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For them, with a vintage none too good to be garnered, it might have been the finest weather in the world: but I am bound to add my belief that they would have laughed were it the worst. With no money, no weather, and taxes intolerable, Pistoja laughed and looked handsome. Was not Boccaccio a Pistolese?

Pistol came into English from the Old French word pistole, and this came from an Italian word, pistolese, which meant "made at Pistoja." We do not think of spaniels as foreign dogs; but the name means "Spanish," having come into English from the Old French word espagneul, with that meaning. A derivation which it would be even harder to guess is that of the word spruce.

But, for that maybe all are not of my opinion, it pleaseth me, whilst following on the given order of the discourse, to relate to you that which befell a Pistolese gentleman by reason thereof. There was in Pistoia a gentleman of the Vergellesi family, by name Messer Francesco, a man of great wealth and understanding and well advised in all else, but covetous beyond measure.

The Digest, the Pandects, the Institutes of Gaius and what not, had given him a bent back before his time, so that he walked among the Pistolese beauties with his eyes on the ground and his hands knotted behind his decent robe. Should he prosper, he looked to Florence for his next jump.