Paganino and Ricciardo
Intro
- Storyteller: Dioneo
- Dioneo confesses that Bernabò's gullibility has made him change his mind about the story he meant to tell.
- Women, as we all know, do not hang around doing nothing while their husbands are having fun.
- Dioneo also wants to demonstrate how people use flawed reasoning to defy Nature.
Story
- In Pisa, there's a feeble old judge called Ricciardo who insanely decides to marry a young and beautiful woman named Bartolomea.
- On their wedding night, he can barely consummate the marriage.
- In the morning, he has to rely on the medieval equivalent of a 5-Hour Energy Drink to get himself together.
- Ricciardo has also convinced her that almost every day of the week is some religious holiday or other, and that they should abstain from sex as a sign of devotion.
- And so things might have stood, if Ricciardo hadn't taken a little fishing boat out to sea on vacay.
- While they're drifting farther and farther from the shore, Paganino the pirate arrives and pursues them.
- Paganino is charmed by Bartolomea's beauty and snatches her up.
- For some reason, Bartolomea's upset. Paganino comforts her; he doesn't worry about holy days.
- They flee to Monaco and live a very happy life until Ricciardo discovers them.
- He offers a ransom to Paganino to get his wife back.
- Paganino counters: if she is, in fact, his wife and she wants to go with him, then so be it.
- But Bartolomea acts as though she's never seen Ricciardo before.
- Ricciardo asks to speak to her in private (just in case she's being strong-armed by Paganino).
- Once they're alone, Bartolomea acknowledges that he's her husband. Sort of.
- She asks him why he chose to marry since he had no intention of "tilling her little field."
- She wants to work it while she's young, she says, and therefore she's staying with Paganino.
- Ricciardo begs her to consider her honor and promises to make a greater effort in a certain area.
- This is where Bartolomea loses her temper. She schools him on what honorable behavior really is.
- And then she insults him for trying to hang on to a fresh, young wife happy with his decrepit old body.
- She tells him to leave immediately or she'll scream and tell Paganino that Ricciardo tried to molest her.
- So Ricciardo goes back to Pisa without his wife, becomes insane, and dies.
- Back in Monaco, word reaches Paganino that Bartolomea's a now a widow.
- He then takes the opportunity to make Bartolomea his proper wife.