Gulfardo Exposes Ambrogiuola and Escapes Repaying the Loan is the first story told on the Eighth Day, in which a proposed paid affair becomes a carefully staged financial reversal. Gulfardo gives Madam Ambruogia the two hundred gold florins she demanded, but he does so in front of a trusted companion and presents the money as repayment of a loan from her husband, Guasparruolo Cagastraccio. When Gulfardo later reports the repayment before both spouses, Madam Ambruogia cannot deny receiving the money; Guasparruolo cancels the debt, and Gulfardo has had the affair without paying its agreed price.

A Story Framed as Requital

The tale is narrated by Dioneo, who introduces it among stories about women deceiving men. He redirects that pattern by announcing a man’s trick against a woman, while presenting Gulfardo’s action not simply as deception but as a just return for deception. The distinction matters to the story’s moral framing: Dioneo condemns a woman who consents to sexual dishonor for money, but allows that a woman who yields for love may merit forgiveness. He invokes the recent example of Madam Filippa, whose case had been treated more leniently. The story therefore presents the transaction as the decisive wrong and Gulfardo’s counterplot as its exposure and punishment.

The Bargain and the Borrowed Money

Gulfardo is a German serving the state in Milan. The narrator emphasizes his reliability in repaying loans: merchants readily lend to him, and at modest interest, because they trust his credit. He is acquainted with and a friend of Guasparruolo, a wealthy merchant, and secretly falls in love with the merchant’s wife, Madam Ambruogia. His devotion is discreet enough that neither her husband nor anyone else suspects it.

When Gulfardo sends word asking for her favor, Madam Ambruogia agrees on two conditions. Their affair must remain secret, and she must receive two hundred gold florins, which she needs for an unspecified purpose. Gulfardo is indignant at the price because he had considered her a woman of worth. Rather than reject the arrangement, he says he will provide the money and claims that only a trusted companion will know what he has done. That assurance both secures her agreement and establishes the witness he will later need.

Before Guasparruolo leaves Milan for Genoa, Gulfardo asks him to lend the same two hundred florins, at the rate of interest customary between them. Guasparruolo agrees and counts out the money. The loan is genuine, but Gulfardo’s plan turns on changing what the subsequent transfer will mean: to Madam Ambruogia it is the promised price; in the presence of his companion, he identifies it as money to be returned to her husband.

The Transfer and Its Public Meaning

After Guasparruolo has gone to Genoa, Madam Ambruogia sends for Gulfardo. He arrives with his companion and first hands her the two hundred florins, telling her to give them to her husband when he returns. She accepts the money, apparently understanding that Gulfardo has described the payment that way to conceal its true purpose from the witness. She counts the full sum and puts it away.

The transfer is not the end of the affair. Madam Ambruogia takes Gulfardo to her chamber, and the two continue their encounters on several nights before Guasparruolo comes back. The arrangement thus works privately as she intended: she receives the money and gives Gulfardo access to her, while believing the stated repayment is merely cover. But the companion’s presence has created a second, public account of the same act—one that Gulfardo can later invoke without needing to prove what happened in the bedroom.

The Debt Reversed

When Guasparruolo returns, Gulfardo waits until he is with his wife and brings the companion along. He says that he had no use for the borrowed money, returned the two hundred florins to Madam Ambruogia, and therefore wants his account canceled. Guasparruolo asks his wife whether she received them. With the witness present, she cannot deny it; she confirms that she has the money and says she had not yet remembered to tell her husband.

Guasparruolo accepts her confirmation, tells Gulfardo that he is satisfied, and promises to settle the account. Gulfardo leaves without repaying the loan. Madam Ambruogia then gives the money to her husband, so the sum that she had accepted as the price of the affair becomes the repayment of Gulfardo’s debt. The closing reversal depends not on a confession of adultery but on the visible transfer of money and the witness who can support Gulfardo’s account. The narrator’s judgment is correspondingly economic as well as sexual: Gulfardo obtains the relationship without cost, while Madam Ambruogia loses the payment she had demanded and is left with the dishonor of having accepted it.