Chichibio’s one-legged crane turns a stolen dinner portion into a test of nerve and verbal agility. A cook gives a crane’s thigh to the woman he loves, then tries to make the missing limb seem natural; when his master demands proof, the birds themselves appear to expose the lie. Yet Chichibio’s answer to that exposure redirects anger into laughter, and a threatened punishment ends in reconciliation. In Neifile’s telling, the escape depends both on a foolishly bold invention and on the sudden opportunity that makes the invention usable.

The commission and the missing thigh

Currado Gianfigliazzi, introduced as a liberal and magnificent citizen who enjoys hawks and hounds, brings down a young, fat crane with his falcon. He sends it to Chichibio, his Venetian cook, with instructions to roast it well for supper. The bird is almost ready when Brunetta, a woman of the neighborhood with whom Chichibio is enamored, enters the kitchen, smells the food, and asks him for a thigh.

Chichibio first refuses. Brunetta answers that if he will not give her the portion, she will never again grant him anything that might please him. Their exchange ends not with an argument about the meal but with Chichibio’s decision to cut off a thigh and give it to her. His attachment, and the pressure she applies through it, explain the practical cause of the later deception: the missing portion is not lost in the cooking but deliberately given away.

A lie made in front of guests

At supper, Currado serves the crane to several visiting guests and notices that it has only one thigh. He summons Chichibio and asks what happened to the other. Without hesitation, the cook claims that cranes have only one thigh and one leg. The answer attempts to pass off a specific act of favoritism as a fact about nature.

Currado rejects the claim with the assurance of someone who has seen cranes before, and Chichibio doubles down: he promises that his master can see one alive. Though angry, Currado does not prolong the dispute in front of his guests. He postpones judgment until morning, when Chichibio will have to demonstrate his claim. The delay gives the cook a night in which to face the consequences, but it also turns the argument into a public test rather than an immediate punishment. Currado makes the stakes explicit: if the birds do not support the story, Chichibio will have reason to remember his master’s name with sorrow for the rest of his life.

The proof at the watercourse

At daybreak, Currado’s anger has not diminished. He has horses brought and takes Chichibio toward a watercourse where cranes can be seen in the morning. Chichibio rides behind him in great fear, knowing he must somehow make good his lie and seeing no way to escape. The scene shifts the dispute from the supper table to the birds’ habitat: the claim will now be tested against living cranes.

Before Currado spots them, Chichibio sees a dozen cranes on the bank, all standing on one leg as they sleep. He points them out as confirmation that he had told the truth the previous evening. For an instant, the carefully limited evidence seems to serve him: the birds’ visible posture matches his account. Currado approaches and calls out, “Ho! Ho!” The cranes put down their other legs, take several steps, and fly away. Their movement makes the missing limb visible, and the cook’s supposed proof collapses in front of his master.

The retort and the change of fortune

Currado asks whether Chichibio still maintains that the cranes have two legs. Confounded, the cook answers that they do, but adds that Currado did not call “Ho! Ho!” to the crane at supper; had he done so, that bird would have put out its other thigh and leg as the cranes on the bank did. The reply does not undo the theft or establish the truth of Chichibio’s original claim. Instead, it converts the exposed lie into a joke by treating the dinner bird as if it, too, had been waiting for a signal.

Currado’s response completes the reversal. His wrath gives way to mirth and laughter, and he tells Chichibio that he is right and that he himself should have called out. The threatened punishment disappears; the master and cook make peace. Neifile introduces the tale by distinguishing the useful words people devise with ready wit from answers that fortune suddenly puts into the mouths of the fearful. The ending sustains both possibilities: Chichibio’s final reply is quick and comic, while the sleeping cranes’ one-legged posture has accidentally furnished the opening for it. The tale’s decisive turn is therefore not that the lie survives scrutiny, but that an exposed lie can still become the occasion for forgiveness.