The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio, Giovanni Boccaccio [buy e reader .TXT] 📗
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[146] i.e. Friday being a fast day and Saturday a jour maigre.
[147] i.e. generally upon the vicissitudes of Fortune and not upon any particular feature.
[148] Industria, syn. address, skilful contrivance.
[149] i.e. half before (not half after) tierce or 7.30 a.m. Cf. the equivalent German idiom, halb acht, 7.30 (not 8.30) a.m.
[150] i.e. as a whole (tutto insieme).
[151] Sollecitudine. The commentators will have it that this is an error for solitudine, solitude, but I see no necessity for the substitution, the text being perfectly acceptable as it stands.
[152] Hortyard (orto) is the old form of orchard, properly an enclosed tract of land in which fruit, vegetables and potherbs are cultivated for use, i.e. the modern kitchen garden and orchard in one, as distinguished from the pleasaunce or flower garden (giardino).
[153] Giardino, i.e. flower-garden.
[154] Lit. broke the string of.
[155] Boccaccio calls her Teudelinga; but I know of no authority for this form of the name of the famous Longobardian queen.
[156] Referring apparently to the adventure related in the present story.
[157] Lit. with high (i.e. worthy) cause (con alta cagione).
[158] Lit. (riscaldare gli orecchi).
[159] i.e. three a.m. next morning.
[160] i.e. a lay brother or affiliate.
[161] i.e. the canticles of praise chanted by certain lay confraternities, established for that purpose and answering to our præ-Reformation Laudsingers.
[162] An order of lay penitents, who were wont at certain times to go masked about the streets, scourging themselves in expiation of the sins of the people. This expiatory practice was particularly prevalent in Italy in the middle of the thirteenth century.
[163] Contraction of Elisabetta.
[164] Dom, contraction of Dominus (lord), the title commonly given to the beneficed clergy in the middle ages, answering to our Sir as used by Shakespeare (e.g. Sir Hugh Evans the Welsh Parson, Sir Topas the Curate, etc.). The expression survives in the title Dominie (i.e. Domine, voc. of Dominus) still familiarly applied to schoolmasters, who were of course originally invariably clergymen.
[165] A Conventual is a member of some monastic order attached to the regular service of a church, or (as would nowadays be said) a "beneficed" monk.
[166] Sic. This confusion of persons constantly occurs in Boccaccio, especially in the conversational parts of the Decameron, in which he makes the freest use of the various forms of enallage and of other rhetorical figures, such as hyperbaton, synecdoche, etc., to the no small detriment of his style in the matter of clearness.
[167] i.e. nine o'clock p.m.
[168] i.e. a gentleman of Pistoia.
[169] Lit. "The summit," or in modern slang "The tiptop," i.e. the pink of fashion.
[170] i.e. this love shall I bear you. This is a flagrant instance of the misuse of ellipsis, which so frequently disfigures Boccaccio's dialogue.
[171] i.e. my death.
[172] Syn. a rare or strange means (nuovo consiglio). The word nuovo is constantly used by Boccaccio in the latter sense, as is consiglio in its remoter signification of means, remedy, etc.
[173] i.e. the favour.
[174] i.e. the lost six months.
[175] Or, in modern parlance, to enlighten her.
[176] i.e. It was not the dead man, but Tedaldo Elisei whom you loved. (Lo sventurato giovane che fu morto non amasti voi mai, ma Tedaldo Elisei si.)
[177] i.e. friars' gowns. Boccaccio constantly uses this irregular form of enallage, especially in dialogue.
[178] Or, as we should nowadays say, "typical."
[179] i.e. the founders of the monastic orders.
[180] Lit. pictures, paintings (dipinture), but evidently here used in a tropical sense, Boccaccio's apparent meaning being that the hypocritical friars used to terrify their devotees by picturing to them, in vivid colours, the horrors of the punishment reserved for sinners.
[181] i.e. may not have to labour for their living.
[182] i.e. the false friars.
[183] Lit. more of iron (più di ferro).
[184] Sic (per lo modo); but quære not rather "in the sense."
[185] i.e. if they must enter upon this way of life, to wit, that of the friar.
[186] The reference is apparently to the opening verse of the Acts of the Apostles, where Luke says, "The former treatise have I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began to do and to teach." It need hardly be remarked that the passage in question does not bear the interpretation Boccaccio would put upon it.
[187] Sic; but the past tense "loved" is probably intended, as the pretended pilgrim had not yet discovered Tedaldo to be alive.
