Elena

Elena is a young Florentine widow whose confidence in her beauty and pleasure in manipulating admirers lead her into a bitter reversal. In Pampinea’s story, she first makes the scholar Rinieri wait through a freezing night as a joke; later, believing he can restore her lost lover through necromancy, she follows his instructions and is left naked on a tower. Her exposure turns a private prank into a public danger and ends her confidence in using other people for amusement.

Identity and Introduction

Elena is described as beautiful, proud in temperament, of gentle lineage, and sufficiently wealthy. After her husband’s death, she chooses not to remarry because she is in love with a handsome, agreeable young man of her own choosing. With help from a trusted maid, she meets him in secret and enjoys their relationship without other cares. Her widowhood therefore does not mean withdrawal from desire: she directs her romantic life herself, while guarding her social standing.

At an entertainment, she notices Rinieri, a gentleman recently returned to Florence after studying in Paris. He had pursued learning to understand the nature and causes of things, rather than merely to sell his knowledge. Elena sees that he admires her and, pleased to have attracted another man, regards his interest as a kind of confirmation of her beauty. She makes a show of noticing him, though her attention is already fixed on how to manage his desire.

The Snowy-Night Deception

Rinieri asks where Elena lives, passes repeatedly by her house under various pretexts, and arranges to speak with her maid. When the maid reports his love, Elena responds with amusement. She instructs the maid to tell him that Elena loves him even more than he loves her, but must protect her honour; this calculated promise keeps Rinieri hopeful while allowing Elena to enjoy the attention without granting him intimacy. She accepts his letters and presents, but gives only vague replies.

Elena then uses Rinieri’s pursuit to reassure her own lover, who has become jealous. On the evening of the Feast of the Nativity, she arranges for Rinieri to be let into her courtyard and promises that she will come to him. Instead, after dining merrily with her lover, she brings him to a lattice from which they can watch without being seen. Snow has covered everything, and Rinieri waits in the cold while Elena’s maid invents an excuse: a brother is visiting and has not yet left. He believes the delay and patiently asks Elena not to trouble herself on his account. Elena presents his suffering to her lover as proof that she would not grant Rinieri the pleasure he fears. She then goes to bed with her lover while Rinieri paces the courtyard, trying to keep warm and hoping in vain that a door will open.

The deception is more than a refusal. Elena stages Rinieri’s hope and discomfort for the entertainment of the man she loves, making the scholar’s devotion a prop in their private reassurance. The contrast between his patient trust and their laughter supplies the motive and measure for his eventual retaliation.

The Bargain for Help

Some time later, Elena’s lover falls for another woman and will neither speak to nor please her. Elena grieves, and her maid, wanting to relieve her distress, imagines that a necromantic operation might restore his affection. Elena accepts the suggestion and asks the maid to approach Rinieri, promising to do whatever he wishes in return for his help. Rinieri welcomes the opportunity: he has kept his resentment hidden, and now sees a chance to make Elena pay for the harm she caused him.

At their meeting at Santa Lucia del Prato, Elena explains her trouble and asks for his aid. Rinieri claims that his studies in Paris included necromancy, though he says he had sworn not to practise it because it displeases God. He presents his assistance as a sacrifice made out of love for her. His invented procedure requires Elena to act alone, naked, at night: she must bathe seven times in running water with a pewter image made in her lover’s name, then climb a tree or an uninhabited house, face north, and recite prescribed words seven times while holding the image. He promises that two beautiful maidens will appear and that, before the following night is half over, her lover will come to her in tears. Elena agrees, eager to regain the man who has abandoned her.

The Tower and the Reversal

Elena carries out the rite at the bank of the Arno, near a tower. At the hour of the first sleep, she checks that no one is watching, hides her clothes under a bush, bathes seven times, and climbs naked toward the tower with the image in her hand. Rinieri and his servant watch from among the trees. He feels compassion at her vulnerability and is also suddenly tempted to seize her, but remembers the injury she inflicted and holds to his plan.

Once Elena reaches the tower platform and begins her incantation, Rinieri quietly removes the ladder. She waits for the promised visitors until dawn, growing cold and realizing that the scholar may be repeating the trick she once played on him. When she tries to descend, she discovers that the ladder is gone and collapses in a faint. Coming to, she understands that she is trapped, naked, and at risk of being discovered. She imagines the damage to her reputation among her brothers, relatives, neighbours, and the people of Florence, and recognizes that Rinieri knows enough of her affairs to undermine any excuse she might make.

At sunrise, Rinieri appears below and asks whether the maidens have arrived. Elena weeps and asks him to enter the tower so she can speak to him. She admits that he has repaid her, pointing out that although it is July she has spent the night freezing naked. She asks him to consider the harm already done, retrieve her clothes, and let her down; to overpower a woman, she argues, would bring no honour. Rinieri’s revenge thus recreates the structure of her prank while reversing their positions: she had made him wait outside, and he has left her exposed and helpless above the ground.

Consequences and Narrative Role

Elena is eventually brought down from the tower. Her maid has broken a thigh, and a husbandman who comes to their aid takes Elena to his home, where the household cares for them. Elena develops a severe fever and suffers through the physicians’ treatment; the maid’s broken thigh is also attended to. Back in Florence, Elena invents a story blaming diabolical enchantments for what happened to her and her maid, concealing the actual course of events from her family and others.

The experience changes her conduct. She forgets the lover who had abandoned her and thereafter refrains both from making mock of others and from loving. Rinieri, hearing of the maid’s broken thigh, considers himself fully avenged and says nothing more about the matter. Pampinea frames the episode as a warning that craft can be answered by craft, and that delight in humiliating others may bring suffering in return. Elena’s fate also turns on a reversal of supposed expertise: she trusts the scholar to command hidden powers, but his real advantage is his knowledge of her vanity, her desperation, and the ritual she is willing to perform.