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herself up for dead; but being fain, if she might, to screen the boy, and
knowing not where else to convey or conceal him, bestowed him under a
hen-coop that stood in a veranda hard by the chamber in which they were
supping, and threw over it a sorry mattress that she had that day emptied
of its straw; which done she hastened to open the door to her husband;
saying to him as he entered:--"You have gulped your supper mighty quickly
to-night." Whereto Pietro replied:--"We have not so much as tasted it."
"How so?" enquired the lady. "I will tell thee," said Pietro. "No sooner
were we set at table, Ercolano, his wife, and I, than we heard a sneeze
close to us, to which, though 'twas repeated, we paid no heed; but as the
sneezer continued to sneeze a third, a fourth, a fifth, and many another
time to boot, we all began to wonder, and Ercolano, who was somewhat out
of humour with his wife, because she had kept us a long time at the door
before she opened it, burst out in a sort of rage with:--'What means
this? Who is't that thus sneezes?' and made off to a stair hard by,
beneath which and close to its foot was a wooden closet, of the sort
which, when folk are furnishing their houses, they commonly cause to be
placed there, to stow things in upon occasion. And as it seemed to him
that the sneezing proceeded thence, he undid the wicket, and no sooner
had he opened it than out flew never so strong a stench of brimstone;
albeit we had already been saluted by a whiff of it, and complained
thereof, but had been put off by the lady with:--''Tis but that a while
ago I bleached my veils with brimstone, having sprinkled it on a dish,
that they might catch its fumes, which dish I then placed under the
stair, so that it still smells a little.'
"However the door being now, as I have said, open, and the smoke somewhat
less dense, Ercolano, peering in, espied the fellow that had sneezed, and
who still kept sneezing, being thereto constrained by the pungency of the
brimstone. And for all he sneezed, yet was he by this time so well-nigh
choked with the brimstone that he was like neither to sneeze nor to do
aught else again. As soon as he caught sight of him, Ercolano bawled
out:--'Now see I, Madam, why it was that a while ago, when we came here,
we were kept waiting so long at the gate before 'twas opened; but woe
betide me for the rest of my days, if I pay you not out.' Whereupon the
lady, perceiving that her offence was discovered, ventured no excuse, but
fled from the table, whither I know not. Ercolano, ignoring his wife's
flight, bade the sneezer again and again to come forth; but he, being by
this time fairly spent, budged not an inch for aught that Ercolano said.
Wherefore Ercolano caught him by one of his feet, and dragged him forth,
and ran off for a knife with intent to kill him; but I, standing in fear
of the Signory on my own account, got up and would not suffer him to kill
the fellow or do him any hurt, and for his better protection raised the
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