1331-1340

THE YEARS OF COURTSHIP—THE REWARD—THE BETRAYAL—THE RETURN TO FLORENCE

Of the first period of Giovanni's love-story, the period of uncertainty which lasted but twelve days, we know almost nothing, save that he was used to remind himself very often of his unworthiness, and to tell himself that he was only the son of a merchant, while Fiammetta, it was said, was the daughter of a king, and at any rate belonged to one of the richest and most powerful families in the Kingdom. That she was married does not seem to have distressed him or appeared as an obstacle at all, for the court was corrupt;[146] but he seems to have been disturbed by the knowledge that she was surrounded by a hundred adorers richer, nobler, and with better opportunities than himself. And so he seems to have come to the conclusion that there was nothing to be done but to make fun of himself for having entertained a thought of her. It was apparently in these states of mind that he passed the days from Holy Saturday to 12th April, 1331, when he found suddenly to his surprise that she was content he should love her if he would.

What happened is described in the forty-fourth chapter of the Amorosa Visione. The twelve days were passed, he tells us in this allegory, when he heard a voice like a terrible thunder cry to him:—

How can we interpret this? It seems that there was evidently an occasion in which Fiammetta gave him to understand that she was not averse from his love. What was this occasion? Della Torre[147]—certainly the most subtle and curious of his interpreters—thinks he has found it: that he can identify it with that in which Fiammetta bade him write the Filocolo.

In the prologue to that romance Boccaccio tells us that after leaving the temple of S. Lorenzo with full heart, and having sighed many days, he found himself by chance—he does not remember how—with some companions "in un santo tempio del Principe de' celestiali uccelli nominato": that is to say, as Casetti interprets it, in the convent of S. Arcangelo a Baiano, where Fiammetta had been. I have said that it was quite usual for nuns to receive visitors, both men and women, from the outside; the Fiammetta[148] itself confirms it if need be. The convents were in some sort fashionable resorts where one went to spend an hour in talk. On some such occasion Boccaccio went to S. Arcangelo with a friend, and finding Fiammetta there, probably told her stories from the French romances "del valoroso giovane Florio figliuolo di Felice grandissimo Re di Spagna," or of Lancelot and Guinivere, "con amorose parole," stuffed with piteous words. When he had finished, she, altogether charmed, turned to the young poet and bade him write such a romance as that—for her—"a little book in which the beginning of love, the courtship, and the fortune of the two lovers even to their death shall be told." Well, what could he do but obey gladly? "Hearing the sweetness of the words which came from that gracious mouth," he tells us, "and remembering that never once till this day had that noble lady asked anything of me, I took her prayer for a command, and saw therein hope for my desires";[149] so he answered that he would do his best to please her. She thanked him, and Boccaccio, "costretto piÙ da ragione che da volontÀ," went home and began at once to compose his romance.[150] So ends the first period of his love-story, and the second, the period of courtship, begins.

The first result of this interview and of the hope and fear it gave him—for whatever may have been the case with Fiammetta now and later, Giovanni was genuinely in love—was that he wandered away "dall' usato cammino" from the highway that had brought him so far and abandoned "le imprese cose," things already begun.[151] And if we ask ourselves what was this highway, we may answer his way of life; and the things already begun—his study of the Canon Law. About this time, then, he began to go more to court, to enter eagerly into the joy of Neapolitan life in search of Fiammetta. At the same time his studies suffered—he neglected them to the dismay, as we shall see, not only of his father, but of his friends.

