unlettered as ourselves are worse off than the dead. So that, being in a graveyard, we are in our own house.’

  Now that Guido’s meaning had been pointed out to them, they all felt suitably abashed, and they never taunted him again. And from that day forth, they looked upon Messer Betto as a paragon of shrewdness and intelligence.

  TENTH STORY

  Friar Cipolla promises a crowd of country folk that he will show them a feather of the Angel Gabriel, and on finding that some bits of coal have been put in its place, he proclaims that these were left over from the roasting of Saint Lawrence.

  His nine companions having each told a story, Dioneo knew without wai
ting for any formal command that it was now his own turn to speak. He therefore silenced those of his companions who were praising Guido’s clever retort, and began:

  Charming ladies, although I have the privilege of speaking on any subject I may choose, I do not propose to depart from the topic on which all of you have spoken so appositely today. On the contrary, following in your footsteps, I intend to show you how one of the friars of Saint Anthony,1 by a quick piece of thinking, neatly side-stepped a trap which had been laid for him by two young men. And if I speak at some length, so as to tell the whole story as it should be told, this ought not to disturb you unduly, for you will find, if you look up at the sun, that it is still in mid heaven.

  Certaldo,2 as you may possibly have heard, is a fortified town situated in the Val d’Elsa, in Florentine territory, and although it is small, the people living there were at one time prosperous and well-to-do. Since it was a place where rich pickings were to be had, one of the friars of Saint Anthony used to visit the town once every year to collect the alms which people were foolish enough to donate to his Order. He was called Friar Cipolla,3 and he always received a warm welcome there, though this was doubtless due as much to his name as to the piety of the inhabitants, for the soil in those parts produces onions that are famous throughout the whole of Tuscany.

  This Friar Cipolla was a little man, with red hair and a merry face, and he was the most sociable fellow in the world. He was quite illiterate, but he was such a lively and excellent speaker, that anyone hearing him for the first time would have concluded, not only that he was some great master of rhetoric, but that he was Cicero in person, or perhaps Quintilian.4 And there was scarcely a single man or woman in the whole of the district who did not regard him as a friend, familiar or well-wisher.

  During one of his regular annual visits to Certaldo, on a Sunday morning in the month of August, when all the good folk from the neighbouring hamlets were gathered in the parish church for mass, Friar Cipolla, choosing a suitable moment, came forward and said:

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, as you know, every year it is your custom to send to the poor of the Lord Saint Anthony a portion of your wheat and oats, varying in amount from person to person according to his ability and devotion, so that the blessed Saint Anthony will protect your oxen, asses, pigs and sheep from harm. Moreover it is customary, in particular for those of you who are enrolled as members of our confraternity, to pay those modest sums which fall due every year at this time, and it is precisely to collect these contributions of yours that my superior, Master Abbot, has sent me among you. And so, with God’s blessing, when you hear the bells ring after nones,5 you will assemble outside the church, where as usual I shall preach the sermon and you will kiss the cross. But in addition to this, since I know how deeply devoted you all are to the Lord Saint Anthony, I shall show you, by way of special favour, a most sacred and beautiful relic, which I myself brought back from a visit I once paid to the Holy Land across the sea; and this is one of the feathers of the Angel Gabriel, which was left behind in the bedchamber of the Virgin Mary when he came to annunciate her in Nazareth.’

  And at this point he ended his homily and returned to the mass.

  Now, among the large congregation present in the church when Friar Cipolla made this announcement, were a pair of very wily young fellows, one of whom was called Giovanni del Bragoniera and the other Biagio Pizzini. Having had a good laugh together over Friar Cipolla’s relic, they decided, though they were his good friends and boon companions, to have a little fun with this feather at the Friar’s expense. They knew that Friar Cipolla was to breakfast with a friend that morning in the citadel,6 and so they waited until he was safely seated at table, then made their way down into the street, whence they proceeded to the inn where the Friar was staying, their intention being that Biagio should engage Friar Ci-polla’s servant in conversation whilst Giovanni rummaged through the Friar’s belongings and removed this feather, or whatever it was, so that later in the day they could see how he explained its disappearance to the populace.

  Friar Cipolla had a servant, variously known as Guccio Balena, or Guccio Imbratta, or Guccio Porco,7 who was such a coarse fellow that he could have given lessons in vulgarity to Lippo Topo8 himself, and whom Friar Cipolla frequently used to make fun of in conversation with his cronies, saying:

  ‘My servant has nine failings, any one of which, had it been found in Solomon or Aristotle or Seneca, would have sufficed to vitiate all the ingenuity, all the wisdom, and all the saintliness they ever possessed. So you can imagine what this fellow must be like, considering that he hasn’t a scrap of ingenuity, wisdom or saintliness, and possesses all nine.’

