us
befooled, returned with her and her lover to the palace, where many a
time thereafterward Pyrrhus took delight and pleasance more at ease of
Lydia and she of him. God grant us as much!"

THE TENTH STORY

[Day the Seventh]

TWO SIENNESE LOVE A LADY, WHO IS GOSSIP TO ONE OF THEM; THE
LATTER DIETH AND RETURNING TO HIS COMPANION, ACCORDING TO
PROMISE MADE HIM, RELATETH TO HIM HOW FOLK FARE IN THE OTHER
WORLD

It now rested only with the king to tell and he accordingly, as soon
as he saw the ladies quieted, who lamented the cutting down of the
unoffending pear-tree, began, "It is a very manifest thing that every
just king should be the first to observe the laws made by him, and an
he do otherwise, he must be adjudged a slave deserving of punishment
and not a king, into which offence and under which reproach I, who am
your king, am in a manner constrained to fall. True it is that
yesterday I laid down the law for to-day's discourses, purposing not
this day to make use of my privilege, but, submitting myself to the
same obligation as you, to discourse of that whereof you have all
discoursed. However, not only hath that story been told which I had
thought to tell, but so many other and far finer things have been said
upon the matter that, for my part, ransack my memory as I will, I can
call nothing to mind and must avouch myself unable to say aught anent
such a subject that may compare with those stories which have already
been told. Wherefore, it behoving me transgress against the law made
by myself, I declare myself in advance ready, as one deserving of
punishment, to submit to any forfeit which may be imposed on me, and
so have recourse to my wonted privilege. Accordingly, dearest ladies,
I say that Elisa's story of Fra Rinaldo and his gossip and eke the
simplicity of the Siennese have such efficacy that they induce me,
letting be the cheats put upon foolish husbands by their wily wives,
to tell you a slight story of them,[357] which though it have in it no
little of that which must not be believed, will natheless in part, at
least, be pleasing to hear.

[Footnote 357: _i.e._ the Siennese.]

There were, then, in Siena two young men of the people, whereof one
was called Tingoccio Mini and the other Meuccio di Tura; they abode at
Porta Salaja and consorted well nigh never save one with the other. To
all appearance they loved each exceedingly and resorting, as men do,
to churches and prea