(9) Slang for an ill-kept jakes.
(10) Also slang: signifying a pyramidal pile
of ordure.
(11) Broom-handle.
(12) The meaning of this term may perhaps be divined
from the sound.
— A Sicilian woman cunningly conveys from
a merchant that which he has brought to Palermo; he,
making a shew of being come back thither with far
greater store of goods than before, borrows money of
her, and leaves her in lieu thereof water and tow.
—
How much in divers passages the queen’s story
moved the ladies to laughter, it boots not to ask:
none was there in whose eyes the tears stood not full
a dozen times for excess of merriment. However,
it being ended, and Dioneo witting that ’twas
now his turn, thus spake he:—Gracious ladies,
’tis patent to all that wiles are diverting in
the degree of the wiliness of him that is by them
beguiled. Wherefore, albeit stories most goodly
have been told by you all, I purpose to relate one
which should afford you more pleasure than any that
has been told, seeing that she that was beguiled was
far more cunning in beguiling others than any of the
beguiled of whom you have spoken.
There was, and perhaps still is, a custom in all maritime
countries that have ports, that all merchants arriving
there with merchandise, should, on discharging, bring
all their goods into a warehouse, called in many places
“dogana,” and maintained by the state,
or the lord of the land; where those that are assigned
to that office allot to each merchant, on receipt
of an invoice of all his goods and the value thereof,
a room in which he stores his goods under lock and
key; whereupon the said officers of the dogana enter
all the merchant’s goods to his credit in the
book of the dogana, and afterwards make him pay duty
thereon, or on such part as he withdraws from the
warehouse. By which book of the dogana the brokers
not seldom find out the sorts and quantities of the
merchandise that is there, and also who are the owners
thereof, with whom, as occasion serves, they afterwards
treat of exchanges, barters, sales and other modes
of disposing of the goods. Which custom obtained,
as in many other places, so also at Palermo in Sicily,
where in like manner there were and are not a few
women, fair as fair can be, but foes to virtue, who
by whoso knows them not would be reputed great and
most virtuous ladies. And being given not merely
to fleece but utterly to flay men, they no sooner
espy a foreign merchant in the city, than they find
out from the book of the dogana how much he has there
and what he is good for; and then by caressing and
amorous looks and gestures, and words of honeyed sweetness,
they strive to entice and allure the merchant to their
love, and not seldom have they succeeded, and wrested
from him great part or the whole of his merchandise;
and of some they have gotten goods and ship and flesh
and bones, so delightsomely have they known how to
ply the shears.
