ll, wherethrough we may range a
story-telling, so throughly have they all[447] been occupied with the
loftiness of the magnificences related, except we have recourse to the
affairs of love, which latter afford a great abundance of matter for
discourse on every subject; wherefore, at once on this account and for
that the theme is one to which our age must needs especially incline
us, it pleaseth me to relate to you an act of magnanimity done by a
lover, which, all things considered, will peradventure appear to you
nowise inferior to any of those already set forth, if it be true that
treasures are lavished, enmities forgotten and life itself, nay, what
is far more, honour and renown, exposed to a thousand perils, so we
may avail to possess the thing beloved.

[Footnote 447: _i.e._ all sections of the given theme.]

There was, then, in Bologna, a very noble city of Lombardy, a
gentleman very notable for virtue and nobility of blood, called Messer
Gentile Carisendi, who, being young, became enamoured of a noble lady
called Madam Catalina, the wife of one Niccoluccio Caccianimico; and
for that he was ill repaid of his love by the lady, being named
provost of Modona, he betook himself thither, as in despair of her.
Meanwhile, Niccoluccio being absent from Bologna and the lady having,
for that she was with child, gone to abide at a country house she had
maybe three miles distant from the city, she was suddenly seized with
a grievous fit of sickness,[448] which overcame her with such violence
that it extinguished in her all sign of life, so that she was even
adjudged dead of divers physicians; and for that her nearest kinswomen
declared themselves to have had it from herself that she had not been
so long pregnant that the child could be fully formed, without giving
themselves farther concern, they buried her, such as she was, after
much lamentation, in one of the vaults of a neighbouring church.

[Footnote 448: Lit. accident (_accidente_).]

The thing was forthright signified by a friend of his to Messer
Gentile, who, poor as he had still been of her favour, grieved sore
therefor and ultimately said in himself, 'Harkye, Madam Catalina, thou
art dead, thou of whom, what while thou livedst, I could never avail
to have so much as a look; wherefore, now thou canst not defend
thyself, needs must I take of thee a kiss or two, all dead as thou
art.' This said, he took order so his going should be secret and it
being presently nigh