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"'And I to his happy death, says she in a wild voice; and as she spoke the empty goblet dropped from her hand and she fell face down on the floor. "The Duke shouted to her women that she had swooned, and they came and lifted her to the bed.... She suffered horribly all night, Nencia said, twisting herself like a heretic at the stake, but without a word escaping her.
There is a fellow who will keep sneaking about her; if Valléra only catch him near his cottage, won't he give him a taste of his long new knife! nay, rip him up and throw his bowels, like those of a pig, to dry on a roof! He is sorry perhaps he bores her God bless you, Nencia! he had better go and look after his sheep.
The 'Beca da Dicomano' of Luigi Pulci is an admitted counterpart to the 'Nencia' of Lorenzo. But the deeper purpose is wanting. The 'Beca' is written not so much from the inward need to give a picture of popular life, as from the desire to win the approbation of the educated Florentine world by a successful poem.
"Well, it was one day in May that the Duchess, who had walked long with Nencia on the terrace, rejoicing at the sweetness of the prospect and the pleasant scent of the gilly-flowers in the stone vases, the Duchess toward midday withdrew to her rooms, giving orders that her dinner should be served in her bed-chamber.
That she saw with her eyes, I can swear to, and never smiled again, so she told me, till they put her first child in her arms ... for she was taken to wife by the steward's son, Antonio, the same who had carried the letters.... But where am I? Ah, well ... she was a mere slip, you understand, my grandmother, when the Duchess died, a niece of the upper maid, Nencia, and suffered about the Duchess because of her pranks and the funny songs she knew.
Besides his share in these verses, he is supposed to have had a hand in his brother's romance, and was certainly the author of some devout poems, and of a burlesque panegyric on a country damsel, La Beca, in emulation of the charming poem La Nencia, the first of its kind, written by that extraordinary person, his illustrious friend Lorenzo, who, in the midst of his cares and glories as the balancer of the power of Italy, was one of the liveliest of the native wits, and wrote songs for the people to dance to in Carnival time.
Here, too, we must briefly indicate how culture prepared the way for artistic development. From the time of the 'Nencia, a period of eighty years elapses to the rustic genre-painting of Jacopo Bassano and his school. In the next part of this work we shall show how differences of birth had lost their significance in Italy.
"But presently another mood seized her; she turned from the table, called for her rosary, and said to Nencia: 'The fine weather has made me neglect my devotions. I must say a litany before I dine. "She ordered the women out and barred the door, as her custom was; and Nencia and my grandmother went down-stairs to work in the linen-room.
With the exception, indeed, of one or two in Boccaccio's Ameto, it is doubtful whether any vernacular eclogues had appeared at the time. The character of Tirsi belongs to rustic tradition, and must be an experiment contemporary with, if not prior to, Lorenzo's Nencia. The portion before the canzone is in terza rima; that after it, like the prologue, in octaves.
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