fortune, as if it had determined of
will aforethought that this should be, furnished them with an occasion
of doing away the timorousness that baulked them.

Messer Amerigo had, about a mile from Trapani, a very goodly
place,[283] to which his lady was wont ofttimes to resort by way of
pastime with her daughter and other women and ladies. Thither
accordingly they betook themselves one day of great heat, carrying
Pietro with them, and there abiding, it befell, as whiles we see it
happen in summer time, that the sky became of a sudden overcast with
dark clouds, wherefore the lady set out with her company to return to
Trapani, so they might not be there overtaken of the foul weather, and
fared on as fast as they might. But Pietro and Violante, being young,
outwent her mother and the rest by a great way, urged belike, no less
by love than by fear of the weather, and they being already so far in
advance that they were hardly to be seen, it chanced that, of a
sudden, after many thunderclaps, a very heavy and thick shower of hail
began to fall, wherefrom the lady and her company fled into the house
of a husbandman.

[Footnote 283: Apparently a pleasure-garden, without a house attached
in which they might have taken shelter from the rain.]

Pietro and the young lady, having no readier shelter, took refuge in a
little old hut, well nigh all in ruins, wherein none dwelt, and there
huddled together under a small piece of roof, that yet remained whole.
The scantness of the cover constrained them to press close one to
other, and this touching was the means of somewhat emboldening their
minds to discover the amorous desires that consumed them both; and
Pietro first began to say, 'Would God this hail might never give over,
so but I might abide as I am!' 'Indeed,' answered the girl, 'that were
dear to me also.' From these words they came to taking each other by
the hands and pressing them and from that to clipping and after to
kissing, it hailing still the while; and in short, not to recount
every particular, the weather mended not before they had known the
utmost delights of love and had taken order to have their pleasure
secretly one of the other. The storm ended, they fared on to the gate
of the city, which was near at hand, and there awaiting the lady,
returned home with her.

Thereafter, with very discreet and secret ordinance, they foregathered
again and again in the same place, to the great contentment of them
both, and th