Isabetta

Isabetta is a beautiful young nun in a Lombard convent whose secret relationship with a young man is exposed when the abbess arrives to punish her. The decisive reversal comes not through denial but through observation: Isabetta spots the priest’s breeches on the abbess’s head and quietly makes the accuser confront her own concealed affair. Isabetta is freed, and the convent’s practice of covertly indulging desire becomes impossible to separate from the authority that had condemned her.

Identity and Setting

Isabetta is described as a young woman of noble birth and extraordinary beauty, living among the nuns of a convent in Lombardy reputed for sanctity and religious observance. The story first presents her at the convent grille, where she speaks with a kinsman. The handsome young man accompanying him sees her, understands that she is receptive, and falls in love with her; Isabetta returns his feeling. Their affection begins within a setting organized around religious discipline and the enclosure of the convent.

Secret Relationship and Discovery

For a long while, Isabetta and her lover endure their attraction without acting on it. Eventually, he finds a way to visit her in secret, and she consents. Their meetings recur, giving both satisfaction, until one night another nun sees the young man taking leave of Isabetta’s cell. The witness tells several others. Rather than report Isabetta at once, the nuns decide to catch the couple together, keeping watch in turns and waiting for an opportunity to bring the abbess in as a witness.

Isabetta does not know that she is being watched. When she receives her lover again, the watchers divide: some remain at her cell door while others hurry to the abbess’s chamber, calling on her to rise because Isabetta has a man in her room. The abbess, Madam Usimbalda, is herself spending the night with a priest whom she secretly admits to her chamber. Startled by the nuns’ urgency and afraid they may force their way in, she dresses hastily in the dark. Mistaking the priest’s breeches for a nun’s head covering, she puts them on her head and rushes out without noticing the error.

The Confrontation and Reversal

The abbess leads the nuns to Isabetta’s cell. They break in and find Isabetta and her lover in bed together. The other nuns seize Isabetta and take her to the chapter-house, while her lover dresses and waits nearby, prepared to intervene if she is harmed. Before the assembled convent, Madam Usimbalda rebukes Isabetta for conduct that, she says, threatens the convent’s sanctity, honor, and reputation. Isabetta is ashamed and frightened, and at first cannot answer.

Then she looks up and sees the abbess’s head covering—and the points of the breeches hanging down on either side. Recognizing what has happened, Isabetta regains her composure. Rather than directly accuse Madam Usimbalda, she tells her to tie up her coif before continuing her reprimand. The abbess initially treats this as insolence, but the other nuns look up, see the garment, and understand the situation. The detail that had escaped the abbess in the darkness becomes the evidence that defeats her authority in the chapter-house.

Outcome and Narrative Significance

Once her own conduct is exposed, Madam Usimbalda changes course. She declares that the demands of the flesh cannot be resisted and permits the nuns to take their pleasures secretly when they can. Isabetta is released and returns to her lover, who continues to visit her despite the resentment of those who envy her. Nuns without lovers also pursue their fortunes in secret.

Isabetta’s quick observation turns a scene of public accusation into a reversal of judgment. Her response is controlled and indirect: the reminder about the coif lets the abbess’s visible mistake speak for itself, while forcing the assembled nuns to recognize that the convent’s moral authority is compromised by the very conduct it punishes. The resolution does not end desire or restore the convent’s professed discipline; it replaces selective condemnation with a tacit permission for secrecy.