I. Lady, I have so entreated you to consent, if it please you, to love me that I have become your vassal, for you are noble and well-bred and you set the seal on fair fame everywhere, so that your friendship delights me. And because you are courtly in all your acts, my heart is now held fast in you more than in any other lady of Genoa, and so it will be a kindness if you love me. Then shall I be more satisfied thau if the city of the Genoese belonged to me, with all the wealth amassed in it.
II. Minstrel, you aren’t courteous, to importune me in this way: I’ll have naught to do with it. I would rather you were hanged! I won’t be your mistress. To be sure, I’ll do you in, you ill-omened Provençal! I’ll give you this insult: “You nasty, foolish, crop-headed fellow!” I won’t love you at all because I have a husband who is handsomer than you are, that I know. Go your ways, brother, I have a happier time (with him).
III. Lady, you who are gracious, distinguished, joyous, excellent and wise, may your good breeding avail me, for joy and youth and courtliness and merit and wisdom guide you, and fair deportment in all things. It is because of this that I am unreservedly your faithful suitor, candid, humble an suppliant, so mightily am I constrained and vanquished by the love I bear you, so that it is a delight to me. Hence it will be an act of mercy If I become your follower and your lover.
IV. Minstrel, you seem out of your senses, making speeches like this. May you meet misfortune in your comings and goings! You haven’t the sense of a cat, and you don’t please me one whit, for you look a bad lot. And I don’t want this thing, even if you were the son of a king. Do you think I have lost my senses? Upon my word, you won’t have me. If you pledge yourself to have my love, you will die of cold this year! The Provençals have very bad habits!
V. Lady, be not so cruel to me, for it is not meet and it becomes you ill. Rather, if it please you, it behoves me to pursue you earnestly and. to love you sincerely, as it behoves you to end my pain, since I am your hegeman and your servant. For I see and recognise and know, when I contemplate your beauty fresher than the rose in May, that in all the world there is no lady more beautiful. That is why I love and shall love you, and if true faith betrays me, it will be a sin.
VI. Minstrel, so may I have joy of my person as I value this Provençal speech of yours less than a Genoese coin. I don’t understand you any more than I do a German or Sardinian or Berber, nor do I care about you. Do you want to scuffle with me? If my husband learns of this, you will have an unpleasant argument with him. Fair Sir, I tell you truly: I don’t want this talk. Brother, I assure you this is so. Be off with you, you ragged Provençal, let me be!
VII. Lady, you have cast me into painful sadness and distress; but once more I shall beseech you to allow me to show you how a Provençal does the deed, when he is mounted.
VIII. Minstrel, I shall not be with you, since you are troubled about me in this way. It will be better if, for the feast of Saint Martin, you go to lord Obizzino, who will perhaps give you a pack-horse, as you are a minstrel.
