1288.

A man was arguing and boasting that he knew many and various tricks.  Another among the bystanders said:  “I know how to play a trick which will make whomsoever I like pull off his breeches.”  The first man—­ the boaster—­said:  “You won’t make me pull off mine, and I bet you a pair of hose on it.”  He who proposed the game, having accepted the offer, produced breeches and drew them across the face of him who bet the pair of hose and won the bet [4].

A man said to an acquaintance:  “Your eyes are changed to a strange colour.”  The other replied:  “It often happens, but you have not noticed it.”  “When does it happen?” said the former.  “Every time that my eyes see your ugly face, from the shock of so unpleasing a sight they suddenly turn pale and change to a strange colour.”

A man said to another:  “Your eyes are changed to a strange colour.”  The other replied:  “It is because my eyes behold your strange ugly face.”

A man said that in his country were the strangest things in the world.  Another answered:  “You, who were born there, confirm this as true, by the strangeness of your ugly face.”

[Footnote:  The joke turns, it appears, on two meanings of trarre and is not easily translated.]

1289.

An old man was publicly casting contempt on a young one, and boldly showing that he did not fear him; on which the young man replied that his advanced age served him better as a shield than either his tongue or his strength.

1290.

A JEST.

A sick man finding himself in articulo mortis heard a knock at the door, and asking one of his servants who was knocking, the servant went out, and answered that it was a woman calling herself Madonna Bona.  Then the sick man lifting his arms to Heaven thanked God with a loud voice, and told the servants that they were to let her come in at once, so that he might see one good woman before he died, since in all his life he had never yet seen one.

1291.

A JEST.

A man was desired to rise from bed, because the sun was already risen.  To which he replied:  “If I had as far to go, and as much to do as he has, I should be risen by now; but having but a little way to go, I shall not rise yet.”

1292.

A man, seeing a woman ready to hold up the target for a jousting match, exclaimed, looking at the shield, and considering his spear:  “Alack! this is too small a workman for so great a business.”

IV.

PROPHECIES.

1293.

THE DIVISION OF THE PROPHECIES.

First, of things relating to animals; secondly, of irrational creatures; thirdly of plants; fourthly, of ceremonies; fifthly, of manners; sixthly, of cases or edicts or quarrels; seventhly, of cases that are impossible in nature [paradoxes], as, for instance, of those things which, the more is taken from them, the more they grow.  And reserve the great matters till the end, and the small matters give at the beginning.  And first show the evils and then the punishment of philosophical things.