Boccaccio:
I subditi suoi, credendo che egli uccidere avesse fatti i figliuoli, il biasimavan forte e reputavanlo crudele uomo e alla donna avevan grandissima compassione.
His vassals, who believed that he had put the children to death, held him mightily to blame for his cruelty, and felt the utmost compassion for the lady.
Petrarch:
quo se ille vir alioquin clarus et suis carus multis infamem odiosumque reddiderat. Neque ideo trux animus flectebatur, sed in suscepta severitate experiendique sua dura illa libidine procedebat.
Wherefore, he who had once been a man of spotless reputation, dear to his people, had become in the eyes of many men infamous and hateful. Not on that account, however, was his stern purpose altered, but he persevered in the severity which he had assumed and in his harsh caprice of testing his wife.
Chaucer:
For which, wher as his peple therbifore
Hadde loved hym wel, the sclaundre of his diffame
Made hem, that they hym hatede therfore.
To been a mordrere is an hateful name;
But nathelees, for ernest ne for game
He of his crueel purpos nolde stente:
To tempte his wyf was set al his entente.
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