counted
upon this subject, I purpose to tell you thereanent a story no less
true than pitiful, whereof, for all it had a joyful ending, so great
and so longsome was the bitterness that I can scarce believe it to
have been assuaged by any subsequent gladness.

You must know, dearest ladies, that, after the death of the Emperor
Frederick the Second, Manfred was crowned King of Sicily, in very high
estate with whom was a gentleman of Naples called Arrighetto Capece,
who had to wife a fair and noble lady, also of Naples, by name Madam
Beritola Caracciola. The said Arrighetto, who had the governance of
the island in his hands, hearing that King Charles the First[102] had
overcome and slain Manfred at Benevento and that all the realm had
revolted to him and having scant assurance of the short-lived fidelity
of the Sicilians, prepared for flight, misliking to become a subject
of his lord's enemy; but, his intent being known of the Sicilians, he
and many other friends and servants of King Manfred were suddenly made
prisoners and delivered to King Charles, together with possession of
the island.

[Footnote 102: Charles d'Anjou.]

Madam Beritola, in this grievous change of affairs, knowing not what
was come of Arrighetto and sore adread of that which had befallen,
abandoned all her possessions for fear of shame and poor and pregnant
as she was, embarked, with a son of hers and maybe eight years of age,
Giusfredi by name, in a little boat and fled to Lipari, where she gave
birth to another male child, whom she named Scacciato,[103] and
getting her a nurse, took ship with all three to return to her
kinsfolk at Naples. But it befell otherwise than as she purposed; for
that the ship, which should have gone to Naples, was carried by stress
of wind to the island of Ponza,[104] where they entered a little bight
of the sea and there awaited an occasion for continuing their voyage.
Madam Beritola, going up, like the rest, into the island and finding a
remote and solitary place, addressed herself to make moan for her
Arrighetto, all alone there.

[Footnote 103: _i.e._ the Banished or the Expelled One.]

[Footnote 104: An island in the Gulf of Gaeta, about 70 miles from
Naples. It is now inhabited, but appears in Boccaccio's time to have
been desert.]

This being her daily usance, it chanced one day that, as she was
occupied in bewailing herself, there came up a pirate galley,
unobserved of any, sailor or other, and taking them all