Anselmo's test of Camilla's fidelity

Anselmo’s test of Camilla’s fidelity is the self-defeating experiment at the center of the embedded tale The Ill-Advised Curiosity. Certain that Camilla is virtuous, Anselmo nevertheless demands that Lothario put her virtue under pressure so he can verify it. The test turns trust into a contrivance: Anselmo arranges the conditions, misreads what he sees, and helps create the betrayal he set out to rule out.

The Test Anselmo Demands

Anselmo introduces his plan while walking with Lothario, whom he calls a treasured friend, and describes his marriage to Camilla and his good fortune as blessings. Yet he says he is troubled by a desire to know whether she is as good as he believes. In his reasoning, virtue has not been proved until it has resisted temptation: promises, gifts, tears, and the pursuit of a suitable suitor must test it as fire tests gold. He imagines that even failure would bring him the satisfaction of knowing the truth, although it would cause pain.

The proposed trial is not a remote or impartial test. Anselmo asks Lothario himself to court Camilla, believing that his friend’s silence will keep any damage from becoming public and that the affair can be taken only far enough to establish the result. Anselmo promises to provide opportunities and whatever means the attempt requires. His confidence rests both on Camilla’s presumed virtue and on Lothario’s loyalty, but the plan puts both relationships at risk at once.

Lothario’s Objections and Reluctant Agreement

Lothario first rejects the request as incompatible with friendship and Christian duty. He argues that Anselmo would be risking his honor and life in the social sense, while Lothario would also compromise his own honor by helping to injure his friend. He urges Anselmo not to disturb the peace of a marriage that has given him no cause for suspicion. Anselmo acknowledges the force of this advice, yet compares his desire to an irrational craving that must be cured by an artifice. He reduces the requested betrayal to a harmless beginning: Lothario need only pretend to court Camilla, he says, and can later explain the scheme to her.

Lothario fears that Anselmo will confide the plan to someone less restrained, so he agrees to take it on himself, intending at first to satisfy his friend without compromising Camilla. The arrangements make the contradiction plain. Anselmo will leave Lothario alone with Camilla, provide money and jewels for presents, and even offers to supply verses and music for the courtship. Lothario accepts these instructions with an intention unlike Anselmo’s, while remaining troubled by the task.

False Reports Become Part of the Experiment

At the first arranged opportunity, Anselmo leaves Camilla and Lothario together at the table, telling Camilla not to leave Lothario alone. Lothario avoids speaking to her and falls asleep in his chair. When Anselmo returns, however, he assumes that enough time has passed for the two to have conversed. Lothario says he has praised Camilla’s beauty and wit, presenting this mild pretense as the start of a careful approach. Anselmo approves and promises to provide further opportunities.

For several days Lothario claims to have spoken to Camilla, while reporting that she has shown no willingness to accept dishonorable advances. Anselmo treats her apparent resistance to words as only the first stage of his experiment. He offers two thousand crowns in gold for Lothario to present to her and another two thousand for jewels, convinced that gifts will test her more conclusively. Lothario accepts the money but continues to invent accounts of a courtship he has not actually pursued.

Anselmo eventually hides in a room and watches through a keyhole. For more than half an hour he sees Lothario say nothing to Camilla, exposing the falsehood of the reports. Confronted, Lothario is ashamed and swears that he will now do what Anselmo asked without further deception. Anselmo believes him. To make the opportunity less likely to be interrupted, he arranges a pressing invitation from a friend in a nearby village and decides to be away for eight days.

Camilla’s Warning and the Scheme’s Reversal

Before Anselmo leaves, Camilla objects to his instruction that Lothario should occupy the household in his absence. She argues that it is not becoming for another man to take her husband’s place at table and says she can manage the house herself. Anselmo insists that she obey. During the first three days of his absence, Camilla keeps servants near her, especially Leonela, her childhood companion and attendant. Lothario does not speak to her at first, but the opportunity Anselmo has provided allows him to dwell on Camilla’s qualities; his resolve to remain loyal weakens.

After Anselmo has been away for three days, Lothario begins to court Camilla in earnest. Astonished, she withdraws without replying and decides to warn her husband by letter. She writes that she feels uneasy without him and that the man he left to protect the household seems more concerned with his own pleasure than with Anselmo’s interests. The letter gives Anselmo exactly the wrong impression: instead of recognizing a warning, he takes it as evidence that Lothario has begun the test successfully. He orders Camilla not to leave the house and promises to return soon.

Camilla is left with two dangers as she sees them: remaining exposes her to Lothario’s advances, while leaving would defy her husband. She stays, hoping to resist in silence and to avoid a quarrel between the men. Lothario continues to press his suit with praise, promises, tears, and entreaties. Camilla’s resolve gives way, and she yields to him. Leonela alone knows what has happened between them. Lothario does not tell Camilla that Anselmo arranged the courtship, fearing that she would think his love accidental or insincere.

Anselmo’s Misreading and the Meaning of the Test

When Anselmo returns, he does not realize that the marriage has been altered by the experiment he devised. Lothario tells him that Camilla resisted his words and promises, rejected presents, and remained a model of purity. He returns the money and claims not to have needed it. The lie preserves Anselmo’s confidence precisely when the test has produced the opposite of the result he thinks he has obtained.

The episode’s reversal follows from Anselmo’s insistence on converting confidence into proof. Lothario initially identifies the danger, but Anselmo makes refusal difficult by threatening to entrust the plan to someone else; he then supplies opportunities, money, and prolonged absence. His surveillance catches Lothario’s first deception, yet instead of abandoning the scheme, it makes the next stage more deliberate. Camilla’s letter, written to alert him, becomes confirmation in his mind that the test is working. The experiment therefore reveals less about an abstract measure of virtue than about the damage caused when suspicion is made into a plan and trust is treated as something to be tested at another person’s expense.