Oh grieve caso! ond' io forte mi doglio;
Colei qui cerco di poter vederla
Sempre non posso poi lei riguardare."[165]
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]
MANLIUS THROWN INTO THE TIBER
By the Dutch engraver called "The Master of the Subjects in the Boccaccio." "De Casibus Virorum." (Strasburg, 1476.)
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:—
"Amor, se questa donna non s' infinge