The damsel, who had done her best to keep her condition secret, saw at length by the increase of her bulk that ’twas impossible:  wherefore one day most piteously bewailing herself, she made her avowal to her mother, and besought her to shield her from the consequences.  Distressed beyond measure, the lady chid her severely, and then asked her how it had come to pass.  The damsel, to screen Pietro, invented a story by which she put another complexion on the affair.  The lady believed her, and, that her fall might not be discovered, took her off to one of their estates; where, the time of her delivery being come, and she, as women do in such a case, crying out for pain, it so befell that Messer Amerigo, whom the lady expected not, as indeed he was scarce ever wont, to come there, did so, having been out a hawking, and passing by the chamber where the damsel lay, marvelled to hear her cries, and forthwith entered, and asked what it meant.  On sight of whom the lady rose and sorrowfully gave him her daughter’s version of what had befallen her.  But he, less credulous than his wife, averred that it could not be true that she knew not by whom she was pregnant, and was minded to know the whole truth:  let the damsel confess and she might regain his favour; otherwise she must expect no mercy and prepare for death.

The lady did all she could to induce her husband to rest satisfied with what she had told him; but all to no purpose.  Mad with rage, he rushed, drawn sword in hand, to his daughter’s bedside (she, pending the parley, having given birth to a boy) and cried out:—­“Declare whose this infant is, or forthwith thou diest.”  Overcome by fear of death, the damsel broke her promise to Pietro, and made a clean breast of all that had passed between him and her.  Whereat the knight, grown fell with rage, could scarce refrain from slaying her.  However, having given vent to his wrath in such words as it dictated, he remounted his horse and rode to Trapani, and there before one Messer Currado, the King’s lieutenant, laid information of the wrong done him by Pietro, in consequence whereof Pietro, who suspected nothing, was forthwith taken, and being put to the torture, confessed all.  Some days later the lieutenant sentenced him to be scourged through the city, and then hanged by the neck; and Messer Amerigo, being minded that one and the same hour should rid the earth of the two lovers and their son (for to have compassed Pietro’s death was not enough to appease his wrath), mingled poison and wine in a goblet, and gave it to one of his servants with a drawn sword, saying:—­“Get thee with this gear to Violante, and tell her from me to make instant choice of one of these two deaths, either the poison or the steel; else, I will have her burned, as she deserves, in view of all the citizens; which done, thou wilt take the boy that she bore a few days ago, and beat his brains out against the wall, and cast his body for a prey to the dogs.”