Bernabo Lomellini

Bernabo Lomellini is a Genoese merchant whose faith in his wife’s virtue is undone by a calculated deception. When Ambrogiuolo of Piacenza presents stolen possessions and a private bodily detail as proof of adultery, Bernabo accepts the appearance of evidence, pays the wager, and orders Ginevra killed. The story’s decisive reversal is that the supposedly proven betrayal is false: Ginevra survives, exposes the deceiver, and returns to Genoa with Bernabo, rich.

Identity and Introduction

Bernabo appears among Italian merchants gathered at an inn in Paris. Their conversation turns to wives left at home, and several merchants assume that their absent spouses will be unfaithful just as the men themselves take opportunities with other women. Bernabo alone rejects this cynical view. He presents his wife as exceptionally capable and virtuous, describing accomplishments that range from embroidery, household service, and good manners to riding, hawking, reading, writing, and arithmetic.

His praise is not a general claim about marriage but a confident declaration about Ginevra in particular. He insists that even a long absence would not make her incline to infidelity. That certainty gives the ensuing wager its stakes: Bernabo’s trust in his wife is set against Ambrogiuolo’s insistence that no woman can resist a determined suitor.

The Wager and the False Proof

Ambrogiuolo mocks Bernabo’s confidence and argues that women are less constant than men, who themselves cannot resist desire. Bernabo responds that Ginevra’s fidelity is a special grace, not a privilege granted by an emperor. The argument becomes a wager, and Ambrogiuolo undertakes to prove that he can gain access to her and establish that she has yielded to him.

In Genoa, Ambrogiuolo finds Ginevra’s household and bribes a poor woman who has access to it. He arranges to be carried into the bedchamber concealed in a chest. Once inside, he observes the room and its furnishings, then approaches Ginevra while she and a young girl sleep. He sees a mole beneath her left breast, surrounded by small golden-red hairs, but does not touch her. Before leaving, he steals a purse, a night-rail, rings, and girdles from a coffer. These details give him several kinds of apparent proof: knowledge of the private room, possession of Ginevra’s belongings, and an intimate physical description.

Back in Paris, Ambrogiuolo displays the stolen goods and describes the chamber. Bernabo acknowledges that the things are his wife’s and that the room is correctly described, but initially points out that servants could have supplied such information or helped obtain the objects. The mole changes his response. Bernabo recognizes the description, feels the force of the supposed proof, and pays Ambrogiuolo in full. The story shows how an intimate detail, though obtained through intrusion rather than an affair, overwhelms Bernabo’s earlier confidence and his remaining doubts about the evidence.

Judgment and Consequences

After paying the wager, Bernabo leaves Paris for Genoa with a murderous purpose. Rather than enter the city, he stops at a country house about twenty miles away and sends a trusted servant to Ginevra with horses and a letter announcing his return and summoning her to him. The summons conceals the danger: Bernabo has moved from accepting Ambrogiuolo’s claim to arranging Ginevra’s death without first establishing what actually happened.

Ginevra escapes the attempt on her life and takes on a man’s identity. She serves the Soldan in that disguise, eventually encounters Ambrogiuolo, and brings him and Bernabo together in Alexandria. There the deceiver is punished, and Ginevra resumes women’s clothing. She returns to Genoa with Bernabo, and the couple returns rich. The outcome reverses the wager’s apparent verdict: the woman Bernabo condemned is vindicated, while the man whose story seemed conclusive is exposed as a fraud.

Character and Narrative Significance

Bernabo’s defining contradiction is the distance between his public confidence in Ginevra and his conduct when that confidence is challenged. He can praise her abilities and fidelity at length, yet the wager makes her character a matter of masculine honor and competition, and Ambrogiuolo’s manufactured evidence quickly displaces his own knowledge of her. His decision to pay and his order to have her killed are separate consequences of the same error: he treats a claim made for profit as sufficient grounds for judgment.

Filomena introduces the episode through a proverb about the deceiver ending at the mercy of the person deceived. Bernabo’s credulity helps make that reversal possible, but Ginevra’s survival and eventual return with the exposed deceiver complete it. His story therefore makes the contrast between reputation and reality concrete: Ginevra’s virtue is real despite the evidence assembled against her, while Ambrogiuolo’s apparent mastery depends on theft, bribery, and concealment. Bernabo’s eventual reunion with his wife closes the narrative, but the evidence of his earlier actions leaves his trust revealed as vulnerable to appearances.