lady:--"'Tis now thy turn to speak," quoth the queen, fixing her gaze
upon Filostrato, who answered that he was ready, and forthwith thus
began:--Sweet my ladies, by what I remember of that young man, to wit,
Maso del Saggio, whom Elisa named a while ago, I am prompted to lay aside
a story that I had meant to tell you, and to tell you another, touching
him and some of his comrades, which, notwithstanding there are in it
certain words (albeit 'tis not unseemly) which your modesty forbears to
use, is yet so laughable that I shall relate it.

As you all may well have heard, there come not seldom to our city
magistrates from the Marches, who for the most part are men of a mean
spirit, and in circumstances so reduced and beggarly, that their whole
life seems to be but a petty-foggery; and by reason of this their inbred
sordidness and avarice they bring with them judges and notaries that have
rather the air of men taken from the plough or the last than trained in
the schools of law.(1) Now one of these Marchers, being come hither as
Podesta, brought with him judges not a few, and among them one that
called himself Messer Niccola da San Lepidio, and looked liker to a
locksmith than aught else. However, this fellow was assigned with the
rest of the judges to hear criminal causes. And as folk will often go to
the court, though they have no concern whatever there, it so befell that
Maso del Saggio went thither one morning in quest of one of his friends,
and there chancing to set eyes on this Messer Niccola, where he sate,
deemed him a fowl of no common feather, and surveyed him from head to
foot, observing that the vair which he wore on his head was all begrimed,
that he carried an ink-horn at his girdle, that his gown was longer than
his robe, and many another detail quite foreign to the appearance of a
man of birth and breeding, of which that which he deemed most notable was
a pair of breeches, which, as he saw (for the judge's outer garments
being none too ample were open in front, as he sate), reached half-way