by nature one and all, I do not disguise from myself that the present work
must seem to you to have but a heavy and distressful prelude, in that it
bears upon its very front what must needs revive the sorrowful memory of the
late mortal pestilence, the course whereof was grievous not merely to eye-
witnesses but to all who in any other wise had cognisance of it. But I would
have you know, that you need not therefore be fearful to read further, as if
your reading were ever to be accompanied by sighs and tears. This horrid
beginning will be to you even such as to wayfarers is a steep and rugged
mountain, beyond which stretches a plain most fair and delectable, which the
toil of the ascent and descent does but serve to render more agreeable to
them; for, as the last degree of joy brings with it sorrow, so misery has
ever its sequel of happiness. To this brief exordium of woe--brief, I say,
inasmuch as it can be put within the compass of a few letters--succeed
forthwith the sweets and delights which I have promised you, and which,
perhaps, had I not done so, were not to have been expected from it. In
truth, had it been honestly possible to guide you whither I would bring you
by a road less rough than this will be, I would gladly have so done. But,
because without this review of the past, it would not be in my power to shew
how the matters, of which you will hereafter read, came to pass, I am almost
bound of necessity to enter upon it, if I would write of them at all.

I say, then, that the years of the beatific incarnation of the Son of God
had reached the tale of one thousand three hundred and forty-eight when in
the illustrious city of Florence, the fairest of all the cities of Italy,
there made its appearance that deadly pestilence, which, whether
disseminated by the influence of the celestial bodies, or sent upon us
mortals by God in His just wrath by way of retribution for our iniquities,
had had its origin some years before in the East, whence, after destroying
an innumerable multitude of living beings, it had propagated itself without
respite from place to place, and so, calamitously, had spread into the West.