Lisa's Love for King Pedro and His Consolation and Marriage Match

Lisa’s love for Pedro of Aragon is a relationship shaped by unequal rank and unequal power: she loves a king from afar, while he can answer her devotion only by recognizing its limits and arranging a future she can publicly inhabit. Her passion first brings illness and despair; Pedro’s response brings comfort, marriage, and an enduring bond expressed through his declaration that he will remain her knight.

The Encounter and the Distance Between Them

At the time the French were expelled from Sicily, Bernardo Puccini, a wealthy Florentine apothecary, lived in Palermo with his only daughter, Lisa. At a festival held by Pedro of Aragon, who had become lord of the island, the king took part in a tournament, and Lisa watched him from a window among other ladies. Seeing him ride in the Catalan fashion, she fell passionately in love. The encounter was brief and public; its consequence for Lisa was private and consuming.

Lisa understood at once the social distance between them. She knew herself to be the daughter of an apothecary and Pedro to be a king, and this mismatch made a happy outcome seem scarcely possible. Yet recognizing that the match was unsuitable did not enable her to stop loving him. She kept her passion secret, partly to avoid the greater trouble that disclosure might bring, while Pedro neither noticed her nor knew what she felt. The imbalance is central to their relationship: Lisa’s love is intense and consequential, but at first it reaches Pedro only as an unspoken feeling.

Love Becomes Illness

As Lisa’s love continued to grow, so did her melancholy. Unable to expect fulfillment and unable to confide in Pedro, she became visibly ill, wasting away like snow in the sun. Her parents, deeply concerned, tried to comfort her and summoned physicians and medicines, but their efforts had no effect. The story presents her condition not as a passing disappointment but as a crisis intensified by her belief that she could neither obtain the king nor escape her love for him.

When Bernardo offered to do anything that might please his daughter, Lisa saw a final possibility: before she died, Pedro should at least learn of her love and her resolve. She asked her father to bring Minuccio d’Arezzo, a singer and player welcomed at court. Bernardo assumed that Lisa wished to hear music for comfort. Instead, she privately entrusted Minuccio with her secret, asked him to tell the king, and asked him to return with news. She described her love as the cause of her decline and believed that dying without Pedro’s knowledge would leave her wholly disconsolate. Her request changes the relationship from silent adoration into a message deliberately carried to its object.

Minuccio’s Song and Pedro’s Answer

Minuccio undertook to help. He had the words made into a song and set them to a soft, plaintive air. On the third day, while Pedro was at table, Minuccio sang it at court. The king listened attentively and asked where the song had come from. Minuccio explained that it was newly composed, then withheld its intended recipient until he could speak to Pedro alone. After the meal, in the king’s chamber, he told him what Lisa had disclosed.

Pedro responded with compassion. He praised Lisa and instructed Minuccio to comfort her in his name, promising to visit that evening toward vespers. When Minuccio brought back the news and sang the song to Lisa, her joy and relief were immediately visible. The change in her condition begins not with a cure or a declaration of love from Pedro, but with the knowledge that he has heard her and will come. Her feeling has moved from an isolated secret to an acknowledged bond, even though the two have not yet met privately.

A Visit, Recovery, and a Publicly Shaped Future

Pedro went to Bernardo’s house under the pretext of riding out for recreation. He asked to see the family’s fine garden and then learned from Bernardo that Lisa, who had been gravely ill, had recently improved. The king understood that her recovery was connected with the message he had sent. He visited her chamber with Bernardo and two companions. Taking her by the hand, he urged her to regain her health; Lisa answered indirectly, saying that she had burdened her limited strength too heavily and that, through his kindness, he would soon see her well again. Pedro understood the concealed meaning of her words and regarded her with still greater esteem.

His visit brought Lisa further comfort. She recovered within days and became fairer than before. The king’s response, however, did not turn their attachment into a private marriage. After consulting the queen about how to repay Lisa’s love, Pedro returned to Bernardo’s house with his barons; the queen came with a company of ladies, and Lisa was received among them. Before this gathering, Pedro offered to find her a husband and said that he would continue to call himself her knight, asking only for a kiss. Lisa accepted his proposed marriage arrangement as an honor and deferred the kiss unless the queen gave permission. Her answer preserves both her devotion and her awareness of the public boundaries around their relationship.

The Meaning of Their Bond

The story’s ending, as announced in its account, is that Pedro marries Lisa to a noble young gentleman and, kissing her on the brow, thereafter avows himself her knight. This resolution gives her a marriage and a recognized social future without pretending that the difference between her station and the king’s has disappeared. Pedro’s generosity lies in acknowledging the feeling she risked revealing, comforting her when she was near despair, and ensuring that her life continues beyond the illness caused by unfulfilled love.

Lisa’s devotion remains the emotional center of the relationship, but the tale gives her more than the role of a silent admirer. She chooses to disclose her secret through Minuccio, explains what she wants him to communicate, and later responds to Pedro’s offer in her own measured terms. Pedro, in turn, does not exploit her vulnerability or promise a union that the story does not provide. Their bond is therefore presented as an exchange of recognition and care: her love reaches him, and his answer changes the course of her illness and secures her a marriage, while the title of knight preserves a lasting, ceremonially expressed attachment.