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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

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