nly this reply: "My
lord, study only your own ease and happiness, without the least care
for me; for nothing is agreeable to me but what is pleasing to
yourself." Not many days after he sent for the son in the same manner
as he had done for the daughter, and seeming also as if he had
procured him to be destroyed, had him conveyed to Bologna, to be taken
care of with the daughter. This she bore with the same resolution as
before, at which the prince wondered greatly, declaring to himself
that no other woman was capable of doing the like. And were it not
that he had observed her extremely fond of her children, while that
was agreeable to him, he should have thought it want of affection in
her; but he saw it was only her entire obedience and condescension.
The people, imagining that the children were both put to death, blamed
him to the last degree, thinking him the most cruel and worst of men,
and showing great compassion for the lady, who, whenever she was in
company with the ladies of her acquaintance, and they condoled with
her for her loss, would only say, "It was not my will, but his who
begot them."

But more years being now passed, and he resolving to make the last
trial of her patience, declared, before many people, that he could no
longer bear to keep Griselda as his wife, owning that he had done very
foolishly, and like a young man, in marrying her, and that he meant to
solicit the pope for a dispensation to take another and send her away;
for which he was much blamed by many worthy persons; but he said
nothing in return, only that it should be so. She, hearing this, and
expecting to go home to her father's, and possibly tend the cattle as
she had done before, while she saw some other lady possest of him,
whom she dearly loved and honored, was perhaps secretly grieved; but
as she had withstood other strokes of fortune, so she determined
resolutely to do now. Soon afterward Gualtieri had counterfeit letters
come to him, as from Rome, acquainting all his people that his
holiness thereby dispensed with his marrying another and turning away
Griselda. He then brought her before him, and said, "Woman, by the
pope's leave I may dispose of thee, and take another wife. As my
ancestors, then, have been all sovereign princes of this country, and
thine only peasants, I intend to keep thee no longer, but to send thee
back to thy father's cottage, with the same fortune which thou
broughtest me, and afterward to make choice o