To the Readers

EVERYONE KNOWS HOW necessary it is to flee from harmful idleness, as long as one does it with honest and irreproachable means. Therefore, I am confident that the labour I set for myself will be most welcome to anyone who sees its result, and that my work will have the effect one can wish for from a pleasing and exemplary lesson.

I am well aware that there may be some who, moved by a hatred that-because of their accursed nature-is rooted in their hearts, will try to destroy my work with a thousand calumnies. To such, I say that I send it out with as much freedom as one does a victim to its sacrifice: just as those willing to regard it with humane and benign eyes will be able to enjoy it and draw from it some benefit, so those who wish to bite it with hateful teeth may devour it as they please. Perhaps it will be with them as with those rabid dogs who, crazed with fury, assault a man who is holding a sword, and seem, in their canine rage, almost to wish to swallow his sword, and in the end those miserable beasts find themselves mortally wounded and killed by that metal and by their own fury.

Leaving these people aside, as they are unworthy of being regarded as human, I say to my other readers that this is a condiment made with various things, namely, witticisms, clever sayings, and tales which, narrated by eight gentlemen and two ladies, brought about both in their tellers and their listeners that good effect which I, having decided to write them down and publish them, hope to bring about in my readers. They are further enriched by wise statements and proverbs, and by some beautiful examples drawn from history, whenever the tellers happened to relate them. I have taken special care to avoid mentioning any holy things, or religious figures, as those writers have irreverently done who believe that one cannot delight one's readers without also endangering them.