Andreuccio Is Deceived and Robbed by Fiordaliso

Andreuccio Is Deceived and Robbed by Fiordaliso is the opening deception in Fiammetta’s tale of a young horse-trader who comes to Naples with money to buy horses. His belief that an affectionate stranger is his newly discovered sister leads him into Fiordaliso’s house, where a staged family welcome becomes a theft. The episode makes the danger of his inexperience concrete: he displays his money in public, accepts a stranger’s story because it fits a fragment of family history, and remains in a house whose welcome has been planned to keep him there until night.

Arrival and Opportunity

The tale introduces Andreuccio di Pietro as a young horse-courser from Perugia, making his first journey away from home. He arrives in Naples on a Sunday evening with five hundred gold florins, and, after consulting his host, goes to the market the following morning. Although he sees many horses and bargains over several, he buys none. As he looks at the animals, he repeatedly brings out his purse to show that he is prepared to purchase. His money is therefore not merely the object of the coming theft: by displaying it openly, he gives a watching stranger the opportunity and the motive to target him.

Fiordaliso notices the purse, but Andreuccio does not notice her watching. An older Sicilian woman who recognizes him from her time with his father approaches and embraces him. She promises to visit him at his inn and leaves without a prolonged conversation, while he returns to bargaining. Fiordaliso observes the woman’s familiarity with him and questions her afterward. Because the older woman had lived with Andreuccio’s father both in Sicily and in Perugia, she can provide Fiordaliso with details about his name, parentage, lodging, and reason for coming to Naples. Fiordaliso then keeps the older woman occupied for the rest of the day, preventing her from returning to Andreuccio and interrupting the scheme.

The Invented Sister

Toward evening, Fiordaliso sends a maid to Andreuccio’s inn. The maid finds him alone at the door and tells him that a gentlewoman of the city wishes to speak with him. He takes the invitation as evidence that the woman has fallen in love with him, judging from his own appearance rather than asking why a stranger has sent for him. He agrees immediately to follow the maid, without telling the people at the inn where he is going.

The maid leads him to Fiordaliso’s house in Malpertugio, a street whose name itself suggests a disreputable quarter. He enters without suspicion, imagining that he has been invited to meet a woman of rank. Fiordaliso comes down several steps with open arms, embraces him, and kisses his forehead. Her tears and warm greeting make the deception feel like a reunion before she has even explained it. In a bedroom furnished with a fine curtained bed, dresses, and rich belongings, she tells him that she is his sister.

Fiordaliso supports this invented kinship with a detailed account of their supposed shared family. She says that their father, Pietro, lived for a long time in Palermo and loved her mother, a gentlewoman who was then a widow. According to her story, her mother bore her after their relationship, and Pietro returned to Perugia without taking her or her mother with him. Fiordaliso presents herself as the forgotten daughter and Andreuccio as the brother who has arrived unexpectedly before her death. The account borrows a truth that Andreuccio already knows—his father had been in Palermo—and builds a false family history around it.

Andreuccio accepts the tale as true. He remembers his father’s time in Palermo, and Fiordaliso’s fluent account, tears, embraces, and apparently modest kisses reinforce his belief. He is surprised that his father never told him about her, but interprets the discovery as a welcome stroke of fortune: alone in the city, he believes he has found a sister. When he asks how she knew he was in Naples, she invokes the poor older woman who had lived with their father in both Palermo and Perugia. Her explanation converts the earlier encounter, which had been part of the plot, into apparent confirmation of their relationship.

Supper and the Fall

The conversation continues as the evening grows hot. Fiordaliso offers Greek wine and confections, and when Andreuccio says he should leave for supper, she treats his departure as an insult to a sister he has only just discovered. She insists that he eat at her house and says that her absent husband makes the occasion unfortunate, while suggesting that she can nevertheless show him some hospitality. Andreuccio objects that his companions at the inn will expect him. Fiordaliso replies that she can send word to them, and even suggests that he might invite them to supper; he declines, and she appears to arrange the message herself.

The meal is sumptuously served and prolonged until it is dark. When Andreuccio again prepares to leave, Fiordaliso says Naples is unsafe at night for a stranger and claims that her message to the inn already told them he would sleep away from home. Believing her, and pleased to remain with the woman he thinks is his sister, he stays. The long conversation after supper keeps him there until part of the night has passed. Fiordaliso then withdraws with her women, leaving him alone in her chamber with a young boy to attend him. The successive acts of hospitality—wine, supper, concern for his safety—have all helped isolate him and postpone any return to his companions.

The heat leads Andreuccio to strip to his doublet and remove his hose, which he lays at the head of the bed. When he needs a privy, the boy points him to a door in a corner. Andreuccio steps through confidently, unaware that the privy occupies a narrow alley between two houses, where boards laid across rafters form its floor. One of those boards has come loose at the far end. It gives way under him, and he falls with it into the alley below, landing in the filth but suffering no physical injury. The fall is both a practical mishap and the turning point that leaves him outside the room, separated from his clothes and money.

The Theft Exposed

As soon as the boy hears the fall, he runs to tell Fiordaliso. She searches the chamber for Andreuccio’s clothes and finds them, along with the purse he has foolishly continued to carry. Having secured the money that prompted her plan, she no longer attends to him and hurries to shut the door through which he fell. The discovery of the theft comes through the contrast between his calls for help below and the silence from the room above: the supposed sister’s welcome has ended as soon as she has obtained the purse.

Andreuccio calls for the boy without receiving an answer. Only then do his suspicions become clear to him. He climbs over a low wall separating the alley from the street, lowers himself down, and goes to the house door he recognizes. He pounds on it and cries out, lamenting that in a short time he has lost both five hundred florins and a sister. His bitter pairing of money with kinship captures the double fraud: Fiordaliso has taken his purse and made him believe he possessed a family bond that never existed.

A woman from inside appears at a window and asks who is knocking. Andreuccio identifies himself as Fiordaliso’s brother and asks for his clothes so that he can leave. She denies knowing either him or the relationship he claims, dismisses his account as a drunkard’s invention, and shuts the window. The neighbors, awakened by his continued knocking, likewise treat him as a nuisance making up a scandalous story about a respectable household. Their reaction leaves him with no immediate support and makes the deception public in a distorted form: the victim’s truthful claim is heard as a false accusation against the woman who robbed him.

The episode ends this evidence with Andreuccio outside the house, stripped of his money and clothing and unable to persuade its occupants or neighbors to acknowledge him. His fall has exposed the trap, but recognition comes too late to prevent the theft. In Fiammetta’s story, the scene’s reversals depend less on elaborate force than on the manipulation of ordinary signs of trust: familiar details about a father, sisterly affection, a shared meal, and a warning about the dangers of the night.