The stormy days of Florentine democracy were at least characterized by something lively, original and spontaneous. The singers who quickened the daily life of Florence—if one admits that it needed any quickening—recited more than epic fragments. Another and different Ginevra, whose home was Ravenna, is the heroine of a short Florentine poem of the fifteenth century, of unknown authorship. Florence appeared like a city which had been taken by the infidels and then abandoned. A good number of the citizens withdrew to the contadoi the surrounding country, but here too the pestilence was raging. These were the darkest times that Florence had known since the famous plague of the fourteenth century which had served as prelude to the tales of Boccaccio. Happily, however, there were oases round Florence which were not contaminated with politics, quiet haunts beside some stream or spring where the shepherdess brought her flock to water, while singing a rustic refrain.