g me from his
bonds, hath vouchsafed me the power of applying myself to the service
of their pleasures.

[Footnote 1: _i.e._ those not in love.]

[Footnote 2: Syn. adventures (_casi_).]

_Day the First_

HERE BEGINNETH THE FIRST DAY OF THE DECAMERON WHEREIN (AFTER
DEMONSTRATION MADE BY THE AUTHOR OF THE MANNER IN WHICH IT
CAME TO PASS THAT THE PERSONS WHO ARE HEREINAFTER PRESENTED
FOREGATHERED FOR THE PURPOSE OF DEVISING TOGETHER) UNDER THE
GOVERNANCE OF PAMPINEA IS DISCOURSED OF THAT WHICH IS MOST
AGREEABLE UNTO EACH

As often, most gracious ladies, as, taking thought in myself, I mind
me how very pitiful you are all by nature, so often do I recognize
that this present work will, to your thinking, have a grievous and a
weariful beginning, inasmuch as the dolorous remembrance of the late
pestiferous mortality, which it beareth on its forefront, is
universally irksome to all who saw or otherwise knew it. But I would
not therefore have this affright you from reading further, as if in
the reading you were still to fare among sighs and tears. Let this
grisly beginning be none other to you than is to wayfarers a rugged
and steep mountain, beyond which is situate a most fair and delightful
plain, which latter cometh so much the pleasanter to them as the
greater was the hardship of the ascent and the descent; for, like as
dolour occupieth the extreme of gladness, even so are miseries
determined by imminent joyance. This brief annoy (I say brief,
inasmuch as it is contained in few pages) is straightway succeeded by
the pleasance and delight which I have already promised you and which,
belike, were it not aforesaid, might not be looked for from such a
beginning. And in truth, could I fairly have availed to bring you to
my desire otherwise than by so rugged a path as this will be I had
gladly done it; but being in a manner constrained thereto, for that,
without this reminiscence of our past miseries, it might not be shown
what was the occasion of the coming about of the things that will
hereafter be read, I have brought myself to write them.[3]

[Footnote 3: _i.e._ the few pages of which he speaks above.]

I say, then, that the years [of the era] of the fruitful Incarnation
of the Son of God had attained to the number of one thousand three
hundred and forty-eight, when into the notable city of Florence, fair
over every other of Italy, there came the death-dealing pestilence,
which,