Michele Scalza’s wager about the Baronci turns a Florentine argument over noble ancestry into a comic contest of reasoning. At Monte Ughi, Scalza claims that the Cadgers are the oldest and noblest gentlemen in Florence; his deliberately absurd proof makes their irregular faces evidence that God created them first, while the rest of humanity was drawn with greater skill. His companions accept the argument, and Scalza wins the supper. The episode’s pleasure lies in watching a boast that seems designed to invite ridicule become, by its own mischievous logic, a winning case.

Setting and Dispute

Fiammetta introduces the incident after Pamfilo’s mention of the Cadgers has prompted her to tell a story demonstrating their nobility. The scene takes place among young Florentines at Monte Ughi, where the group is debating which families are the best and oldest in Florence. Some name the Uberti, others the Lamberti, and still others offer different families as they come to mind. The conversation begins as a contest over inherited standing, with established family names serving as evidence of distinction.

Michele Scalza is already known in this company as a merry, agreeable young man with a ready supply of unusual stories. The young Florentines enjoy his company when they go out together, but his claim that the Cadgers outrank all the families under discussion provokes disbelief. He specifies that he means the Cadgers who live near Santa Maria Maggiore, turning a broad argument about civic and worldly rank toward a familiar local group. The story identifies them as professional beggars, making the claim not merely surprising but an intentional inversion of conventional prestige.

The Wager and Its Terms

Rather than retreat when the others laugh at him, Scalza insists that he is speaking the truth. He proposes a wager: the winner is to receive a supper, with six companions of the winner’s choosing. He also offers to abide by the judgment of anyone the group selects, making the contest depend not on Scalza’s own say-so but on a mutually accepted decision.

Neri Mannini takes the opposing side. The company agrees that Piero di Fiorentino, at whose house they are, will judge the argument, and the whole party goes to him expecting Scalza to lose. The terms give Scalza’s joke a formal shape: a challenge, an opponent, an impartial judge, and a tangible prize. They also sharpen the reversal. Those who initially treat his claim as an obvious absurdity agree to let the same claim be tested as a serious argument.

Scalza’s Proof

Piero first hears Neri’s case, then asks Scalza how he can establish that the Cadgers are the oldest and noblest. Scalza answers by adopting the group’s own premise that greater age implies greater nobility. He then offers his comic explanation of the Cadgers’ age: God made them while first learning to draw, before creating the rest of humankind after becoming skilled at the art.

The supposed evidence is visible in their faces. Scalza contrasts other people’s well-composed, proportionate features with the Cadgers’ exaggerated variety: one has an exceptionally long, narrow face and another an excessively broad one; one has too long a nose, another too short; some have a jutting chin or huge, ass-like jawbones. He adds uneven eyes, with one larger than the other or set lower, and compares their appearance to the faces children make when they are just learning to draw. The argument transforms physical irregularity into a sign of precedence: the very feature that might ordinarily be used to mock the Cadgers becomes, in Scalza’s reasoning, proof that they belong to an earlier stage of creation.

The proof depends on a deliberate comic reversal rather than a serious account of human origins. Scalza borrows the debate’s rule about age and nobility, then makes an imagined history of divine drawing serve as his evidence. His conclusion is playful, but its construction is precise: if the Cadgers look like early attempts at drawing, they must have been made while God was still learning; if they were made first, they must be the oldest; and if the oldest are the noblest, their standing is settled.

Judgment and Comic Reversal

Piero, Neri, and the other listeners laugh at Scalza’s reasoning and declare him the winner. The group that had expected his defeat accepts the wager’s conclusion, and Scalza earns the supper for himself and the companions he may choose. The story does not report a further dispute over the judgment; the laughter itself marks the argument’s success within the company.

The ending also links the wager back to Pamfilo’s earlier use of a Cadger’s face as a measure of ugliness. Pamfilo had suggested that Forese’s appearance would have been notably ugly even beside one of the Cadgers. Fiammetta’s anecdote turns that disparaging comparison into the basis for Scalza’s mock elevation of the Cadgers: the features treated as comic defects become the signs of an ancient, supposedly superior lineage. The wager thus makes social rank unstable for the duration of the joke. Family names and inherited prestige give way to a clever speaker’s ability to control how the group interprets a visible difference.

Narrative Role

As a story told within the gathering, the episode supplies a compact performance of wit: Scalza does not change the Cadgers’ appearance, but changes what that appearance is made to mean. His victory comes from turning ridicule back upon the assumptions that support the original debate, especially the easy equation of antiquity with nobility. Fiammetta’s framing connects his ingenuity to the group’s continuing conversation, while the supper gives the verbal victory a concrete reward. The result is at once a local joke about the Cadgers and a miniature demonstration of how persuasive invention can make an audience accept an argument it first came prepared to dismiss.