Alberto of Bologna’s reply to the ladies

Alberto of Bologna’s reply to the ladies is a comic reversal in which an elderly physician meets public teasing with a carefully shaped analogy and leaves his would-be mockers chastened. The leek-and-lupin comparison recasts the contest of age and attractiveness as a contest of judgment: the women who think to expose his unlikely love are made to consider whether they have mistaken youthful display for worth.

The physician and the occasion

Alberto of Bologna is introduced as a famous physician at Bologna, nearly seventy years old and still susceptible to love. After seeing the beautiful widow Malgherida de' Ghisolieri at an entertainment, he becomes so taken with her that he does not rest well unless he has seen her face that day. He repeatedly passes her house, on foot or horseback as occasion allows. His visible persistence gives Malgherida and other women grounds for amusement: they treat his mature age and his passion as an incongruous spectacle, as though love belonged only to the young.

A courteous trap

On a holiday, Malgherida sits with a group of women before her house and sees Alberto approaching. The women agree to receive and honor him, then tease him about loving a widow who is courted by handsome, young, and lively gentlemen. Their hospitality supplies the setting for the challenge: they lead him into a shady courtyard, bring out choice wines and sweetmeats, and put their question in civil, pleasant terms. Alberto is thus confronted not with open hostility but with a polished social performance that expects him to blush under collective scrutiny.

The leek-and-lupin retort

Alberto answers without rejecting the premise that he is old or that the widow has younger suitors. Instead, he argues that age removes the bodily vigor required for amorous exercises, not the will or discernment to recognize what deserves love; experience, he suggests, can improve the latter. He then makes his hope depend on the women’s own habits of choice. Recalling ladies eating lupins and leeks, he distinguishes the leek’s less disagreeable, more agreeable head from its ill-savored leaves, which the women, through what he calls a perverse appetite, commonly choose to eat. He asks whether they might make the same mistake in choosing lovers: if so, he may be the one they choose while the younger gallants are rejected. The analogy converts their comparison of his age with youthful rivals into a teasing judgment of their taste, and makes his own age the grounds of a possible advantage rather than a disqualification.

Reversal and narrative lesson

The women are abashed and acknowledge that Alberto has courteously chastised their presumptuous attempt. Malgherida says that his love is dear to her as the love of a man of worth and learning, and offers to grant his every pleasure except what would compromise her honor. Alberto rises, thanks her, and departs with his companions amid laughter and merriment. The scene ends without claiming that the widow becomes his lover: its resolution is the defeat of the attempted mockery and the preservation of her stated boundary.

The story is presented as a lesson in measuring one’s wit before trying to embarrass another person. The women intend to discomfit Alberto, but his answer redirects attention to their own judgment and leaves them discomfited instead. Its comic force rests on a neat reversal: an old man whom the company treats as an unlikely lover proves the most composed speaker in the courtyard, while the women’s courteous trap becomes the occasion for his rebuke.