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The Decameron, Volume II

Giovanni Boccaccio · 1349-1353 (approx.); for this volume: portions composed within the overall work's timeframe

passage 147 of 311 · (144/308)

in brief
Bruno, Buffalmacco, and a priest steal Calandrino’s pig, persuade him to report it as stolen, and plan to recover it using “ginger pills” and vernaccia to identify the culprit.

will never do it." The others said a great deal more, but to no purpose; and Calandrino bade them to supper, but so coldly that they declined, and left him.

Presently:--"Should we not steal this pig from him to-night?" quoth Bruno to Buffalmacco. "Could we so?" returned Buffalmacco. "How?" "Why, as to that," rejoined Bruno, "I have already marked how it may be done, if he bestow not the pig elsewhere." "So be it, then," said Buffalmacco: "we will steal it; and then, perchance, our good host, Master Priest, will join us in doing honour to such good cheer?" "That right gladly will I," quoth the priest. Whereupon:--"Some address, though," quoth Bruno, "will be needful: thou knowest, Buffalmacco, what a niggardly fellow Calandrino is, and how greedily he drinks at other folk's expense. Go we, therefore, and take him to the tavern, and there let the priest make as if, to do us honour, he would pay the whole score, and suffer Calandrino to pay never a soldo, and he will grow tipsy, and then we shall speed excellent well, because he is alone in the house."

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topics: contracts, oaths, and obligation · crime and punishment · custom and the manners of a people

The Decameron, Volume II · Giovanni Boccaccio · 1349–1353