Francesca’s Ruse Against Her Two Suitors is a comic tale of desire redirected into a test neither suitor can successfully complete. In Pistoia, the widowed Francesca de' Lazzari turns a freshly buried corpse into the instrument of her escape from two men who love her without knowing of each other. Their courage brings them to the tomb, but chance turns their acts of devotion into a public calamity—and gives Francesca the excuse she wants to dismiss them both.

The widow and her unwanted suitors

Francesca is a very beautiful widow in Pistoia. Two fellow townsmen, Rinuccio Palermini and Alessandro Chiarmontesi, have been banished from Florence and are living in the city. Each has fallen passionately in love with her without knowing that the other is also courting her. Both pursue her privately, sending messages and entreaties. Francesca has sometimes listened to them, but now wishes to withdraw from their advances without appearing to break faith after their repeated professions.

Her solution is to ask for a service she expects neither man to perform. That day, a notorious and frighteningly misshapen man named Scannadio has died. Though descended from gentlemen, he was reputed to be the worst man in Pistoia, and even those who had seen him alive had feared him. His body has been buried in a tomb outside the church of the Friars Minor. Francesca makes his death and burial the center of a separate, perilous task for each suitor.

Two tests at the tomb

Francesca instructs her maid to approach Alessandro first. He is to go to Scannadio’s tomb at the time of the first sleep, put on the dead man’s clothes, and lie still in his place. Scannadio’s kinsmen, she claims, will later carry the body to her house; Alessandro must let himself be transported there without speaking or moving. She tells Rinuccio a different story: he must go to the tomb around midnight, take Scannadio’s body out, and carry it silently to her house. Each man is promised her favour if he performs the service, and threatened with the end of her attentions if he refuses.

Both accept. Each declares himself willing to enter not merely a tomb but hell itself for Francesca. Their agreement unsettles her expectation that the challenge will be too dreadful to attempt. The story then follows their separate journeys, making the danger real through the fears each man considers before proceeding.

On his way to the tomb, Alessandro wonders whether Francesca’s relatives have set a trap, perhaps believing falsely that he has wronged her, or whether an enemy has arranged the scheme. He imagines being injured in the tomb—his eyes put out, his teeth drawn, or his hands cut off—and fears that speaking would expose him without securing Francesca’s promised favour. Love prevails over those apprehensions. He opens the tomb, strips Scannadio of his clothes, puts them on, and shuts himself inside. Recalling tales of horrors that occur at night in graveyards, he lies in the dead man’s place and waits, struggling against the fear that Scannadio might rise and attack him.

Rinuccio also considers the consequences of obeying. He fears that the watch may catch him carrying a corpse and condemn him as a sorcerer, and that his family may turn against him if the deed becomes known. He nevertheless decides that refusing Francesca’s first request would be worse than risking death. Near midnight, he opens the tomb and reaches for what he believes is Scannadio’s body. It is Alessandro, still concealed in the dead man’s clothes. Rinuccio grasps his feet, pulls him out, hoists him onto his shoulders, and sets off toward Francesca’s house.

The interruption and the failed delivery

Rinuccio carries his burden through dark, cloudy streets, repeatedly jolting it against benches because he cannot see clearly. Francesca watches from a window with her maid, prepared to send the men away with an excuse. Near her door, Rinuccio’s scuffling alerts watch officers lying in wait for an outlaw. They put out a light, rattle their shields and halberds, and challenge whoever is there. With no time to deliberate, Rinuccio drops Alessandro and runs.

Alessandro rises and flees too, hampered by Scannadio’s long clothes. Francesca has recognized Rinuccio carrying the apparently dead man and sees Alessandro run in the corpse’s garments. She marvels at the men’s daring, but laughs at the sight of the mishap. The unexpected interruption has spared her the need to receive either suitor, and she returns to her chamber, satisfied that the accident has freed her from their importunity.

The interruption does not end Rinuccio’s effort. After the watch leaves, he returns to the spot where he dropped Alessandro and searches for him so he can finish the service. Finding him gone, Rinuccio assumes that the officers have taken him. He goes home distressed. Alessandro, not knowing what else to do and unaware of who carried him, also returns home, chagrined at the failure.

The open tomb and Francesca’s excuse

The next morning, Scannadio’s tomb is found open and his body missing; Alessandro has rolled it to the bottom of the vault. Pistoia fills with conjectures, and the simpler townspeople decide that devils have carried the corpse away. The disappearance gives the nighttime episode a second, public consequence: what began as Francesca’s private stratagem becomes a mystery discussed throughout the city.

Both suitors report to Francesca what they attempted and what prevented them from completing her commands. Each asks her to reward his effort with her favour. She pretends not to believe either account and curtly tells them she will do nothing for them because they did not accomplish what she required. The ending is a neat reversal: their extraordinary willingness proves their devotion, but the intervening accident supplies Francesca with the literal grounds to refuse them.

Narrative design and significance

The story is told within the Decameron’s storytelling frame by Elisa. Its comic mechanism depends on the contrast between the two men’s imagined dangers and the unintended reality they encounter together. Alessandro fears an ambush and bodily mutilation; Rinuccio fears arrest and disgrace. Neither predicts that the first will be carried from his own tomb by the second, or that a patrol looking for someone else will scatter them just short of Francesca’s door.

The tomb, the borrowed corpse-clothes, and the watch’s sudden challenge turn courtship into a scene of mistaken identity and physical comedy. Yet the ruse also reveals Francesca’s practical control of the encounter: she invents separate stories, lets each man expose his own willingness, and retains the final word after chance defeats them. Their daring does not win the promised reward. Instead, Francesca converts the failed delivery into a justification for ending both pursuits, while Pistoia’s supernatural explanation of the missing body extends the consequences of the trick beyond the lovers themselves.