was inured to hardships from a child."

Gualtieri perceiving that, tho Griselda thought that person was to be
his wife, she nevertheless answered him with great humility and
sweetness of temper, he made her sit down by him, and said, "Griselda,
it is now time for you to reap the fruit of your long patience, and
that they who have reputed me to be cruel, unjust, and a monster in
nature may know that what I have done has been all along with a view
to teach you how to behave as a wife; to show them how to choose and
keep a wife; and, lastly, to secure my own ease and quiet as long as
we live together, which I was apprehensive might have been endangered
by my marrying. Therefore I had a mind to prove you by harsh and
injurious treatment; and, not being sensible that you have ever
transgrest my will, either in word or deed, I now seem to have met
with that happiness I desired. I intend, then, to restore in one hour
what I have taken away from you in many, and to make you the sweetest
recompense for the many bitter pangs I have caused you to suffer.
Accept, therefore, this young lady, whom thou thought my spouse, and
her brother, as your children and mine. They are the same whom you and
many others believed that I had been the means of cruelly murdering;
and I am your husband, who love and value you above all things,
assuring myself that no person in the world can be happier in a wife
than I am."

With this he embraced her most affectionately, when, rising up
together (she weeping for joy), they went where their daughter was
sitting, quite astonished with these things, and tenderly saluted both
her and her brother, undeceiving them and the whole company. At this
the women all arose, overjoyed, from the tables, and, taking Griselda
into the chamber, they clothed her with her own noble apparel, and as
a marchioness, resembling such a one even in rags, and brought her
into the hall. And being extremely rejoiced with her son and daughter,
and every one expressing the utmost satisfaction at what had come to
pass, the feasting was prolonged many days. The marquis was adjudged a
very wise man, tho abundantly too severe, and the trial of his lady
most intolerable; but as for Griselda, she was beyond compare.

NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI

Born in Florence in 1469, died in 1527; of a noble but
impoverished family; employed in diplomatic missions to
small Italian states and France and Germany; deprived of
office w