And of the magic vessel him bethinks
Which shows his consort’s guilt to him that drinks;
And him bethinks therewith of what the knight
Related; how of all that he had tried,
Who of his goblet drank, there was no wight
But split the wine he to his lips would guide.
Now he repents him; now, “ ’Tis my delight,”
(Mutters) “that I the proof would not abide:
Succeeding I should prove but what I thought;
And not succeeding, to what pass am brought!
“This my belief I deem a certainty;
And faith could have but small increase in me:
So, if I this should by the touchstone try,
My present good would little bettered be:
But small the evil would not prove, if I
Saw of my Clarice what I would not see.
This were a thousand against one to stake;
To hazard much where I could nothing take.”
The knight of Clermont buried in this mood,
Who lifted not his visage from the floor,
A mariner with much attention viewed,
That overright was seated at his oar:
And, for he deemed he fully understood
The thought that prest the cavalier so sore,
Made him (well-spoken was the man and bold)
Wake from his muse, some talk with him to hold.
The substance of the talk between the two
Was, “that the husband little wit possest,
Who, wishing to assay if she was true,
Had tried his wife by too severe a test:
For woman, proof to gold and silver, who,
Armed but with modesty, defends her breast,
This from a thousand faulchions will defend
More surely, and through burning fires will wend.”
The mariner subjoined; “Thou saidest well;
With gifts so rich he should not her have prest;
For, these assaults, these charges, to repel,
Not good alike is every human breast.
I know not if of wife thou has heard tell
(For haply not with us the tale may rest)
That in the very sin her husband spied,
For which she by his sentence should have died.
“My lord should have remembered, gold and meed
Have upon every hardest matter wrought:
But he forgot this truth in time of need;
And so upon his head this ruin brought,
Ah! would that he in proof, like me, a deed
Done in this neighbouring city had been taught,
His country and mine own; which lake and fen,
Brimming with Mincius’ prisoned waters, pen.
“I of Adonio speak, that in a hound
A treasure on the judge’s wife conferred.”
“Thereof,” replied the paladin, “the sound
Hath not o’erpast the Alps: for never word
Of this neighbouring France, nor in my round
Through far and foreign countries have I heard:
So tell, if telling irks not,” said the peer,
“What willingly I bown myself to hear.”
The boatman then; “Erewhile was of this town
One Anselm, that of worthy lineage came;
A wight that spent his youth in flowing gown,
Studying his Ulpian: he of honest fame,
Beauty, and state assorting with his own,
A consort sought, and one of noble name:
Nor vainly; in a neighbouring city, crowned
With superhuman beauty, one he found.
“She such fair manners and so graceful shows,
She seems all love and beauty; and much more
Perchance than maketh for her lord’s repose;
Then well befits the reverend charge he bore.
He, wedded, strait in jealousy outgoes
All jealous men that ever were before:
Yet she affords not other cause for care
But that she is too witty and too fair.
“In the same city dwelt a cavalier,
Numbered that old and honoured race among,
Sprung from the haughty lineage, which whilere
Out of the jaw-bone of a serpent sprung:
Whence Manto,531 doomed my native walls to rear,
Descended, and with her a kindred throng.
The cavalier (Adonio was he named)
Was with the beauties of the dame inflamed;
“And for the furtherance of his amorous quest,
To grace himself, began his wealth to spend,
Without restraint, in banquet and in vest,
And what might most a cavalier commend:
If he Tiberius’532 treasure had possest,
He of his riches would have made an end.
I well believe two winters were not done,
Ere his paternal fortune was outrun.
“The house erewhile, frequented by a horde
—Morning and evening—of so many friends,
Is solitary; since no more his board
Beneath the partridge, quail, and pheasant bends.
Of that once noble troop upon the lord,
Save beggars, hardly any one attends.
Ruined, at length he thinks he will begone
To other country, where he is unknown.
“He leaves his native land with this intent,
Nor letteth any his departure know;
And coasts, in tears and making sad lament,
The marshes that about his city go:
He his heart’s queen, amid his discontent,
Meanwhile forgets not, for this second woe.
Lo! him another accident that falls,
From sovereign woe to sovereign bliss recalls!
“He saw a peasant who with heavy stake
Smote mid some sapling trunks on every side:
Adonio stopt, and wherefore so he strake,
Asked of the rustic, that in answer cried,
‘Within that clump a passing ancient snake,
Amid the tangled stems he had espied:
A longer serpent and more thick to view
He never saw, nor thought to see anew;
“ ‘And that from thence he would not wend his way
Until the reptile he had found and slain.’
When so Adonio heard the peasant say,
He scarce his speech with patience could sustain,
Aye reverence to the serpent wont to pay,
The honoured ensign of his ancient strain;
In memory that their primal race had grown
Erewhile from serpent’s teeth by Cadmus sown;
“And by the churl the offended knight so said,
And did withal, he made him quit the emprize;
Leaving the hunted serpent neither dead,
Nor injured, nor pursued in further wise.
Thither, where he believes would least have spread
The story of his woe, Adonio hies;
And in discomfort and in sorrow wears,
Far from his native land, seven weary years.
“Neither for distance nor for straitened cheer,
Which will
