Federigo di Neri Pegolotti

Federigo di Neri Pegolotti is the handsome young lover of Mistress Tessa, whose secret meetings with him are sustained by an ingenious signal and rescued, when that signal goes awry, by her quick-witted performance before her unsuspecting husband. His episode turns a domestic near-disaster into comedy: a knock at the bedroom door becomes a supposed haunting, and the conjuration that protects Tessa’s secret also directs Federigo to a supper waiting in the garden.

Identity and Introduction

Federigo di Neri Pegolotti is introduced as a brisk, handsome youth who is in love with Mistress Tessa, a fair and discreet woman married to Gianni Lotteringhi. Tessa returns his affection. Her husband is a wool-comber in Florence, more fortunate in his craft than wise in other matters, and his simplicity helps make their affair possible. The tale does not give Federigo a family history or a broader account of his life; it defines him through his mutual attachment to Tessa and the practical arrangements by which they meet.

Tessa has a country house at Camerata, where she stays through the summer. At first, a serving-maid helps bring Federigo there. Their meetings are not merely a single lapse: after their first night together, neither intends it to be their last, and they establish a signal that lets them meet repeatedly without requiring the maid to summon him each time.

A Secret Courtship by Signal

Federigo is eager for the meetings and takes the appointed opportunity to visit Tessa at the country house. On their first night together, Gianni does not arrive, and the lovers spend the night in each other’s company. Tessa even teaches Federigo some of her husband’s lauds, a detail that makes the household’s religious observances part of the lovers’ intimacy as well as the story’s later joke.

The pair arrange a message in the adjoining vineyard: an ass’s skull is set on a vine pole, and the direction of its muzzle determines whether Federigo should come. Facing Florence means that he may visit after dark; facing Fiesole means that Gianni is present and Federigo must stay away. The system converts an ordinary object into a private signal, allowing the lovers to coordinate their meetings in view of the husband’s household without directly communicating each time. Under this arrangement they meet many times.

The Knock and the Mock Exorcism

The signal fails on a night when Federigo expects to sup with Tessa. She has prepared two capons, eggs, and wine for him, but Gianni arrives unexpectedly. Tessa cannot pass the food to Federigo through the house without raising suspicion, so she has it carried to the garden and placed at the foot of a peach tree. In her distress, she forgets to tell the maid to wait and warn Federigo that Gianni is there.

Federigo arrives after dark and knocks softly at the door. Gianni hears the knock; Tessa, who has heard it even more clearly, pretends to have been asleep. She explains it as the sound of a phantom that has frightened her on previous nights. Gianni trusts the explanation and invokes the prayers he has said and the signs of the cross he has made before bed. Tessa answers that she will not feel safe until the phantom is exorcised, using her husband’s presence as a reason to get up and go to the door rather than remain beside him while Federigo waits outside.

At the door, Tessa stages a conjuration whose instructions point beyond the house to the garden. She tells the supposed phantom to go to the peach tree, where it will find the food and wine, and directs it to leave without harming either her or Gianni. She also tells her husband when to spit, making his participation in the ritual part of the deception. Federigo hears the performance from outside. Though vexed by the interruption, he understands what Tessa is doing and is so amused that he can scarcely contain his laughter; when Gianni spits, Federigo mutters a wish that it were the husband’s teeth.

Supper, Repetition, and Narrative Function

After Tessa has repeated the conjuration three times, she returns to bed with Gianni. Federigo goes to the garden, finds the capons, eggs, and wine at the foot of the peach tree, and carries them home to eat at his ease. At a later meeting, he and Tessa laugh together about the exorcism. The scene thus gives Federigo two roles in the joke: he is the lover threatened with discovery, but also the audience who recognizes the coded meaning of Tessa’s performance and the beneficiary of its practical instructions.

The tale also preserves an alternative account of the mishap. In that version, a passing husbandman strikes the ass’s skull with a stick, turning its muzzle toward Florence and inadvertently summoning Federigo. Tessa then tells the supposed phantom that she did not turn the signal herself and that Gianni is in bed with her; Federigo leaves without supper or lodging. An elderly neighbor reports that both versions were true, but that the second happened not to Gianni Lotteringhi and Tessa, but to another Gianni, who lived at Porta San Piero. The competing versions make the signal’s vulnerability part of the comic pattern: the lovers’ clever device can be disrupted by chance, while the conjuration can either guide the lover to a meal or send him away empty-handed.

Federigo’s part in the story ends with the continuing affair rather than a public reckoning or a change in his circumstances. The episode’s comedy depends on the difference between what he and Tessa understand and what Gianni believes: the husband hears a pious defense against a phantom, while the lover hears a message about food, safety, and their continuing intimacy. Federigo’s readiness to follow the garden’s directions completes the practical joke, turning a failed rendezvous into a small, successful escape.