’Twas not without travail most grievous that the lady, as she heard this announcement, got the better of her woman’s nature, and suppressing her tears, made answer:—­“My lord, I ever knew that my low degree was on no wise congruous with your nobility, and acknowledged that the rank I had with you was of your and God’s bestowal, nor did I ever make as if it were mine by gift, or so esteem it, but still accounted it as a loan.  ’Tis your pleasure to recall it, and therefore it should be, and is, my pleasure to render it up to you.  So, here is your ring, with which you espoused me; take it back.  You bid me take with me the dowry that I brought you; which to do will require neither paymaster on your part nor purse nor packhorse on mine; for I am not unmindful that naked was I when you first had me.  And if you deem it seemly that that body in which I have borne children, by you begotten, be beheld of all, naked will I depart; but yet, I pray you, be pleased, in guerdon of the virginity that I brought you and take not away, to suffer me to bear hence upon my back a single shift—­I crave no more—­besides my dowry.”  There was nought of which Gualtieri was so fain as to weep; but yet, setting his face as a flint, he made answer:—­“I allow thee a shift to thy back; so get thee hence.”  All that stood by besought him to give her a robe, that she, who had been his wife for thirteen years and more, might not be seen to quit his house in so sorry and shameful a plight, having nought on her but a shift.  But their entreaties went for nothing:  the lady in her shift, and barefoot and bareheaded, having bade them adieu, departed the house, and went back to her father amid the tears and lamentations of all that saw her.  Giannucolo, who had ever deemed it a thing incredible that Gualtieri should keep his daughter to wife, and had looked for this to happen every day, and had kept the clothes that she had put off on the morning that Gualtieri had wedded her, now brought them to her; and she, having resumed them, applied herself to the petty drudgery of her father’s house, as she had been wont, enduring with fortitude this cruel visitation of adverse Fortune.

Now no sooner had Gualtieri dismissed Griselda, than he gave his vassals to understand that he had taken to wife a daughter of one of the Counts of Panago.  He accordingly made great preparations as for the nuptials, during which he sent for Griselda.  To whom, being come, quoth he:—­“I am bringing hither my new bride, and in this her first home-coming I purpose to shew her honour; and thou knowest that women I have none in the house that know how to set chambers in due order, or attend to the many other matters that so joyful an event requires; wherefore do thou, that understandest these things better than another, see to all that needs be done, and bid hither such ladies as thou mayst see fit, and receive them, as if thou wert the lady of the house, and then, when the nuptials are ended, thou mayst go back to thy cottage.”