Bartolomea and Paganino's Relationship and Marriage

Bartolomea and Paganino’s relationship turns an abduction at sea into a sharply contested choice about marriage, desire, and the life Bartolomea wants. First carried off against her will, she later refuses the husband who comes to ransom her, names the deprivation of their marriage, and chooses to remain with Paganino, who makes her his lawful wife.

Marriage Before the Abduction

Bartolomea is the young wife of Ricciardo di Chinzica, a judge whose jealousy is matched by his preoccupation with legal and religious calendars. He teaches her an elaborate schedule of days on which, he claims, husband and wife must abstain from sex: saints’ days, fasts, vigils, Ember Days, Fridays and Saturdays, Sundays, Lent, and other occasions. The calendar becomes a comic instrument of control. Bartolomea is young and sexually active, while Ricciardo is described as frail; their marriage gives her the status of a wife without, in her account, the intimacy she needs.

Ricciardo’s rules also reflect his preference for legal study and observance over attention to his wife. He keeps watch over her, lest anyone teach her which days might be working days rather than holidays. The story thus establishes a contrast that will shape the later choice: Ricciardo claims the authority of husband and judge, but his prescribed abstinence leaves Bartolomea dissatisfied and makes their domestic life, as she later presents it, a source of injury rather than companionship.

Abduction and a New Household

During a country outing near Monte Nero, Ricciardo takes Bartolomea fishing with other women. Their boats drift miles out to sea, and a galliot belonging to the corsair Paganino da Mare overtakes the boat carrying the women. Paganino sees Bartolomea, carries her aboard in full sight of Ricciardo, and sails away. Ricciardo is left on shore, unable to identify the corsair or learn where he has taken her.

Paganino initially finds Bartolomea weeping and tries to comfort her with soft words. By night, however, he sets aside those words for physical consolation. The narrator relates the change with deliberate comic speed: Paganino’s calendar, along with its saints’ days and holidays, has dropped away, and Bartolomea’s memory of Ricciardo’s ordinances soon follows. Before they reach Monaco, she is living merrily with Paganino. He treats her honorably as his wife, and the two form a household together there. This change does not erase the violence of her capture; it marks the point at which the story presents her attachment to Paganino as real and her new life as preferable to the one she left.

Ricciardo’s Attempt to Reclaim Her

When Ricciardo learns where Bartolomea is, he sails to Monaco intending to spend whatever is needed for her ransom. Paganino receives him civilly but says that Bartolomea herself must decide whether she will go. If she identifies Ricciardo as her husband and agrees to leave, Ricciardo may pay what he thinks fit; if she does not, Paganino will not surrender her. The arrangement makes Bartolomea’s answer, rather than the husband’s claim or the ransom, decisive.

When she enters the room, Bartolomea treats Ricciardo like a stranger. He assumes at first that grief or fear has altered her recognition, then asks to speak to her privately. Alone with him, she admits that she knows who he is but rejects his appeal. She explains that during their marriage he failed to understand her youth and desire, while Paganino holds her through the night. Her comparison is both intimate and practical: Ricciardo’s long list of holy days had made their marriage a succession of enforced abstentions, whereas her life with Paganino has no such calendar of sexual refusals.

Ricciardo appeals to her family’s honor, her reputation, and the security of returning as mistress of his house. He also promises that he will try to satisfy her from then on. Bartolomea refuses to let him define her honor for her after the fact. In her view, her family failed to protect that honor when they gave her in marriage to Ricciardo; she will not now sacrifice her own wishes merely to preserve theirs. She says that she regards herself as Paganino’s wife, and makes clear that even if Paganino later left her, she would seek another life rather than return to Ricciardo.

Choice, Marriage, and Comic Reversal

Bartolomea’s refusal defeats Ricciardo’s effort to recover her. He leaves Monaco distressed, returns to Pisa, and dies not long afterward, repeating a saying about the ill-timed or misused hole having no holidays. The line reduces his elaborate calendar to a final joke: his rules have not preserved his marriage, and his belated promise cannot undo the life he imposed on Bartolomea.

After Ricciardo’s death, Paganino, knowing that Bartolomea loves him, marries her lawfully. The ending distinguishes her initial seizure from her later decision: she was taken from the boat, but when given the opportunity to return, she chose to remain. Their marriage is presented as a cheerful life without the abstinence schedule that had governed her former household. The relationship’s force lies in that reversal: the judge who claimed authority over Bartolomea’s body loses her, while the corsair who first took her becomes her chosen husband.