A little while afterwards, having often repeated to his wife that his subjects could not endure this daughter born of her, he instructed one of his servants and sent him to her, to whom with sorrowful face he said, “My lady, if I do not wish to die, I am obliged to do what my lord commands me; he has commanded that I should take your daughter and that I—­” and here he stopped.  The lady, seeing the face of the servant and hearing the words that he said, and the words said by her husband, bethinking herself, understood that this man had been ordered to kill the child; upon which, immediately taking her from the cradle, kissing her, and placing her as if in great sorrow to her heart, without changing countenance she placed her in the arms of the servant and said, “Take her and do exactly what your and my lord has imposed on you to do, but do not leave her so that the beasts and the birds shall devour her, unless he should have commanded you that.”  The servant having taken the child and having repeated to Walter what his wife had said, he, marveling at her constancy, sent him with her to Bologna to one of his relatives, beseeching him that without ever saying whose daughter she might be, he should carefully rear her and teach her good manners.  It happened that the lady again in due time bore a son, who was very dear to Walter.  But not being satisfied with what he had done, with greater wounds he pierced his wife, and with a countenance of feigned vexation one day he said to her, “My lady, since you have borne this male child I have in no way been able to live with my people, so bitterly do they regret that a grandchild of Giannucoli should after me remain their lord; and I make no question that if I do not wish to be deposed, it will be necessary to do what I did before, and in the end leave you and take another wife.”  The lady with patience heard him, and only replied, “My lord! think of your own content, and do your own pleasure, and have no thought of me; because nothing is so agreeable to me as to see you satisfied.”  A little after, Walter, in the same manner as he had sent for the daughter, sent for the son, and in the same way feigned to have ordered it to be killed, and sent him to nurse in Bologna as he had sent the daughter.  On account of which thing the lady behaved no otherwise and said no other word than she had done for the daughter.  At this Walter marveled greatly, and declared to himself that no other woman could have done what she did; and had it not been that he found her most affectionate to her children, as he saw her to be, he would have believed that she could only do so because she did not care for them, although he knew her to be very prudent.  His subjects, believing that he had had the child killed, blamed him greatly and considered him a most cruel man, and had great compassion for the lady, who, with the women who came to condole with her on the death of her children, never said other thing than that that pleased her which pleased her lord who had begotten them.