ns for nought,
for they will not leave me with the lady, and she will say that I
disobeyed her command, and I shall never have aught of her favours.

As thus he communed with himself, he was on the point of turning back;
but his overmastering love plied him with opposing arguments of such
force that he kept on his way, and reached the tomb; which having opened,
he entered, and after stripping Scannadio, and wrapping himself in the
grave-clothes, closed it, and laid himself down in Scannadio's place. He
then fell a thinking of the dead man, and his manner of life, and the
things which he had heard tell of as happening by night, and in other
less appalling places than the houses of the dead; whereby all the hairs
of his head stood on end, and he momently expected Scannadio to rise and
cut his throat. However, the ardour of his love so fortified him that he
overcame these and all other timorous apprehensions, and lay as if he
were dead, awaiting what should betide him.

Towards midnight Rinuccio, bent likewise upon fulfilling his lady's
behest, sallied forth of his house, revolving as he went divers
forebodings of possible contingencies, as that, having Scannadio's corpse
upon his shoulders, he might fall into the hands of the Signory, and be
condemned to the fire as a wizard, or that, should the affair get wind,
it might embroil him with his kinsfolk, or the like, which gave him
pause. But then with a revulsion of feeling:-- Shall I, quoth he to
himself, deny this lady, whom I so much have loved and love, the very
first thing that she asks of me? And that too when I am thereby to win
her favour? No, though 'twere as much as my life is worth, far be it from
me to fail of keeping my word. So on he fared, and arrived at the tomb,
which he had no difficulty in opening, and being entered, laid hold of
Alessandro, who, though in mortal fear, had given no sign of life, by the
feet, and dragged him forth, and having hoisted him on to his shoulders,
bent his steps towards the lady's house. And as he went, being none too
careful of Alessandro, he swung him from time to time against one or
other of the angles of certain benches that were by the wayside; and
indeed the night was so dark and murky that he could not see where he was
going. And when he was all but on the threshold of the lady's house (she
standing within at a window with her maid, to mark if Rinuccio would
bring Alessandro, and being already provided with an excuse for