Andreuola Escorts Her Dead Husband’s Body and Resists the Magistrate

Andreuola Escorts Her Dead Husband’s Body and Resists the Magistrate is the decisive sequence in the tragedy of Andrevuola and Gabriotto: after her secret husband dies in her arms, she refuses both to abandon his body and to let civic authority turn her grief into an opportunity for sexual coercion. Her care for the dead man becomes an act of public truth. The journey intended to preserve his dignity exposes their marriage, tests her resolve, and ends not in a new marriage but in her withdrawal from the world with the maid who had shared their secret.

Secret Marriage and Sudden Death

Andrevuola, the young and unmarried daughter of Messer Negro da Ponte Carraro of Brescia, had fallen in love with Gabriotto, a neighbor of lower social standing but, as the tale presents him, an attractive and admirable young man. With help from her serving-maid, she arranged for him to visit her father’s garden. The lovers had secretly married, hoping that no cause other than death would separate them. That hope is tested with brutal literalness when Gabriotto dies there.

Before his death, Andrevuola had dreamt that a dark, indistinct force tore Gabriotto from her embrace and carried him underground. Afraid because of the dream, she had tried to prevent his visit, but received him rather than give him reason to suspect another cause. In the garden, beside a clear fountain and among roses they had gathered, she recounted what she had seen. Later, while they embraced, Gabriotto sighed, said he was dying, and collapsed. He could not answer her; panting and sweating, he died in her lap. The dream’s image of violent separation thus returns in a more ordinary and irreversible form: no apparition takes him, but his body is suddenly beyond her reach as a living beloved.

Preparing the Body for Burial

After weeping over Gabriotto and confirming that his body had grown cold, Andrevuola summoned the serving-maid, who knew of their love. She told her that she did not wish to go on living, but first wanted to protect her honor and the secret of their relationship and ensure that Gabriotto was buried. The maid urged her not to kill herself and offered two ways to dispose of the body: bury him in the garden, where the lovers’ secret might remain undiscovered, or leave him to be found and taken to his family.

Andrevuola rejected a burial that would conceal their bond and refused to let her husband be left as though he were a dog or abandoned in the street. Instead, she sent the maid for a piece of silk kept in a coffer. Together they laid Gabriotto on it, resting his head on a pillow; Andrevuola closed his eyes and mouth and covered him with a chaplet of roses and the flowers they had gathered. The silk and roses transform the lovers’ private garden into a prepared funeral bier. She meant to carry him to his home before daybreak, so that his kin could mourn and bury him, and so that the man who had died in her arms would not be treated as an unknown body.

Before they set out, Andrevuola removed from her finger the ring with which Gabriotto had espoused her and placed it on his. She addressed him as her husband and offered the ring as a final gift, even while acknowledging that she did not know whether his soul could see her tears or any sense remained in his body. She then fainted upon him. When she recovered, she and the maid lifted the cloth bearing his body and left the garden for his house.

Arrest and Resistance at the Palace

Officers of the provostry encountered the women on the way and took them with the body. Andrevuola did not attempt to flee. She agreed to go before the Seignory and explain what had happened, but declared that none of the officers should touch her or remove anything from the corpse so long as she obeyed. Her response combines submission to examination with a sharply stated limit: she would answer for herself, but would not surrender either her body or Gabriotto’s to their handling.

At the palace, the Provost ordered physicians to examine Gabriotto. They found no evidence that he had been poisoned or killed; their conclusion was that an abscess near the heart had burst and suffocated him. That finding distinguishes the death from a crime and confirms the sudden physical cause of the loss. The Provost nevertheless used Andrevuola’s vulnerability for his own ends. He offered to release her if she consented to his sexual demands, and, when she refused, attempted to use force. Andrevuola defended herself, answering his coercion with indignation and proud resistance. The man empowered to judge her conduct becomes the immediate aggressor; her refusal prevents the examination from becoming another form of possession.

Her Father’s Judgment and the Funeral

By broad daylight, Messer Negro had heard what had happened and came to the palace with friends, demanding that his daughter be returned to him. Rather than face an accusation of the violence he had attempted, the Provost praised Andrevuola’s constancy and disclosed his own conduct. He then said that he had come to love her and would gladly marry her, if she and her father agreed, despite Gabriotto’s lower rank.

Andrevuola appeared before her father in tears. She asked his pardon for having married the man she preferred without his knowledge, but made clear that she sought pardon not to have her life spared: she wanted to die as his daughter, not as his enemy. Messer Negro, described as old, kind, and affectionate, lifted her tenderly. He admitted that he would have preferred a husband of a lineage he considered suitable, but said that, had Gabriotto lived, he would have honored him as a son-in-law to please her. Since the young man was dead, he ordered that the same honor be given to his remains.

The burial consequently became public rather than secret. Gabriotto’s body was laid in the middle of the courtyard on Andrevuola’s silken cloth and strewn with the roses. His kin and nearly all the city’s men and women gathered to mourn him. He was carried from the courtyard of the Seignory to his tomb on the shoulders of the noblest citizens, not as a commoner but with the honors of a nobleman. The father’s recognition could not restore the marriage in life, but it gave public form to the bond Andrevuola had insisted on preserving.

Refusal and Withdrawal

Some days after the funeral, the Provost renewed his proposal through Messer Negro. Andrevuola would have none of it. Her father accepted her refusal, and she and the serving-maid entered a convent renowned for its sanctity, where they lived honorably for many years. The ending closes the possibility of the Provost converting his attempted abuse into marriage: although her father had once hoped to arrange a prestigious match, and the Provost now sought her as his wife, Andrevuola chooses neither arrangement. The story’s movement is from a secret union, through the exposed body and its public mourning, to a life withdrawn from marriage and civic power.

Narrative Significance

Fiammetta tells the episode within the larger collection, presenting a sequence in which private fidelity becomes visible through practical acts: covering the body, carrying it toward the family home, guarding the ring, and insisting on honorable burial. Andrevuola’s grief does not remain merely inward. It shapes what happens to Gabriotto’s body and compels her father and the city to acknowledge the marriage that had been concealed from them.

The passage also sharply contrasts forms of authority. The Provost possesses the power to detain and release Andrevuola, yet turns that power toward coercion; Messer Negro, by contrast, begins from disappointment in her secret choice but responds to her plea with tenderness and public recognition of Gabriotto. The resulting funeral reverses the lovers’ social difference in death: the lower-status young man is borne with the honors of a noble. Andrevuola’s final refusal of the Provost and her entry into the convent complete the story’s pattern of resistance, while the maid’s continued presence links the private knowledge of the affair to its honorable conclusion.