Having often made you, by my letters, acquainted with the things which have happened, I think I ought not to be silent as to the events of the last few days, which—­[2]...

Having several times—­

Having many times rejoiced with you by letters over your prosperous fortunes, I know now that, as a friend you will be sad with me over the miserable state in which I find myself; and this is, that during the last few days I have been in so much trouble, fear, peril and loss, besides the miseries of the people here, that we have been envious of the dead; and certainly I do not believe that since the elements by their separation reduced the vast chaos to order, they have ever combined their force and fury to do so much mischief to man.  As far as regards us here, what we have seen and gone through is such that I could not imagine that things could ever rise to such an amount of mischief, as we experienced in the space of ten hours.  In the first place we were assailed and attacked by the violence and fury of the winds [10]; to this was added the falling of great mountains of snow which filled up all this valley, thus destroying a great part of our city [Footnote 11:  Della nostra citta (Leonardo first wrote di questa citta).  From this we may infer that he had at some time lived in the place in question wherever it might be.].  And not content with this the tempest sent a sudden flood of water to submerge all the low part of this city [12]; added to which there came a sudden rain, or rather a ruinous torrent and flood of water, sand, mud, and stones, entangled with roots, and stems and fragments of various trees; and every kind of thing flying through the air fell upon us; finally a great fire broke out, not brought by the wind, but carried as it would seem, by ten thousand devils, which completely burnt up all this neighbourhood and it has not yet ceased.  And those few who remain unhurt are in such dejection and such terror that they hardly have courage to speak to each other, as if they were stunned.  Having abandoned all our business, we stay here together in the ruins of some churches, men and women mingled together, small and great [Footnote 17:  Certe ruine di chiese.  Either of Armenian churches or of Mosques, which it was not unusual to speak of as churches.

Maschi e femmini insieme unite, implies an infringement of the usually strict rule of the separation of the sexes.], just like herds of goats.  The neighbours out of pity succoured us with victuals, and they had previously been our enemies.  And if

[Footnote 18:  I vicini, nostri nimici.  The town must then have stood quite close to the frontier of the country.  Compare 1336.  L. 7. vicini ai nostri confini.  Dr. M. JORDAN has already published lines 4-13 (see Das Malerbuch, Leipzig, 1873, p. 90:—­his reading differs from mine) under the title of “Description of a landscape near Lake Como”.  We do in fact find, among