Maddalena

Maddalena is the middle of three sisters whose flight from Marseilles begins as a shared escape into wealth and romantic freedom but ends in betrayal and violence. When Ninetta is captured and threatened with death, Maddalena bargains her own safety and reputation for her sister’s release. Folco discovers what she has done and kills her; her sacrifice saves Ninetta from execution, but not from the chain of violence that follows.

Identity and Circumstances

Maddalena is one of the daughters of Narnald Cluada, a wealthy merchant of Marseilles, who is away in Spain when the sisters’ lives change. Ninetta and Maddalena are twins, both fifteen; their younger sister Bertella is fourteen. Their family is waiting for their father’s return before arranging their marriages, but the three have already formed attachments of their own.

Maddalena loves Folco, a wealthy young man whose father has died. Ughetto, likewise wealthy, is in love with Bertella. Ninetta is secretly involved with Restagnone, a young man of gentle birth but poor means. These relationships place the sisters’ different prospects together: two lovers have substantial resources, while Restagnone has little, and he becomes the person who proposes a common plan.

The Flight to Crete

Restagnone presents the young men’s wealth as the means to carry all three couples away and establish a life together. He proposes that Folco and Ughetto pool their riches with him, choose a country in which to live, and take their beloveds along. The plan promises the sisters escape from the marriage arrangements awaiting them at home, but it also makes their departure depend on a scheme devised by a man whose own interests are not equal to the others’ resources.

Ninetta knows her sisters’ inclinations and persuades them to join the venture. On the appointed night, Maddalena and her sisters open their father’s great coffer and take a large quantity of money and jewels. They leave the house as arranged, meet their lovers, and board the brigantine. After reaching Genoa, they sail from port to port and arrive in Crete before the eighth day. There the couples buy substantial estates near Candia and build handsome houses, living with servants, hounds, hawks, and horses. Maddalena’s escape thus leads first to comfort and apparent independence, supported by wealth taken from her family’s household.

The Reversal and Maddalena’s Bargain

The security of the new life does not last. Restagnone, once able to enjoy Ninetta without hindrance, grows tired of her and begins courting a beautiful, noble local woman. Ninetta learns of his attention and becomes so jealous that she monitors his movements and reproaches him. The story’s turn from abundance to danger is especially sharp: the freedom that had seemed to guarantee happiness cannot protect the lovers from changing desire or its consequences.

After Restagnone dies, the duke has Ninetta seized and questions her without torture, obtaining the knowledge he seeks about the death. He intends to punish her by fire. Folco and Ughetto, and through them their beloveds, learn why she has been taken and fear that she will be condemned. Maddalena’s response is not to wait upon their attempts to save her. The duke has long courted her, though she has never before consented to gratify him. She sends him word that she will comply with his wishes if he returns Ninetta safe and keeps the arrangement secret.

The duke agrees after deliberating. He has Folco and Ughetto detained under the pretext of questioning them, then secretly goes to Maddalena. He stages Ninetta’s removal in a sack, as though she is to be drowned that night, but instead brings her to Maddalena and delivers her safely the next morning. The duke treats the night as payment and asks that it not be the last. Maddalena has secured her sister’s release, but the secrecy she requested cannot govern what happens next.

Death and Consequences

Folco and Ughetto are released after hearing that Ninetta was supposedly drowned. They return home to comfort their beloveds for the sister they believe dead. Folco soon discovers that Ninetta is in the palace. Suspicious because he knows the duke has desired Maddalena, he presses her for an explanation. Maddalena invents a story, but Folco does not believe it and forces her to confess what happened. He draws his sword and kills her despite her pleas for mercy.

Folco then conceals the murder behind a false account of rescue. He tells Ninetta that he will take her somewhere safe, supposedly as Maddalena had arranged, and she leaves with him at night without learning that her sister is dead. He takes only the little money he can lay hands on, and the two depart by sea; their destination is never discovered. Maddalena’s bargain therefore succeeds in its immediate purpose but cannot protect her from Folco’s rage or Ninetta from his deception.

On the following day, the duke finds Maddalena murdered. People who hate or envy Ughetto accuse him, and the duke seizes Ughetto and Bertella, who know nothing of Folco and Ninetta’s departure. Under pressure, they confess to a killing they did not commit. They bribe their guards with money they had hidden for emergencies and escape by night, leaving their possessions behind. They reach Rhodes but live there in poverty and distress. Maddalena’s death is thus part of a wider collapse: her sister disappears, her lover becomes a murderer and fugitive, and Bertella and Ughetto lose their home and fortune.

Narrative Significance

Emilia introduces the episode as a story of Fortune’s grievous changes, in which an apparently happy outcome may fail to undo the suffering that preceded it. Maddalena’s role gives that pattern a human and costly form. She moves from a clandestine flight financed by her father’s wealth to a life of apparent plenty, then risks herself to rescue Ninetta when the household’s precarious safety disintegrates. The decisive act is at once an exercise of choice and a bargain constrained by the duke’s power over her sister’s fate.

The story does not make the rescue a simple triumph. Maddalena’s private agreement with the duke succeeds in preventing Ninetta’s immediate execution, but Folco’s discovery transforms her sacrifice into the cause of her own death. Secrecy, which she made a condition of the bargain, proves fragile; the sister she saves is carried away under false pretenses, while those left behind are punished for a murder they did not commit. Through this sequence, Maddalena’s brief intervention becomes the hinge between Ninetta’s reprieve and the final dispersal of the three sisters and their lovers.