So great were the terror and disorder and distress, that all laws, human and divine, were disregarded.  Everybody in Florence did just as he pleased.  The wilder sort broke into the houses of rich persons, and gave themselves over to riotous living, exclaiming that, since it was impossible to avoid dying from the plague, they would at least die merrily.  Others shut themselves up from the rest of the world, and lived on spare diet, and many thousands fled from their houses into the open country, leaving behind them all their goods and wealth, and all their relatives and friends.  Brother fled from brother, wife from husband, and, what was more cruel, even parents forsook their own children.  It was perilous to walk the streets, for they were strewn with the bodies of plague-strickened wretches, and I have seen with my own eyes the very dogs perish that touched their rags.

Between March and July a hundred thousand persons died in Florence, though, before the calamity, the city was not supposed to have contained so many inhabitants.  But I am weary of recounting out late miseries, and, passing by everything that I can well omit, I shall only observe that, when the city was almost depopulated, seven beautiful young ladies, in deep mourning, met one Tuesday evening in Saint Mary’s Church, where indeed they composed the whole of the congregation.  They were all related to each other, either by the ties of birth, or by the more generous bonds of friendship.  Pampinea, the eldest, was twenty-eight years of age; Fiammetta was a little younger; Filomena, Emilia, Lauretta, and Neifile were still more youthful; and Elisa was only eighteen years old.

After the service was over, they got into a corner of the church, and began to devise what they should do, for they were now alone in the world.

“I would advise,” said Pampinea, “that we should leave Florence, for the city is now dangerous to live in, not merely by reason of the plague, but because of the lawless men that prowl about the streets and break into our houses.  Let us retire together into the country, where the air is pleasanter, and the green hills and the waving corn-fields afford a much more agreeable prospect than these desolate walls.”

“I doubt,” said Filomena, “if we could do this unless we got some man to help us.”

“But how can we?” exclaimed Elisa.  “Nearly all the men of our circle are dead, and the rest have gone away.”

While they were talking, three handsome young cavaliers—­Pamfilo, Filostrato, and Dioneo—­came into the church, looking for their sweethearts, who by chance were Neifile, Pampinea, and Filomena.

“See,” said Pampinea with a smile, “fortune is on our side.  She has thrown in our way three worthy gentlemen, who, I am sure, will come with us if we care to invite them.”