Pinuccio and Adriano
Intro
- Storyteller: Panfilo
- The name of Calandrino's crush reminds Panfilo about another woman named Niccolosa whose quick thinking prevents a scandal.
Story
- First, another literary shout-out: this tale is a source for Chaucer's "Reeve's Tale".
- There was a poor man who made his living by offering food and drink to travelers.
- Sometimes he offered lodging, but as his house was tiny, he only took in people he knew well.
- Amazingly, he also has a beautiful wife and a 15-year-old daughter, named Niccolosa.
- A young gentleman named Pinuccio (not to be confused with Pinocchio) falls in love with Niccolosa.
- She falls in love back.
- Pinuccio gets his friend Adriano to help him hook up with the girl.
- The two pretend to be coming home late to Florence one evening and to be in need of a place to sleep (the city gates are locked at a certain point, so no one can get in or go out).
- In the tiny house, the sleeping arrangements were like this: two beds against one wall, one bed against the opposite wall.
- The host placed the two men in one bed, his daughter in the second and he and his wife in the third. The wife placed a cradle with a baby at the foot of her bed.
- Cozy, right?
- After lights out, Pinuccio finds his way to Niccolosa's bed. After everyone is asleep, they, uh, entertain each other.
- But then the darn house cat knocks something over in the other room and wakes up the wife.
- Naked as she is, of course, she gets up to see what's going on.
- Adriano also gets up (call of nature). He bumps up against the cradle and moves it beside his own bed to get it out of the way.
- The wife returns to her own bed, but doesn't feel the cradle. She's mortified that she nearly got into bed with one of her guests!
- So she gropes around until she finds the cradle and climbs into bed.
- Adriano can't believe his luck and takes advantage of the situation. The wife thinks she's is in bed with her husband, so she goes along with it.
- Pinuccio realizes he now has to get back to bed with Adriano before he drifts off to sleep next to his girlfriend and gets killed in the morning.
- So he finds the bed without the cradle and hops in. Thinking the bedmate is his buddy Adriano, Pinuccio talks about how exquisite young Niccolosa was in bed. Oops.
- The host freaks out and then the game is up. The wife realizes she's in the wrong bed with the wrong man.
- But she's a quick thinker, so she hops in bed with her daughter. She convinces her husband that Pinuccio's lying, because she's been in bed beside her daughter the entire night.
- So she manages to save both their skins.
- Adriano helps by teasing Pinuccio for his stupid sleepwalking habit.
- It works.
- Because of their quick thinking, the men make it out of the house alive in the morning. Pinuccio and Niccolosa figure out other ways to continue "meeting."