But edifies another with her deeds."[244]
This sort of deception, however, cannot last long. Troilus grows more and more suspicious, till one day Deiphebus having fought with Diomede, he brings into Troy a clasp taken from the Greek which Troilus recognises as the same he had given to Criseyde, and is persuaded of her falsity.[245] So he resolves to avenge himself on Diomede. In every encounter he rushes headlong on the foe, achieving miracles of valour, seeking everywhere for Diomede; but fate is against him even here, and he falls at last unavenged, but at least by the noble hand of Achilles.[246]
"The wraththe, as I began yow for to seye
Of Troilus, the Grekes boughten dere;
For thousands his hondes maden deye
As he that was with-outen any pere,
Save Ector, in his tyme, as I can here.
But weylaway save only goddes will
Dispitously him slough the fiers Achille."[247]
Thus ends this simple work. In it we see an extraordinary advance on the Filocolo and the Teseide, both of which were possibly planned and begun before the Filostrato and finished later, for there is a fine unity about the last which suggests that it was begun and ended without intervention. Certainly here Boccaccio has freed himself from all the mythological nonsense of those works as well as from the lay figures and ghosts of knights who take antique names and follow impossible ways. Here are real people of flesh and blood, and among them nothing is finer than the study of Criseyde. She is as living as any figure in the Decameron itself. We see her first as a widow mourning for a husband she has altogether forgotten; yet when Pandarus makes his first overtures, she pleads her bereavement, while she reads with delight the letters Troilus sends her, and is already contriving in her little head how and when she shall meet him. She tries to make Pandarus think she is doing everything out of pity, but in her mind she has already decided to give everything to her lover, although she writes him that she is "desirous to please him so far as she may with safety to her honour and chastity." Then, as soon as she has left Troy weeping, and Diomede has revealed his love to her, she forgets Troilus because the Greek "was tall and strong and beautiful":—