“Lorna is still living, John,” said my mother, very softly.

“Is there any chance for her?” I cried, awaking out of my dream.  “For me, I mean; for me?”

Well, my darling is sitting by me now as I write, and I am now Sir John Ridd, if you please.  Year by year, Lorna’s beauty grows, with the growth of goodness, kindness, and true happiness—­above all, with loving.  For change, she makes a joke of this, and plays with it, and laughs at it.  Then, when my slow nature marvels, back she comes to the earnest thing.  If I wish to pay her out—­as may happen once or twice, when we become too galdsome—­I bring her to sadness, and to me for the cure of it, by the two words, “Lorna Doone.”

* * * * *

GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO

The Decameron Or Ten Days’ Entertainment

Giovanni Boccaccio, the father of Italian prose literature, was born in 1313, probably at Certaldo, a small town about twenty miles from Florence, where he was brought up.  In 1341 he fell in love with the daughter of King Robert of Naples, and the lady, whom he made famous under the name of Fiammetta, seems to have loved him in return.  It was for her amusement, and for the amusement of the Queen of Naples, that he composed many of the stories in “The Decameron.”  He returned to Florence in 1350, after the great plague, which he has described in so vivid a manner in the opening chapter of his great work, had abated; and three years afterwards he published “The Decameron,” the title being derived from the Greek words signifying “ten days.”  This collection of a hundred stories is certainly one of the world’s great books.  Many English writers of the first order have gone to it for inspiration.  Boccaccio’s friend, Petrarch, was so delighted with the tale of Griselda, with which the work concludes, that he learnt it off by heart.  Chaucer developed it into the finest of all his stories.  Dryden, Keats, and Tennyson have also been inspired by Boccaccio; while Lessing has made the Italian story-teller’s allegory of “The Three Rings” the jeweled point on which turns his masterly play.  “Nathan the Wise” (see Vol.  XVII).  Boccaccio, after filling many high posts at Florence, retired to Certaldo, where he died on December 21, 1375.

The Seven Beautiful Maidens

In the year of our Lord 1348 a terrible plague broke out in Florence, which, from being the finest city in Italy, became the most desolate.  It was a strange malady that no drugs could cure; and it was communicated, not merely by conversing with those strickened by the pestilence, but even by touching their clothes, or anything they had worn.  As soon as the purple spots, which were the sign of the disease, appeared on the body, death was certain to ensue within three days.