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Updated: June 27, 2025
And as that could not be, if he said nothing to Nuto, he remarked: "Ah! 'twas well done of thee to come hither. A man to live with women! he might as well live with so many devils: six times out of seven they know not themselves what they want." There the conversation ended; but Masetto began to cast about how he should proceed to get permission to live with them.
Leporello is trying to escape from Elvira, who still thinks him Don Giovanni, and is first confronted by Masetto and Zerlina and then by Ottavio and Anna. He is still in his master's hat and cloak, and is taken vigorously to task, but discloses his identity when it becomes necessary in order to escape a beating.
Their very beautiful garden was in charge of a foolish fellow, who, not being content with his wage, squared accounts with their steward and hied him back to Lamporecchio, whence he came. Among others who welcomed him home was a young husbandman, Masetto by name, a stout and hardy fellow, and handsome for a contadino, who asked him where he had been so long.
The end of Filostrato's story, whereat whiles the ladies had some little blushed and other whiles laughed, being come, it pleased the queen that Pampinea should follow on with a story, and she accordingly, beginning with a smiling countenance, said, "Some are so little discreet in seeking at all hazards to show that they know and apprehend that which it concerneth them not to know, that whiles, rebuking to this end unperceived defects in others, they think to lessen their own shame, whereas they do infinitely augment it; and that this is so I purpose, lovesome ladies, to prove to you by the contrary thereof, showing you the astuteness of one who, in the judgment of a king of worth and valour, was held belike of less account than Masetto himself.
And so Masetto, who had left Lamporecchio with a hatchet on his shoulder, returned thither in his old age rich and a father, having by the wisdom with which he employed his youth, spared himself the pains and expense of rearing children, and averring that such was the measure that Christ meted out to the man that set horns on his cap.
One of his boots would have made a small portmanteau, and one could have clad a child in one of his gloves. So great was his strength that as Leporello he sometimes carried off under one arm a singer of large stature representing Masetto, and in rehearsal would often for exercise hold a double bass out at arm's length.
Wonder-struck to hear the supposed mute thus speak, the lady exclaimed: "What means this? I took thee to be dumb." "And in sooth, Madam, so was I," said Masetto, "not indeed from my birth, but through an illness which took from me the power of speech, which only this very night have I recovered; and so I praise God with all my heart."
This leads of itself to the second, which is at once confidential, disputative, and comic, as though two lovers were chasing each other and laughing more than usual about it. How all this is changed in the third! It is filled with fairy music and moonshine; Masetto keeps at a distance, swearing audibly, but without any effect on Don Juan. And now the fourth what do you think of it?
Don Giovanni sends the merrymakers to his palace for entertainment, cajoles and threatens Masetto into leaving him alone with Zerlina, and begins his courtship of her. Elvira breaks out with denunciations, and Don Giovanni, in a whisper to his companions, proclaims her mad, and leads her off.
Which the lady observing, and knowing that she was alone, fell a prey to the same appetite to which her nuns had yielded: she aroused Masetto, and took him with her to her chamber, where, for some days, though the nuns loudly complained that the gardener no longer came to work in the kitchen-garden, she kept him, tasting and re-tasting the sweetness of that indulgence which she was wont to be the first to censure in others.
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