NOVEL VI.
Two young gentlemen lie at an inn, one of whom goes to bed to the landlord's daughter; whilst the wife, by mistake, lies with the other. Afterwards, he that had lain with the daughter, gets to bed to the father, and tells him all that had passed, thinking it had been his friend: a great uproar is made about it; upon which the wife goes to bed to the daughter, and very cunningly sets all to rights again.
Calandrino, who had so frequently diverted the company, made them laugh once more: when the queen laid her next commands upon Pamfilo, who therefore said: - Ladies, the name of Niccolosa, mentioned in the last novel, puts me in mind of one concerning another of the same name; in which will be shown, how the subtle contrivance of a certain good woman was the means of preventing a great deal of scandal.
On the plains of Mugnone lived, not long ago, an honest man, who kept a small house for the entertainment of travellers, serving them with meat and drink for their money, but seldom lodging any, unless they were his particular acquaintances. He had a wife, a very comely woman, by whom he had two children, the one an infant, the other a fine handsome girl of about fifteen or sixteen years of age, not yet married. She had taken the fancy of a young gentleman of our city, who used to travel much that way, and being proud of such a conquest, she strove to preserve his good opinion, so that their mutual inclinations would several times have been gratified, had not Pinuccio, for that was the young gentleman's name, carefully avoided it, for her credit as well as his own. At last, his love growing every day more fervent, he resolved, in order to gain his point, to lie all night at her father's house; supposing, as he was acquainted with the state of the house, that it might then be effected without any one's privity. He communicated his design to a confidential friend of his, named Adriano; so they hired a couple of horses one evening, and having their portmanteaus behind them, filled perhaps with straw, they set out from Florence; and, after taking a circuit, came, as it grew late, to the plains of Mugnone. There, turning their horses' heads, as if they had come from Romagna, they rode on to this cottage, and knocked at the door, which was immediately opened by the attentive landlord. "Honest landlord," said Pinuccio, "we must beg the favour of a night's lodging, for we designed to have reached Florence, but have so managed that it is now much too late, as you see." - "sir," replied the host, "you know very well how ill I can accommodate such gentlemen as yourselves; but, as you are come at such an hour, and there is no time for your travelling any farther, I will entertain you as well as I can. So they dismounted, and went into the house, having first taken care of their horses; and as they had provision along with them, they sat down and supped with their host.
Now there was only one little chamber in the house, which had three beds in it; namely, two at one end, and the third at the other, opposite to them, with just room to go between, and no more. The least incommodious of these, the landlord ordered to be sheeted for these two gentlemen, and put them to bed. A little time afterwards, neither of them being asleep, though they pretended to be so, he made his daughter lie in one of the beds that remained; he and his wife went into the other, and she set the cradle with the child by her bed-side. Things being so disposed, and Pinuccio having made an exact observation of every particular, as soon as he thought it a proper time, and that every one was asleep, he rose, and went softly to bed to the daughter, where he remained to his great satisfaction. In the meantime, a cat happened to throw something down in the house, which awakened the good woman, who, fearing it was something else, got up in the dark, and went where she had heard the noise. Just then it chanced that Adriano rose, upon a particular occasion, and finding the cradle in his way, he moved it nearer to his own bed; and having done what he rose for, went to bed again, without troubling himself to put the cradle back in its place. The good woman, finding what was thrown down to be of no moment, never troubled herself to strike a light, to see farther about it, but returned to the bed where her husband lay; and not finding the cradle, "Bless me," she said to herself, "I had like to have made a strange mistake, and gone to bed to my guests!" Going farther then, and finding the cradle which stood by Adriano, she stepped into bed to him, thinking it had been her husband. He was awake, and treated her very kindly, without saying a word all the time to undeceive her. At length Pinuccio, fearing lest he should fall asleep, and so be surprised with his mistress, after having made the best use of his time, left her to return to his own bed; when meeting with the cradle, and supposing that was the host's bed, he went farther, and stepped into the host's bed indeed, who immediately awoke. Pinuccio, thinking it was his friend, said to him, “surely, nothing was ever so sweet as Niccolosa; never man was so blessed as I have been with her all night long." The host, who anything but pleased with this news, said first to himself, "What the devil is the man doing here?" Afterwards, being more passionate than wise, he cried out, "Thou art the greatest of villains to use one in that manner: but I vow to God I will pay thee for it."
