Adriano

Adriano is Pinuccio’s trusted companion in Pamfilo’s tale of a night at a small inn, where a misplaced cradle and a series of mistaken beds turn a planned secret visit into a household confusion. His own encounter with the innkeeper’s wife is accidental, but his later agreement with her explanation helps keep the mistake from becoming an open scandal.

Identity and Place in the Tale

Adriano is a young gentleman from Florence and a close, trusted friend of Pinuccio. He knows that Pinuccio is in love with the innkeeper’s daughter, Niccolosa, and accompanies him when Pinuccio devises a way to lodge in her family’s house. The tale gives Adriano a supporting role rather than making him the architect of the scheme: he knows its purpose, joins the journey, and then becomes involved in a second, unintended encounter.

Pamfilo introduces the episode as a story recalled by Niccolosa’s name, which had just brought to mind another young woman of that name. The tale’s comic engine is not a deliberate seduction arranged by Adriano, but the difference between what happens in darkness and what the people involved can safely claim happened. Adriano’s part turns on that difference: he shares in the confusion and then helps preserve it as a plausible misunderstanding.

The Journey and the Inn

To help Pinuccio reach Niccolosa without attracting suspicion, Adriano travels with him late in the evening. They hire two hackneys, load them with pairs of saddlebags apparently filled with straw, ride out from Florence, and circle back toward the inn as if returning from Romagna. Pinuccio presents their late arrival as the result of failing to reach Florence before dark. The host knows both young men and, despite the limited space in his poor, small house, agrees to put them up.

The household has only one cramped chamber, furnished with three narrow beds. The host prepares the least unsuitable bed for the two visitors; his daughter takes one of the others, while he and his wife occupy the third, with their infant’s cradle beside them. Once everyone appears to be asleep, Pinuccio quietly joins Niccolosa. Adriano, however, does not set out to pursue anyone. He gets up for a natural need, finds the cradle blocking his way, and moves it beside his own bed before returning to sleep. That small practical adjustment changes the geography of the dark room and makes the later mistake possible.

The Mistaken Bed and Adriano’s Response

The innkeeper’s wife wakes after a cat knocks something over. She investigates the noise but finds nothing that alarms her, and returns in the dark. Discovering that the cradle is no longer where she left it, she feels her way toward the bed beside it, believing she has found her husband. In fact, she lies down beside Adriano. He is awake, receives her willingly, and the two have sex, each acting within a mistaken understanding of the room and the other person’s identity.

Meanwhile, Pinuccio leaves Niccolosa’s bed and, confused by the darkness and the moved cradle, gets into bed beside the host. Believing he is speaking to Adriano, he boasts about his time with Niccolosa. The host wakes and realizes that the young man beside him is Pinuccio; his anger threatens to make the secret encounter public. Adriano is in the other bed with the hostess, who at first thinks she is still beside her husband. Hearing the exchange, she recognizes where she has been and what has happened.

Cover Story and Narrative Function

The hostess acts first. Without lighting the room or calling attention to her mistake, she moves the cradle to the side of Niccolosa’s bed, lies down beside her daughter, and calls out as if awakened by the men’s quarrel. She denies that Pinuccio has been with Niccolosa and presents his account as the confused invention of a man who gets up while asleep and mistakes dreams for reality. Adriano immediately backs her version, treating Pinuccio’s movements and boast as the familiar extravagances of a sleepwalker. His quick cooperation gives the explanation support from the very person Pinuccio had thought he was addressing.

The host accepts that account and shakes Pinuccio awake, turning his anger into laughter at the young man’s supposed dreaming. Pinuccio understands the rescue and plays along, pretending to wake from sleep before returning to Adriano’s bed. In the morning the host continues to tease him about his dreams, while the visitors leave for Florence content with how the night has turned out. Pinuccio later finds another way to meet Niccolosa; she tells her mother that he must indeed have dreamed the episode. The hostess privately knows that she herself had been awake.

Adriano’s significance lies in this chain of errors and evasions. Moving the cradle is an incidental act, not a plotted trick, yet it redirects the hostess to his bed; his later defense helps transform a dangerous disclosure into a comic dream. The tale makes his friendship practical: he is present for Pinuccio’s plan, becomes entangled in its unintended consequences, and helps his friend and the household avoid a public reckoning. The episode’s resolution depends less on restoring the facts than on finding a version of events that the people at the inn can accept.