Madonna Isabella
Intro
- Storyteller: Pampinea
- Pampinea is displeased by the general belief that Love turns people into idiots.
- Not so, she says, and she'll tell a story to prove it.
Story
- Madonna Isabella is—of course—a beautiful noblewoman who's married to a pretty great rich guy.
- But she gets tired of all that and decides to fall in love with Leonetto, a young man of inferior social standing.
- On the other side of things, an influential gentleman called Lambertuccio has got it bad for Isabella. She thinks he's just annoying.
- When Lambertuccio realizes that Isabella won't have him, he threatens to make her life difficult.
- So Isabella gives in and does whatever Lambertuccio asks of her.
- When the summer comes, Isabella heads out to her country villa and invites Leonetto to visit her while her husband's away.
- Lambertuccio invites himself as well.
- Isabella hides Leonetto behind her bed and begs him to stay quiet until she can smuggle him out.
- Then she lets Lambertuccio in.
- Her husband comes home. But Isabella's a quick thinker and she tells Lambertuccio to run downstairs with his dagger drawn, screaming, "I'll catch you yet!"
- Then, he's to leap into his saddle and ride away immediately.
- Lambertuccio does this, much to the amazement of Isabella's husband.
- Isabella then tells her husband a whopper of a story, loudly enough so that Leonetto can hear and act accordingly.
- She explains that a young man came rushing into the house with Lambertuccio breathing fire at his heels. The young man begged her to save him and so she hid him somewhere in her chamber.
- Isabella's husband praises her for doing the right thing; it wouldn't have been nice to have someone murdered in their own house.
- Her husband coaxes Leonetto out of his hiding place and asks what happened between himself and Lambertuccio.
- Taking his example from his lover, Leonetto explains that he'd never met Lambertuccio in his life, but that the man began chasing him with a drawn dagger for no reason.
- Isabella's husband, being a man of honor, escorts Leonetto all the way back to his own house, just to be sure he's safe.
- And Leonetto, on instruction from Isabella, tells Lambertuccio what happened, so that Isabella's husband never did find out the truth about that night.