The Deaths of Andreola and Gabriotto is a tragedy of secret love interrupted by sudden death, followed by a public vindication of the bond the lovers had formed without family consent. In Pampinea’s embedded tale, Gabriotto dies in Andrevuola’s arms, but she survives to defend his dignity and her own: she carries his body toward his home, resists a magistrate’s abuse, and persuades her father to honor the dead man as his son-in-law. The title’s paired names mark their shared story, not a shared death; Andrevuola lives for many years afterward in a convent.

Secret Marriage and Foreboding Dreams

Andrevuola is the young, unmarried daughter of Messer Negro da Ponte Carraro, a gentleman of Brescia. She falls in love with Gabriotto, a neighbor of lower social standing, whose pleasant manner and good qualities distinguish him. With help from a household maid, Andrevuola makes it possible for Gabriotto to visit her in her father’s garden. Their meetings bring delight to both, and they secretly become husband and wife, hoping that nothing but death will separate them.

Before Gabriotto’s sudden end, Andrevuola dreams that she is embracing him in the garden when a dark, frightening shape tears him from her arms and carries him underground. She wakes grieving, then feels relief that the dream was not real, although fear remains. When Gabriotto wishes to visit the next night, she tries to prevent him coming, but eventually receives him rather than let him suspect another cause for her reluctance. In the garden, beside a clear fountain, among the season’s white and red roses, she tells him what she has dreamed.

Gabriotto dismisses the idea that dreams foretell events, reasoning that they arise from eating too much or too little and prove vain in daily life. He says he, too, has dreamed, but the available account does not disclose the dream’s full content. His skepticism stands beside Andrevuola’s apprehension as they return to their intimacy. She watches his face more closely than usual and scans the garden for anything dark, keeping her fear to herself so as not to trouble him.

Gabriotto’s Death and Andrevuola’s Vigil

As the pair are together, Gabriotto sighs, asks Andrevuola for help, and collapses on the grass. She draws him into her lap and asks what is wrong. He gives no answer; breathing hard and sweating, he soon dies. The dream’s image of separation is thus answered not by a visible attacker but by a death that arrives suddenly in the garden where their secret marriage had been lived.

Andrevuola weeps over him, calls to him in vain, and handles his body until she recognizes that he is cold and dead. She summons the maid who knows of their relationship and explains her grief. Andrevuola says she wants to die, but before doing so she wants to protect her honor, keep their love secret, and ensure that Gabriotto is buried. The maid counsels against suicide and offers two possibilities: bury him in the garden, or leave his body where it can be found and taken to his family. Andrevuola rejects the thought of letting a beloved husband lie like a dog in the street. She chooses instead to take him to his home, so that his kin can mourn and bury him.

She sends the maid for a piece of silk cloth kept in a coffer. They lay Gabriotto’s body on it, place his head on a pillow, close his eyes and mouth, and cover him with a garland of roses and the flowers the lovers gathered together. Andrevuola removes the ring with which Gabriotto had espoused her and puts it on his finger as a final gift. Overcome with grief, she faints against him; when she recovers, she and the maid lift the cloth and set out for his house before daybreak.

Investigation and Abuse of Authority

Officers of the provostry encounter the women carrying the body. Andrevuola recognizes that flight would be useless and agrees to go before the Seignory and explain what happened. She insists that no one touch her or remove anything from the corpse while she remains obedient. At the palace, the Provost questions her and orders physicians to examine Gabriotto. They determine that he was not poisoned or otherwise killed: an imposthume near his heart had burst and suffocated him. Their finding establishes that his death was sudden and natural, not the result of a crime by Andrevuola.

The Provost nevertheless exploits her vulnerability. He offers to release her if she yields to him, then tries to use force when she refuses. Andrevuola resists with indignation, defending herself and answering him scornfully. Her conduct turns the encounter from a question about the circumstances of Gabriotto’s death into a test of her own constancy under coercion.

By broad daylight, Messer Negro arrives at the palace with friends, grieving and demanding his daughter’s return. Rather than conceal his conduct, the Provost acknowledges the violence he attempted and praises Andrevuola’s firmness. He then asks her father to allow him to marry her, despite Gabriotto’s lower birth. The later proposal does not alter Andrevuola’s choice: when it is put to her, she will have none of it.

Family Recognition and Aftermath

Andrevuola falls at her father’s feet and asks pardon for taking as husband, without his knowledge, the man she loved. She does not ask that her life be spared; she asks to die his daughter rather than his enemy. Messer Negro raises her tenderly and explains that he had hoped she would marry someone suited to the family alliance he had imagined. He would have welcomed her choice had she trusted him, and grieves that Gabriotto died before he could know of the marriage. Still, he decides to give the dead man the honor he would gladly have granted him alive: the honor of a son-in-law.

Messer Negro orders a great and honorable funeral. Gabriotto’s relatives arrive, and almost the whole city gathers. His body, displayed in the courtyard on Andrevuola’s silk cloth and strewn with roses, is mourned by his family, by the young woman who loved him, and publicly by many women and men. Citizens bear him to the sepulchre with the honors accorded to a nobleman rather than a commoner. The burial thus reverses the social dismissal implicit in the difference between the lovers’ ranks: although Gabriotto had been a man of humble condition, his place in Andrevuola’s marriage and her father’s recognition now shape the public ceremony.

Some days later, Messer Negro asks his daughter whether she will accept the Provost’s proposal. She refuses. Andrevuola and her maid enter a convent renowned for its sanctity and live there honorably for many years. Gabriotto’s death ends their life together, but the tale’s final movement is not Andrevuola’s death: it is her refusal of another marriage, her father’s belated recognition of her husband, and the preservation of their love in public mourning and memory.