The night before the day fixed for Claudio's wedding, Don John entered a room in which Don Pedro and Claudio were conversing, and asked Claudio if he intended to be married to-morrow.
“You know he does!” said Don Pedro.
“He may know differently,” said Don John, “when he has seen what I will show him if he will follow me.”
They followed him into the garden; and they saw a lady leaning out of Hero's window talking love to Borachio.
Claudio thought the lady was Hero, and said, “I will shame her for it to-morrow!” Don Pedro thought she was Hero, too; but she was not Hero; she was Margaret.
Don John chuckled noiselessly when Claudio and Don Pedro quitted the garden; he gave Borachio a purse containing a thousand ducats.
The money made Borachio feel very gay, and when he was walking in the street with his friend Conrade, he boasted of his wealth and the giver, and told what he had done.
A watchman overheard them, and thought that a man who had been paid a thousand ducats for villainy was worth taking in charge. He therefore arrested Borachio and Conrade, who spent the rest of the night in prison.
Before noon of the next day half the aristocrats in Messina were at church. Hero thought it was her wedding day, and she was there in her wedding dress, no cloud on her pretty face or in her frank and shining eyes.
The priest was Friar Francis.