Ricciardo il Zima Trades a Horse for a Talk with Francesco’s Wife is a story of a bargain that changes meaning as soon as its participants begin to speak. Ricciardo il Zima gives Francesco Vergellesi the coveted palfrey, but secures a private audience with Francesco’s wife in return. Francesco thinks he has bought a horse without risking his household’s honor; Zima uses the silence imposed on the wife to turn a one-sided declaration into a conversation, then into an invitation. The bargain’s immediate reward is the horse, but its more consequential return is the secret affair that begins after Francesco departs for Milan.

The palfrey as bargain

In Pistoia, Francesco Vergellesi is a wealthy, capable gentleman with one conspicuous difficulty: although appointed provost of Milan and otherwise prepared for the journey, he cannot find a palfrey handsome enough to suit him. Ricciardo, a rich young man of lesser family, owns one of the finest palfreys in Tuscany. He is also known for his elaborate dress and handsome appearance, and has long courted Francesco’s beautiful wife without success.

People tell Francesco that, because of Zima’s love for his wife, he might obtain the horse by asking for it. Moved by avarice, Francesco summons Zima and tries to arrange what he wants as a sale, while expecting Zima to make it a gift. Zima refuses to sell the palfrey at any price, but offers it freely on a condition: before taking it, he must be permitted to speak with Francesco’s wife, in Francesco’s presence, at a distance where no one else can hear them. The request joins a valuable object to a carefully limited opportunity. Zima does not ask for a private meeting or for the husband to leave; he asks for a conversation under the husband’s supervision.

Francesco accepts, believing that he can acquire the horse and manage the risk. He takes Zima into his palace’s saloon, then goes to his wife’s chamber and tells her how easily the palfrey may be gained. He orders her not to answer anything Zima says. Although she objects, she submits to her husband’s command and accompanies him to the saloon. His attempt to control the exchange rests on an assumption: if the wife remains silent, Zima’s words cannot alter the arrangement.

A speech that supplies its own answer

Zima renews the agreement and sits with Francesco’s wife at a remove from everyone else. He declares the depth of his love, praising her beauty, manners, and virtue, and presents himself as wholly hers, along with everything he owns. He says that her favor would mean more to him than universal obedience to his own commands. His appeal turns the horse’s transfer into evidence of devotion: he has not merely brought an attractive animal, but is offering it as part of an attachment he describes as absolute.

The lady does not reply aloud. Her husband’s prohibition holds, and the earlier courtship—his jousts, serenades, and other attentions—had not moved her. Yet the speech affects her differently. She sighs despite trying to restrain herself, and those involuntary signs disclose an emotion she had not previously felt. Zima watches her face and notices flashes in her eyes as well as the sighs. The silence that Francesco arranged to make the encounter harmless instead gives Zima room to read the response that words are forbidden to express.

When no spoken answer comes, Zima guesses the husband’s design. Rather than stop, he answers himself in the lady’s voice. He invents a reply in which she claims that she has long loved him, explains her apparent coldness as protection of her reputation, and promises a meeting once Francesco has gone to Milan. He even provides a practical signal: two napkins displayed at the window of her chamber, which looks onto the garden. If Zima sees them, he is to come at nightfall through the garden door.

The imagined reply is not evidence that the wife has already made such a promise. It is Zima’s improvisation, delivered in her hearing while she cannot speak. But his invention gives form to a possibility the lady’s reactions have begun to open. He follows the fabricated answer with his own expression of gratitude, speaking as though her welcome were real, while she still says nothing. In this way he turns an enforced silence into an apparent exchange, and lets the husband witness a performance that he mistakes for proof of his wife’s indifference.

The husband gets the horse; Zima gets the opening

When Zima rises, Francesco asks whether he has fulfilled his promise. Zima answers that he has been allowed to speak to a marble statue. The husband is pleased: he already thinks well of his wife, and this performance improves his opinion further. He treats the horse as fairly won. Zima confirms that Francesco may have it, but regrets having asked for the conversation, since the favor has yielded him no return. His ironic complaint lets Francesco believe that the exchange has ended in the husband’s favor.

A few days later, Francesco sets out for Milan to take up the provostship. His departure changes the conditions of the arrangement. The wife remembers Zima’s words, his long devotion, and the palfrey he gave for her sake. She reflects that he will be away for six months, that she is alone, and that she may not have another opportunity to find such a lover. The story presents this reconsideration as a decision made after the conversation, not as a response she had voiced in the saloon. She chooses to act while Francesco is absent and settles the conflict between restraint and opportunity in favor of meeting Zima.

She displays two napkins in the garden window, precisely the signal Zima had proposed. He sees them, waits until night, and goes alone to the garden gate. Finding it open, he passes through a second door into the house, where the lady is waiting. They meet in her chamber. Their first night is not the only one: Zima returns many times while Francesco remains in Milan, and continues to visit after Francesco comes back. The husband’s absence makes the first meeting possible, but the affair does not end with his return.

Performance, silence, and narrative reversal

The episode turns on a sharp contrast between what Francesco believes he has secured and what the exchange actually sets in motion. He seeks a palfrey and assumes he has also protected his household by requiring his wife’s silence. Zima gives up the horse while gaining an occasion to speak; the wife, initially bound by her husband’s instruction, becomes the person who later activates the plan. The same terms thus produce different outcomes for the three participants: Francesco obtains the animal, Zima wins access to a conversation and then to the garden, and the wife moves from imposed silence to a secret choice of her own.

Zima’s self-answering speech is the episode’s central piece of ingenuity. It does not literally free the wife to speak in front of her husband; instead, it stages an answer for her and makes the encounter resemble a successful rejection. The false appearance reassures Francesco, while the emotion he notices least—the wife’s sighs and glances—matters most to the later outcome. The two napkins then carry the invented conversation out of the saloon and into action. What began as a verbal fiction becomes a real invitation when the lady chooses to use its signal.

Elisa introduces the tale within the company’s storytelling by criticizing those who test another person’s wit in the belief that they can outwit them. Her example makes the distinction between intelligence and judgment consequential: Francesco is wealthy and well advised in other matters, yet his avarice leads him to accept an arrangement whose risks he misreads. The tale also places two forms of exchange beside each other. Francesco treats the palfrey as something he can acquire through another man’s passion, while Zima gives it as the price of a chance to address the woman he loves. The bargain’s comic reversal is that the husband gets exactly the object he desired, but cannot control what his attempt to obtain it has set in motion.