black cowl clapped upon her back, she is no longer a woman and is no
longer sensible of feminine appetites, as if the making her a nun had
changed her to stone; and if perchance they hear aught contrary to
this their belief, they are as much incensed as if a very great and
heinous misdeed had been committed against nature, considering not
neither having regard to themselves, whom full license to do that
which they will availeth not to sate, nor yet to the much potency of
idlesse and thought-taking.[151] On like wise there are but too many
who believe that spade and mattock and coarse victuals and hard living
do altogether purge away carnal appetites from the tillers of the
earth and render them exceeding dull of wit and judgment. But how much
all who believe thus are deluded, I purpose, since the queen hath
commanded it to me, to make plain to you in a little story, without
departing from the theme by her appointed.

[Footnote 151: _Sollecitudine._ The commentators will have it that
this is an error for _solitudine_, solitude, but I see no necessity
for the substitution, the text being perfectly acceptable as it
stands.]

There was (and is yet) in these our parts a convent of women, very
famous for sanctity (the which, that I may not anywise abate its
repute, I will not name), wherein no great while agone, there being
then no more than eight nuns and an abbess, all young, in the nunnery,
a poor silly dolt of a fellow was gardener of a very goodly garden of
theirs, who, being miscontent with his wage, settled his accounts with
the ladies' bailiff and returned to Lamporecchio, whence he came.
There, amongst others who welcomed him home, was a young labouring
man, stout and robust and (for a countryman) a well-favoured fellow,
by name of Masetto, who asked him where he had been so long. The good
man, whose name was Nuto, told him, whereupon Masetto asked him in
what he had served the convent, and he, 'I tended a great and goodly
garden of theirs, and moreover I went while to the coppice for faggots
and drew water and did other such small matters of service; but the
nuns gave me so little wage that I could scare find me in shoon
withal. Besides, they are all young and methinketh they are possessed
of the devil, for there was no doing anything to their liking; nay,
when I was at work whiles in the hortyard,[152] quoth one, "Set this
here," and another, "Set that here," and a third snatched the spade
from my hand, saying,