292 



THE GARDENS OF ITALY. 



Boccaccio was thirty-five in the year 1348, when the great plague came to Florence, where it 

 ravaged and destroyed and struck such terror " that the laws of God and man were no more 

 regarded." Some lived licentiously, some temperately, some fled from the city. There was 

 no one to nurse the sick, and numbers passed out of the world without even a witness. In the 

 country the animals were left to roam at will, no one cared to reap the standing corn. Between 

 March and July a hundred thousand souls perished in the city alone. ' What noble palaces 

 were then depopulated to the last inhabitant, what families became extinct ! What vast 

 possessions were left, and no known heir to inherit them ! ' 



Boccaccio frames his tales in the device of a joyous company of seven ladies, " all discreet, 

 nobly descended, and perfectly accomplished," who met in Santa Maria Novella, where they 

 agreed to take their maids and to retire to the country seat of one or the other of the party. 

 They were speedily joined by three gentlemen in whom neither the adversity of the times nor 

 the loss of friends nor even fear for themselves could stifle, or indeed cool, the passion of love. 



304. ORANGERY OF THE VILLA. 



" They accordingly set out next day from the city, and, after they had travelled two short miles, 

 came to the place they had already decided upon." This first halt has been identified as Poggio 

 Gherardo, lying above Settignano. It is an old castellated house standing high above the plain. 

 The entrance hall is the Loggia mentioned in the " Decameron " : " The said place was on a small 

 height removed from roads on every side, full of various trees and shrubs in full greenery and 

 most pleasant to behold. On the brow of the hill was a palace with a fine and spacious 

 courtyard in the middle and with loggie and halls and rooms, all and each one in itself beautiful 

 and ornamented with jocund paintings ; surrounded with marvellous gardens and with wells 

 of coldest water and cellars of rare wines ; a thing more suited to curious topers than to sober 

 and virtuous women." 



Here one of the ladies, Pampinea, was crowned queen " with an honourable and beautiful 

 garland of bays." Though this is a graceful fiction, Boccaccio had probably some real lady, 

 a leader of Florentine society, in his mind. It was very usual to select some lady whose word 



