t step before the hall,
Drawing a slice of water-melon, long
As Cupid's bow, athwart thy wetted lips
(Like one who plays Pan's pipe) and letting drop
The sable seeds from all their separate cells,
And leaving bays profound and rocks abrupt,
Redder than coral round Calypso's cave?

_Petrarca._ There have been those anciently who would have been
pleased with such poetry, and perhaps there may be again. I am not
sorry to see the Muses by the side of childhood, and forming a part of
the family. But now tell me about the books.

_Boccaccio._ Resolving to lay aside the more valuable of those I had
collected or transcribed, and to place them under the guardianship of
richer men, I locked them up together in the higher story of my tower
at Certaldo. You remember the old tower?

_Petrarca._ Well do I remember the hearty laugh we had together (which
stopped us upon the staircase) at the calculation we made, how much
longer you and I, if we continued to thrive as we had thriven
latterly, should be able to pass within its narrow circle. Although I
like this little villa much better, I would gladly see the place
again, and enjoy with you, as we did before, the vast expanse of
woodlands and mountains and maremma; frowning fortresses inexpugnable;
and others more prodigious for their ruins; then below them, lordly
abbeys, overcanopied with stately trees and girded with rich
luxuriance; and towns that seem approaching them to do them honour,
and villages nestling close at their sides for sustenance and
protection.

_Boccaccio._ My disorder, if it should keep its promise of leaving me
at last, will have been preparing me for the accomplishment of such a
project. Should I get thinner and thinner at this rate, I shall soon
be able to mount not only a turret or a belfry, but a tube of
macarone, while a Neapolitan is suspending it for deglutition.

What I am about to mention will show you how little you can rely on
me! I have preserved the books, as you desired, but quite contrary to
my resolution: and, no less contrary to it, by your desire I shall now
preserve the _Decameron_. In vain had I determined not only to mend in
future, but to correct the past; in vain had I prayed most fervently
for grace to accomplish it, with a final aspiration to Fiametta that
she would unite with your beloved Laura, and that, gentle and
beatified spirits as they are, they would breathe together their purer
prayers