[188] Lit. barkers (abbajatori), i.e. slanderers.
[189] Lit. despite, rancour (rugginuzza), but the phrase appears to refer to the suspicions excited by the whispers that had been current, as above mentioned, of the connection between Ermellina and Tedaldo.
[190] i.e. foot-soldiers.
[191] i.e. of his identity.
[192] i.e. the abbot who played the trick upon Ferondo. See post.
[193] i.e. I will cure your husband of his jealousy.
[194] The well-known chief of the Assassins (properly Heshashin, i.e. hashish or hemp eaters). The powder in question is apparently a preparation of hashish or hemp. Boccaccio seems to have taken his idea of the Old Man of the Mountain from Marco Polo, whose travels, published in the early part of the fourteenth century, give a most romantic account of that chieftain and his followers.
[195] i.e. in the sublunary world.
[196] Sic (casciata); meaning that he loves her as well as he loves cheese, for which it is well known that the lower-class Italian has a romantic passion. According to Alexandre Dumas, the Italian loves cheese so well that he has succeeded in introducing it into everything he eats or drinks, with the one exception of coffee.
[197] i.e. the Angel Gabriel.
[198] The plural of a surname is, in strictness, always used by the Italians in speaking of a man by his full name, dei being understood between the Christian and surname, as Benedetto (dei) Ferondi, Benedict of the Ferondos or Ferondo family, whilst, when he is denominated by the surname alone, it is used in the singular, il (the) being understood, e.g. (Il) Boccaccio, (Il) Ferondo, i.e. the particular Boccaccio or Ferondo in question for the nonce.
[199] Lit. and so I hope (spero), a curious instance of the ancient Dantesque use of the word spero, I hope, in its contrary sense of fear.
[200] Fornito, a notable example of what the illustrious Lewis Carroll Dodgson, Waywode of Wonderland, calls a "portmanteau-word," a species that abounds in mediæval Italian, for the confusion of translators.
[201] i.e. getting good pay and allowances (avendo buona provisione).
[202] Guadagnare l'anima, lit. gain the soul (syn. pith, kernel, substance). This passage is ambiguous and should perhaps be rendered "catch the knack or trick" or "acquire the wish."
[203] The translators regret that the disuse into which magic has fallen, makes it impossible to render the technicalities of that mysterious art into tolerable English; they have therefore found it necessary to insert several passages in the original Italian.
[204] i.e. the government (corte).
[205] Lit. that scythes were no less plenty that he had arrows (che falci si trovavano non meno che egli avesse strali), a proverbial expression the exact bearing of which I do not know, but whose evident sense I have rendered in the equivalent English idiom.
[206] Syn. what he said (che si dire). See ante, p. 11, note.
[207] Apparently the well-known fabliau of the Dame de Vergy, upon which Marguerite d'Angoulême founded the seventieth story of the Heptameron.
[208] Lit. made (Di me il feci digno).
[209] i.e. false suspicion (falso pensiero).
[210] i.e. to heaven (e costa su m'impetra la tornata).
[211] The pertinence of this allusion, which probably refers to some current Milanese proverbial saying, the word tosa, here used by Boccaccio for "wench," belonging to the Lombard dialect, is not very clear. The expression "Milan-fashion" (alla melanese) may be supposed to refer to the proverbial materialism of the people of Lombardy.
[212] Sic (senza invidia); but the meaning is that misery alone is without enviers.
[213] i.e. blasts of calumny.
[214] i.e. having not yet accomplished.
[215] i.e. my censors.
[216] i.e. in alms.
[217] "I know both how to be abased and I know how to abound; everywhere and in all things I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and suffer need."—Philippians iv. 12.
[218] i.e. benumbed (assiderati).
[219] Or airshaft (spiraglio).
[220] Lit. introduced him to me (a me lo 'ntrodussi); but Boccaccio here uses the word introdurre in its rarer literal sense to lead, to draw, to bring in.
[221] i.e. thou being the means of bringing about the conjunction (adoperandol tu).
[222] i.e. Guiscardo's soul.
[223] i.e. in the heart.
[224] i.e. was more inclined to consider the wishes of the ladies her companions, which she divined by sympathy, than those of Filostrato, as shown by his words (più per la sua affezione cognobbe l'animo delle campagne che quello del re per le sue parole). It is difficult, however, in this instance as in many others, to discover with certainty Boccaccio's exact meaning, owing to his affectation of Ciceronian concision and delight in obscure elliptical forms of construction; whilst his use of words in a
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