The doctor, being
informed that they were come to see him, advanced to meet them, and bade
them good morning. Whereto Bruno and Buffalmacco, having prepared their
answer, replied:--"No good morning shall you have from us: rather we pray
God to give you bad years enough to make an end of you, seeing that there
lives no more arrant and faithless traitor. 'Tis no fault of yours, if
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.
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