Something has already been said of the life at the court of King Robert. The very soul of it was the three ladies: Agnes de Perigord, wife of Jean D'Anjou, brother of King Robert; Marie de Valois, wife of Charles, Duke of Calabria, son of the king; and Catherine de Courteney, who at twelve years of age had married Philip of Taranto, another of the King's brothers.[152] The luxury in the city was by far the greatest to be found in Italy. The merchants of Florence, Lucca, Venice, and Genoa furnished to the court "scarlatti di Gant," "sciamiti, panni ricamati ad uso orientale," "oggetti d' oro ed argento," and "gemmas et lapides pretiosas ad camere regie usum." Boccaccio himself describes Naples: "CittÀ, oltre a tutte l' altre italiche, di lietissime feste abbondevole, non solamente rallegra i suoi cittadini o con le nozze o con li bagni o con li marini liti, ma, copiosa di molti giuochi, sovente or con uno, or con un altro letifica la sua gente: ma tra l' altre cose, nelle quali essa appare splendidissima, È nel sovente armeggiare."[153] Or again of the spring there: "I giovani, quando sopra i correnti cavalli con le fiere armi giostravano, e quando circondati da' sonanti sonagli armeggiavano, quando con ammaestrata mano lieti mostravano come gli arditi cavalli con ispumante freno si debbano reggere. Le giovani donne di queste cose vaghe, inghirlandate di nuove frondi, lieti sguardi porgevano ai loro amanti, ora dall' alte finestre ed ora dalle basse porte; e quale con nuovo dono, e quale con sembiante, e quale con parole confortava il suo del suo amore."[154]

If he thus spent his time in play and love there can have been little enough left, when the Filocolo was laid aside, for study. We find his father complaining of his slackness. Old Boccaccio had already been grievously disappointed when Giovanni abandoned trade, and now that he threw up or was not eager to pursue his law studies, he was both distressed and angry; nor were Giovanni's friends more content. All the Florentines at Naples, he tells us, seemed to speak with his father's voice. It was well to be in love, they told him, even better to write poetry, but to ruin oneself for love, Monna mia! what madness, and then poetry never made any one rich.[155]

So spoke and thought the practical Tuscan soul, and the English have but echoed it for centuries. However, Giovanni only immersed himself more in Ovid, and doubtless the throb of hexameter and pentameter silenced the prose of the merchants. Later, about 1334, he began to read Petrarch;[156] their personal friendship, however, did not begin till much later, in 1350.[157] His reading then, like his love, inspired him to write verses, and as he tells us, when the days of uncertainty were over, "Under the new lordship of love I desired to know what power splendid words had to move human hearts."[158] And these ornate parole were all in honour of his love. How he praises her!

Presumptuous or no, he tells us very eloquently and sweetly that her teeth were candid Eastern pearls, her lips, living rubies clear and red, her cheeks, roses mixed with lilies, her hair, all gold like an aureole about her happy face:—

And then her eyes, it is always them he praises best:—

But he speaks of her beauty in a thousand verses in a thousand places, in many disguises.

This burning and eager love was, however, hindered in one thing—he had the greatest difficulty in seeing Fiammetta:—

For at this time certainly Fiammetta does not seem to have considered his love of any importance to her, so that she gave him very few opportunities of seeing her, and then in everything he had to be careful not to rouse her husband's suspicions.[163] Sometimes, too, she went far away into the country to some property of her family, whither he could not follow, and always every year to Baia for the season; so that we find him writing:—

He managed to see her, however, sometimes in church, or at her window, or in the gardens, and once he followed her to Baia, but only to see her "a long way off." Yet, as he reminds himself, he always had her, a vision in his heart:—

Then there were moments of wild hope, till the indifference of Fiammetta put it out; and he would resolve to break the "love chains," but it was useless. He humiliated himself, and at last came to despair. It was in some such moment, during her absence, we may think, that he began the Filostrato,[166] and at length finally abandoned those studies which in some sort his love had killed.

