d thrown out
into the streets "presently, as if they had taken poison, after a few
dizzy turns, fell dead"; and this, which he says he saw with his own
eyes, is the only incident of which he makes this declaration (the
incident on which the unity of his work hinges, the meeting of the merry
troupe in the church of S. Maria Novella, being recorded on the
information of a person "worthy of belief"). Nor does he in his own
person intrude anywhere in the story; so that this bit of intense
realization thrown into the near foreground of his picture, as it were
by chance, and without meaning, yet certified by his own signature, is
the point at which he gets touch of his reader and convinces him of
actuality throughout the romance.

And to my mind this opening chapter, with all its horrors and
charnel-house realization, its slight and suggestive delineation of
character, all grace and beauty springing out of the chaos and social
dissolution, is not only the best part of the work, but the best of
Boccaccio's. The well-spun golden cord on which the "Novelle" are strung
is ornamented, as it were, at the divisions of the days by little cameos
of crafty design; but the opening, the portico of this hundred-chambered
palace of art, has its own proportions and design, and may be taken and
studied alone. Nothing can, it seems to me, better convey the idea of
the death-stricken city, "the surpassing city of Florence, beyond every
other in Italy most beautiful,"--a touch to enhance the depth of his
shade, than the way he brings out in broad traits the greatness of the
doom: setting in the heavens that consuming sun; the paralysis of the
panic; the avarice of men not daunted by death; the helplessness of all
flesh before--

"the just wrath of God for our correction sent upon men; for
healing of such maladies neither counsel of physician nor
virtue of any medicine whatever seemed to avail or have any
effect--even as if nature could not endure this suffering or
the ignorance of the medical attendants (of whom, besides
regular physicians, there was a very great number, both men
and women, who had never had any medical education whatever),
who could discover no cause for the malady and therefore no
appropriate remedy, so that not only very few recovered, but
almost every one attacked died by the third day-after the
appearance of the above-noted signs, some sooner and some
later, an