[220] Lit. introduced him to me (a me lo 'ntrodussi); but Boccaccio here uses the word introdurre in its rarer literal sense to lead, to draw, to bring in.
[221] i.e. thou being the means of bringing about the conjunction (adoperandol tu).
[222] i.e. Guiscardo's soul.
[223] i.e. in the heart.
[224] i.e. was more inclined to consider the wishes of the ladies her companions, which she divined by sympathy, than those of Filostrato, as shown by his words (più per la sua affezione cognobbe l'animo delle campagne che quello del re per le sue parole). It is difficult, however, in this instance as in many others, to discover with certainty Boccaccio's exact meaning, owing to his affectation of Ciceronian concision and delight in obscure elliptical forms of construction; whilst his use of words in a remote or unfamiliar sense and the impossibility of deciding, in certain cases, the person of the pronouns and adjectives employed tend still farther to darken counsel. E.g., if we render affezione sentiment, cognobbe (as riconobbe) acknowledged, recognized, and read le sue parole as meaning her (instead of his) words, the whole sense of the passage is changed, and we must read it "more by her sentiment (i.e. by the tendency and spirit of her story) recognized the inclination of her companions than that of the king by her [actual] words." I have commented thus at large on this passage, in order to give my readers some idea of the difficulties which at every page beset the translator of the Decameron and which make Boccaccio perhaps the most troublesome of all authors to render into representative English.
[225] Lit. of those who was held of the greatest casuists (di quelli che de' maggior cassesi era tenuto). This is another very obscure passage. The meaning of the word cassesi is unknown and we can only guess it to be a dialectic (probably Venetian) corruption of the word casisti (casuists). The Giunta edition separates the word thus, casse si, making si a mere corroborative prefix to era, but I do not see how the alteration helps us, the word casse (chests, boxes) being apparently meaningless in this connection.
[226] Venetian contraction of Casa, house. Da Ca Quirino, of the Quirino house or family.
[227] cf. Artemus Ward's "Natives of the Universe and other parts."
[228] Mo vedi vu, Venetian for Or vedi tu, now dost thou see? I have rendered it by the equivalent old English form.
[229] i.e. not of the trap laid for him by the lady's brothers-in-law, but of her indiscretion in discovering the secret.