Pinuccio, who was none of the sharpest men in the world, seeing his mistake, without ever thinking to amend it, as he might have done, replied, "You pay me! what can you do?" The hostess, imagining that she had been with her husband, said to Adriano, "Hark to our guests! what is the matter with them?" He replied, with a laugh, "Let them be hanged, if they will; they got drunk, I suppose, last night." The woman now distinguished her husband's voice, and hearing Adriano, soon knew where she was, and with whom. Therefore she very discreetly got up, without saying a word, and removed the cradle, though there was no light in the chamber, as near as she could guess to her daughter's bed, and crept in to her; when, seeming as if she had been awoke with their noise, she called out to her husband to know what was the matter with him and the gentleman. The husband replied, "Do you not hear what he says he has been doing tonight with Niccolosa?" - "He is a liar," quoth she, "he was never in bed with her, it was I, and I have never closed my eyes since. You are an ass to believe him. You drink to that degree in the evening, that you rave all night long, and go here and there, without knowing anything of the matter, and think you do wonders. It's surprising you don't break your neck. But what is that gentleman doing there? why is he not in his own bed?" Adriano, on the other side, perceiving that the good woman had found a very artful evasion, both for herself and daughter, cried out, "Pinuccio, I have told you a hundred times that you should never lie out of your own house; for that great failing of yours, of walking in your sleep, and telling your dreams for truth, will get you into mischief some time or other. Come back to your own bed, confound you! "The landlord, hearing what his wife and Adriano said, began to think Pinuccio was really dreaming, so he got up and shook him by the shoulders, to rouse him, saying, "Wake up, and get back to your own bed." Pinuccio now began to ramble in his talk, like a man that was dreaming, whereat the host made himself exceedingly merry. At last he seemed to wake, after much ado, and called out, "Hallo! Adriano, is it daylight? what do you wake me for?" - "Yes, yes," said Adriano, "come here, will you?" He, pretending to be very sleepy, got up at last, and went to Adriano. In the morning, the landlord laughed very heartily, and was full of jokes about him and his dreams. So they passed from one merry subject to another, whilst their horses were getting ready, and their portmanteaus tying upon them; when, taking the host's parting cup, they mounted and went to Florence, no less pleased with the manner of the thing's being effected, than with what followed. Afterwards, Pinuccio contrived other means of being with Niccolosa, who still vowed to her mother that he had been dreaming that night; whilst she, well remembering how she had fared with Adriano, thought herself the only person that had been awake.
[This tale has been taken from an old Fabliau of the Trouveur Jean de Boves, entitled "De Gombert et des deux Clercs." These two clerks go to get their corn ground. The miller pretends to be from home, and while they are seeking him through the wood, he purloins the corn, but without their suspecting him of the theft. The night scene corresponds with the "Decameron," except that the cradle is removed intentionally, by one of the clerks, in order to entrap the miller's wife: the catastrophe, however, is different; for the miller, during his quarrel with the other clerk, on account of the information he had unconsciously given, strikes a light, and discovers the circumstances in which his wife is placed. He addresses her in terms the most energetic. She answers, that what she had done was undesigned, which is more than he can say of stealing the corn. The "Reeve's Tale," in Chaucer, seems to be compounded of the Fabliau and the novel of Boccaccio. It bears the nearest resemblance to the former, but in one or two incidents is different from both, and by no means so ingenious. The story, as related by our author, has been imitated in the "Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles," and in the "Berceau," of La Fontaine.]
