h, if (albeit it is nowise unseemly) it offer
certain expressions which you think shame to use, is natheless so
laughable that I will e'en tell it.

As you may all have heard, there come oftentimes to our city governors
from the Marches of Ancona, who are commonly mean-spirited folk and so
paltry and sordid of life that their every fashion seemeth nought
other than a lousy cadger's trick; and of this innate paltriness and
avarice, they bring with them judges and notaries, who seem men taken
from the plough-tail or the cobbler's stall rather than from the
schools of law. Now, one of these being come hither for Provost, among
the many judges whom he brought with him was one who styled himself
Messer Niccola da San Lepidio and who had more the air of a tinker
than of aught else, and he was set with other judges to hear criminal
causes. As it oft happeneth that, for all the townsfolk have nought in
the world to do at the courts of law, yet bytimes they go thither, it
befell that Maso del Saggio went thither one morning, in quest of a
friend of his, and chancing to cast his eyes whereas this said Messer
Niccola sat, himseemed that here was a rare outlandish kind of wild
fowl. Accordingly, he went on to examine him from head to foot, and
albeit he saw him with the miniver bonnet on his head all black with
smoke and grease and a paltry inkhorn at his girdle, a gown longer
than his mantle and store of other things all foreign to a man of good
breeding and manners, yet of all these the most notable, to his
thinking, was a pair of breeches, the backside whereof, as the judge
sat, with his clothes standing open in front for straitness, he
perceived came halfway down his legs. Thereupon, without tarrying
longer to look upon him, he left him with whom he went seeking and
beginning a new quest, presently found two comrades of his, called one
Ribi and the other Matteuzzo, men much of the same mad humour as
himself, and said to them, 'As you tender me, come with me to the law
courts, for I wish to show you the rarest scarecrow you ever saw.'

Accordingly, carrying them to the court house, he showed them the
aforesaid judge and his breeches, whereat they fell a-laughing, as
soon as they caught sight of him afar off; then, drawing nearer to the
platform whereon my lord judge sat, they saw that one might lightly
pass thereunder and that, moreover, the boards under his feet were so
broken that one might with great ease thrust his hand and