es, some to play at chess and at tables, while the
others slept. But when passed the ninth hour, they arose, and
refreshing their faces with the fresh water, they came to the
fountain, and in their customary manner taking their seats,
waited for the beginning of the story-telling on the subject
proposed by the Queen."

Of the character of the Novelle I have need to say little: they were the
shaping of the time, and made consonant with its tastes, and nobody was
then disturbed by their tone. Some are indelicate to modern taste, and
some have passed into the classics of all time. The story of 'Griselda';
that of 'The Stone of Invisibility,' put into shape by Irving;
'Frederick of the Alberighi and his Falcon'; 'The Pot of Basil'; and
'The Jew Abraham, Converted to Christianity by the Immorality of the
Clergy,' are stories which belong to all subsequent times, as they may
have belonged to the ages before. Those who know what Italian society
was then, and in some places still is, will be not too censorious,
judging lightness of tongue and love of a good story as necessarily
involving impurity. And Boccaccio has anticipated his critics in this
vein, putting his apology in the mouth of Filomena, who replies to
Neifile, when the latter speaks of scandal growing out of their holiday,
"This amounts to nothing where I live virtuously and my conscience in no
wise reproaches me--let them who will, speak against me: I take God and
the truth for my defense."