The Decameron, vol. 1 | Page 6

and dies suddenly in her arms. While she and her maid are
carrying his corpse to his house, they are taken by the Signory. She tells how the matter
stands, is threatened with violence by the Podesta, but will not brook it. Her father hears
how she is bested, and, her innocence being established, causes her to be set at large; but
she, being minded to tarry no longer in the world, becomes a nun.
NOVEL VII. - Simona loves Pasquino; they are together in a garden, Pasquino rubs a leaf
of sage against his teeth, and dies; Simona is arrested, and, with intent to shew the judge
how Pasquino died, rubs one of the leaves of the same plant against her teeth, and
likewise dies.
NOVEL VIII. - Girolamo loves Salvestra: yielding to his mother's prayers he goes to
Paris; he returns to find Salvestra married; he enters her house by stealth, lays himself by
her side, and dies; he is borne to the church, where Salvestra lays herself by his side, and
dies.

Nova IX. - Sieur Guillaume de Roussillon slays his wife's paramour, Sieur Guillaume de
Cabestaing, and gives her his heart to eat. She, coming to wit thereof, throws herself from
a high window to the ground, and dies, and is buried with her lover.
NOVEL X. - The wife of a leech, deeming her lover, who has taken an opiate, to be dead,
puts him in a chest, which, with him therein, two usurers carry off to their house. He
comes to himself, and is taken for a thief; but, the lady's maid giving the Signory to
understand that she had put him in the chest which the usurers stole, he escapes the
gallows, and the usurers are mulcted in moneys for the theft of the chest.
ILLUSTRATIONS TO THE DECAMERON
VOLUME I.
The lady and the friar (third day, third story) - Frontispiece
The three rings (first day, third story)
The dinner of hens (first day, fifth story)
Rinaldo D'Asti and the widow lady (second day, second story)
Alatiel dancing (second day, seventh story)
The wedding party (fourth day, introduction)
The daughter of the King of Tunis (fourth day, fourth story)
Simona and Pasquino (fourth day, seventh story)
INTRODUCTION
Son of a merchant, Boccaccio di Chellino di Buonaiuto, of Certaldo in Val d'Elsa, a little
town about midway between Empoli and Siena, but within the Florentine "contado,"
Giovanni Boccaccio was born, most probably at Paris, in the year 1313. His mother, at
any rate, was a Frenchwoman, whom his father seduced during a sojourn at Paris, and
afterwards deserted. So much as this Boccaccio has himself told us, under a transparent
veil of allegory, in his Ameto. Of his mother we would fain know more, for his wit has in
it a quality, especially noticeable in the Tenth Novel of the Sixth Day of the Decameron,
which marks him out as the forerunner of Rabelais, and prompts us to ask how much
more his genius may have owed to his French ancestry. His father was of sufficient
standing in Florence to be chosen Prior in 1321; but this brief term of office--but two
months--was his last, as well as his first experience of public life. Of Boccaccio's early
years we know nothing more than that his first preceptor was the Florentine grammarian,
Giovanni da Strada, father of the poet Zanobi da Strada, and that, when he was about ten
years old, he was bound apprentice to a merchant, with whom he spent the next six years
at Paris, whence he returned to Florence with an inveterate repugnance to commerce. His
father then proposed to make a canonist of him; but the study of Gratian proved hardly

more congenial than the routine of the counting-house to the lad, who had already
evinced a taste for letters; and a sojourn at Naples, where under the regime of the
enlightened King Robert there were coteries of learned men, and even Greek was not
altogether unknown, decided his future career. According to Filippo Villani his choice
was finally fixed by a visit to the tomb of Vergil on the Via Puteolana, and, though the
modern critical spirit is apt to discount such stories, there can be no doubt that such a
pilgrimage would be apt to make a deep, and perhaps enduring, impression upon a nature
ardent and sensitive, and already conscious of extraordinary powers. His stay at Naples
was also in another respect a turning point in his life; for it was there that, as we gather
from the Filocopo, he first saw the blonde beauty, Maria, natural daughter of King Robert,
whom he has immortalized as Fiammetta. The place was the church of San Lorenzo, the
day the 26th of March, 1334. Boccaccio's admiring gaze was observed by