Amongst those that they drove away as captives were Melibœus and his wife, Corydon, and Pastorella. Through the dark night they drove them on, until they came to the sea. On an island near the coast was the robbers’ home. The island was covered with trees and thick brushwood, and the robbers lived in underground caves, so well hidden amongst the bushes that it was hard to find them. The robbers meant to sell the shepherds and shepherdesses as slaves, but until merchants came to buy them they kept their prisoners in the darkest of the caves, and used them very cruelly.
One morning the robber captain came to look at his captives. When he saw Pastorella in her pretty gown, all soiled now and worn, with her long golden hair and beautiful blue eyes, and her face white and thin with suffering, he thought her so lovely that he determined to have her for his wife.
From that day she was kindly treated. But when the robber told Pastorella that he loved her and wanted her for his wife, she pretended she was ill.
‘I am much too ill to marry any one,’ she said.
To the island there came one day the ships of some merchants who wished to buy slaves. They bought Melibœus and Corydon and all the others. Then one of the robbers said to the captain:
‘They are all here but the fair shepherdess.’
And he told the merchants that Pastorella would make a much more beautiful slave than any of those they had bought.
Then the captain was very angry.
‘She belongs to me,’ he said. ‘I will not sell her.’
To show the merchants that Pastorella was ill and not fit to be a slave, at last he sent for her.