ve but
that you were in act to have carnal knowledge of your lady here, had I
not heard you say that it appeared to yourself that I did what I know
most certainly I never thought, much less did.'

Thereupon the lady, feigning to be mightily incensed, rose to her feet
and said, 'Ill luck betide thee, dost thou hold me so little of wit
that, an I had a mind to such filthy fashions as thou wouldst have us
believe thou sawest, I should come to do them before thy very eyes?
Thou mayst be assured of this that, if ever the fancy took me thereof,
I should not come hither; marry, methinketh I should have sense enough
to contrive it in one of our chambers, on such wise and after such a
fashion that it would seem to me an extraordinary thing if ever thou
camest to know of it.' Nicostratus, himseeming that what the lady and
Pyrrhus said was true, to wit, that they would never have ventured
upon such an act there before himself, gave over words and reproaches
and fell to discoursing of the strangeness of the fact and the miracle
of the sight, which was thus changed unto whoso climbed up into the
pear-tree. But his wife, feigning herself chagrined for the ill
thought he had shown of her, said, 'Verily, this pear-tree shall never
again, if I can help it, do me nor any other lady the like of this
shame; wherefore do thou run, Pyrrhus, and fetch a hatchet and at one
stroke avenge both thyself and me by cutting it down; albeit it were
better yet lay it about Nicostratus his cosard, who, without any
consideration, suffered the eyes of his understanding to be so quickly
blinded, whenas, however certain that which thou[355] saidst might
seem to those[356] which thou hast in thy head, thou shouldst for
nought in the world in the judgment of thy mind have believed or
allowed that such a thing could be.'

[Footnote 355: This sudden change from the third to the second person,
in speaking of Nicostratus, is a characteristic example of Boccaccio's
constant abuse of the figure enallage in his dialogues.]

[Footnote 356: _i.e._ those eyes.]

Pyrrhus very readily fetched the hatchet and cut down the tree, which
when the lady saw fallen, she said to Nicostratus, 'Since I see the
enemy of mine honour overthrown, my anger is past,' and graciously
forgave her husband, who besought her thereof, charging him that it
should never again happen to him to presume such a thing of her, who
loved him better than herself. Accordingly, the wretched husband, th