  Friar Cipolla had put these nine failings into rhyme, so that whenever he was asked what they were, he replied:

  ‘I’ll tell you: he’s untruthful, distasteful and slothful; negligent, disobedient, and truculent; careless, witless and graceless. Apart from this, he has one or two other little foibles, that are best passed over in silence. But the funniest thing about him is that wherever he goes, he’s always wanting to find himself a wife and rent a house; and because he has a big, black, greasy beard, he thinks he’s very handsome and seductive, and that every woman he meets is desperately in love with him; and if he were left to his own devices, he’d be so busy chasing the girls that he could lose his breeches and be none the wiser. All the same I must confess that he’s a great help to me, because he won’t allow me to be burdened with anybody’s secrets, but always insists on sharing them with me; and if anyone asks me a question, he’s so afraid I won’t be able to answer that he does it for me, putting in a quick “yes” or a quick “no” as the occasion appears to merit.’

  This, then, was the man Friar Cipolla had left behind at the inn, with strict instructions not to allow anyone to touch his belongings, in particular his saddlebags, which contained his sacred bits and pieces.

  But no nightingale was ever as happy on the branch of a tree as Guccio Imbratta in the kitchen of an inn, especially if there happened to be a serving-wench in the offing. And having caught a glimpse of a stocky little kitchen-maid, who was plump and coarse and bowlegged, with a pair of paps like a couple of dung-baskets and a face like a Baronci, her skin plastered in sweat, grease and soot, he left Friar Cipolla’s things to take care of themselves, and, like a vulture descending on carrion, down he swooped. Although it was August, he took a seat beside the fire and struck up a conversation with the girl, whose name was Nuta, telling her that he was a gentleman by proxy, that he had more florins than anyone could count, not excluding the ones he had to pay out, which were even more in number, and that not even his master could do and say so many fine things as he. Moreover, paying no heed to the cowl he was wearing, which had enough grease on it to season the soup-cauldron of Altopascio,9 or to his patched and tattered doublet, which was smeared with filth round the collar and under the armpits, and stained all over in more colours than a length of cloth from India or Tartary, or to his shoes, that were falling to bits, or to his hose, that were gaping at the seams, he told her, as though he were the Lord of Chatillon10 himself, that he would buy her some fine new clothes, set her up in comfort, release her from her drudgery, and, whilst she wouldn’t have much to call her own, give her something to look forward to at any rate. But all these promises, and a great many more, though uttered with a good deal of affection, were as insubstantial as the air itself, and like most of the projects he undertook, they came to nothing.

  Finding Guccio Porco thus occupied with Nuta, the two young men were delighted, since it meant that half their job was already done. And so they made their way unhindered to Friar Cipolla’s room, the door of which was unlocked; and having let themselves in, the very first thing they laid hands upon was the saddlebag containing the feather. On opening the bag, they found a small casket wrapped in a length of taffeta, and when they raised the lid, and found that it contained one of the tail feathers of a parrot, they concluded that this must be the one he had promi
sed to display to the people of Certaldo.

  And without a doubt he could easily have got away with it in those days, because the luxuries of Egypt had not yet infiltrated to any marked degree into Tuscany, as they were later to do on a very wide scale, to the ruination of the whole of Italy. A few people in Tuscany were aware that such things existed, but they were almost totally unknown in Certaldo, where, since the lives of the people still conformed to the honest precepts of an earlier age, not only had they never seen any parrots, but the vast majority had never even heard of them.

  Delighted, then, with their discovery, the young men removed the feather from the casket, and in its place, so as not to leave the casket empty, they put a few pieces of coal, which they had found lying in a corner of the room. They then closed the lid, and, leaving everything just as they had found it, they made off, undetected, with the feather, chortling with glee, and waited to see what Friar Cipolla, on finding the coals instead of the feather, would have to say for himself.

  When mass was over, the simple folk who were in the church, having heard that they would be seeing the feather of the Angel Gabriel after nones, had returned to their homes and passed the news on to all their friends and neighbours. And after they had eaten their midday meal, they thronged the citadel in such vast numbers, all agog to see the feather, that they scarcely had sufficient room to move their limbs.

  Having eaten a hearty breakfast and taken a short siesta, Friar Cipolla arose shortly after nones, and on perceiving that a great multitude of peasants had come to see the feather, he sent word to Guccio Imbratta that he was to come up to the citadel, bringing with him the bells and the saddle-bags. So Guccio tore himself away from the kitchen and from Nuta, and made his way up at a leisurely pace. His body was swollen up like a balloon with all the water he had been drinking, and so he arrived there puffing and panting; but having, in accordance with Friar Cipolla’s instructions, taken up his stance in the church doorway, he began to ring the bells with great gusto.