es; nevertheless, it pleaseth me yet again to demonstrate it
to you with a story of an enamoured youth.

Ischia is an island very near Naples, and therein, among others, was
once a very fair and sprightly damsel, by name Restituta, who was the
daughter of a gentleman of the island called Marino Bolgaro and whom a
youth named Gianni, a native of a little island near Ischia, called
Procida, loved more than his life, as she on like wise loved him. Not
only did he come by day from Procida to see her, but oftentimes
anights, not finding a boat, he had swum from Procida to Ischia, at
the least to look upon the walls of her house, an he might no
otherwise. During the continuance of this so ardent love, it befell
that the girl, being all alone one summer day on the sea-shore,
chanced, as she went from rock to rock, loosening shell-fish from the
stones with a knife, upon a place hidden among the cliffs, where, at
once for shade and for the commodity of a spring of very cool water
that was there, certain young men of Sicily, coming from Naples, had
taken up their quarters with a pinnace they had. They, seeing that she
was alone and very handsome and was yet unaware of them, took counsel
together to seize her and carry her off and put their resolve into
execution. Accordingly, they took her, for all she made a great
outcry, and carrying her aboard the pinnace, made the best of their
way to Calabria, where they fell to disputing of whose she should be.
Brief, each would fain have her; wherefore, being unable to agree
among themselves and fearing to come to worse and to mar their affairs
for her, they took counsel together to present her to Frederick, King
of Sicily, who was then a young man and delighted in such toys.
Accordingly, coming to Palermo, they made gift of the damsel to the
king, who, seeing her to be fair, held her dear; but, for that he was
presently somewhat infirm of his person, he commanded that, against he
should be stronger, she should be lodged in a very goodly pavilion,
belonging to a garden of his he called La Cuba, and there tended; and
so it was done.

Great was the outcry in Ischia for the ravishment of the damsel and
what most chagrined them was that they could not learn who they were
that had carried her off; but Gianni, whom the thing concerned more
than any other, not looking to get any news of this in Ischia and
learning in what direction the ravishers had gone, equipped another
pinnace and embarking