IN WHICH IS RELATED THE NOVEL OF "THE ILL-ADVISED CURIOSITY"
In Florence, a rich and famous city of Italy in the province called
Tuscany, there lived two gentlemen of wealth and quality, Anselmo and
Lothario, such great friends that by way of distinction they were called
by all that knew them "The Two Friends." They were unmarried, young, of
the same age and of the same tastes, which was enough to account for the
reciprocal friendship between them. Anselmo, it is true, was somewhat
more inclined to seek pleasure in love than Lothario, for whom the
pleasures of the chase had more attraction; but on occasion Anselmo would
forego his own tastes to yield to those of Lothario, and Lothario would
surrender his to fall in with those of Anselmo, and in this way their
inclinations kept pace one with the other with a concord so perfect that
the best regulated clock could not surpass it.
Anselmo was deep in love with a high-born and beautiful maiden of the
same city, the daughter of parents so estimable, and so estimable
herself, that he resolved, with the approval of his friend Lothario,
without whom he did nothing, to ask her of them in marriage, and did so,
Lothario being the bearer of the demand, and conducting the negotiation
so much to the satisfaction of his friend that in a short time he was in
possession of the object of his desires, and Camilla so happy in having
won Anselmo for her husband, that she gave thanks unceasingly to heaven
and to Lothario, by whose means such good fortune had fallen to her. The
first few days, those of a wedding being usually days of merry-making,
Lothario frequented his friend Anselmo's house as he had been wont,
striving to do honour to him and to the occasion, and to gratify him in
every way he could; but when the wedding days were over and the
succession of visits and congratulations had slackened, he began
purposely to leave off going to the house of Anselmo, for it seemed to
him, as it naturally would to all men of sense, that friends' houses
ought not to be visited after marriage with the same frequency as in
their masters' bachelor days: because, though true and genuine friendship
cannot and should not be in any way suspicious, still a married man's
honour is a thing of such delicacy that it is held liable to injury from
brothers, much more from friends. Anselmo remarked the cessation of
Lothario's visits, and complained of it to him, saying that if he had
known that marriage was to keep him from enjoying his society as he used,
he would have never married; and that, if by the thorough harmony that
subsisted between them while he was a bachelor they had earned such a
sweet name as that of "The Two Friends," he should not allow a title so
rare and so delightful to be lost through a needless anxiety to act
circumspectly; and so he entreated him, if such a phrase was allowable
between them, to be once more master of his house and to come in and go
out as formerly, assuring him that his wife Camilla had no other desire
or inclination than that which he would wish her to have, and that
knowing how sincerely they loved one another she was grieved to see such
coldness in him.