congruous with your nobility, and acknowledged that the rank I had
with you was of your and God's bestowal, nor did I ever make as if it
were mine by gift, or so esteem it, but still accounted it as a loan.
'Tis your pleasure to recall it, and therefore it should be, and is, my
pleasure to render it up to you. So, here is your ring, with which you
espoused me; take it back. You bid me take with me the dowry that I
brought you; which to do will require neither paymaster on your part nor
purse nor packhorse on mine; for I am not unmindful that naked was I when
you first had me. And if you deem it seemly that that body in which I
have borne children, by you begotten, be beheld of all, naked will I
depart; but yet, I pray you, be pleased, in guerdon of the virginity that
I brought you and take not away, to suffer me to bear hence upon my back
a single shift--I crave no more--besides my dowry." There was nought of
which Gualtieri was so fain as to weep; but yet, setting his face as a
flint, he made answer:--"I allow thee a shift to thy back; so get thee
hence." All that stood by besought him to give her a robe, that she, who
had been his wife for thirteen years and more, might not be seen to quit
his house in so sorry and shameful a plight, having nought on her but a
shift. But their entreaties went for nothing: the lady in her shift, and
barefoot and bareheaded, having bade them adieu, departed the house, and
went back to her father amid the tears and lamentations of all that saw
her. Giannucolo, who had ever deemed it a thing incredible that Gualtieri
should keep his daughter to wife, and had looked for this to happen every
day, and had kept the clothes that she had put off on the morning that
Gualtieri had wedded her, now brought them to her; and she, having
resumed them, applied herself to the petty drudgery of her father's
house, as she had been wont, enduring with fortitude this cruel
visitation of adverse Fortune.

Now no sooner had Gualtieri dismissed Griselda, than he gave his vassals
to understand that he had taken to wife a daughter of one of the Counts
of Panago. He accordingly made great preparations as for the nuptials,
during which he sent for Griselda. To whom, being come, quoth he:--"I am
bringing hither my new bride, and in this her first home-coming I purpose
to shew her honour; and thou knowest that women I have none in the house
that know how to set chambers in due order, or attend to the many other
matte