Salabaetto’s deception of Biancofiore comes to light only after he has left Palermo: the stores she had expected to contain valuable goods prove to be mostly seawater and tow. Their opening reverses the balance between deceiver and deceived, revealing how thoroughly the cargo had misrepresented its worth and leaving Biancofiore to count her losses.

Discovery in Palermo

After waiting a good two months for Salabaetto to return, Biancofiore grew suspicious. She then had the broker force open the stores. Her investigation proceeds by testing the apparent cargo itself: first the casks, which she had believed held oil, and then the bales. The delay matters—the deception is not exposed by Salabaetto’s confession, but by the evidence left behind after his departure.

The cargo exposed

The casks held seawater, with no more than a small runlet of oil at the top near each bung. The bales were filled with tow, apart from two containing cloth. Taken together, the goods were worth no more than two hundred florins. The careful contrast between what Biancofiore expected and what she found makes the stores a material record of the fraud: their contents appear substantial while yielding little value when opened.

The cost of the reversal

Biancofiore acknowledged that she had been outwitted. She lamented the five hundred florins repaid and, more bitterly, the thousand she had lent. Her losses thus extend beyond the worthless-looking cargo: the sums she had entrusted or returned to Salabaetto become the measure of how far his deception had reached. With Salabaetto gone, her discovery brings no recovery, only the knowledge that she has been made to pay for misjudging him.

A closing proverb

Biancofiore repeatedly invoked the saying, "Who with a Tuscan hath to do, Must nor be blind nor see askew." In Dioneo’s telling, the proverb gives her defeat a pointed ending: she recognizes that Salabaetto has matched her own skill at deception. The final reversal is not simply that the cargo is false, but that the person who believed herself able to profit from the exchange has become its most costly victim.