Much smaller crimes have heretofore moved you in your wrath to execute a vengeance less just. Therefore, why do you delay now? Though you inflicted the worst of tortures on him, you would not visit him with a punishment befitting his deserts.
Ah, wretched me! would that you felt the effect of his treachery as I do, to the end that in you as in me there were the same insatiable desire to inflict on him a chastisement that would bear some proportion to his guilt! O ye gods, visit him with one, or with two, or with all those perils which I lately dreaded he might encounter!
Slay him by whatever manner of death it may please ye to employ, so, that I may, at one and the same hour, feel the last sorrow I am ever to feel for him, and exact the vengeance due me as well. Let not me alone pay the penalty of his sins, and let him not, after laughing at both you and me, enjoy himself with his new spouse.”
Then, not less inflamed with anger, but with a burst of tears and sobs that shook me even more cruelly than before, turning, as it were, to Panfilo, I thus addressed him:
“O Panfilo, now I know the cause of thy absence; now are all thy artifices plain to me; now do I see who kept thee away from me, and what was the nature of that ‘piety,’ forsooth, of which thou hast so often spoken. Now art thou celebrating the sacred rites of Hymen, while I, betrayed by thy flattering words, betrayed both by thee and by myself, am wasting away in tears, and by my tears am opening a path for death to reach me. Yes, death, the executioner of thy cruelty, will speedily cut short my days, and of this thou alone art the cause. O most infamous of men, how prompt thou hast been in rendering my anguish unendurable!
Now, tell me, what was thy purpose in espousing thy new bride? To deceive her as thou hast deceived me? With what eyes didst thou regard her? With those wherewith thou didst capture me, the most wretched of all women? What sort of fidelity didst thou promise her? That which thou hadst promised me? How couldst thou do that? Dost thou not remember that thou canst not bind thyself by the same bond twice in succession? By what gods hast thou sworn? Before what deities hast thou perjured thyself?
Woe is me! I know not what countervailing pleasure has so blinded thee that, being mine, and mine only, thou couldst belong to another! Wretched me! for what fault of mine have I deserved to be of such little concern to thee? Whither has our hitherto unalloyed affection for each other fled so soon? Alas! that their melancholy fortunes should have such power over the heartbroken! Thou hast now cast to the winds the vowed faith, pledged to me by thy right hand, and the gods forsworn, by whom thou didst most solemnly and ardently swear to return, and thy fair-spoken words, whereof thou hadst a bountiful supply, and the tears wherewith thou didst bathe, not only thy face but mine also—all these, I say, thou hast cast to the winds, and, scornfully looking down on me, thou livest blithely with another woman.
Alas and alas! who could ever have believed that such duplicity lay hidden beneath thy words? and that the tears that gushed so plentifully from thine eyes were a masterstroke of cunning ingenuity? Not I, certainly. Just as the words I spoke and the tears I shed were loyal words and tears, so did I accept thine own as equally loyal. And if, haply, thou shouldst say that, contrariwise, both the tears and the oaths were true, and that the faith pledged came from a pure heart, granted, at least for the moment.
“But what excuse wilt give for not having kept that faith as purely as thou didst pledge it? Wilt thou say that thy new love’s gentleness and sweetness of temper have been the cause of this? Such an admission would be a sign of thy weakness and a manifest proof of thy fickleness. And, over and above all this, will it be, therefore, satisfactory to me? Certainly not. O thou abominable young man! Was not the ardent love I bore thee, and still bear thee, albeit much against my will, plain to thine eyes? Surely, it was; and that is the reason why it needed much less manoeuvring to deceive me than thou hast employed. But, in order that thou mightest prove how clever and subtle thou wert, thou didst decide to use all the arts of which thou wert possessed in discoursing with me.
Now, hast thou ever thought of how little glory thou wert the gainer in deceiving a woman who trusted thee? My simplicity was deserving of more loyalty than thou hast shown it. But it were bootless to speak to thee of such things. Yet, as I believed not less in the gods, to whom thou hast perjured thyself, than I believed in thee, I will beseech them so to ordain that this may be the best part of thy renown in the future; that is, the fame of having deceived a young woman who loved thee more than she loved herself.
Come now, Panfilo: have I committed any fault for which I deserved to be so skilfully betrayed by thee? Certainly not, None have I committed, except that of loving thee too well, but not wisely, and in always, besides loving thee overmuch, keeping the faith I had pledged to thee: but for such a sin, I, at least, did not merit such a penance.
In sooth, one sin I fully admit I have committed, and that was the sin of abandoning myself so freely to a most wicked and merciless young man, O thou villain! And this befell me because of the wrath of the gods. Yet of this, as they themselves have clearly perceived, thou, not I, wert guilty. I resisted thee, and God knoweth this, as long as I was able. Woe is me! Would that the day which ushered in that fatal night had been my last; so, might I have died a virtuous woman! Oh, what bitter and heartrending pangs will be my portion henceforth! Now wilt thou amuse thy youthful bride with many a tale of thy past loves, and wilt speak of wretched me as in every way blamable, abasing my beauty and my manners, albeit thou didst once extol both as more worthy of laud and renown than those of all other ladies.
But now thou wilt have praises only for her beauty and her manners, saying that our intercourse was the fruit, not of true love, but of a transitory passion. But among the many falsehoods thou art sure to relate, forget not to make mention also of, at least, some of thy true deceptions, which have left me woebegone and forlorn. Tell her, too, of my most honorable estate, whereby she may perceive more clearly the extent of thy base ingratitude.
Nor let it slip thy mind to record how many young men of the noblest rank and of the most exalted disposition and character sought to win my love, and their divers ways of seeking it, and their quarrels at night, and their many valiant encounters during the day, and the portals of my palace hung with garlands by them, and all for my sake. And yet could they not wile me away from loving thee and from the counterfeit love thou didst feign to have for me.
Notwithstanding all this, thou hast in a moment forsaken me for a young girl whom thou hast scarcely known! Truly, if she be not as simple as I have been, she will always have a suspicion of thy kisses, and will be, on her guard against those sly manˇuvres of thine from which I, alas! have not known how to guard myself.
Oh, I beseech the avenging gods that she may deal with thee as the spouse of Atreus dealt with her husband, or as the daughters of Danaus did with their husbands, or as Clytemnestra did with Agamemnon; or, at the very least, may she treat thee as I have treated my husband, who has not merited such injury at my hands; and may she cause thee such harrowing anguish that I, yes, even I, may be forced to shed such tears for pity of thee, as I now shed for pity of myself. And if the gods have any true concern for ill-used mortals, this, as I hope and pray, will happen speedily.”
Although I was almost maddened by my consuming wrongs, I recurred to them again and again, not only on that day, but on divers others that ensued; yet could I not help being disturbed also by the agitation I had noted on the face of the young lady already mentioned; and this gave birth to other feverish thoughts, now as it had at the time, and afterward.
“Wherefore,” I would often say within my own mind, “should I grieve so deeply, O Panfilo, because thou art so far away from me, and at present enamored of another woman, seeing that even when thou wert here present, thou wert not entirely mine, but belonged to others also?
