while I go to prepare the table."
For all the sore poverty he was in, he had never before this day grasped the extent of his prodigality and folly in squandering his money and dissipating his fortune in the days gone by. Oh, how bitter his remorse now, and the anguish of his soul, when it became plain to him that he was powerless to do honor to that maiden for whose sake he had so often given banquets and lavished money without stint!
The hour was late, and his desire to honor her extreme; but he would not ask anything of people, nor would he consent to seek from the gardener any help to save the situation.
His glance chanced upon the falcon, perched on an iron bar in its chamber. He took hold of it and felt it, and found it fat and plump, and said: nothing will serve the station of such a maiden but this. He did not hesitate, but took it and slaughtered it, and charged a little servant girl of his to pluck its feathers and prepare it on the spit as roasted meat, while he himself went to the table and spread it; then he returned to the fair lady in the garden, beaming, to inform her that the food which his slender means allowed had been made ready.
The fair lady rose with her companion and went to the table, and the two sat down to the food and ate the roasted falcon, knowing nothing of it.
After the meal she lingered, exchanging talk with him, until she judged the time had come to broach what she had come for, and she began: "Hear me out at length, Federigo. I do not doubt that when you remember the past, and remember your love for me, and remember above all my chastity and what you suffered from it, and then hear what I am about to say, you will count what I have come to ask today an impudence beyond all impudence. But I am certain that if you had a child, by whom you would know the meaning of a father's love and its measure, you would find some excuse for me in what I say and ask... I am, as you know, a mother... and I have an only son, and motherhood has the mastery of me; so do not wonder that I have come to beg of you — against my own will — a gift I know is dear to you. You have every right to prize it, now that your money is gone and you have no consolation left in life but it. This gift I ask of you is... the falcon you keep. My son has been utterly bewitched by it, so much that I have come to fear that the illness he suffers today may grow worse upon him. I adjure you — not in the name of the love you bear me, for that binds you to fulfill nothing, but in the name of the chivalry by which you have risen above all men — to grant me this falcon, that with it I may save my son from death, and remain forever your debtor for it."
Scarcely had Federigo heard her request, and realized that it was no longer in his power to grant it, since he had served her the bird as food, than he began to weep...
Monna thought at first that he grieved and wept at parting from his falcon, and she was on the point of withdrawing her request; but she held back, and waited
for what he would say... After he had dried his tears and composed himself a little, he said:
"Ah, my lady, today I have come to believe that fortune, ever since God willed that I should love you, has set itself against me, and that fate mocks me. My sorrows in times gone by were great, but how light all those sorrows, measured against this sorrow that has come upon me now, and that will return to me forever, whenever I picture that you came to my humble house to ask of me a small gift which fate rendered me powerless to give. And here is the secret of my powerlessness:
"When you graciously showed, my lady, your wish to take dinner, I pictured your greatness and your majesty, and this made it needful, in my eyes, that any food served to you must be grand and noble; and I found no food grander or nobler than the falcon you now ask of me as a gift. So I slaughtered it and roasted it and served it to you at table, as best I could. I did not know that you wanted the falcon in any other fashion than this; so how deserving I am of grief, and how fitting for me are sorrow and regret."
And he showed her the feathers, the legs, and the beak that remained of the falcon, as proof.
The fair lady saw and heard all this, and at first she took to reproaching him for slaughtering this precious falcon to make of it a meal for a woman; then she returned to herself, and honored in him his rare chivalry. She departed hopeless and sad, and went back to her little boy.
Death overtook the boy within days — whether from the dashing of his hope in the falcon, or from the worsening of the illness that pressed upon him. For a season she wept the bitterest tears and mourned most grievously.
But she was in the prime of life and newly come into wealth, so her brothers began to press her to marry, while she held back and refused; until, when they pressed too hard, she remembered Federigo's chivalry and his manliness, and his generosity with the falcon, the dearest thing he possessed, and she said to her brothers: "If you truly wish me to take a husband, I will accept none but Federigo for a spouse. By God, he is the best of mates."
They burst out laughing at her in mockery!
They said: "What a wonder you are, and what folly! Would you marry a man who does not own a farthing?"
She said: "You have spoken truly: he does not own a farthing. But I would rather marry a man in need of money than marry money in need of a man!"
Her brothers saw the sincerity of her resolve, and they knew Federigo's merit, so they yielded to her and married her to him, poor as he was.
Federigo found that he had won the woman on whom he had bestowed the deepest love, and gained at her side the ample wealth that had passed to her; and the couple lived the rest of their days in happiness and good estate.
(From the book "Amorous Situations" by the American writer Carl Mason) Summarized by: Abbas Hafiz