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The Decameron, Volume I by Giovanni Boccaccio
page 31 of 374 (08%)
thereat do I marvel, but at this I do marvel greatly, that, though none of
us lacks a woman's wit, yet none of us has recourse to any means to avert
that which we all justly fear. Here we tarry, as if, methinks, for no other
purpose than to bear witness to the number of the corpses that are brought
hither for interment, or to hearken if the brothers there within, whose
number is now almost reduced to nought, chant their offices at the canonical
hours, or, by our weeds of woe, to obtrude on the attention of every one
that enters, the nature and degree of our sufferings.

"And if we quit the church, we see dead or sick folk carried about, or we
see those, who for their crimes were of late condemned to exile by the
outraged majesty of the public laws, but who now, in contempt of those laws,
well knowing that their ministers are a prey to death or disease, have
returned, and traverse the city in packs, making it hideous with their
riotous antics; or else we see the refuse of the people, fostered on our
blood, becchini, as they call themselves, who for our torment go prancing
about here and there and everywhere, making mock of our miseries in
scurrilous songs. Nor hear we aught but:--Such and such are dead; or, Such
and such art dying; and should hear dolorous wailing on every hand, were
there but any to wail. Or go we home, what see we there? I know not if you
are in like case with me; but there, where once were servants in plenty, I
find none left but my maid, and shudder with terror, and feel the very hairs
of my head to stand on end; and turn or tarry where I may, I encounter the
ghosts of the departed, not with their wonted mien, but with something
horrible in their aspect that appals me. For which reasons church and street
and home are alike distressful to me, and the more so that none, methinks,
having means and place of retirement as we have, abides here save only we;
or if any such there be, they are of those, as my senses too often have
borne witness, who make no distinction between things honourable and their
opposites, so they but answer the cravings of appetite, and, alone or in
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