Adalietta’s ring

Adalietta’s ring links a parting shaped by uncertainty to a reunion made possible by recognition. First entrusted to Messer Torello d'Istria as a token to remember his wife by if he died abroad, it returns years later as the unmistakable proof that he is alive and has come back to her.

A token at departure

As Messer Torello d'Istria prepared to leave on crusade, he and Madam Adalieta faced the possibility that he might never return. He asked her to wait a year, a month, and a day before marrying again if she received no certain news that he was alive. Madam Adalieta accepted that condition, but also gave him the ring from her finger, asking him to remember her if she died before seeing him again. The ring thus began as a personal keepsake carried into an uncertain absence, bound to a promise that neither spouse could know whether circumstances would allow them to keep.

A hidden sign at the wedding feast

Messer Torello d'Istria was captured and carried to Alexandria. Much later, having returned in disguise, he arrived at the wedding feast where Madam Adalieta was about to marry another man, believing her first husband dead. She did not recognize him beneath his beard and unfamiliar clothing. To test whether she remembered him, Messer Torello arranged for her to send him wine in a gilded cup, following the custom he claimed belonged to his country. Before drinking, he took the ring she had given him into his mouth and, unseen by the guests, dropped it into the cup. The small object passed back to its giver concealed within an ordinary act of hospitality.

Recognition and reunion

When Madam Adalieta uncovered the cup to drink what remained, she saw the ring and recognized it as the one she had given Messer Torello d'Istria at their parting. She then recognized the supposed stranger as her husband, overturned the table, and rushed to embrace him. The ring did not merely identify an old possession: it overturned the wedding’s apparent meaning, disclosing that the man thought dead was alive and that the bride’s first marriage could resume. After Messer Torello recounted what had happened, the bridegroom accepted that the choice rested with him. Madam Adalieta removed the ring and crown of her new groom and put on the ring from the cup and the crown sent by Saladin. The keepsake that had accompanied a feared death became the public sign of her husband’s return and their reunion.