In the midst of this resurrection of energy in which, as we learn, he had already grown calm enough to see Fiammetta afar off without flinching and even with a sort of pleasure, his father, widowed by the death of Margherita, "full of years, deprived by death of his children," summoned him home.[207] When did Boccaccio obey this summons? That he was in Naples in 1340 is proved by the letter "Sacro famis et angelice viro," dated "sub Monte Falerno apud busta Maronis Virgilii, Julii Kal IIII.," i.e. 28th June, and, as the contents show, of the year 1340.[208] He was still there in October, for on 1st November the renewal of the contract of the podere of S. Lorenzo fell due, but by 11th January, 1341, we know him to have been in Florence.[209] He left Naples, then, between 1st November, 1340, and 11th January, 1341,[210] and as the journey took eleven days or so he must have set out in the end of the year. By so doing, as it happened, he just missed seeing Petrarch, who, invited to his court by King Robert, left Avignon on 16th February, 1341, in the company of Azzo da Correggio, to reach Naples in March.[211]
So Giovanni came back into the delicate and strong Florentine country, along the bad roads, through the short days, the whole world lost in wind and rain, neither glad nor sorry, but thoughtful, and, yes, homesick after all for that ghost in his heart.
[CHAPTER V]
BOCCACCIO'S EARLY WORKS—THE FILOCOLO—THE FILOSTRATO—THE TESEIDE—THE AMETO—THE FIAMMETTA—THE NINFALE FIESOLANO
I have written at some length and in some detail of the early years of Boccaccio and of the circumstances attending his love for Fiammetta, because they decided the rest of his life, and are in many ways by far the most important in his whole career. But the ten years which follow his return to Florence are even more uncertain and obscure that those which preceded them, while we are without any of those semi-biographical allegories to help us. It will be necessary, therefore, to deal with these years less personally, and to regard them more strictly from the point of view of the work they produced. And to begin with, let us consider the work already begun before Boccaccio left Naples, or at any rate worked on during the years 1341-4, which were spent in and around Florence.
That his life was far from happy on his return from Naples we know not only from the bitter and cruel verses he has left us, in which he speaks of his home—
"Dove la cruda ed orribile vista
D' un vecchio freddo, ruvido ed avaro