Talano di Molese

Talano di Molese is the husband in a tale of a warning ignored and a dream fulfilled. His concern for Margarita persists despite the strain of their marriage; her suspicion turns his attempt to protect her into a reason to do precisely what he cautions against. The wolf’s attack leaves her permanently disfigured, making the tale’s warning not merely predictive but irreversible.

Identity and Story Context

Talano is presented as a respectable man who has taken Margarita, a young and exceptionally beautiful woman, as his wife. The narrator, Pampinea, introduces their marriage as difficult: Margarita is capricious, ill-tempered, and unwilling either to follow another person’s judgment or to accommodate another’s wishes. Talano finds this hard to endure, yet the story gives no indication that he can change her disposition by ordinary counsel.

Pampinea tells the episode on the Ninth Day, in response to an ongoing discussion among the company about dreams that foretell events. She identifies Margarita as a neighbor and frames what follows as a recent example of the cost of scoffing at a dream. Talano’s role is therefore central to the story’s test of whether a warning deserves belief even when its recipient distrusts the person delivering it.

The Dream and the Warning

While staying with Margarita at his country estate, Talano dreams that she is walking in a beautiful wood near their house. A fierce wolf bursts from a thicket, leaps at her throat, knocks her down, and tries to carry her away. In the dream, she escapes the wolf’s jaws, but her throat and face are badly marred.

The next morning Talano recounts the dream and urges Margarita not to leave the house that day, or at least to keep away from the wood. His warning is strikingly measured: he acknowledges that her waywardness has made life difficult for him, but tells her that he would still be grieved if harm came to her. The tale thus presents his concern as genuine rather than as a claim that she owes him obedience.

Suspicion and the Attack

Margarita refuses to treat the dream as a reason for caution. She answers with the saying, “Who willeth thee ill, dreameth thee ill,” and supposes that Talano has invented the warning to conceal a meeting with another woman in the wood. Although she tells him she will heed his advice, she secretly resolves to discover what she thinks he is hiding.

After Talano leaves by one door, Margarita slips out by another and goes straight to the wood. She hides in its thickest part, watching for someone to arrive and giving no thought to the danger her husband described. A wolf emerges from nearby cover, seizes her by the throat, and carries her off. Its grip is so tight that she can neither cry out nor defend herself. Shepherds hear and see what is happening, shout at the animal, and force it to release her; without their intervention, the wolf would have throttled her.

Consequences and Narrative Significance

The shepherds recognize Margarita and carry her home. Physicians tend her for a long time, and she survives, but her recovery is incomplete: her throat and part of her face remain damaged. The injury reverses the condition with which the story first presents her, from a woman renowned for her beauty to one whose altered appearance makes her ashamed to be seen.

Margarita later bitterly regrets both her stubbornness and her refusal to trust Talano’s dream, which would have cost her nothing to heed. The ending binds the tale’s moral consequence to a concrete bodily change: the warning accurately names the danger, while her suspicion sends her into its path. Talano’s dream is not explained; within Pampinea’s account, its fulfillment supports the discussion of prophetic dreams through the stark sequence of warning, disbelief, attack, and belated regret.