(1) Cf. First Day, Novel X.
— Cisti, a baker, by an apt speech gives
Messer Geri Spina to know that he has by inadvertence
asked that of him which he should not. —
All the ladies and the men alike having greatly commended
Madonna Oretta’s apt saying, the queen bade
Pampinea follow suit, and thus she began:—
Fair ladies, I cannot myself determine whether Nature
or Fortune be the more at fault, the one in furnishing
a noble soul with a vile body, or the other in allotting
a base occupation to a body endowed with a noble soul,
whereof we may have seen an example, among others,
in our fellow-citizen, Cisti; whom, furnished though
he was with a most lofty soul, Fortune made a baker.
And verily I should curse Nature and Fortune alike,
did I not know that Nature is most discreet, and that
Fortune, albeit the foolish imagine her blind, has
a thousand eyes. For ’tis, I suppose, that,
being wise above a little, they do as mortals ofttimes
do, who, being uncertain as to their future, provide
against contingencies by burying their most precious
treasures in the basest places in their houses, as
being the least likely to be suspected; whence, in
the hour of their greatest need, they bring them forth,
the base place having kept them more safe than the
dainty chamber would have done. And so these two
arbitresses of the world not seldom hide their most
precious commodities in the obscurity of the crafts
that are reputed most base, that thence being brought
to light they may shine with a brighter splendour.
Whereof how in a trifling matter Cisti, the baker,
gave proof, restoring the eyes of the mind to Messer
Geri Spina, whom the story of his wife, Madonna Oretta,
has brought to my recollection, I am minded to shew
you in a narrative which shall be of the briefest.
I say then that Pope Boniface, with whom Messer Geri
Spina stood very high in favour and honour, having
sent divers of his courtiers to Florence as ambassadors
to treat of certain matters of great moment, and they
being lodged in Messer Geri’s house, where he
treated with them of the said affairs of the Pope,
’twas, for some reason or another, the wont
of Messer Geri and the ambassadors of the Pope to pass
almost every morning by Santa Maria Ughi, where Cisti,
the baker, had his bakehouse, and plied his craft
in person. Now, albeit Fortune had allotted him
a very humble occupation, she had nevertheless prospered
him therein to such a degree that he was grown most
wealthy, and without ever aspiring to change it for
another, lived in most magnificent style, having among
his other good things a cellar of the best wines, white
and red, that were to be found in Florence, or the
country parts; and marking Messer Geri and the ambassadors
of the Pope pass every morning by his door, he bethought
him that, as ’twas very hot, ’twould be
a very courteous thing to give them to drink of his
