Madam Isabella

Madam Isabella is a noble-born, beautiful married woman in a story about desire under the threat of exposure. When her husband returns unexpectedly while Leonetto is hidden in her bedroom and Messer Lambertuccio is still with her, she turns a dangerous household crisis into an apparent rescue. Her composed invention deceives her husband, protects Leonetto, and leaves the secret affair undiscovered.

Identity and Narrative Context

Pampinea tells Isabella’s story as a demonstration that love need not deprive people of their senses. Isabella is introduced as a gently born and very fair woman, married to a worthy and notable gentleman. The story locates her in Florence, where she has a country estate to which she goes in summer. That estate becomes the setting for the central crisis: her husband is away, Leonetto has come to visit, and an unwelcome second suitor arrives.

Isabella’s position combines social standing with limits on her freedom. She has a waiting-woman, a household, and a country property, but her husband’s unexpected return immediately makes her private choices perilous. Her story belongs among the Seventh Day’s tales of wives and lovers negotiating jealousy, surveillance, and the danger of discovery. Pampinea’s framing makes Isabella’s intelligence crucial: the episode asks not whether she is free of risk, but how well she can read and redirect it.

Lovers, Pressure, and Unequal Choice

Isabella and Leonetto are mutually enamoured, and their relationship has already been consummated. Leonetto is described as well-bred and agreeable, though not of great extraction. The story says that her husband does not altogether satisfy her, and it presents her desire for Leonetto as reciprocal rather than one-sided. When her husband is away, she sends for Leonetto to join her at the estate; he comes at once, pleased by the invitation.

Messer Lambertuccio’s connection with Isabella is sharply different. He is a notable man who becomes intensely enamoured of her, but she finds him disagreeable and tiresome and cannot bring herself to love him. His repeated messages fail, so he threatens to dishonour her unless she submits to his wishes. Knowing his character and fearing him, Isabella yields. The narrative thus distinguishes her chosen love for Leonetto from her coerced compliance with Lambertuccio; both men are in her household when the unexpected return of her husband turns their different claims into immediate danger.

The Household Crisis and Isabella’s Ruse

One day, while Isabella is at the country estate and her husband is away, she has Leonetto summoned. Lambertuccio learns of the husband’s absence, rides there alone, and is admitted. Isabella is closeted with Leonetto when her waiting-woman reports the visitor. Fearful of Lambertuccio, Leonetto hides behind the bed curtains. Isabella receives the newcomer as cheerfully as she can, but the encounter becomes still more dangerous when he embraces and kisses her and takes his pleasure in her in a locked chamber.

The maid then warns Isabella that her husband has returned and is already near the courtyard. Isabella recognizes the trap: Leonetto is concealed inside, while Lambertuccio’s palfrey is tied outside and makes his presence impossible to hide. Rather than let the two men meet or attempt an implausible concealment, she gives Lambertuccio precise instructions. He is to take his naked hanger, descend with an angry air, and leave as though pursuing someone who has escaped him. If her husband questions him, he must repeat that he will find the man elsewhere and ride away without stopping.

Lambertuccio follows the plan. Her husband sees the palfrey and then encounters the armed visitor as he comes down the stairs, declaring that he will find his quarry elsewhere. Isabella meets her husband at the stairhead in a show of disarray and fear. She explains that an unknown young man had fled into the house, begging for protection, and that Lambertuccio had pursued him with a hanger. She says that she stood between the pursuer and the chamber door, preventing him from entering. The account turns her actual predicament into a scene of hospitality and defense, casting her as the person who protected a stranger from violence.

Aftermath and Narrative Significance

The husband accepts Isabella’s explanation. He considers it a reproach to the household that a man might have been killed there and praises her for intervening. He calls Leonetto out of hiding, believing him to be the frightened stranger, and offers to take him safely home. After supper, the husband rides with Leonetto to Florence and leaves him at his own house. The man whose return threatened the affair therefore becomes its unwitting escort.

That evening Leonetto privately approaches Lambertuccio, following the arrangement Isabella has taught him; the story does not specify what they settle between themselves. Although people talk about the incident afterward, Isabella’s husband never discovers the deception. Her success rests on more than a quick lie: she notices what can and cannot be concealed, uses the palfrey and Lambertuccio’s reputation as parts of a plausible account, and gives each person a role that carries the danger away from her door. Pampinea’s example makes her alertness—not a miraculous escape from constraint—the decisive force in the ending.