Pedro of Aragon

Pedro of Aragon is portrayed as a king who answers Lisa’s unreturned love with compassion and restraint, using his authority to restore her to health and secure her future rather than to claim her for himself. In the story told on the tenth day, his response transforms a private passion, intensified by the distance between their social positions, into a public act of humane and generous patronage.

Identity and Setting

At the time of the French expulsion from Sicily, Pedro of Aragon has become lord of the island and holds a festival with his barons at Palermo. Lisa, the marriageable daughter of the wealthy Florentine apothecary Bernardo Puccini, sees him from a window as he jousts in the Catalan fashion. The scene establishes the unequal positions that shape the story: he is a king displaying his prowess before a court, while she is a young woman watching from beyond the arena.

Lisa falls passionately in love with him, but her awareness of her own lower station makes a happy outcome seem scarcely possible. She keeps her feelings secret, and Pedro initially neither notices nor reciprocates them. Her love consequently becomes a source of severe distress: as it grows, she becomes melancholy, falls ill, and visibly wastes away. Her parents try to comfort her and seek physicians and medicines, but nothing helps while she believes her passion hopeless.

Learning of Lisa’s Love

When Lisa sees that she may not recover, she asks her father to bring her Minuccio d’Arezzo, a singer and player welcomed at the king’s court. Bernardo supposes that his daughter wants music for comfort. Instead, Lisa entrusts Minuccio with the account of her love and asks him to make it known to Pedro. Minuccio turns her words into a song and performs it at court, where the king listens attentively and asks who composed it and for whom.

Once Minuccio has explained Lisa’s circumstances, Pedro responds with immediate concern. He praises her worth and resolves to show compassion, then sends the musician back to reassure her that he will visit towards vespers. The message itself changes Lisa’s condition: hearing that the king will come, she shows clear signs of improvement and waits eagerly for the promised visit. Pedro’s intervention thus begins before he appears in person; a response conveyed through song and trusted messenger interrupts the despair that medicine could not ease.

The Visit and Its Meaning

Pedro makes the visit under the appearance of going out for recreation. He rides to Bernardo’s house, asks to have its garden opened, and there inquires after Lisa’s health and whether she has married. Bernardo tells him that she remains unmarried but has been very ill, though she has lately improved. Pedro understands what her recovery signifies. He says it would be a pity for so fair a young woman to be lost to the world and asks to see her.

Entering her chamber with Bernardo and only two companions, Pedro takes Lisa by the hand and urges her to recover, addressing her with kindness. Lisa answers obliquely that she has burdened her small strength too heavily, and that, thanks to his goodness, he will soon see her well. Pedro alone understands her meaning. The disclosure deepens his regard for her; the story also records that he inwardly curses Fortune for having made so worthy a woman the daughter of a man of such modest standing. His sympathy recognizes both the intensity of Lisa’s feeling and the social disparity that makes its fulfilment seem impossible.

Marriage, Restraint, and Narrative Role

After Lisa recovers, Pedro consults the queen about how to reward her love. He later returns to Bernardo’s house with many barons, while the queen arrives with a company of ladies. In this public setting, Lisa is received among the women, and the king offers a concrete resolution: he will give her in marriage to a husband of his choosing, yet continue to call himself her knight. He asks no return for her devotion beyond one kiss, and makes even that dependent on the queen’s permission.

Lisa accepts the marriage arrangement as an honour and says she will hold dear the husband Pedro bestows on her. She explains that she knew from the beginning that he was a king and she Bernardo the apothecary’s daughter; her love, she says, arose from inclination rather than a calculation of what was socially fitting. She also refuses to grant the requested kiss without leave from the queen. The surviving passage presents Pedro’s proposal and Lisa’s answer as an accommodation that preserves her dignity, acknowledges her feeling, and places a limit on royal desire. His significance lies not in returning her passion as a lover, but in hearing it, relieving its immediate suffering, and turning his power into a lasting and publicly honoured settlement.