Dioneo, teller of the Day Two story

Dioneo, teller of the Day Two story, closes the day’s storytelling with a comic but pointed account of a husband who cannot reclaim his wife. His tale turns the assumptions of men like Bernabo Lomellini against them: instead of treating a wife as someone who will passively await her husband’s return, Dioneo makes Bartolomea’s desire and decision decisive, and lets the husband’s failed claim end in his death while she finds happiness with Paganino da Mare.

Identity and Place in the Company

Dioneo is the last storyteller on the second day. Before beginning, he says that the queen’s preceding story has changed his choice of subject: he had planned to tell one tale, but now chooses another about the stupidity of Bernabo Lomellini and of men who assume that wives left at home remain sexually inactive while their husbands travel and pursue other women. He presents his story as a demonstration of that folly, and of the failure of invented arguments to overcome what human nature will not accept.

His position in the storytelling order comes with a stated exception to the day’s assigned theme. When Neifile sets the subject for the next day—people who obtain a desired thing or recover a lost one through diligence—she preserves Dioneo’s privilege. The company approves her plan. The evidence identifies the privilege but does not elaborate its full terms here; in this scene, its significance is that Dioneo is explicitly exempted from the ordinary restriction on the group’s choice of subject.

The Argument Behind His Tale

Dioneo’s opening commentary connects his new story to the tale that has just been told about Bernabo Lomellini. He criticizes men who travel, take pleasure with different women, and nevertheless imagine that the women they leave behind do nothing but wait. He also mocks husbands who use elaborate reasoning to demand that others conform to their own desires, as if contrived arguments could defeat a person’s nature. This framing makes the story more than a sexual farce: Dioneo announces that he intends to expose the gap between male confidence and the reality of women’s lives and choices.

That argument has a pointed context in the storytelling company. Earlier, Filomena had cautioned the women that they might need men’s guidance to keep their company from dissolving; Dioneo’s story, by contrast, gives the wife the final authority over where she will live and with whom. His performance does not erase the company’s gendered conventions, but it makes a woman’s expressed preference—not her husband’s claim—the outcome that governs the tale.

Bartolomea’s Refusal and Ricciardo’s Defeat

When Ricciardo di Chinzica finds Bartolomea with Paganino, he goes to retrieve her. Bartolomea rejects the life she had with Ricciardo and contrasts it with her present relationship: her former husband’s elaborate calculations about auspicious times could not make their intimacy satisfying, while Paganino holds and embraces her through the night. She tells Ricciardo that she will not return to him, even if Paganino later leaves her; she would seek her own advantage elsewhere rather than resume the marriage that had brought her grief and loss.

Ricciardo recognizes that his attempt has failed. He had married a young woman despite being worn out himself, and now leaves Paganino’s house without her. Back in Pisa, his grief becomes a fixation: when people greet him or ask him about anything, he answers with the same saying about an ill place having no holidays. Not long afterward, he dies. Dioneo thus makes Ricciardo’s defeat both personal and comic: the husband who tried to dictate the conditions of marriage cannot persuade Bartolomea to return, and the recurring saying registers how completely the encounter has overwhelmed him.

Ending and Narrative Effect

After Ricciardo’s death, Paganino, knowing that Bartolomea loves him, marries her lawfully. The two live joyfully without observing saints’ days, vigils, or Lent. Dioneo’s ending gives Bartolomea the lasting choice that Ricciardo had tried to reverse, and its comic contrast between the former husband’s calendar-bound calculations and the couple’s unrestrained life completes the tale’s attack on male self-deception.

The company responds with sustained laughter. The ladies agree that Dioneo has spoken truly and that Bernabo was a fool. Once the laughter subsides, the queen passes her wreath to Neifile, whose rule will begin with the next day’s rest from storytelling and a newly announced theme. Dioneo’s tale therefore closes not only a comic argument about marriage but also the day’s sequence of stories, leaving its challenge to male credulity ringing into the company’s change of leadership.