In this feverish state of mind, of soul, sometimes hopeful, sometimes in despair, Boccaccio passed the next five years of his life, from the spring of 1331 to the spring of 1336. It was during this time, in 1335[167] it seems, that with his father's unwilling permission he discontinued the law studies he had begun in 1329, but had for long neglected, and gave himself up to literature, "without a master," but not without a counsellor—his old companion in the study of astronomy, Calmeta. Other friends, too, were able to assist him, among them Giovanni Barrili, the jurisconsult, a man of fine culture, later Seneschal of King Robert for the kingdom of Provence,[168] and Paolo da Perugia, King Robert's learned librarian, elected to that office in 1332. Him Boccaccio held in the highest veneration, and no doubt Paolo was very useful to him.[169]

We know nothing of his first literary studies, but we may be sure he continued to read Ovid, and now read or re-read Virgil—these if only for the study of versification. As for prose, it is possible that he now read the Metamorphoses of Apuleius, which he certainly knew and admired. However that may be, his work at this time cannot have been very severe or serious, for his mind was full of uneasiness about Fiammetta, and this excitement no doubt increased in the early summer of 1336, when she grew "kinder," and deigned even to encourage him; he met her "con humil voce e con atti piacenti."[170]

What was the real cause of this "kindness" it seems impossible we should ever know. Perhaps at the moment Fiammetta lacked a lover, though that is hard measure for her. Some cause there must have been, for a woman does not surely let a lover sigh for five years unheard, and then for no reason at all suddenly requite him. Certainly Giovanni had made many beautiful verses for her, but when did that touch a woman's heart? Yet, be the cause what it may, in the summer of 1336 she would suddenly grow pale when he passed her by, and then as suddenly turn her "starry eyes" on him languidly, voluptuously:—

All this seems to have come to pass at Baia, perhaps, as Boccaccio seems himself to suggest, one day in the woods of Monte Miseno whither they were gone with a gay company holding festa there in the golden spring weather.[171] And there were other days too: long delicious noons in the woods, still evenings by the seashore, where, though not alone, he might talk freely to her, by chance or strategy, or in a low voice whisper his latest verses beating with her heart. Giovanni, we may be sure, was no mean strategist; he was capable of playing his part in the game of hide-and-seek with the world.[172] He seems eagerly to have sought the friendship of her husband and of her relations and Fiammetta herself tells us in the romance that bears her name that filled "non solamente dello amoroso ardore, ma ancora di cautela perfetta il vidi pieno; il che sommamente mi fu a grado. Esso, con intera considerazione vago di servare il mio onore e adempiere, quando i luoghi e li tempi il concedessero, li suoi desii credo non senza gravissima pena, usando molte arti, s' ingegnÒ d' aver la familiaritÀ di qualunque mi era parente, ed ultimamente del mio marito: la quale non solamente ebbe, ma ancora con tanta grazia la possedette, che a niuno niuna cosa era a grado, se non tanto quanto con lui la comunicava...."[173]

Well, the one hundred and thirty-five days had begun.[174] There were difficulties still to be overcome, however, before he won that for which, as he says, he had always begged. Fiammetta, like a very woman, denied it him over and over again, though very willingly she would have given it to him. Expert as he had become in a woman's heart—in this woman's heart at least—Giovanni guessed all this and knew besides that she could not give him what he desired unless he took it with a show at least of violence. Such, even to-day, are Italian manners.[175] He awaited the opportunity. It seems to have come during the absence of the husband in Capua.[176] Screwing his courage to the sticking-point, he resolved to go to her chamber, and to this end persuaded or bribed her maid to help him.[177]

It was in the early days of November probably, days so pensive in that beautiful southern country, that it befell even as he had planned. Led by the maid into Fiammetta's chamber, he hid himself behind the curtains of the great marital bed. Presently she came in with the maid, who undressed her and put her to bed, and left her, half laughing, half in tears. Again he waited, and when at last, desperate with anxiety and hope, he dared to come out of his hiding, she was sleeping as quietly as a child. For a time he looked at her, then trembling and scarce daring to breathe the while, he crept into the great bed beside her, in verity as though he were her newly wedded husband. Then softly he kissed her, sleeping still, and drawing aside the curtain that hid the light,[178] discovered to his amorous eyes "il delicato petto, e con desiderosa mano toccava le ritonde mammelle, bacciandola molte volte," and already held her in his arms when she awakened. She opened her mouth to cry for help, he closed it with kisses; she strove to get out of bed, but he held her firm, bidding her have no fear. She was defeated, of course, but that her yielding might not seem too easy she reproached him[179] in a trembling voice—trembling with fear and pleasure—for the violence with which he had stolen what she had always denied him; adding that all was quite useless as she did not wish it.

