Ambrogiuolo

Ambrogiuolo is a merchant from Piacenza whose confidence in his own ingenuity turns a boast into a fraud with deadly consequences. He does not win Ginevra’s affection: he steals into her room, steals her belongings, and converts a private physical detail into false proof that she has betrayed her husband. His apparent victory over Bernabo Lomellini depends on making theft look like intimacy; when Ginevra returns under the assumed name Sicurano, that same performance becomes the evidence that exposes him.

Identity and the Paris Wager

Ambrogiuolo appears among Italian merchants assembled at an inn in Paris. Their conversation turns to wives left at home, and several merchants speak cynically of being unfaithful themselves while assuming their wives will do likewise. Bernabo stands apart, praising Ginevra’s beauty, skill, good sense, and chastity, and insisting that no length of his absence would lead her into infidelity. Ambrogiuolo mocks this confidence, treating Bernabo’s praise as a claim that Ginevra is exempt from ordinary human conduct.

The dispute becomes a wager, not simply a contest of seduction. Bernabo stakes five thousand gold florins against Ambrogiuolo’s thousand. Ambrogiuolo undertakes to go to Genoa and, within three months, return with tokens that will persuade Bernabo he has had his way with Ginevra. Bernabo agrees not to visit or write to his wife during that period. The other merchants try to prevent the bet, anticipating that it could bring grave harm, but the two men commit themselves in writing. Ambrogiuolo’s confidence is thus given a deadline and a price, while Ginevra—who has not consented to take part—is made the object of their contest.

The Intrusion into Ginevra’s Chamber

In Genoa, Ambrogiuolo makes careful inquiries about Ginevra’s household and conduct. What he learns confirms the reputation Bernabo had described, so he abandons any attempt to persuade her and turns instead to bribery and concealment. He pays a poor woman who is often welcomed in Ginevra’s home to carry a specially made chest into the bedchamber, where the woman leaves it as if it were an ordinary object entrusted to her care.

At night Ambrogiuolo lets himself out of the chest with tools. A lamp allows him to study the chamber’s arrangement, its paintings, and other notable features, details he will later present as evidence that he has been inside. Ginevra and a little girl are asleep. He uncovers Ginevra and discovers a mole beneath her left breast, surrounded by reddish hairs. He does not approach her sexually; instead, he takes a purse, a night-rail, rings, and girdles from a coffer, returns to the chest, and hides himself again. He repeats the intrusion on a second night without waking Ginevra. On the third day, the woman retrieves the chest, and Ambrogiuolo rewards her and leaves Genoa with the stolen goods.

A Theft Made to Look Like Proof

Back in Paris before the wager’s term expires, Ambrogiuolo summons the merchants who witnessed the agreement. He describes Ginevra’s bedchamber and displays the purse, night-rail, rings, and girdles, claiming that she gave them to him. Bernabo recognizes both the room and the belongings, but initially points out that the room could have been described and the objects obtained through household servants. Ambrogiuolo then supplies the detail that makes the theft seem conclusive: the mole beneath Ginevra’s left breast and the hairs around it.

Bernabo’s visible anguish confirms that Ambrogiuolo has struck the mark he intended. Bernabo accepts the claim as true, pays the wager, and returns toward Genoa intent on punishing Ginevra. Rather than entering the city himself, he waits at a country house and sends a trusted servant with a letter inviting her to join him. He privately orders the servant to kill her. During their ride, the servant draws a knife in a deep, lonely valley and tells Ginevra that she must die. She begs to know what offense warrants her death; the servant explains that he is acting on Bernabo’s command. The story records the devastating consequence of Ambrogiuolo’s lie: Bernabo trusts an intruder’s stolen evidence over his experience of his wife.

Sicurano Turns the Deception Around

Ginevra escapes the killing and takes on the name and appearance of Sicurano. By the time Ambrogiuolo’s stolen purse and girdle come into view in a shop belonging to Venetian merchants, Sicurano serves as captain of the guard of merchants and their merchandise at Acre. Ginevra recognizes the objects as her own but gives no sign of recognition. When Ambrogiuolo comes forward, he says that the goods are his and offers to give them to Sicurano.

Asked how he acquired them, Ambrogiuolo freely repeats his story: Ginevra, Bernabo’s wife, supposedly gave him the objects after he had slept with her. He also boasts of the wager, describing Bernabo as a fool and saying that he later heard Ginevra had been killed. He believes he is entertaining Sicurano with an amusing account of his success; he does not recognize the person whose honor he claims to have taken. Ginevra conceals her identity, cultivates his acquaintance, and persuades him to accompany her to Alexandria with his goods. There she arranges for him to have a warehouse and places some of her own money in his hands, giving him reason to settle in the city.

Ginevra also arranges for Bernabo, now in poor circumstances, to be brought to Alexandria and lodged privately with a friend. She has Ambrogiuolo tell his account before the Soldan, then brings both men before him. Under stern questioning and threats of severe torment, Ambrogiuolo recounts what happened, expecting that his punishment will amount only to returning the wager money and stolen goods. His confession confirms the means of his deception: he had entered Ginevra’s chamber, observed and stolen, then invented the sexual encounter. Bernabo admits that, believing the lie and consumed by anger over the money and the supposed shame, he ordered Ginevra’s death; he says his servant reported that wolves had devoured her.

Exposure and Punishment

Sicurano now reveals the woman whom both men believe dead. Bernabo recognizes Ginevra and, after his astonishment gives way to understanding, praises her constancy and virtue. At her request, the Soldan pardons Bernabo for the death he had intended for her. Bernabo falls at her feet, weeps, and asks forgiveness; Ginevra grants it and embraces him. The reconciliation makes clear that the case is not resolved by Ambrogiuolo’s confession alone: Ginevra’s survival and return establish the truth before the people whose actions had depended on believing her dead.

The Soldan orders Ambrogiuolo bound to a stake, smeared with honey, and exposed in a high place until he falls of himself. He also gives everything that belonged to Ambrogiuolo to Ginevra; the property is worth more than ten thousand doubloons. The insects of the country—flies, wasps, and gadflies—torment and consume Ambrogiuolo until only his bones remain. Left hanging in view, those bones continue to testify to his villainy. The story closes with the reversal expressed in its final judgment: the deceiver ends at the feet of the deceived.

Narrative Role

Ambrogiuolo’s scheme exploits the gap between what he knows and what Bernabo can verify. The stolen clothes and jewelry are genuine, the description of the room is accurate, and the bodily mark is real; together, these facts lend authority to a sexual claim that is false. His apparent evidence is powerful precisely because it is assembled from real observations and theft rather than from an actual encounter. The narrative distinguishes proof of access to Ginevra’s private space from proof that she consented to him.

His reversal also turns the story’s central method against him. At first he controls what the merchants and Bernabo believe by selecting details and concealing how he obtained them. Later, while still ignorant of Sicurano’s identity, he repeats the same account in Ginevra’s presence, making his own boast the instrument of his exposure. The physical objects travel from her chamber to Ambrogiuolo’s possession, then back into the hands of the woman he had presumed destroyed. His punishment and confiscated wealth complete the reversal, while Ginevra’s survival restores the reputation his fabricated proof had placed in jeopardy.