Ciacco Takes Revenge on Biondello

Ciacco Takes Revenge on Biondello turns an insult at table into a calculated public reprisal. Ciacco is drawn into a dinner by a false promise of fine food; he answers the deception not with a direct confrontation but by manipulating a volatile man into punishing its author. The exchange ends with Biondello acknowledging the force of the lesson and taking care not to affront Ciacco again.

The Invitation and Its Disappointment

Ciacco is introduced as a great glutton whose means cannot support the expense of his appetite. Though well-mannered and given to pleasant sayings, he makes his living as a sponger among wealthy people who enjoy good food, sometimes joining their meals without being invited. Biondello, a small, neatly dressed man with a carefully arranged yellow wig, practices the same trade. Their shared dependence on other people’s tables makes food both their common currency and the instrument of their quarrel.

One morning during Lent, Biondello is buying two fine lampreys for Messer Vieri de' Cerchi when Ciacco asks what the purchase is for. Biondello claims that Messer Corso Donati has already received three finer lampreys and a sturgeon, but that even this will not suffice for the dinner he plans to give certain gentlemen. He invites Ciacco to join them, and Ciacco accepts, confident that he will be there.

When Ciacco arrives at Messer Corso’s house, he finds Corso with several neighbors, not yet seated for dinner. The meal begins with chickpeas and pickled tuna, followed by fried fish from the Arno, and nothing more. The contrast between Biondello’s lavish description and the modest food exposes the invitation as a trick. Ciacco recognizes the deception and is deeply angered; rather than challenge Biondello at once, he resolves to repay him.

The Counterplot's Design and Bait

Some days later, Biondello encountered Ciacco and laughingly asked how he had enjoyed Messer Corso's lampreys. Ciacco answered that Biondello would know better than he did before eight days had passed. The promise turned their food-based prank into an announced contest of retaliation: Ciacco would make Biondello experience a version of the humiliation he had inflicted at dinner.

Ciacco arranged the reprisal through a shrewd huckster, whom he paid to carry a large glass flagon to Messer Filippo Argenti near the Cavicciuoli Gallery. Filippo was a powerful, broad-built man, notorious for being touchy and quick-tempered. Ciacco supplied the huckster with a fabricated message: Biondello supposedly wanted Filippo to fill the flagon with red wine so he could entertain his companions. Ciacco warned the messenger to keep out of Filippo's reach, since the man might attack him, and arranged to pay him when he returned. The danger was part of the design: the messenger could deliver the insult safely, while Biondello, whose name was attached to it, would be left to face the consequences.

The Humiliation and Its Limit

The huckster delivered Ciacco’s invented message to Filippo Argenti, who took it as a deliberate mockery by Biondello. Already furious that the messenger had escaped his grasp, Filippo remained in a rage, unable to make sense of the request. Ciacco, who had watched the encounter, paid the huckster and then sought out Biondello. He told him that Filippo was asking for him, without explaining why. Biondello, unaware of the trap, said he would go and speak with Filippo; Ciacco followed to see what would happen.

As soon as Filippo saw Biondello, he struck him in the face and demanded to know why he had sent the insulting message. Biondello protested that he did not understand what was happening: he had heard Filippo complain of the request for wine, but did not know what the words meant and had sent no message. Filippo seized him by the hair, tore off his coif, knocked his bonnet to the ground, battered his face with his fists, and rolled him in the mire, tearing his clothes. Biondello could neither explain himself nor ask why Filippo was attacking him.

The gathered bystanders eventually dragged Biondello from Filippo’s grasp. Bruised and battered, he learned from them why Filippo had beaten him and was blamed for joking with a man known to be dangerous when provoked. In tears, Biondello insisted that he had never asked Filippo for wine. Once recovered enough to return home, he guessed that Ciacco had arranged the assault.

When the two met again after Biondello’s bruises had faded, Ciacco asked how he had liked Filippo’s wine. Biondello answered by comparing it with the meal Ciacco had received at Messer Corso’s house. Ciacco then made the exchange explicit: if Biondello again tricked him out of a meal, Ciacco would make him drink in the manner he had just experienced. Biondello recognized that wishing Ciacco harm would be easier than carrying it out, begged him to make peace, and thereafter took care not to affront him again. The retaliation thus closes not with another prank, but with Biondello’s decision to leave Ciacco alone.

Revenge, Reputation, and the Story’s Frame

Lauretta presents Ciacco’s retaliation after the account of a scholar’s harsher vengeance, distinguishing this episode as less barbarous yet still grievous to its target. That framing places the prank within the Ninth Day’s sequence of reversals: Biondello’s earlier deception is answered through another deception, but the punishment is delivered by an unwitting intermediary and carried out by a man whose anger makes the consequences real. The comic design depends on the gap between Ciacco’s controlled arrangement and the violence he sets in motion.

The story also turns on the difference between knowing how to provoke laughter and knowing whom it may safely provoke. Biondello’s trick makes Ciacco the object of a joke at a dinner table; Ciacco’s counterstroke makes Biondello answer for words he never sent, before a crowd that can explain the trap only after the beating. The initial contest over food thus shifts into a contest over exposure and reputation. Its final settlement is practical rather than conciliatory: Biondello learns to avoid giving Ciacco another occasion for retaliation, and the narrative closes on the restraint imposed by the threat of a renewed reprisal.