It will be remembered that in the romance which passes under her name Fiammetta tells us that Panfilo (Giovanni), when he deserted her, promised to return in four months. Later[309] she says, when the promised time of his return had passed by more than a month, she heard from a merchant lately arrived in Naples that her lover fifteen days before had taken a wife in Florence.[310] Great distress on the part of Fiammetta; but, as she soon learnt, it was not Giovanni, but his father, who had married himself.
THE THEFT OF CALANDRINO'S PIG (DEC. VIII, 6)
GHINO AND THE ABBOT (DEC. X, 2)
Woodcuts from the "Decameron." (Venice, 1492.)
Is there any truth in this story? Assuredly there is. We know, indeed, that Boccaccino did marry a second wife, whose name was Bice de' Bostichi, and that she bore him a son, Jacopo;[311] but we do not know when either of these events happened. If we may trust the Fiammetta, which says clearly that Giovanni's father married again about five months after his son returned home, and if we are right in thinking that that return took place in January, 1341, then Boccaccino married his second wife in the spring, or more precisely in May, 1341. That they were man and wife in May, 1343,[312] we know, for, thanks to Crescini, we have a document which proves it. Beyond that fact all is conjecture in this matter. Yet it is significant that we find Boccaccino, on December 13, 1342, acquiring half a house in the popolo di S. Ambrogio in Florence,[313] and yet, as we know from the document just quoted,[314] in May, 1343, he was still living in popolo di S. Felicità.[315] For what possible reason could Boccaccino, ruined as he was, want half a house in which he did not propose to live? Had family history repeated itself? Was Giovanni in some sort again turned out of his father's house by his second stepmother as he had been by the first, and for a like reason—the birth of a legitimate son? It was for him, then, that Boccaccino bought the half-house in popolo di S. Ambrogio, and the occasion was the birth of Jacopo his son by Madonna Bice? It is possible, at any rate; and when we remember the efforts the old man had already made in his poverty for the comfort of a son who had disappointed him in everything, it seems more than likely. Nor can we but accuse Giovanni of ingratitude when we think of his constant allusions to his father's avarice and remember these benefits.[316]
Such, then, are the few and meagre personal events that have in any way come down to us of Boccaccio's life while he was writing all or nearly all those works of his youth which we have already examined, between his return to Florence in January, 1341, and his departure once more for Naples in 1344 or 1345.
These years, materially none too happy for him but full after all of successful work, were disastrous for Florence. That tranquillity and internal peace which so happily followed the death of Castruccio Castracani and of Charles of Calabria in 1328, in which, among other splendid things, Giotto's tower was built, had been broken in 1340, when the grandi, who held the government, having grown oppressive, a rebellion headed by Piero de' Baldi and Bardo Frescobaldi was only crushed by a rising of the people. Things were quiet then for a moment, but the grandi would heed no warning, and as one might expect, their insolence grew with their power. Nor was it only at home that things were going unhappily for Florence. When Louis of Bavaria, who claimed the empire against the will of the Pope, left Italy—it was the Visconti who had called him across the Alps in fear of the House of Anjou—some of his Germans, after Castruccio's death, seized Lucca and offered to sell it to the Florentines, who refused it. They repented later; and when it had come into the hands of Martino della Scala of Verona and Parma, who, in straits himself on account of Visconti, offered to sell it again, they found a competitor in Pisa, who was ready to dispute the city with them. Nevertheless they bought it, only to find that the Pisans, knowing the wealth of Florence and expecting this, had sat down before it. A war followed in which nothing but dishonour came the way of Florence, and Lucca fell into the hands of Pisa. This so enraged the Florentines that they rose against the grandi, who, at their wits' end what to do, asked their old ally Robert of Naples for help. This was in 1341. It was not, therefore, to a very prosperous or joyful city that Boccaccio returned from Naples; the words he put into the mouth of Fiammetta[317] were fully justified.
King Robert, however, did not send help to Florence at once. He was thinking always of Sicily and had been busy with the conquest of the Lipari Islands,[318] but when he did send it, in the person of Walter, Duke of Athens and Count of Brienne, a French baron, it proved to be the worst disaster of all. Yet at first the Florentines rejoiced, for they knew Walter of old, who had been vicegerent in Florence for Charles of Calabria in 1325, and as Machiavelli tells us, his behaviour had been so modest that every one loved him. That was not his attitude now, nor does it tally with Boccaccio's lively account of him,[319] which certainly reads like the work of an eye-witness and supports our belief that he was in Florence during 1342 and 1343—those disastrous years.
For as it happened, the Duke arrived in Florence at the very time when the enterprise of Lucca was utterly lost. The grandi, however, hoping to appease the people, at once made him Conservator and later General. But they had alienated every one. The nobili, long since their enemies, had always maintained a correspondence with the Duke ever since he had been vicegerent for Charles of Calabria; they thought now that their chance was come when they might be avenged alike on the grandi and the people; so they pressed him to take the government wholly into his hands. The people, on the other hand, smarting under new taxes and oppression and insolence and defeat, to a large extent joined the nobili against the grandi. In this conspiracy we find all the names of the great popular families, Peruzzi, Acciaiuoli, Antellesi, and Buonaccorsi, whom the unsuccessful war, among other things, had ruined, and who hoped thus to free themselves from their creditors.