ve never yet chosen to do, to wit,
that I should acquaint you with his lewdness and his vile fashions,
and I will do it. I firmly believe that this he hath told you hath
verily befallen him and that he hath done as he saith; and you shall
hear how. This worthy man, to whom in an ill hour for me you gave me
to wife, who calleth himself a merchant and would be thought a man of
credit, this fellow, forsooth, who should be more temperate than a
monk and chaster than a maid, there be few nights but he goeth
fuddling himself about the taverns, foregathering now with this lewd
woman and now with that and keeping me waiting for him, on such wise
as you find me, half the night and whiles even till morning. I doubt
not but that, having well drunken, he went to bed with some trull of
his and waking, found the twine on her foot and after did all these
his fine feats whereof he telleth, winding up by returning to her and
beating her and cutting off her hair; and not being yet well come to
himself, he fancied (and I doubt not yet fancieth) that he did all
this to me; and if you look him well in the face, you will see he is
yet half fuddled. Algates, whatsoever he may have said of me, I will
not have you take it to yourselves except as a drunken man's talk, and
since I forgive him, do you also pardon him.'

Her mother, hearing this, began to make an outcry and say, 'By Christ
His Cross, daughter mine, it shall not pass thus! Nay, he should
rather be slain for a thankless, ill-conditioned dog, who was never
worthy to have a girl of thy fashion to wife. Marry, a fine thing,
forsooth! He could have used thee no worse, had he picked thee up out
of the dirt! Devil take him if thou shalt abide at the mercy of the
spite of a paltry little merchant of asses' dung! They come to us out
of their pigstyes in the country, clad in homespun frieze, with their
bag-breeches and pen in arse, and as soon as they have gotten a leash
of groats, they must e'en have the daughters of gentlemen and right
ladies to wife and bear arms and say, "I am of such a family" and
"Those of my house did thus and thus." Would God my sons had followed
my counsel in the matter, for that they might have stablished thee so
worshipfully in the family of the Counts Guidi, with a crust of bread
to thy dowry! But they must needs give thee to this fine jewel of
fellow, who, whereas thou art the best girl in Florence and the
modestest, is not ashamed to knock us up in the middle of