ot withal for
its length been unpleasing to any of the company, nay, but was held of
all the ladies to have been briefly narrated, having regard to the
number and diversity of the incidents therein recounted,--the queen,
having with a mere sign intimated her pleasure to Lauretta, gave her
occasion to begin thus: "Dearest ladies, there occurreth to me to tell
you a true story which hath much more semblance of falsehood than of
that which it indeed is and which hath been recalled to my mind by
hearing one to have been bewept and buried for another. I purpose
then, to tell you how a live man was entombed for dead and how after
he and many other folk believed himself to have come forth of the
sepulchre as one raised from the dead, by reason whereof he[192] was
adored as a saint who should rather have been condemned as a criminal.

[Footnote 192: _i.e._ the abbot who played the trick upon Ferondo. See
post.]

There was, then, and yet is, in Tuscany, an abbey situate, like as we
see many thereof, in a place not overmuch frequented of men, whereof a
monk was made abbot, who was a very holy man in everything, save in
the matter of women, and in this he contrived to do so warily that
well nigh none, not to say knew, but even suspected him thereof, for
that he was holden exceeding godly and just in everything. It chanced
that a very wealthy farmer, by name Ferondo, contracted a great
intimacy with him, a heavy, clodpate fellow and dull-witted beyond
measure, whose commerce pleased the abbot but for that his simplicity
whiles afforded him some diversion, and in the course of their
acquaintance, the latter perceived that Ferondo had a very handsome
woman to wife, of whom he became so passionately enamoured that he
thought of nothing else day or night; but, hearing that, simple and
shallow-witted as Ferondo was in everything else, he was shrewd enough
in the matter of loving and guarding his wife, he well nigh despaired
of her.

However, like a very adroit man as he was, he wrought on such wise
with Ferondo that he came whiles, with his wife, to take his pleasance
in the abbey-garden, and there he very demurely entertained them with
discourse of the beatitude of the life eternal and of the pious works
of many men and women of times past, insomuch that the lady was taken
with a desire to confess herself to him and asked and had Ferondo's
leave thereof. Accordingly, to the abbot's exceeding pleasure, she
came to confess to him and