siness. I have slept well, and wake better.
[_Raising himself up a little._]

Why? who are you? It makes my eyes ache to look aslant over the
sheets; and I cannot get to sit quite upright so conveniently; and I
must not have the window-shutters opened, they tell me.

_Petrarca._ Dear Giovanni! have you then been very unwell?

_Boccaccio._ O that sweet voice! and this fat friendly hand of thine,
Francesco!

Thou hast distilled all the pleasantest flowers, and all the
wholesomest herbs of spring, into my breast already.

What showers we have had this April, ay! How could you come along such
roads? If the devil were my labourer, I would make him work upon these
of Certaldo. He would have little time and little itch for mischief
ere he had finished them, but would gladly fan himself with an
Agnus-castus, and go to sleep all through the carnival.

_Petrarca._ Let us cease to talk both of the labour and the labourer.
You have then been dangerously ill?

_Boccaccio._ I do not know: they told me I was: and truly a man might
be unwell enough, who has twenty masses said for him, and fain sigh
when he thinks what he has paid for them. As I hope to be saved, they
cost me a lira each. Assunta is a good market-girl in eggs, and
mutton, and cow-heel; but I would not allow her to argue and haggle
about the masses. Indeed she knows best whether they were not fairly
worth all that was asked for them, although I could have bought a
winter cloak for less money. However, we do not want both at the same
time. I did not want the cloak: I wanted _them_, it seems. And yet I
begin to think God would have had mercy on me, if I had begged it of
him myself in my own house. What think you?

_Petrarca._ I think he might.

_Boccaccio._ Particularly if I offered him the sacrifice on which I
wrote to you.

_Petrarca._ That letter has brought me hither.

_Boccaccio._ You do then insist on my fulfilling my promise, the
moment I can leave my bed. I am ready and willing.

_Petrarca._ Promise! none was made. You only told me that, if it
pleased God to restore you to your health again, you are ready to
acknowledge His mercy by the holocaust of your _Decameron_. What proof
have you that God would exact it? If you could destroy the _Inferno_
of Dante, would you?

_Boccaccio._ Not I, upon my life! I would not promise to burn a copy
of it on the condition of a recovery for twenty years.

_Petrarca._ You are the only author who would not rather d