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!
"Ed io presumo in versi diseguali
Di disegnarle in canto senza suono?
Vedete se son folli i pensier miei!"[159]
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:—
"E l' altre parti tutte si confanno
Alle predette in proporzione eguale
Di costei ch' i ver angioli simiglia."[160]