And when she walked abroad, so fastidious was her
humour, she was ever averting her head, as if there was never a soul she
saw or met but reeked with a foul smell. Now one day--not to speak of
other odious and tiresome ways that she had--it so befell that being come
home, where Fresco was, she sat herself down beside him with a most
languishing air, and did nought but fume and chafe. Whereupon:--"Ciesca,"
quoth he, "what means this, that, though 'tis a feast-day, yet thou art
come back so soon?" She, all but dissolved with her vapourish humours,
made answer:--"Why, the truth is, that I am come back early because
never, I believe, were there such odious and tiresome men and women in
this city as there are to-day. I cannot pass a soul in the street that I
loathe not like ill-luck; and I believe there is not a woman in the world
that is so distressed by the sight of odious people as I am; and so I am
come home thus soon to avoid the sight of them." Whereupon Fresco, to,
whom his niece's bad manners were distasteful in the
extreme:--"Daughter," quoth he, "if thou loathe odious folk as much as
thou sayest, thou wert best, so thou wouldst live happy, never to look at
thyself in the glass." But she, empty as a reed, albeit in her own
conceit a match for Solomon in wisdom, was as far as any sheep from
apprehending the true sense of her uncle's jest; but answered that on the
contrary she was minded to look at herself in the glass like other women.
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