we, that did our best to honour and pleasure you, have not come by a
dog's death; your faithlessness has cost us to-night as many sound blows
as would more than suffice to keep an ass a trotting all the way from
here to Rome; besides which, we have been in peril of expulsion from the
company in which we arranged for your enrolment. If you doubt our words,
look but at our bodies, what a state they are in." And so, baring their
breasts they gave him a glimpse of the patches they had painted there,
and forthwith covered them up again. The doctor would have made them his
excuses, and recounted his misfortunes, and how he had been thrown into
the trench. But Buffalmacco broke in with:--"Would he had thrown you from
the bridge into the Arno! Why must you needs mind you of God and the
saints? Did we not forewarn you?" "God's faith," returned the doctor,
"that did I not." "How?" quoth Buffalmacco, "you did not? You do so above
a little; for he that we sent for you told us that you trembled like an
aspen, and knew not where you were. You have played us a sorry trick; but
never another shall do so; and as for you, we will give you such requital
thereof as you deserve." The doctor now began to crave their pardon, and
to implore them for God's sake not to expose him to shame, and used all
the eloquence at his command to make his peace with them. And if he had
honourably entreated them before, he thenceforth, for fear they should
publish his disgrace, did so much more abundantly, and courted them both
by entertaining them at his table and in other ways. And so you have
heard how wisdom is imparted to those that get it not at Bologna.

(1) The distinguishing mark of a doctor in those days. Fanfani, Vocab.
della Lingua Italiana, 1891, "Batolo."

(2) Perhaps an allusion to some frightful picture.

(3) About four miles from Florence.