you to approve yourself
very stout-hearted you shall hear. You must find means to be this
evening, at the season of the first sleep, on one of the raised tombs
which have been lately made without Santa Maria Novella, with one of
your finest gowns on your back, so you may make an honourable figure
for your first appearance before the company and also because,
according to what was told us (we were not there after) the Countess
is minded, for that you are a man of gentle birth, to make you a
Knight of the Bath at her own proper costs and charges; and there you
must wait till there cometh for you he whom we shall send. And so you
may be apprised of everything, there will come for you a black horned
beast, not overbig, which will go capering about the piazza before you
and making a great whistling and bounding, to terrify you; but, when
he seeth that you are not to be daunted, he will come up to you
quietly. Then do you, without any fear, come down from the tomb and
mount the beast, naming neither God nor the Saints; and as soon as you
are settled on his back, you must cross your hands upon your breast,
in the attitude of obeisance, and touch him no more. He will then set
off softly and bring you to us; but if you call upon God or the
Saints or show fear, I must tell you that he may chance to cast you
off or strike you into some place where you are like to stink for it;
wherefore, an your heart misgive you and unless you can make sure of
being mighty resolute, come not thither, for you would but do us a
mischief, without doing yourself any good.'[413]

[Footnote 413: Lit. "do _yourself_ a mischief, without doing _us_ any
good"; but the sequel shows that the contrary is meant, as in the
text.]

Quoth the physician, 'I see you know me not yet; maybe you judge of me
by my gloves and long gown. If you knew what I did aforetimes at
Bologna anights, when I went a-wenching whiles with my comrades, you
would marvel. Cock's faith, there was such and such a night when, one
of them refusing to come with us, (more by token that she was a scurvy
little baggage, no higher than my fist,) I dealt her, to begin with,
good store of cuffs, then, taking her up bodily, I dare say I carried
her a crossbowshot and wrought so that needs must she come with us.
Another time I remember me that, without any other in my company than
a serving-man of mine, I passed yonder alongside the Cemetery of the
Minor Friars, a little after the Ave Maria, albeit