Gilberto Lets Dianora Keep Her Promise, and Ansaldo Gives Up His Claim

Gilberto Lets Dianora Keep Her Promise, and Ansaldo Gives Up His Claim is a tale of a seemingly impossible bargain whose fulfillment exposes the difference between possessing a beloved and honoring her. Madam Dianora asks Messer Ansaldo Gradense for a garden in January as a way to end his importunities; when he creates one, her husband Gilberto allows her to keep her word, but Ansaldo refuses to take advantage of that permission. Emilia’s story turns the lovers’ expected exchange into a succession of acts of generosity, each answered by another.

The demand and its purpose

The episode takes place in Udine, in Friuli. Madam Dianora is married to Gilberto, a wealthy gentleman described as gentle and accommodating. Messer Ansaldo, a noble baron renowned for prowess and courtesy, has fallen passionately in love with her. He repeatedly sends messages and seeks her affection, but she refuses him. His persistence has become a burden, and she decides to bring it to an end with a test she believes cannot be passed.

Dianora tells the woman who carries Ansaldo’s messages that she has heard of his devotion and of the gifts he has offered, but that gifts will not change her mind. She will consider his claim only if he can provide, during the coming January, a garden near the city full of green grass, flowering plants, and leafy trees as if it were May. If he cannot do so, he must stop sending either the messenger or anyone else. She also warns that if he continues to press her, she may disclose his pursuit to her husband and relatives, though until then she has kept it hidden from them. The demand therefore serves both as an apparently impossible condition and as a boundary against further solicitation.

The winter garden

Ansaldo understands that Dianora’s condition is intended to destroy his remaining hope, yet he resolves to attempt it. He makes inquiries in different parts of the world until he finds a practitioner who promises to produce the garden by necromantic art in return for a large payment. Ansaldo agrees and waits for the appointed time.

The night before the calends of January, in severe cold and amid snow and ice, the practitioner works in a meadow beside the city. By morning it appears transformed: grass, trees, and fruits of every kind make it seem one of the finest gardens imaginable. Ansaldo has the fairest flowers and fruits gathered and secretly sent to Dianora as proof that he has met her condition. He also reminds her of the promise she made and swore to fulfill. The garden is not merely a spectacle; it converts a condition she had set to end his suit into an obligation she now fears she cannot escape.

Dianora goes with many other women of the city to see the marvel. She praises it with wonder, but her curiosity cannot quiet her distress. Having once thought her demand impossible, she now feels bound by the promise attached to it. Her unease becomes visible at home, and Gilberto presses her to explain. After remaining silent for a long while out of shame, she tells him the whole story.

Gilberto’s difficult permission

Gilberto is at first angry, but he then considers what he understands to have been the purity of his wife’s intention: she had meant to discourage Ansaldo, not to betray her husband. He nevertheless reproves her for listening to the messages and entering into terms concerning her chastity, observing that words heard by the heart can have more power than people suppose and that, for lovers, almost anything may become possible.

Even while faulting her judgment, Gilberto chooses to release her from the promise himself. He tells her to go to Ansaldo and seek to be freed from it while preserving her chastity if she can. If that proves impossible, he says, she may yield her body on this occasion, but not her soul. The permission is deliberately costly: it places his own honor and Dianora’s safety within a choice made in response to Ansaldo’s claim, while leaving room for her to return without having surrendered her inner allegiance.

Dianora weeps and says she does not wish to receive such a concession from her husband, but Gilberto insists. At daybreak she goes to Ansaldo’s house with two serving-men before her and a chamberwoman behind. Ansaldo is astonished by her arrival and calls the practitioner to witness what his skill has won him. He receives Dianora with decency and reverence, seats her in a chamber by a great fire, and asks why she has come so early and in such company.

Ansaldo relinquishes his claim

Dianora explains that neither love for Ansaldo nor a promise made of her own accord has brought her there. She has come because her husband commanded it, out of regard for the trouble caused by Ansaldo’s passion and for the honor of those involved; by Gilberto’s order, she is prepared to grant Ansaldo what he wishes. The fulfillment of the bargain thus arrives not as a freely renewed declaration of love, but as the consequence of her husband’s permission.

That distinction changes Ansaldo’s response. Hearing that Gilberto has shown compassion toward the man who loves his wife, Ansaldo’s ardor gives way to compassion of his own. He refuses to become the cause of an injury to the husband who has treated him so generously, and tells Dianora that she may remain as long as she likes but will be treated as his sister. When she wishes, she is free to leave. He asks only that she convey her thanks to Gilberto and regard him thereafter as a brother and servant.

Dianora is overjoyed. She says that Ansaldo’s conduct is what she had expected from his character, and returns home under honorable escort. She tells Gilberto what has happened, and the two men become close and loyal friends. Ansaldo extinguishes his lustful love for Dianora, but keeps an honorable affection for her. His change is not a denial that he loved her: the story stresses that his former passion was ardent, then gives that passion a different form once he recognizes the generosity that has been shown to him.

The final gift and the tale’s design

The last act completes the exchange of generosity. Ansaldo intends to pay the practitioner the large fee he promised. Having witnessed Gilberto’s liberality toward his wife’s lover and Ansaldo’s restraint toward Dianora, the practitioner refuses the money. He says that after seeing Gilberto generous with his honor and Ansaldo generous with his love, he too will be generous with his payment. Ansaldo tries to make him accept all or part of the fee, but the practitioner will not; after three days, he also makes the winter garden disappear and departs.

Emilia frames the episode as a comparison with the preceding tale of Messer Gentile de' Carisendi. There, generosity is shown by a man who relinquishes a woman he believes dead and whose love has already lost hope. Here, Ansaldo gives up the woman he has pursued when she stands before him and, through her husband’s command, seems within his reach. Gilberto’s permission makes the temptation concrete; Ansaldo’s refusal turns the apparent victory into a test of character. The garden’s brief, artificial May in the middle of January gives way to a more durable result: Dianora is returned unharmed, the claim is relinquished, and generosity passes from husband to lover to practitioner.