Rinieri’s Snowy-Night Deception to Avenge Himself on Elena is a revenge episode built around a cruel reversal: Elena first leaves the scholar Rinieri freezing in her courtyard for a night, then becomes the victim of a deception that exposes her to cold, heat, thirst, and public disgrace. His retaliation comes when she seeks his help to recover a lover who has abandoned her. By feigning knowledge of necromancy, Rinieri lures her into a test whose details she accepts as the means to regain love; in fact, each instruction makes her more vulnerable to his revenge.

The first deception

Pampinea introduces the episode as a just retribution for a townswoman whose own trick recoils upon her, nearly costing her life. Elena has been making sport of Rinieri, a scholar who loves her. She encourages his attentions while keeping him at a distance, accepts his letters and gifts, and answers his entreaties with vague assurances. Her lover, meanwhile, has grown jealous of the scholar. To prove that the jealousy is unfounded, Elena arranges a night-time meeting that seems to promise Rinieri the fulfilment of his hopes.

On the evening of the Feast of the Nativity, Elena has Rinieri brought by her maid into a courtyard and locked inside. Heavy snow has covered the ground. While he waits, Elena and her lover watch unseen from a window as the maid tells him that a brother is still visiting and that Elena will come as soon as she is free. Rinieri believes the explanation and asks only that Elena not worry about him. The pair remain indoors, taking pleasure in his distress as the snow and cold lengthen his wait.

Near midnight, Elena goes with her lover to the courtyard door and speaks to Rinieri through a small opening without letting him in. She claims that the brother is still there, promises to return, and gives the door’s supposed noise as the reason she cannot admit him. Rinieri pleads for shelter and says he can scarcely feel himself from the cold. Elena answers by mocking the contrast between his professed burning love and his present chill. She then returns to bed with her lover, leaving Rinieri outside through the night.

Injury becomes a plan

As the hours pass, Rinieri paces the courtyard, tries the door, and searches for another way out. When dawn approaches, he understands that Elena has fooled him. His long-held love turns suddenly to hatred, and he begins looking for a way to repay the injury. At daybreak the maid opens the door and pretends to sympathize, again suggesting that Elena will make things right another time. Rinieri conceals his anger. He answers calmly, says that he understands Elena is not to blame, and leaves without revealing what he intends.

The night’s cold has a lasting physical cost. Rinieri returns home exhausted and soon finds that his arms and legs have stiffened. Physicians treat him with strong remedies; it takes time for them to loosen the contracted sinews, and the recovery is difficult. Youth and the arrival of warm weather help him recover. Once well again, he continues to act as though he is more deeply in love with Elena than ever, keeping his resentment hidden until an opportunity arises.

That opportunity comes when Elena’s lover falls for another woman and refuses to see or please her. Elena grieves over the loss. Her maid, seeking a remedy, imagines that Rinieri may know how to use necromancy to bring the former lover back. Elena accepts the suggestion and promises to do whatever Rinieri asks if he will help. For Rinieri, her request offers precisely the opening he has awaited: Elena is asking him to take her somewhere alone and to follow his instructions, unaware that he means to punish rather than assist her.

The invented rite

The two meet alone at Santa Lucia del Prato. Rinieri claims that he learned necromancy in Paris but had sworn not to practise it because it displeases God. He presents his willingness to help Elena as an exception made for love, then insists that the operation requires courage, solitude, and the woman’s own participation. His staged reluctance lends authority to the instructions that follow.

Rinieri tells Elena that he must make a pewter image bearing the name of the man she wants back. She must bathe naked in a running stream seven times with the image at the hour of first sleep, when the moon is far on the wane. Then she must climb to the top of an uninhabited building, face north, and repeat a written conjuration seven times. Two beautiful women will supposedly appear and ask what she wants; after she explains her desire, her lover will return before the following night is over. Elena readily identifies a place that seems suited to the rite: her farm near the bank of the Arno River, in the upper Val d’Arno, where a solitary tower stands beside the stream. A chestnut-wood ladder leads to its upper platform, which shepherds sometimes use to look for strayed animals.

Rinieri makes an image marked with characters of his own invention and writes a conjuration of his own devising. He sends both to Elena with instructions to perform the rite that very night. Then, with a servant, he secretly goes to a friend’s house near the tower. Elena travels to the farm with her maid. At night she pretends to go to bed, sends the maid to sleep, and slips out alone. After looking around to make sure no one is there, she hides her clothes under a bush and bathes seven times with the image before walking naked to the tower.

The tower and the reversal

Rinieri has hidden among trees and willows near the tower, where he watches Elena carry out the instructions. As she climbs, he momentarily feels compassion for her, then is struck by desire; recollection of the night she left him freezing renews his anger, and he remains concealed. Elena reaches the upper platform, faces north, and repeats the conjuration. Rinieri quietly removes the ladder. The promised figures do not appear. Elena waits until dawn, then discovers that she cannot get down.

At first, Elena recognizes the shape of the revenge: she suspects Rinieri has given her a night like the one she gave him. When she sees him below, she begs him to enter the tower and fetch her clothes. She acknowledges the wrong she did him and asks him to be satisfied with the revenge already taken, warning that he cannot restore the honour he would take from her if he abused his power. Her plea distinguishes retaliation from further violence: she offers him future nights together in exchange for her release, but asks him to act as a gentleman and not use his strength against a woman. Rinieri hears her appeal and feels both satisfaction and compassion, yet his desire for vengeance prevails.

He eventually agrees to fetch her clothes after Elena appeals to the love he claims to bear another woman. But he leaves her waiting while he eats at his friend’s house and then sleeps. On the tower, Elena has only a little shade. By noon the summer sun beats on her uncovered head and body, burning her skin; the hot platform gives her nowhere to rest. Flies and gadflies settle on her cracked flesh and sting her, while hunger and thirst compound the torment. The sight of the Arno River intensifies her thirst without relieving it. The account’s sharp reversal of season makes the punishment especially stark: the winter cold that once tormented Rinieri gives way to a July day in which heat, insects, and exposure make Elena fear death.

Release and aftermath

After midday, Rinieri returns. Weak from her ordeal, Elena asks him either to kill her or at least bring water. He sends for the clothes and ladder, but Elena’s maid, who has come to help, slips while descending and breaks her thigh. A husbandman carries Elena away because she cannot walk; his wife gives her a wine-sop, puts her to bed, and helps arrange for Elena and the injured maid to be taken to Florence that night. The rescue ends the physical ordeal but leaves Elena to contend with the threat to her reputation.

Back in Florence, Elena invents an account that blames the ordeal on diabolical enchantment, concealing what happened and asking those who know the truth to remain silent. Physicians treat her fever and the injuries to her skin; they also tend the maid’s broken thigh. Elena recovers, but changes her conduct: she forgets the lover who abandoned her and thereafter refrains both from making sport of others and from falling in love. Rinieri, learning of the maid’s injury, considers himself fully avenged and says nothing further.

The episode closes by turning its particular revenge into a warning. Elena had assumed that she could play with a scholar as she might with another man; Rinieri answers by exploiting her credulity and her desire to regain her lover. Pampinea’s framing makes the scholar’s patience and contrivance central to the reversal, while the ordeal’s long, bodily consequences prevent the revenge from appearing harmless. Elena survives, but her return to ordinary life is marked by a retreat from both mockery and love.