in as humble and sober a style as
might be. Yet for all this have I not availed to escape being cruelly
shaken, nay, well nigh uprooted, of the aforesaid wind and all torn of
the fangs of envy; wherefore I can very manifestly understand that to
be true which the wise use to say, to wit, that misery alone in things
present is without envy.[212]

[Footnote 212: Sic (_senza invidia_); but the meaning is that misery
alone is without _enviers_.]

There are then, discreet ladies, some who, reading these stories, have
said that you please me overmuch and that it is not a seemly thing
that I should take so much delight in pleasuring and solacing you; and
some have said yet worse of commending you as I do. Others, making a
show of wishing to speak more maturely, have said that it sorteth ill
with mine age henceforth to follow after things of this kind, to wit,
to discourse of women or to study to please them. And many, feigning
themselves mighty tender of my repute, avouch that I should do more
wisely to abide with the Muses on Parnassus than to busy myself among
you with these toys. Again, there be some who, speaking more
despitefully than advisedly, have said that I should do more
discreetly to consider whence I might get me bread than to go peddling
after these baubles, feeding upon wind; and certain others, in
disparagement of my pains, study to prove the things recounted by me
to have been otherwise than as I present them to you.

With such, then, and so many blusterings,[213] such atrocious
backbitings, such needle-pricks, noble ladies, am I, what while I
battle in your service, baffled and buffeted and transfixed even to
the quick. The which things, God knoweth, I hear and apprehend with an
untroubled mind; and albeit my defence in this pertaineth altogether
unto you, natheless, I purpose not to spare mine own pains; nay,
without answering so much [at large] as it might behove, I mean to rid
mine ears of them with some slight rejoinder, and that without delay;
for that if even now, I being not yet come to[214] the third part of
my travail, they[215] are many and presume amain, I opine that, ere I
come to the end thereof, they may, having had no rebuff at the first,
on such wise be multiplied that with whatsoever little pains of theirs
they might overthrow me, nor might your powers, great though they be,
avail to withstand this.

[Footnote 213: _i.e._ blasts of calumny.]

[Footnote 214: _i.e._ having not yet accompl