Dego della Ratta’s counterfeit-florin bargain

Dego della Ratta’s counterfeit-florin bargain is a transaction built on two abuses: a husband’s willingness to sell access to his wife, and a marshal’s use of gilded silver to make a false payment. In Lauretta’s tale, the bargain’s public exposure also sets the scene for Nonna de' Pulci to turn a sexually charged jest back on Dego and Antonio d'Orso.

Background and Bargain

The episode is set in Brescia. Dego della Ratta, a Catalan gentleman serving as marshal to King Robert, is described as handsome and amorous. He takes an interest in a particularly beautiful Florentine woman, the granddaughter of Antonio d'Orso’s brother. Her husband, though of good family, is represented as sordid and miserly.

Dego reaches an agreement with the husband: five hundred gold florins in exchange for being allowed to spend a night with the man’s wife. The arrangement treats the woman as the object of a bargain between men. The account makes clear that she does not consent to the encounter, so the husband’s agreement does not make it a mutual liaison.

The Counterfeit Payment

After lying with the woman against her will, Dego pays her husband with coins that only appear to meet the agreed price. He has silver poplins, then current currency, gilded to resemble gold florins. The payment thus converts the husband’s greed into a second deception: he has accepted what looks like the promised sum, while Dego has substituted gilded silver.

The device joins the sexual and commercial dimensions of the episode. Dego obtains what he sought through the husband’s consent, while the husband’s reward is counterfeit; the woman herself has neither agreed to the encounter nor controlled the terms of the exchange.

Public Exposure and Retort

The affair and the false payment become widely known. The husband suffers both financial loss and public scorn, while Antonio d'Orso, despite being related to the woman, affects ignorance of the matter. The episode therefore leaves the bargain with consequences beyond the night itself: a private transaction becomes a public scandal, and the bishop’s association with Dego continues despite the story attached to his kinswoman.

On St. John’s Day, Antonio d'Orso and Dego ride together while watching the ladies gathered along the route of the mantle race. The bishop points out Nonna de' Pulci, a young married woman, and asks whether Dego thinks he could win her. Taking the remark as an affront to her honor, Nonna answers that she would require good money. Her reply recalls the paid encounter and the husband’s humiliation without repeating the original bargain: Dego and the bishop both recognize the sting, and leave in shame and silence.

Narrative Function

Lauretta presents the bargain as the backstory that gives force to Nonna’s retort. The exchange on St. John’s Day is not a repetition of the original transaction but its social aftershock: Dego’s conduct and the bishop’s connection to it make the joke land against both men. The gilded coins are the episode’s concrete emblem of a corrupted exchange, in which apparent value conceals fraud and a woman’s will is disregarded.