Bernabo and Ambrogiuolo's Wager and Fraud

The wager between Bernabo Lomellini and Ambrogiuolo of Piacenza turns a boast about women’s chastity into a fraud with lethal consequences: Ambrogiuolo manufactures evidence of an affair, and Bernabo trusts that evidence over his wife. Their contest begins as an argument between merchants, becomes a test supposedly capable of settling that argument, and ends with Ginevra publicly exposing both the deception and the disastrous credulity that followed it.

The dispute becomes a wager

Bernabo and Ambrogiuolo debate whether a discreet woman can be induced to betray her husband. Ambrogiuolo argues that women are subject to desire and that a discreet woman may conceal an affair so successfully that no outward sign remains. He presents his own experience with women as proof of his confidence and claims that he could quickly bring Bernabo’s wife to yield. Bernabo answers that women who guard their honour can resist, and insists that Ginevra is one of them.

Rather than continue an argument that neither can settle by words, Bernabo proposes a test. At first he says he is willing to stake his head against Ambrogiuolo’s claim; Ambrogiuolo instead proposes that Bernabo stake five thousand gold florins against his own thousand. He will go to Genoa and, within three months, try to seduce Ginevra and return with objects and tokens that Bernabo himself will accept as proof. Bernabo agrees not to visit Genoa or write to his wife during that period. Although the other merchants foresee the danger and try to prevent the wager, the two men commit themselves in writing. The formal agreement gives their dispute a clear measure of success, but it does not make the proposed evidence reliable.

A bedroom turned into false proof

In Genoa, Ambrogiuolo investigates Ginevra’s household and learns that her reputation for chastity is stronger, not weaker, than he had expected. Unable to win her over, he bribes a poor woman who has access to the house. The woman arranges to have Ambrogiuolo carried inside in a specially prepared chest, which she leaves in Ginevra’s bedchamber on the pretext that she is going away for a few days.

After nightfall, Ambrogiuolo opens the chest and quietly surveys the illuminated room: its paintings, furnishings, and other distinguishing details. Ginevra is asleep with a little girl. He uncovers her, sees no sign of intimacy, and notes instead a mole beneath her left breast, surrounded by several small hairs as red as gold. He does not risk lying beside her. During two nights in the room, he takes a purse, a night-rail, rings, and girdles from one of her coffers, then hides himself again in the chest. On the third day, the accomplice removes it, and Ambrogiuolo returns to Paris with the stolen belongings and his observations.

This is the central fraud: nothing in Ambrogiuolo’s account proves that Ginevra consented to an affair. His access to her private room lets him acquire genuine knowledge and possessions, but he converts that access into a false story of sexual conquest. The objects are real; the meaning he assigns them is fabricated.

Bernabo accepts the deception

Before the merchants, Ambrogiuolo describes the bedchamber and displays the belongings as proof that Ginevra gave them to him. Bernabo recognizes the room and the possessions, but initially objects that a servant might have disclosed the room’s appearance or helped obtain the goods. Ambrogiuolo then names the mole and its distinctive red hairs. Bernabo’s changed expression confirms that this intimate detail is accurate; he accepts the claim, declares Ambrogiuolo the winner, and pays the five thousand florins.

That moment exposes the weakness in Bernabo’s test. The wager had made him promise to accept proof, but he treats precise information about Ginevra’s body as proof of her consent. Ambrogiuolo’s trespass has supplied a true detail that makes his lie persuasive, while Bernabo’s confidence in his own ability to recognize his wife’s honour gives way as soon as the evidence appears decisive. The other merchants’ earlier warning that the contest could bring serious harm proves well founded.

Bernabo then travels toward Genoa with violent intent. Rather than enter the city, he stops at a country house about twenty miles away and sends a trusted servant with letters summoning Ginevra to him. In private, he orders the servant to kill her on the journey, threatening to have him hanged if he refuses. In a deep, lonely valley, the servant draws his knife and tells Ginevra that she must die, explaining that her husband has commanded it. Ginevra pleads that she has never wronged him and asks the servant not to become her murderer. The evidence of the wager has now travelled far beyond the merchants’ dispute: Bernabo’s belief in Ambrogiuolo’s invented conquest becomes an order to kill the woman whose fidelity he had claimed to defend.

Exposure and reversal in Alexandria

The deception comes back to light years later in Alexandria. Ginevra, living in male disguise under the name Sicurano, hears Ambrogiuolo boast about the wager: he recalls winning five thousand florins by claiming to have had his way with Bernabo’s wife, and says that Bernabo subsequently had her killed. Sicurano recognizes the account as the source of Ginevra’s suffering and decides not to let its author escape punishment. He befriends Ambrogiuolo, brings him to Alexandria, and arranges for Bernabo to be brought there too. By this time Bernabo is in poor circumstances, and Sicurano has him privately sheltered while preparing to confront both men.

Before the Soldan, Ambrogiuolo is ordered to explain how he won the five thousand florins. Threatened with severe torture if he does not tell the truth, he recounts the deception plainly in Bernabo’s presence. Sicurano then asks Bernabo what he did to his wife. Bernabo admits that, overcome by anger at losing his money and by the shame he thought she had brought upon him, he ordered her killed. He says he was told that she had been devoured by wolves.

Sicurano frames the two men’s responsibility in contrasting terms. Ambrogiuolo robbed Ginevra of her good name with a lie and took her husband’s money; Bernabo, more ready to believe another man’s falsehood than the truth he might have learned through long experience, ordered her death. Sicurano then asks permission to bring the woman before them. Bernabo believes she is dead, while Ambrogiuolo, realizing that the reckoning may be worse than repayment, waits in fear and amazement.

Ginevra’s revelation

Before the Soldan and the assembled witnesses, Sicurano falls to his knees, sheds the masculine voice and manner he has adopted, and identifies himself as Ginevra. She reveals that she has wandered the world in men’s clothing for six years after Ambrogiuolo slandered her and Bernabo condemned her to be killed. She opens the front of her clothing and shows her breast, making her identity visible to those present. Turning to Ambrogiuolo, she challenges him to say when he ever lay with her; knowing her now, he is nearly speechless with shame.

The revelation reverses the wager’s false verdict. Ambrogiuolo’s supposed proof had made the absent wife appear guilty; Ginevra’s own presence, survival, and exposure of her identity show how badly Bernabo misread what he thought he knew. The relation between the two merchants is therefore defined not simply by a contest over money, but by the consequences of treating a woman’s private body as evidence that can be interpreted without her testimony. The tale ends this portion of their reckoning by placing the deception, the husband’s confession, and Ginevra’s return before the same public authority that had first heard the fraud recounted for entertainment.