Page 62 - THE DECAMERON: 100 Days on 100 Etchings by Petru Rusu
P. 62
“The Gentlewoman and the Confessor“
In Florence, there was a gentlewoman who was married off friar please take them back and tell him to stop? So the friar
to a rich merchant. She hated him because she felt that she meets up with the gentleman again, and gives him a good
should have been married to a gentleman. So she decides lecture and the belt and purse. The friar doesn’t realize it, but
to find some other way of satisfying herself. That is to say, the he’s now delivering gifts between the lovers. Then the
with some other man. But she’s a discreet woman and won’t gentlewoman’s husband goes to Genoa for business and she
use her maid as a go-between. Instead, she hooks up with decides to push her luck further. She goes back to the friar
a fat friar who’s a friend of the object of her desire. She and tells him the harrowing story of how his friend must have
pretends that this man has threatened her virtue and asks learned that her husband was away from home, because he
if the friar will please get him to stop his wicked behavior. appeared at her window and saw her naked. The friar is about
The next time this handsome gentleman visited his friar to pop a vessel at this news. He confronts the gentleman, who
friend, the clergyman gives him a good talking to about his receives the information exactly as the gentlewoman intends
wickedness. At first, the man is amazed. Then he understands it. The next morning, he’s in his lover’s arms. They spend their
the woman’s plan. He cruises by her house and serious time together making fun of her husband and the friar. Soon
flirtation starts. The gentlewoman wants things to proceed, they arrange a better way to hook up than using the friar.
so she visits the friar again. This time, she complains that Filomena ends the story with a funny little prayer, asking God
the gentleman sent her a belt and purse as a gift. Would the to give her a similar fate as these two lovers.
“The Gentlewoman and the Confessor” Retrieved from publicly source: shmoop
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