ans to feed her fill with him elsewhere and using discretion,
long took her pleasure thereof. Thus, then, that my last words may not
be out of accord with my first, it came to pass that, whereas Fra
Puccio, by doing penance, thought to win Paradise for himself, he put
therein the monk, who had shown him the speedy way thither, and his
wife, who lived with him in great lack of that whereof Dom Felice,
like a charitable man as he was, vouchsafed her great plenty."

[Footnote 160: _i.e._ a lay brother or affiliate.]

[Footnote 161: _i.e._ the canticles of praise chanted by certain lay
confraternities, established for that purpose and answering to our
prae-Reformation Laudsingers.]

[Footnote 162: An order of lay penitents, who were wont at certain
times to go masked about the streets, scourging themselves in
expiation of the sins of the people. This expiatory practice was
particularly prevalent in Italy in the middle of the thirteenth
century.]

[Footnote 163: Contraction of Elisabetta.]

[Footnote 164: _Dom_, contraction of Dominus (lord), the title
commonly given to the beneficed clergy in the middle ages, answering
to our _Sir_ as used by Shakespeare (_e.g._ Sir Hugh Evans the Welsh
Parson, Sir Topas the Curate, etc.). The expression survives in the
title _Dominie_ (_i.e._ Domine, voc. of Dominus) still familiarly
applied to schoolmasters, who were of course originally invariably
clergymen.]

[Footnote 165: A Conventual is a member of some monastic order
attached to the regular service of a church, or (as would nowadays be
said) a "beneficed" monk.]

[Footnote 166: _Sic._ This confusion of persons constantly occurs in
Boccaccio, especially in the conversational parts of the Decameron, in
which he makes the freest use of the various forms of enallage and of
other rhetorical figures, such as hyperbaton, synecdoche, etc., to the
no small detriment of his style in the matter of clearness.]

[Footnote 167: _i.e._ nine o'clock p.m.]

THE FIFTH STORY

[Day the Third]

RICCIARDO, SURNAMED IL ZIMA, GIVETH MESSER FRANCESCO
VERGELLESI A PALFREY OF HIS AND HATH THEREFOR HIS LEAVE TO
SPEAK WITH HIS WIFE. SHE KEEPING SILENCE, HE IN HER PERSON
REPLIETH UNTO HIMSELF, AND THE EFFECT AFTER ENSUETH IN
ACCORDANCE WITH HIS ANSWER

Pamfilo having made an end, not without laughter on the part of the
ladies, of the story of Fra Puccio, the queen with a commanding air
bade Elisa follow on. She,