where they were dressing the pork at the foot of an oak, by a fire they had just lighted. Travers strips himself, climbs the tree, and, swinging on one of the branches, exclaims in the voice of their father, who had been hanged, 'Wretches, you will end like me.' On hearing this, the thieves run off in the utmost consternation, and leave the pig at the disposal of their brother. Immediately on his return home, the proper owner, to prevent farther accidents, begins to bake it in a pie, but soon perceives it going up the chimney, appended to pieces of wood. The thieves, who had recovered from their fright, had returned to the house of Travers, and seeing, by a hole in the wall, that there was now no time to be lost, were trying this last expedient from the roof of the dwelling. They are now invited by their kinsman to descend and partake of the pye along with him. Accordingly they all sit down to table, and are cordially reconciled. These two specimens that have been given are, I think, quite in the spirit of the Italian novels, and as good tricks as those in the Decameron which are practised on Calandrino by his brother artists. (See N. 3 and 6, Day 8, &c.).

In the Fabliaux, too, there are innumerable instances of ingenious gallantry, and deceptions practised on husbands, precisely in the style of the Italian novelists, as La Femme qui fit trois fois le tour des murs de l'Eglise, where a woman, detected out of doors at night, persuades her husband she had been recommended to walk three times round the walls of the church, in order to have children: see also La Robbe d'Ecarlate, and La culotte des Cordeliers (Le Grand, vol. i. p. 299). In the Lai du prisonnier (Le Grand, iv. 126), where twelve ladies partake of the heart of a lover who had deceived them all, we have an exaggerated instance of that mixture of horror and gallantry which prevails, in some degree, in the Decameron, and more strongly in the imitations of the work of Boccaccio. The monastic orders are not so severely treated as by that author and his successors, but the priests are frequently satirized, and are made the principal actors, in a great proportion of the most licentious stories, as Constant du Hamel, La Longue Nuit, Le Boucher d'Abbeville, Le Pretre crucifié, and Le pauvre Clerc, which is the origin of the well-known story of The Monk and the Miller's Wife.

We have besides a series of stories in the Fabliaux in which ludicrous incidents occur with dead bodies, which also became a favourite subject in Italy. There is not, however, in the whole Italian novels, so good a story of this description as that of Les trois Bossus, by the Trouveur Durant.

Gentlemen, says the author, if you chuse to listen I will recount to you an adventure which once happened in a castle, which stood on the bank of a river, near a bridge, and at a short distance from a town, of which I forget the name, but which we may suppose to be Douai. The master of this castle was humpbacked. Nature had exhausted her ingenuity in the formation of his whimsical figure. In place of understanding she had given him an immense head, which nevertheless was lost between his two shoulders, he had thick hair, a short neck, and a horrible visage.

Spite of his deformity, this bugbear bethought himself of falling in love with a beautiful young woman, the daughter of a poor but respectable burgess of Douai. He sought her in marriage; and as he was the richest person in the district, the poor girl was delivered up to him. After the nuptials he was as much to pity as she, for, being devoured by jealousy, he had no tranquillity night nor day, but went prying and rambling every where, and suffered no strangers to enter the castle.

One day, during the Christmas festival, while standing sentinel at his gate, he was accosted by three humpbacked minstrels. They saluted him as a brother, as such asked him for refreshments, and at the same time, to establish the fraternity, they ostentatiously displayed their humps. Contrary to expectation, he conducted them to his kitchen, gave them a capon with some peas, and to each a piece of money over and above. At their departure, however, he warned them never to return, on pain of being thrown into the river.

At this threat of the chatelain, the minstrels laughed heartily, and took the road to the town, singing in full chorus, and dancing in a grotesque manner, in derision. He, on his part, without paying any farther attention to them, went to walk in the fields.

The lady, who saw her husband cross the bridge, and had heard the minstrels, called them back to amuse her. They had not been long returned to the castle when her husband knocked at the gate, by which she and the minstrels were equally alarmed. Fortunately the lady perceives on a bedstead, in a neighbouring room, three empty coffers. Into each of these she stuffs a minstrel, shuts the covers, and then opens the gate to her husband. He had only come back to spy the conduct of his wife as usual, and after a short stay went out anew, at which you may believe his wife was not dissatisfied. She instantly run to the coffers to release the prisoners, for night was approaching, and her husband would not probably be long absent. But what was her dismay when she found them all three suffocated! Lamentation, however, was useless. The main object now was to get rid of the dead bodies, and she had not a moment to lose.

She run then to the gate, and seeing a peasant go by, she offered him a reward of thirty livres, and leading him into the castle, she took him to one of the coffers, and showing him its contents, told him he must throw the dead body into the river; he asked for a sack, put the carcase into it, pitched it over the bridge into the stream, and then returned quite out of breath to claim the promised reward.

‹ I certainly intended to satisfy you,' said the lady, but you ought first to fulfil the conditions of the bargain-you have agreed to rid me of the dead body, have you not? There, however, it is still;' saying this, she showed him the other coffer in which the second humpbacked minstrel had expired. At this sight the clown is perfectly confounded-how the devil! come back! a sorcerer ! -he then stuffed the body into the sack, and threw