Then Giovanni, putting all to the proof, drew a dagger from his belt, and retiring to a corner of the bed, in a low and distressed voice said—we find the words in the Ameto—"I come not, O lady, to defile the chastity of thy bed, but as an ardent lover to obtain relief for my burning desires; thou alone canst assuage them, or tell me to die: surely I will only leave thee satisfied or dead, not that I seek to gratify my passion by violence or to compel any to raise cruel hands against me; but if thou art deaf to my entreaties with my dagger I shall pierce my heart."

To kill himself—there. O no, Giovanni! Certainly she did not want that. What then? Well, not a dead man in her room, at any rate, for all the world to talk about.[180] Yes, she was paid in her own coin. She was conquered; her silence gave consent. "O no, Giovanni!"

"Donna mia," he whispered, "I came thus because it was pleasing to the gods...."[181]

"Thou lovest me so?" she answered. "And when then, and how, and why ... and why?" So he told her all over again from the beginning, and she, yielding little by little, seemed doubtful even yet. Then he asked again, "Che farÒ O Donna? PasserÀ il freddo ferro il solecito petto o lieto sarÀ dal tuo riscaldato?" At this renewed menace the poor lady, without more ado, reached for the iron and flung it away. Then he, putting his arms about her and kissing her furiously, whispered: "Lady, the gods, my passion, and thy beauty, have wounded my soul, and thus as was already told thee in dreams I shall for ever be thine: I do not think I need implore thee to be mine, but if necessary I pray thee now once for all...."

That night was but the first of a long series, as we may suppose. "Oh," says Fiammetta, in the romance which bears her name, "how he loved my room and with what joy it saw him arrive. He held it in greater reverence than any church (temple). Ah me, what pleasant kisses! What loving embraces! How many nights passed as though they had been bright days in sweet converse without sleep! How many delights, dear to every lover, have we enjoyed there in those happy days."[182]

So autumn passed into winter and the long nights grew short, and all the world was at the spring; and for them too it was the golden age—so long ago. Well, do we not know how they spent their lives? It was ever Giovanni's way to kiss and tell. Has he not spoken of the festas and the jousts, and the rare encounters that in Naples greeted Primavera?[183] We see him with Fiammetta at the Courts of Love, in the deep shade of the gardens, in the joyful fields,[184] on the seashore at Baia,[185] and at the Bagno beside the lake of Avernus,[186] while we may catch a glimpse of them too at a wedding feast.[187] So passed what proved to be the one happy year of their love, and perhaps the happiest of Giovanni's life.

That year so full of wild joy soon passed away. With the dawn of 1338 his troubles began. At first jealousy. He found it waiting to torture him on returning from a journey we know not whither,[188] in which he had encountered dangers by flood and field; a winter journey then, doubtless. He came home to find Fiammetta disdainful, angry, even indifferent. All the annoyance of the road came back to him threefold:—[189]

"... non ch' alcun tormento

Mi desser tornand 'io, ma fur gioconde,

Tanta dolce speranza mi recava

Spronato dal desio di rivederti,

Qual ver me ti lasciai, Donna, pietosa.

Or, oltre, a quel che io, lasso! stimava,

Trovo mi sdegni, e non so per quai merti;

Per che piange nel cor l' alma dogliosa,

E maledico i monti, l' alpe e 'l mare,

Che mai mi ci lasciaron ritornare."[190]