Pietro di Vinciolo
Intro
- Storyteller: Dioneo
- Dioneo can't explain why, but it seems as though humans are more likely to laugh at something wicked than at something virtuous.
- He mentions that as a storyteller, his only function is to please and make them merry, so he'll tell a story that's pretty racy but awesome nevertheless.
- He hopes the ladies can take what's good in it and cast aside the naughtiness when it is over.
Story
- A man called Pietro di Vinciolo decides to distract peers from his homosexuality by taking a wife.
- But he makes a mistake: he chooses a young redhead. You know those redheads—Boccaccio says they can take on two husbands.
- Pietro's really not up to the challenge, so his wife decides to find pleasure elsewhere.
- She enlists the help of a local older woman who puts on a good show of religious devotion but really is a bit of a…madame.
- She encourages Pietro's wife to have a bit of fun while she's still young. She'll look out for a suitable man. Pietro's wife gives her a piece of meat by way of payment.
- The old woman arranges a variety of men for Pietro's wife and the young woman's quite satisfied.
- But one evening, Pietro returns home early from a dinner at his friend Ercolano's house and catches his wife on the hop.
- She hides her lover under the chicken coop and pretends that all is well.
- Pietro explains why he's home so early. Ercolano's wife had hidden her lover in the cupboard under the stairs where she'd been bleaching her veils. The young man gave himself away by sneezing because of the chemicals.
- You can imagine the scene, and Pietro had to carry the young lover out of the house before Ercolano had time to find a knife.
- Pietro's wife tries to cover her own tracks by loudly denouncing Ercolano's wife. How could she do such a thing? And she's so old, too!
- Pietro goes off to bed without any supper and his wife thinks she's off the hook.
- But Fortune has other plans. Fate, in the form of a donkey, wanders over and tramps on the lover's fingers, which are sticking out from under the chicken coop.
- He lets out a blood-curdling scream and Pietro rushes over to check things out.
- And really, Pietro couldn't be more pleased. He'd been after this young man for his own purposes.
- So he chews his wife out for blaming Ercolano's wife, saying that women are all alike.
- She notices that he doesn't seem to be all that angry. And he does seem to be holding her lover's hand an awful lot.
- She tells Pietro that she really just wants what every wife wants. At least she takes her pleasure in men of high social standing.
- Pietro tells her that he'll work things out to everyone's mutual satisfaction.
- So she brings out some supper and they make a merry evening of it.
- Dioneo says that he doesn't recall exactly how Pietro worked it all out, but the young man spent the next day trying to figure out if he'd spent more of the night with the husband or the wife.