The Decameron

Dioneo’s tale diverges from Lauretta’s by telling about a cunning revenge taken on a cunning, not foolish, victim.

In the seaports of all maritime countries, incoming merchants must have the value of their goods assessed at the customs-house, where they are stored until he pays the appropriate customs fees. Local brokers consult the customs-house’s register to identify potential business deals. In Palermo, where the women are as lovely as they are prone to criminality, this register offers a chance for those who would fleece—or rather, completely skin—naive merchants to select their marks. Then, they charm these men into falling in love and entice them to hand over their money or goods.

Niccolò da Cignano, better known as Salabaetto, goes to Palermo with five hundred florins’ worth of woolens. He is slow to sell them since he’s eager to see what the city has to offer. Before long, a Sicilian con-woman, who calls herself Madonna Jancofiore, learns about his goods and begins to cast glances at him. He thinks she is a fine lady who has fallen in love with his good looks. He is thus an easy mark when Jancofiore sends an invitation to meet secretly at a local bathhouse.

At the appointed hour, Salabaetto goes to the bathhouse, where he watches slave-girls prepare a fine bed and scrub the bath. When Madonna Jancofiore arrives, she washes him with fragrant soap, and the slave-girls anoint them both with fragrant waters. After some light refreshments, Jancofiore dismisses them and falls into Salabaetto’s arms. At the end of their time, she invites him to her home that evening. Her bedroom, filled with rich gowns and adorned with “mechanical songbirds” and other “paraphernalia,” convinces Salabaetto that she must be a great lady, despite some rumors he has heard  to the contrary.

Salabaetto becomes more enamored as he regularly meets with Madonna Jancofiore during his stay in Palermo. When he has sold his merchandise, she finds out. The next night, one of her slave-girls calls her from the room where she entertains Salabaetto. Jancofiore returns in tears because she’s just received a letter from her brother. He has been imprisoned and needs a thousand florins within a week to escape execution. She worries that she can’t sell her property or call in her debts fast enough to raise that amount in that time. Salabaetto, whose passion has caused him to misplace “a substantial portion of his wits,” offers to loan her his five hundred florins, to be repaid in two weeks.

Proclaiming her undying gratitude to Salabaetto and protesting that she’d never have thought to ask for what he freely offered, Madonna Jancofiore throws herself into his arms. When he brings her the money, he takes her promise to repay as soon as she can as her surety. Having gotten the money, Jancofiore avoids him and frequently breaks their plans. Two weeks go by, then two months, before he realizes that she won’t be repaying his money. He’s too ashamed of his naiveté to report her to the authorities. Instead, he runs away from his creditors to Naples.

In Naples, Salabaetto goes to a family friend, Pietro dello Canigiano, who is treasurer to the Empress of Constantinople. He wants Pietro to help him find a livelihood in Naples, but Pietro promises to help him recover his money from Madonna Jancofiore instead. They prepare a shipment of merchandise and barrels of oil, which Salabaetto takes to Palermo and leaves at the customs-house. Learning that he has returned with more than two thousand florins’ worth of goods, Madonna Jancofiore quickly resumes their relationship. She claims her repayment was delayed due to difficulties raising the money and asks forgiveness. Salabaetto tells her that he is moving to Palermo to be with her, and that he’s expecting another valuable shipment of goods soon.

Madonna Jancofiore repays Salabaetto’s five hundred florins. To pay her back in her own coin, he goes to her home one evening looking sad and forlorn. He claims that pirates have captured his expected shipment, and he must contribute a thousand florins towards its ransom. Because he invested the money she returned in another shipment, he has no cash on hand. Madonna Jancofiore promises to ask a moneylender (by which she means herself) for help, and Salabaetto offers the goods in the customs-house as a guarantee against the loan.

The next morning, Madonna Jancofiore gives a friend one thousand florins of her own money to “lend” to Salabaetto. Salabaetto happily signs over his goods as collateral, then returns to Naples with his fifteen hundred florins to repay his creditors. Two months later, suspecting a trick, Jancofiore seizes his goods in the warehouse. She discovers casks filled mostly with seawater and a thin layer of oil on the top. All but two of the bales of “woolens” are filled with straw. The whole shipment is worth only two hundred florins. She repents her losses as she realizes the truth of the old saying, “honesty’s the better line, when dealing with a Florentine.”