Well pleased to be certified of the lady’s intention, the scholar, to whom her estate and the tower were very well known, made answer:—­“I was never in those parts, Madam, and therefore know neither your estate nor the tower, but, if ’tis as you say, ’twill certainly be the best place in the world for your purpose.  So, when time shall serve, I will send you the image and the orison.  But I pray you, when you shall have your heart’s desire, and know that I have done you good service, do not forget me, but keep your promise to me.”  “That will I without fail,” quoth the lady; and so she bade him farewell, and went home.  The scholar, gleefully anticipating the success of his enterprise, fashioned an image, and inscribed it with certain magical signs, and wrote some gibberish by way of orison, which in due time he sent to the lady, bidding her the very next night do as he had prescribed:  and thereupon he hied him privily with one of his servants to the house of a friend hard by the tower, there to carry his purpose into effect.  The lady, on her part, set out with her maid, and betook her to her estate, and, night being come, sent the maid to bed, as if she were minded to go to rest herself; and about the hour of first sleep stole out of the house and down to the tower, beside the Arno; and when, having carefully looked about her, she was satisfied that never a soul was to be seen or heard, she took off her clothes and hid them under a bush; then, with the image in her hand, she dipped herself seven times in the river; which done, she hied her with the image to the tower.  The scholar, having at nightfall couched himself with his servant among the willows and other trees that fringed the bank, marked all that she did, and how, as she passed by him, the whiteness of her flesh dispelled the shades of night, and scanning attentively her bosom and every other part of her body, and finding them very fair, felt, as he bethought him what would shortly befall them, some pity of her; while, on the other hand, he was suddenly assailed by the solicitations of the flesh which caused that to stand which had been inert, and prompted him to sally forth of his ambush and take her by force, and have his pleasure of her.  And, what with his compassion and passion, he was like to be worsted; but then as he bethought him who he was, and what a grievous wrong had been done him, and for what cause, and by whom, his wrath, thus rekindled, got the better of the other affections, so that he swerved not from his resolve, but suffered her to go her way.

The lady ascended the tower, and standing with her face to the North, began to recite the scholar’s orison, while he, having stolen into the tower but a little behind her, cautiously shifted the ladder that led up to the roof on which the lady stood, and waited to observe what she would say and do.  Seven times the lady said the orison, and then awaited the appearance of the two damsels; and so long had she to wait—­not to mention that the night