O ch' io 'l vedessi scritto breve o steso
Lì nol vid' io nè 'l seppi immaginare."[96]
When she saw that he continued to stare at her, she screened herself with her veil.[97] But he changed his position and found a place by a column whence he could see her very well—"dirittissimamente opposto, ... appoggiato ad una colonna marmorea"—and there, while the priest sang the Office, "con canto pieno di dolce melodia,"[98] he drank in her blonde beauty which the dark clothes made more splendid—the golden hair and the milk-white skin, the shining eyes and the mouth like a rose in a field of lilies.[99] Once she looked at him,—"Li occhi, con debita gravità elevati, in tra la moltitudine de' circostanti giovani, con acuto ragguardamento distesi."[100] So he stayed where he was till the service was over, "senza mutare luogo." Then he joined his companions, waiting with them at the door to see the girls pass out. And it was then, in the midst of other ladies, that he saw her for the second time, watching her pass out of S. Lorenzo on her way home. When she was gone he went back to his room with his friends, who remained a short time with him. These, as soon as might be, excusing himself, he sent away, and remained alone with his thoughts.
The morrow was Easter Day, and again he went to S. Lorenzo to see her only. And she was there indeed, "di molto oro lucente"—"adorned with gems and dressed in most fair green, beautiful both by nature and by art."[101] Then remembering all things, he said to himself: "This is that lady who in my boyhood (puerizia) and again not so long ago, appeared to me in my dreams; this is she who, with a joyful countenance and gracious, welcomed me to this city; this is she who was ordained to rule my mind, and who was promised me for lady, in my dreams."[102] From this moment began for him "the new life."
Who was this lady "promised to him in his dreams," whose love was indeed the great prize of his youth? We know really very little about her, though he speaks of her so often, but in three well-known places, in the Filocolo, the Ameto, and the Amorosa Visione, he tells us of her origin. It is in the Ameto that he gives us the fullest account of her. In that comedy[103] he tells us that at the court of King Robert there was a gentleman of the wealthy and powerful house of Aquino who held in Naples "the highest place beside the throne of him who reigned there." This noble had married, we learn, a young Provençal, "per bellezza da lodare molto," who with her husband lived in the royal palace.[104] Of this pair were born "some daughters whom Fiammetta called sisters,"[105] and a son who was assassinated.[106] Fiammetta's own birth is, we understand, surrounded by a kind of mystery, "voluttuoso e lascivo," corresponding, as we shall see, to her own temperament.[107]
LUCRECE
A woodcut from "De Claris Mulieribus." (Berne, 1539.) (By the courtesy of Mssrs. J. & J. Leighton.)
Boccaccio suggests that her birth is connected with the great festa which celebrated the coronation of King Robert, that took place in Avignon in September, 1309.[108] The king returned to Naples by way of Florence, where he arrived on September 30, 1310;[109] he was still there in October, and there was much fighting to be done, for Henry VII was making war in Italy; so that it was not till February 2, 1313,[110] that the king opened the first general parliament in Naples after his coronation. Della Torre[111] thinks that it was on this occasion the great festa described by Boccaccio took place. Its chief feature seems to have been a banquet of the greatest magnificence, to which all the court as well as many of the leading subjects of the Kingdom were bidden. Amid all this splendour Boccaccio describes the king's gaze passing over a host of beautiful women, to rest, always with new delight, on the beauty of the young wife of D'Aquino, who, since her husband belonged to the court, was naturally present. Well, to make a long story short, a little later the king seduced this lady, but as it seems, on or about the same night she slept also with her husband, so that when nine months later a daughter was born to her, both the king and her husband believed themselves to be the father. It is like a story out of the Decameron.
This daughter, the Fiammetta of his dreams, was born, he tells us, in the spring[112]—the spring then of 1314[113]—and was named Maria.[114] Before very long she lost her mother, who however, before she died, told her as well as she could, considering her tender age, the mystery of her birth. Not long after, her father—or rather her mother's husband—died also, leaving the piccoletta "a vestali vergini a lui di sangue congiunte ... acciocchè quelle di costumi e d' arte inviolata servandomi, ornassero la giovanezza mia";[115] which is Boccaccio's way of saying that she was placed in the care of nuns, the nuns, as Casetti[116] supposes, of the Order of St. Benedict, to whom belonged the very ancient church of S. Arcangelo a Baiano.[117] There she grew up, and, like very many others of an eager and sensuous temperament, totally unfitted for the life of a religious, she desired too to be a nun, and this desire, we learn, became definite in her after an ecstatic vision in which S. Scholastica appeared to her[118] and invited her to take the vow. But happily this was not to be. Her golden hair was not to fall under the shears of the Church, but to be a poet's crown. She was too beautiful for the cloister, and indeed already the fame of her beauty had gone beyond the convent walls, which were in fact by no means very secure or unassailable. In those days, people "in the world," men as well as women, were received even by the "enclosed" in the parlour of the convent, where it was customary to hold receptions.[119]
So, we learn, there presently began a struggle in Fiammetta's heart—it was not of very long duration—between her resolution to take the veil and her feminine vanity. Little by little she began to adorn herself,[120] she received offers of marriage which by no means shocked her, she became reconciled to the life of the world for which she was so perfectly fitted by nature. Among the suitors, and apparently they were many, was "uno dei più nobili giovani ... di fortuna grazioso, de' beni Giunonichi copioso, e chiaro di sangue."[121] To him, as to the rest, she replied with a refusal, to which she was doubtless encouraged by the nuns, who could not easily suffer so well-born and powerful a pupil to escape them. The young man, however—we do not know his name—was not easily discouraged, and, renewing his suit, was accepted. So she was married perhaps when she was about fifteen years old, in 1329.[122]