Gulfardo

Gulfardo’s story turns credit into a trap: his reputation as a dependable borrower enables him to expose Madam Ambruogia’s attempt to sell her favors, while making the two hundred gold florins pass through her hands as repayment rather than payment. The outcome rests on a precise financial maneuver, but it also depends on the woman’s own confirmation of a transaction whose meaning she has mistaken.

Identity and Reputation

Gulfardo is a German in the pay of the state at Milan. The tale introduces him as physically sturdy and exceptionally loyal to those who employ him, adding a period stereotype about Germans while making clear that Gulfardo is represented as an exception to it. His reliability is not merely a personal virtue: it has a practical value in the credit economy of the story. Because he repays loans punctually, many merchants are willing to lend him substantial sums at low interest.

That reputation supplies the means for his later stratagem. Gulfardo can approach Guasparruolo Cagastraccio for a loan without arousing suspicion, and the sum he receives is exactly the amount his wife has demanded. His established standing as a trustworthy debtor thus becomes the instrument by which he can construct an apparently ordinary repayment in front of a witness.

The Affair and the Demand for Payment

During his stay in Milan, Gulfardo falls in love with Madam Ambruogia, the beautiful wife of the wealthy merchant Guasparruolo Cagastraccio, who is also his friend and acquaintance. Gulfardo conducts his attachment discreetly: neither the husband nor anyone else suspects it. He sends word to Madam Ambruogia, asks for her favors, and declares himself ready to do whatever she might command.

After discussion, Madam Ambruogia agrees on two conditions. Their arrangement must remain secret, and Gulfardo must give her two hundred gold florins, which she says she needs for a particular purpose. The tale makes the price, rather than secrecy alone, the turning point in Gulfardo’s response. He had regarded her as a woman of worth; learning that she will consent for money makes him indignant and turns his fervent love nearly into hatred. Instead of simply breaking off the arrangement, he agrees to her terms while preparing to make the payment appear to be something else.

Madam Ambruogia tells him that her husband will soon travel to Genoa on business and promises to let Gulfardo know when to visit. Before that opportunity arrives, Gulfardo goes to Guasparruolo and asks to borrow two hundred gold florins at the same rate of interest the merchant ordinarily charges him. Guasparruolo agrees and counts out the money. The borrowed sum is therefore not an independent payment from Gulfardo’s own resources: it is the exact amount he will carry back into the household from which it came.

A Repayment Staged in the Wife’s Presence

When Guasparruolo has departed for Genoa, Madam Ambruogia sends for Gulfardo. He comes to her house with the trusted companion whose presence he had already disclosed to her as the one person who would know of their arrangement. In front of this witness, Gulfardo first places the two hundred florins in Madam Ambruogia’s hands and presents them as money she should give to her husband when he returns. She accepts the coins, supposing that Gulfardo is protecting the secret by making the transfer look innocent to his companion. She turns them out on the table, counts the full amount, and puts them away.

Only after this witnessed handoff does Gulfardo enter her chamber and take his pleasure with her. The story specifies that their intimacy continues on several nights before Guasparruolo comes back from Genoa. This recurrence matters to the design: the deception is not a single hurried encounter but an arrangement maintained until the moment Gulfardo can publicly establish that the money was returned to the husband’s household.

The Account Is Canceled

After Guasparruolo’s return, Gulfardo waits until he is with his wife and approaches him alongside the companion who witnessed the transfer. He explains that he had no need of the borrowed money after all, and that he returned the two hundred florins to Madam Ambruogia; accordingly, he asks Guasparruolo to cancel the debt. The husband turns to his wife to verify the claim. With the witness present, she cannot deny having received the money, and she confirms that she has it, adding that she had not yet remembered to tell her husband.

Guasparruolo accepts her confirmation, tells Gulfardo that the account is settled, and promises to put the debt in order. Gulfardo leaves without owing the two hundred florins. Madam Ambruogia, now unable to retain the money as her own, gives her husband the sum that had served as the dishonorable price of her consent. The transaction has returned the borrowed capital to its source, while the witnessed version of events leaves the husband satisfied that his loan has been repaid.

Narrative Role and Significance

The opening storyteller presents Gulfardo’s action as a man’s trick against a woman, and calls it a just requital rather than simple deception. The story’s moral framing distinguishes between a woman who yields for money and one who yields for love, invoking Madam Filippa’s case at Prato as a contrast. Gulfardo’s own behavior is therefore praised within the tale’s argument, even though his success depends on misleading both the woman, about what the witnessed transfer will mean, and the husband, about why the money changed hands.

The episode makes commercial trust do double work. Gulfardo’s record of repayment wins him the loan; the same reputation makes his claim of repayment credible. The companion supplies independent confirmation, the coins supply a visible object to be counted, and Madam Ambruogia’s own acknowledgment completes the proof. She believes the performance protects their secret, but it instead binds her to the husband’s account. Gulfardo’s defining action is not simply obtaining an affair without spending money: it is converting a private bargain into a public repayment, leaving his lover with the loss and himself with no outstanding debt.