s and
other remedies. Thenceforward, being now a better judge of his own
powers than he was, he fell to teaching his wife a calendar fit for
children learning to read and belike made aforetime at Ravenna,[141]
for that, according to what he feigned to her, there was no day in the
year but was sacred not to one saint only, but to many, in reverence
of whom he showed by divers reasons that man and wife should abstain
from carnal conversation; and to these be added, to boot, fast days
and Emberdays and the vigils of the Apostles and of a thousand other
saints and Fridays and Saturdays and Lord's Day and all Lent and
certain seasons of the moon and store of other exceptions, conceiving
belike that it behoved to keep holiday with women in bed like as he
did bytimes whilst pleading in the courts of civil law. This fashion
(to the no small chagrin of the lady, whom he handled maybe once a
month, and hardly that) he followed a great while, still keeping
strait watch over her, lest peradventure some other should teach her
to know working-days, even as he had taught her holidays. Things
standing thus, it chanced that, the heat being great and Messer
Ricciardo having a mind to go a-pleasuring to a very fair country-seat
he had, near Monte Nero, and there abide some days to take the air, he
betook himself thither, carrying with him his fair lady. There
sojourning, to give her some diversion, he caused one day fish and
they went out to sea in two boats, he in one with the fishermen, and
she in another with other ladies. The sport luring them on, they
drifted some miles out to sea, well nigh without perceiving it, and
whilst they were intent upon their diversion, there came up of a
sudden a galliot belonging to Paganino da Mare, a famous corsair of
those days. The latter, espying the boats, made for them, nor could
they flee so fast but he overtook that in which were the women and
seeing therein the judge's fair lady, he carried her aboard the
galliot, in full sight of Messer Ricciardo, who was now come to land,
and made off without recking of aught else. When my lord judge, who
was so jealous that he misdoubted of the very air, saw this, it
booteth not to ask if he was chagrined; and in vain, both at Pisa and
otherwhere, did he complain of the villainy of the corsairs, for that
he knew not who had taken his wife from him nor whither he had carried
her. As for Paganino, finding her so fair, he deemed himself in luck
and having no wif