Il Zima Begins Trysts with Vergellesi’s Wife

Ricciardo il Zima Begins Trysts with Vergellesi’s Wife is the turn from frustrated courtship to a concealed, continuing affair. A private conversation arranged as part of a bargain for a palfrey gives Ricciardo il Zima an opportunity, but it is Vergellesi’s wife who later chooses to act: when her husband is away in Milan, she sends the agreed signal and receives Ricciardo il Zima at night in her garden.

The Bargain and the Silence

Ricciardo il Zima has given a palfrey to Francesco Vergellesi in exchange for the chance to speak with Vergellesi’s wife. When she remains silent during their arranged conversation, Ricciardo il Zima tells her husband that he had been promised a conversation but was made to speak with a marble statue. Francesco Vergellesi laughs, pleased by the exchange, and claims the palfrey; Ricciardo il Zima answers that he has paid for it without receiving what he hoped to gain.

The exchange leaves the wife with Ricciardo il Zima’s words, his affection, and the horse given for her sake. Her silence in the first encounter does not settle what she will do. Instead, the episode pauses over the interval between the failed conversation and her later decision.

The Signal and the Meeting

Francesco Vergellesi departs for Milan to take up the provostship, and his wife understands that he will not return for six months. Recalling Ricciardo il Zima and the opportunity before her, she considers that she is alone and has time in which to act. She decides that she should not let the opportunity pass, then places two napkins in the garden window, following the signal Ricciardo il Zima had described.

Ricciardo il Zima sees the sign and comes secretly, alone, to the garden gate that night. Finding it open, he passes through to a second door into the house, where Vergellesi’s wife is waiting for him. She rises to meet him with evident joy. They go upstairs to her chamber and share the night together. The signal converts an earlier, frustrated exchange into a deliberately arranged rendezvous.

An Affair That Continues

The meeting is not presented as a single lapse. Ricciardo il Zima returns many times while Francesco Vergellesi is in Milan, to the satisfaction of both lovers, and continues to visit even after the husband comes back. That final detail extends the consequence beyond the husband’s absence: the affair persists alongside the return of the household’s ordinary circumstances.

The episode’s movement is from a woman’s silence under a husband-arranged encounter to her own private signal and repeated choice. Francesco Vergellesi’s departure creates the immediate opportunity, but the plot gives Vergellesi’s wife the decisive action: she recalls Ricciardo il Zima, opens the way for him, and sustains their meetings. The palfrey that began as the price of a conversation thus remains bound to an affair that outlasts the journey for which the husband left.