gown,
but nobody pitied him, for regardless of his good wife's claims, a plain
woman but a Christian, he had longed to bed with Prester John's
Chinchimura, who wears horns betwixt her sinful buttocks. Good
Buffalmacco had persuaded the Doctor he could take him o' nights to the
Witches' Sabbath, where he went himself with a merry company to make
love to the Queen of France, who gave him wine and spices for his
doughty deeds. Simon accepted the invitation, hoping he should be
treated right royally too. Then Buffalmacco having donned a beast's skin
and a horned mask such as they wear at merry-makings, came to Master
Simon, declaring he was a devil ordered to conduct him to the Sabbath.
Taking him on his shoulders, he carried him to the edge of a pit full of
filth, where he pitched him in head first.

Next Buffalmacco saw Calendrino, whom he had got to believe that the
stone Heliotropia was to be found in the plain of the Mugnone, which
stone possesses the virtue of rendering invisible whosoever bears it
about his person. He took him to Mugnone along with Bruno da Giovanni,
and when Calendrino had picked up a very large number of stones,
Buffalmacco suddenly pretended he could not see him, crying out: "The
scamp has given us the slip; an I catch him, I'll bang his behind with
this paving-stone!" And he landed the stone exactly where he said he
would, without Calendrino having any right to complain, because he was
invisible. This same Calendrino was without any sense of humour, and
Buffalmacco played on his simplicity so far as to make him actually
believe he was with child, and got a brace of fat capons out of him as
fee for his safe delivery.

Next Buffalmacco saw the countryman for whom he had painted the Blessed
Virgin with the Infant Jesus in her arms, afterwards changing the babe
into a bear's cub.

He saw moreover the Abbess of the Nuns of Faenza, who had commissioned
him to paint the walls of the Convent Church in fresco, and he told her
on his oath and honour you must mix good wine with the colours, if the
flesh tints are to be really brilliant. So the Abbess gave him for every
Saint, male or female, depicted in his pictures a flask of the wine
reserved for Bishops' drinking, which he poured down his throat,
trusting to vermilion to bring out the warm tints. The same Lady Abbess
it was he deceived, making her take a pitcher with a cloak thrown over
it for a master painter, as has been already recounted.

Buffal