Andreuccio di Pietro—Fiordaliso

Andreuccio di Pietro and Fiordaliso are joined, in their first encounter in Naples, by a kinship that exists only in Fiordaliso’s carefully fashioned story. She presents herself as his half-sister, but the supposed reunion is a trap: she uses information about his family, staged signs of gentility, and his own credulity to separate him from his money. Their relation is therefore less a meeting between relatives than a performance in which false intimacy makes the robbery possible.

An Unequal Encounter

Andreuccio di Pietro arrives in Naples from Perugia as a young horse dealer, carrying five hundred gold florins to buy horses. He has never before been away from home. At the market, while considering horses and bargaining without reaching an agreement, he repeatedly takes out his purse to show that he is prepared to buy. This conspicuous display gives Fiordaliso the opportunity to notice both his money and his inexperience before he knows that she is watching him. Fiordaliso does not approach him directly at the market. An older Sicilian woman recognizes Andreuccio and greets him warmly; because she once lived with his father, she knows his circumstances and can tell Fiordaliso who he is, where he comes from, what brought him to Naples, and where he is staying. Fiordaliso draws this information from the older woman, then arranges to keep her away from Andreuccio for the rest of the day. The separation matters: the source of the information is removed, leaving Fiordaliso free to turn what she has learned into a seemingly personal discovery.

The Sisterhood She Invents

Towards evening, Fiordaliso sends a maid, whom she has instructed in the task, to find Andreuccio at his inn. The maid says that a gentlewoman of the city wishes to speak with him. He readily agrees to follow her, taking his own good looks as evidence that the invitation must be romantic. He tells no one at the inn where he is going. His willingness to interpret an unknown woman’s summons as an expression of attraction carries him directly into Fiordaliso’s house in Malpertugio, a street whose name signals the quarter’s ill repute, although he does not understand the warning. Fiordaliso meets him at the stairhead with open arms. She embraces him, weeps, kisses his forehead, and welcomes him as Andreuccio, then leads him through rooms furnished with fine clothes and rich household goods. Her chamber has a fine curtained bed, and the room’s perfumes and furnishings help him imagine that she is a lady of high standing. Before explaining herself, she lets the affectionate reception and the appearance of the house establish the impression that he has entered a respectable, prosperous household. Seated with him, Fiordaliso claims that she is his sister. She says that their father had lived in Palermo, where he was beloved, and that her mother, a gentle-born widow, had loved him and borne her. According to her account, their father left for Perugia when she was a little girl and never returned or acknowledged her. The story turns Andreuccio’s limited knowledge into apparent confirmation: he knows that his father had been in Palermo, but had never heard of this woman or her mother. Fiordaliso’s invention is built around a fact he recognizes, then surrounded by details that explain why he had not known about the supposed daughter.

Trust Built from Recognition

Andreuccio is persuaded not merely by the claimed family connection, but by how it is delivered. He sees Fiordaliso’s tears and embraces, remembers his father’s connection to Palermo, and accepts her account as more than true. He tells her that he had known nothing of her, yet welcomes the unexpected discovery of a sister while alone in Naples. His response makes the emotional logic of the deception plain: because the relationship is presented as a recovered bond, his ignorance seems to him a reason for surprise rather than a reason for suspicion. Fiordaliso reinforces the story by asking about his relatives by name. He answers her questions, and their exchange gives him the sense that she possesses intimate family knowledge. In fact, she has already been given his background by the older woman. The information flows in only one direction: Fiordaliso has prepared for the meeting, while Andreuccio thinks they are learning about one another as siblings. When he tries to leave because it is supper-time, Fiordaliso objects that he should not leave a sister he has only just found to eat at his inn. She says that her husband is away and offers to entertain him herself. Andreuccio yields. She calls for Greek wine and confections, extending the hospitality and making the supposed family welcome feel like the natural continuation of their reunion. His choice to stay gives the deception more time to work and leaves him inside her household, away from the inn and anyone who might question the story.

The Betrayal Revealed

The fraud becomes unmistakable when Andreuccio, alone in the chamber, asks a servant where he may relieve himself. He steps onto a loose plank over a privy in the narrow alley between two houses; the plank gives way, and he falls into the filth below. He survives the fall without injury, but is left in the alley without his clothes. The accident is the immediate reversal of Fiordaliso’s carefully furnished welcome: the supposed brother who had been received among perfumes and fine household goods is suddenly outside, soiled and separated from the room where he left his belongings. As soon as the servant reports the fall, Fiordaliso searches the chamber. She finds Andreuccio’s clothes and, with them, the purse he had foolishly kept about his person. Once she has obtained what she sought, she takes no further concern for him and hastens to shut the door through which he fell. The contrast clarifies the purpose of the intimacy: the embraces and family story have secured access to the valuables, while the open purse he had displayed at the market supplies the object of the scheme. Andreuccio calls for the servant, receives no answer, and only then begins to suspect the deception. He scrambles over a low wall into the street and returns to the house, where he knocks and demands recognition as Fiordaliso’s brother. A woman at the window denies knowing either him or the name he gives, treating his appeal as the drunken invention of a stranger. The denial erases the kinship as abruptly as Fiordaliso had invented it. In that moment, Andreuccio understands that he has lost both his five hundred florins and the sister he believed he had found. The encounter makes their relation a study in recognition used against the person who longs to recognize. Fiordaliso has the advantage of prior knowledge and rehearsed intimacy; Andreuccio supplies the trust that completes the deception. His father’s real journey between Palermo and Perugia is the hinge on which her false family history turns, while his desire to believe that he has found kin in an unfamiliar city prevents him from testing it. The kinship ends not in reunion but in a locked door, a stolen purse, and a stranger’s denial.