d up, and took the little boy in his arms and the lady
by the hand, and approached Niccoluccio, saying:--"Rise, my gossip: I do
not, indeed, restore thee thy wife, whom thy kinsfolk and hers cast
forth; but I am minded to give thee this lady, my gossip, with this her
little boy, whom I know well to be thy son, and whom I held at the font,
and named Gentile: and I pray thee that she be not the less dear to thee
for that she has tarried three months in my house; for I swear to thee by
that God, who, peradventure, ordained that I should be enamoured of her,
to the end that my love might be, as it has been, the occasion of her
restoration to life, that never with her father, or her mother, or with
thee, did she live more virtuously than with my mother in my house."
Which said, he turned to the lady, saying:--"Madam, I now release you
from all promises made to me, and so deliver you to Niccoluccio." Then,
leaving the lady and the child in Niccoluccio's embrace, he returned to
his seat.

Thus to receive his wife and son was to Niccoluccio a delight great in
the measure of its remoteness from his hope. Wherefore in the most
honourable terms at his command he thanked the knight, whom all the rest,
weeping for sympathy, greatly commended for what he had done, as did also
all that heard thereof. The lady, welcomed home with wondrous cheer, was
long a portent to the Bolognese, who gazed on her as on one raised from
the dead. Messer Gentile lived ever after as the friend of Niccoluccio,
and his and the lady's kinsfolk.

Now what shall be your verdict, gracious ladies? A king's largess, though
it was of his sceptre and crown, an abbot's reconciliation, at no cost to
himself, of a malefactor with the Pope, or an old man's submission of his
throat to the knife of his enemy--will you adjudge that such acts as
these are comparable to the deed of Messer Gentile? Who, though young,
and burning with passion, and deeming himself justly entitled to that
which the heedlessness of another had discarded, and he by good fortune
had recovered, not only tempered his ardour with honour, but having that
which with his whole soul he had long been bent on wresting from another,
did with liberality restore it. Assuredly none of the feats aforesaid
seem to me like unto this.

NOVEL V.

--
Madonna Dianora craves of Messer Ansaldo a garden that shall be as fair
in January as in May. Messer Ansaldo binds himself to a necromancer, and
thereby gives h