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The Decameron, including forty of its hundred novels
The Decameron including forty of its hundred novels Author:Giovanni Boccaccio Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: The Decameron Messer GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO. THE FIRST DAY. INDUCTION. Wherein, after the demonstration made by the author upon what occasion it happened... more », that the persons (of whom we shall speak hereafter) should thus meet together to make so quaint a narration of novels, he declareth unto you that they first begin to devise and confer under the government of Madam Pampinea, and of such matters as may be most pleasing to them all. Gracious ladies, so often as I consider with myself, and observe respectively, how naturally you are inclined to compassion, as many times do I acknowledge that this present work of mine will, in your judgment, appear to have but a harsh and offensive beginning in regard of the mournful remembrance it beareth at the very entrance of the last pestilential mortality, universally hurtful to all that beheld it, or otherwise came to knowledge of it. But for all that I desire it may not be so dreadful to you, to hinder your further proceeding in reading, as if none were to look thereon but with sighs and tears. For I could rather wish that so fearful a beginning should seem but as a high and steepy hill appears to them that attempt to travel far on foot, and ascending the same with some difficulty, come afterward to walk upon a goodly even plain, which causeth the more contentment in them because the attaining thereto was hard and painful. For even as pleasures are cut off by grief and anguish, so sorrows cease by joy's most sweet and happy arriving. After this brief molestation—brief, I say, because it is contained within small compass of writing—immediately followed the most sweet and pleasant taste of pleasure, whereof before I made promise to you ; which peradventure could not be expected by such a beginning, if promise stood not thereunto e...« less