Each one of these one hundred stories has an individual character of its own. While reading them we see passing in picturesque procession before our eyes the whole of Italian society of the times, kings and princes, knights and peasants, merchant, artist, mechanic, priest, and monk. There are not wanting earnest and serious stories, but the comic and satirical element prevails; especially are the vices of the clergy scourged, that fruitful source of all European medieval literature. The avaricious and licentious priests and monks are everywhere held up to the scornful laughter of his readers. All this is expressed in an admirable prose style, with perfect adaptation of local color, with excellent delineation of character and insight into human nature, and with the inimitable skill in narration of the born story-teller. The popularity of Boccaccio was, and is still, enormous, in spite of the immorality of certain of his stories. He is read to-day in the elementary schools of Italy (in emendated editions), and his influence on modern literature is incalculable. In English literature alone most of the great writers have found subjects for poems, stories, and dramas in the Decameron, among them Chaucer, Dryden, Shakespeare, Keats, Tennyson, and Longfellow. The following story, which I have translated with some slight condensation, is not only the best and most famous of the Decameron, but it illustrates on the one hand the vast antiquity of the short-story (existing, as it does, not only in all European languages in the Middle Ages, but running back its roots to the early antiquity of India), and on the other hand, the influence of Boccaccio, "Patient Griselda" having become almost a household word in modern literature, and having furnished themes for poet, painter, and sculptor. John Addington Symonds has declared that no Greek poem equals Boccaccio's story of Griselda for tenderness. A long time ago there lived a certain marquis of Saluzzo, named Walter, who spent his time chiefly in hunting, with never a thought of marriage. His vassals not liking this state of affairs often urged him to take to himself a wife, so that in case of death, he might not be without an heir, nor they without a master. To all this Walter made answer as follows: "My friends, you urge me to do that which I had resolved not to do, considering how difficult it is to find a proper mate, and how hard is the life of him who finds one not suited to him. Yet since it pleases you to bind me with these chains, I will agree--on this condition, however, that I choose my wife myself, so that if evil come to me, I may have no one to blame but myself. But bear this in mind: if you do not honor her as becomes your lady, you shall prove to your cost how grievous a thing it is to have forced me to wed against my own desire."