we think of goats; more than a hundred thousand human beings are believed to have been taken from life within the walls of Florence, which before the mortal pestilence were not believed to have contained so many souls.  Oh! how many great palaces, how many beautiful houses, how many noble dwellings, once full of domestics, of gentlemen and ladies, became empty even to the last servant!  How many historical families, how many immense estates, what prodigious riches remained without heirs!  How many brave men, how many beautiful women, how many gay youths whom not only we, but Galen, Hippocrates, or Esculapius would have pronounced in excellent health, in the morning dined with their relatives, companions and friends, and the coming night supped with those who had passed away.”

The ten companions, meeting in the church of S. Maria Novella, seven ladies and three gentlemen, agree to escape this doom, and, repairing to one of the deserted villas in the neighborhood, to pass the time of affliction in merry doings and sayings; and with four maids and three men-servants, move eastward out of the gloomy city.  Their first habitation is clearly indicated as what is known to-day as the Poggio Gherardi, under Maiano.  After the second day they return towards the city a short distance and establish themselves in what seems a more commodious abode, and which I consider incontrovertibly identified as the Villa Pasolini, or Rasponi, and which was in their day the property of the Memmi family, the famous pupils of Giotto.  The site of this villa overlooks the Valley of the Ladies, which figures in the framework of the “Novelle,” and in which then there was a lake to which Boccaccio alludes, now filled up by the alluvium of the Affrico, the author’s beloved river, and which runs through the valley and under the villa.  The valley now forms part of the estate of Professor Willard Fiske.  As the entire adventure is imaginary, and the “merry company” had no existence except in the dreams of Boccaccio, it is useless to seek any evidence of actual occupation; but the care he put in the description of the localities and surroundings, distances, etc., shows that he must have had in his mind, as the framework of the story, these two localities.  The modern tradition ascribing to the Villa Palmieri the honor of the second habitation has no confirmation of any kind.

The house-flitting is thus told:—­

“The dawn had already, under the near approach of the sun, from rosy become golden:  when on Sunday, the Queen[3] arising and arousing all her company, and the chamberlain—­having long before sent in advance to the locality where they were to go, enough of the articles required so that he might prepare what was necessary—­seeing the Queen on the way, quickly loading all other things as if it were the moving of the camp, went off with the baggage, leaving the servants with the Ladies and the Gentlemen.  The Queen, then, with slow steps, accompanied and followed by