invested by the troops of your enemies; so
that those two or three friends whom fortune had left you could not
come near to relieve you. In a word, you have experienced every
hardship but imprisonment and death. But what do I say? You have felt
all the horrors of the former, when your faithful wife and children
were shut up by your enemies; and even death followed you, and took
one of those children, for whose life you would willingly have
sacrificed your own.

In you have been united the fortunes of Pompey and Marius; but you
were neither arrogant in prosperity as the one, nor discouraged in
adversity as the other. You have supported both in a manner that has
made you loved by your friends and admired by your enemies. There is a
peculiar charm in the serene and tranquil air of virtue, which
enlightens all around it, in the midst of the darkest scenes and the
greatest calamities. My ancient friendship for you has caused me to
quit everything for you to perform a work, in which, as in a glass,
you may adjust and prepare your soul for all events; and be able to
say, as AEneas did to the Sibyl, "Nothing of this is new to me; I have
foreseen, and am prepared for it all." I am sensible that, in the
disorders of the mind, as well as those of the body, discourses are
not thought the most efficacious remedies; but I am persuaded also
that the malady of the soul ought to be cured by spiritual
application.

If we see a friend in distress, and give him all the consolation we
are able, we perform the duties of friendship, which pays more
attention to the disposition of the heart than the value of the gift.
A small present may be the testimony of a great love. There is no good
I do not wish you, and this is all I can offer toward it. I wish this
little treatise may be of use to you.

GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO

Born in Italy probably in 1313, died, in 1375; lived in
Florence in his youth; settled at Naples in 1330; returned
to Florence about 1341, where he lectured on Dante; several
times sent abroad as ambassador; his chief work the
"Decameron," comprising one hundred stories published
collectively in 1353; wrote many other works of fiction and
history, some being in Latin.

THE PATIENT GRISELDA[29]

He [the Marquis of Saluzzo] had taken a fancy, some time before, to
the behavior of a poor country girl, who lived in a village not far
from his palace; and thinking he might live comf