Ciacco—Biondello

Ciacco and Biondello are fellow Florentine spongers whose competition over invitations turns a false dinner into a calculated public beating. Their relationship begins in shared habits and comic deception, but it ends in an unequal peace: Ciacco has demonstrated how readily a prank can become physical punishment, and Biondello chooses not to provoke him again.

Fellow diners and rivals

Ciacco is known for gluttony, which his means cannot satisfy. He is also well-mannered and given to pleasant sayings, and makes a living of sorts by attaching himself to wealthy people who enjoy good food, sometimes dining with them without an invitation. Biondello pursues the same trade. The narrator distinguishes him through his appearance: a small, dapper man, unusually particular about his dress, with a carefully arranged yellow wig beneath his coif. Their shared appetite for other people’s tables gives them common ground, but also makes a dinner invitation an effective instrument of rivalry.

Their first exchange takes place during Lent, when Biondello is buying two fine lampreys for Messer Vieri de' Cerchi. Ciacco asks what the fish are for. Biondello claims that Messer Corso Donati has already received three finer lampreys and a sturgeon, and needs two more for a dinner with gentlemen. He invites Ciacco along, who readily accepts. The account makes the bait unusually concrete: expensive fish, a prominent host, and the promise of a company meal all fit the appetites and social habits the two men share.

The false invitation

When Ciacco arrives at Messer Corso’s house, he finds Corso with several neighbors, but they have not gone to dinner. The meal that follows is not the feast Biondello promised: chickpeas and pickled tuna come first, followed by fried fish from the Arno, and nothing more. Ciacco understands that he has been cheated. His anger is not merely about the quality of the food; Biondello has used Ciacco’s known eagerness to dine as the means of making him look foolish before a host and company.

Ciacco does not retaliate immediately. He waits until he meets Biondello again, by which time Biondello has amused many people with the story of his trick. When Biondello laughs and asks how Ciacco found the promised lampreys, Ciacco gives him a warning that he will learn the answer within eight days. The delay lets Ciacco turn the original deception into a plan, rather than answering one public embarrassment with another on the spot.

A prank becomes a beating

Ciacco pays a shrewd huckster to carry a large glass flask to Messer Filippo Argenti, a burly and notoriously choleric gentleman. The huckster is to say that Biondello has sent him and asks Filippo to fill the flask with red wine for a gathering with his companions. Ciacco cautions the messenger to avoid being seized, and watches the encounter. Filippo, who knows Biondello, takes the message as deliberate mockery. He becomes angry, reaches for the huckster, and curses both the messenger and the man he believes sent him; the huckster escapes and reports back to Ciacco.

Ciacco then finds Biondello and tells him that Messer Filippo is asking for him, without explaining why. Biondello accepts this as an ordinary summons and heads toward the gallery, while Ciacco follows to see what will happen. The arrangement depends on Biondello’s ignorance: he has heard nothing about the flask, the request for wine, or Filippo’s rage. When Filippo sees him, he strikes him, grabs his hair, tears off his coif, and batters his face. He then rolls Biondello in the mire and tears his clothes. The punishment is far more than a verbal embarrassment, and Biondello cannot even understand what he is being accused of while the blows fall.

Retaliation and uneasy peace

Bystanders eventually drag Biondello from Filippo’s grasp. They explain that Filippo believes Biondello sent the insulting message and blame Biondello for playing a joke on a man known to take offense. Biondello protests that he never sent for wine and, once he has recovered enough to go home, suspects Ciacco arranged the affair. The suspicion becomes certainty when he next encounters Ciacco: the latter asks how he liked Filippo’s wine and compares it with the lampreys at Corso’s table. The parallel makes the retaliation legible as an answer to the first trick, while also exposing its harsher cost.

Ciacco tells Biondello that the matter rests with him, but warns that another attempt to make Ciacco go hungry will be answered in the same fashion. Biondello appeals to God for peace and thereafter takes care not to affront him. The story does not describe a reconciliation or renewed friendship. Instead, the relationship settles into restraint enforced by demonstrated consequences: Biondello knows that Ciacco can arrange for someone else’s anger to fall on him, and Ciacco has no further need to repeat the lesson.

The story’s measure of wit

Lauretta presents the episode as a revenge tale, distinguishing it from the more barbarous vengeance in the story she recalls. Its sequence links appetite, deception, anger, and bodily harm: a false promise of lampreys produces the motive for retaliation, while a glass flask and a misleading message make that retaliation possible. Ciacco’s scheme is clever in its design, but its success depends on transferring the danger to Biondello, who is beaten for a message he never sent. The contrast prevents the episode’s symmetry from seeming exact: each man uses a trick, but the consequences are not equivalent.

The tale also sits beside the collection’s concern with how a jest should land. In another account of witty speech, Lauretta describes a proper retort as one that bites like a sheep rather than a dog: a sharp answer need not become an affront. Ciacco’s response, by contrast, converts comic injury into physical violence. The ending restores quiet, not the easy sociability of the pair’s shared dining trade. Biondello stops giving Ciacco cause to retaliate, and their comic contest closes under the shadow of the beating.