Madam Isabella—Messer Lambertuccio

Madam Isabella and Messer Lambertuccio are linked by a relationship she does not choose: he is passionately drawn to her, but she finds him disagreeable and resists his advances until his threat to dishonor her forces her submission. The episode makes that coercion the source of its central predicament. Lambertuccio’s power gives him access to Isabella, while her ingenuity determines how his presence will be explained when her husband unexpectedly comes home.

Desire and coercion

Madam Isabella is a young, gently born woman, married to a respected gentleman. Her marriage does not satisfy her, and she falls in love with Leonetto, a well-bred and agreeable young man of lower social standing. Their love is mutual and becomes an affair. Lambertuccio, by contrast, is a gentleman who becomes enamoured of Isabella without winning her affection. She considers him disagreeable and tiresome; repeated messages fail to persuade her to accept him.

His next move changes the nature of their connection. Because he is a man of consequence, he threatens to dishonor Isabella if she refuses him. She fears him and submits to his will. The contrast is decisive: Isabella’s relationship with Leonetto is presented as reciprocal desire, whereas Lambertuccio’s access to her is secured through intimidation. The story does not treat her submission as evidence of affection; it identifies the threat as the reason she yields.

The country-house encounter

The immediate crisis arises during summer, at Isabella’s country estate. Her husband has ridden away to spend several days elsewhere, and Isabella has sent for Leonetto, who arrives gladly. Lambertuccio hears that the husband is absent and rides alone to the house. The waiting-woman alerts Isabella while she is with Leonetto, and Isabella, afraid of Lambertuccio, asks Leonetto to hide temporarily behind the bed curtains.

Isabella then receives Lambertuccio as cheerfully as she can. He embraces and kisses her and announces that he has come because he believes her husband is away. They enter a bedchamber together. This visit repeats the coercive arrangement established by his threat, but it also creates a practical danger: the horse he has left in the courtyard makes his presence impossible to conceal if Isabella’s husband returns. Lambertuccio’s palfrey, brought into the household’s visible space, becomes evidence that Isabella must explain.

A staged escape from discovery

The husband does return, contrary to Isabella’s expectation. The waiting-woman brings word that he is already near the courtyard. With both Leonetto and Lambertuccio in the house, Isabella recognizes that she cannot hide them both in the same way: Lambertuccio’s horse is outside, and his presence cannot plausibly be erased. She acts quickly, asking him to help save her from the danger and instructing him to descend with his hanger drawn, appear angry and disordered, and leave as if pursuing someone.

Lambertuccio follows her directions. The armed departure gives his sudden exit a visible explanation before the husband can question him. When the husband sees him mounting his horse and hears him speak of finding a man elsewhere, the display appears to concern a fugitive rather than Isabella’s lover. Isabella then supplies the story that completes the deception: she claims an unknown young man had fled into the house seeking protection from Lambertuccio, and that she had prevented Lambertuccio from entering the chamber where he was hiding. Leonetto remains concealed and is thus incorporated into the account as a stranger whom Isabella had sheltered.

The husband accepts this explanation. He praises Isabella for preventing a man from being killed in their house and reproaches Lambertuccio for pursuing someone who had taken refuge there. The episode ends with the husband endorsing the very account that conceals the affair, while Lambertuccio has escaped without exposing either his coercion or Isabella’s relationship with Leonetto.

Power, concealment, and the relationship’s significance

The episode distinguishes the relationships by the different choices available to Isabella within them. Her love for Leonetto is mutual, but its secrecy leaves them vulnerable to discovery; Lambertuccio’s pursuit is unwanted, yet his status and threat make refusal dangerous. Isabella’s quick plan does not undo the coercion that brought Lambertuccio to her, but it does let her control the outcome of this particular encounter and protect Leonetto from exposure.

The movement through the house sharpens that contrast. Leonetto is hidden behind curtains; Lambertuccio cannot be hidden because his palfrey stands in the courtyard; Isabella turns the unavoidable sight of him leaving, hanger in hand, into a plausible performance. Her husband’s return transforms the house from a private setting for the affair into a space of immediate scrutiny. Isabella survives that scrutiny not by confessing either relationship, but by directing what her husband sees and how he interprets it. Lambertuccio’s connection to her therefore remains one of threat and enforced access, while her actions in the crisis reveal a resourcefulness that the threat itself had made necessary.