given his wife to understand that the
vassals could not endure her daughter, he sent her a message by a
servant. So the servant came, and:--"Madam," quoth he with a most
dolorous mien, "so I value my life, I must needs do my lord's bidding. He
has bidden me take your daughter and..." He said no more, but the lady by
what she heard, and read in his face, and remembered of her husband's
words, understood that he was bidden to put the child to death. Whereupon
she presently took the child from the cradle, and having kissed and
blessed her, albeit she was very sore at heart, she changed not
countenance, but placed it in the servant's arms, saying:--"See that thou
leave nought undone that my lord and thine has charged thee to do, but
leave her not so that the beasts and the birds devour her, unless he have
so bidden thee." So the servant took the child, and told Gualtieri what
the lady had said; and Gualtieri, marvelling at her constancy, sent him
with the child to Bologna, to one of his kinswomen, whom he besought to
rear and educate the child with all care, but never to let it be known
whose child she was.

Soon after it befell that the lady again conceived, and in due time was
delivered of a son, whereat Gualtieri was overjoyed. But, not content
with what he had done, he now even more poignantly afflicted the lady;
and one day with a ruffled mien:--"Wife," quoth he, "since thou gavest
birth to this boy, I may on no wise live in peace with my vassals, so
bitterly do they reproach me that a grandson of Giannucolo is to succeed
me as their lord; and therefore I fear that, so I be not minded to be
sent a packing hence, I must even do herein as I did before, and in the
end put thee away, and take another wife." The lady heard him patiently,
and answered only:--"My lord, study how thou mayst content thee and best
please thyself, and waste no thought upon me, for there is nought I
desire save in so far as I know that 'tis thy pleasure." Not many days
after, Gualtieri, in like manner as he had sent for the daughter, sent
for the son, and having made a shew of putting him to death, provided for
his, as for the girl's, nurture at Bologna. Whereat the lady shewed no
more discomposure of countenance or speech than at the loss of her
daughter: which Gualtieri found passing strange, and inly affirmed that
there was never another woman in the world that would have so done. And
but that he had marked that she was most tenderly affectiona