Milan enters the narrative as the destination that takes Francesco Vergellesi away from home. His appointment as provost gives the journey an official purpose, but the story makes the city’s importance intimate: while Francesco is away, Ricciardo il Zima and Francesco’s wife move from frustrated courtship to a concealed relationship. Milan is therefore less a described setting than the distant point around which an absence, and the opportunity it creates, takes shape.

Appointment and the bargain for the palfrey

Francesco is a wealthy and sensible gentleman, but also exceptionally covetous. Preparing to go to Milan to assume the provostship, he has arranged what he needs for the journey except for a palfrey handsome enough to satisfy him. He cannot find one to his liking and remains troubled by the lack. The story establishes the destination through this practical want: Milan is the reason Francesco needs a suitable riding horse.

In the same town lives Ricciardo, a rich young man of modest family, known as Ricciardo il Zima for his fashionable appearance. He owns one of the handsomest palfreys in Tuscany and has long loved Francesco’s beautiful and virtuous wife, though his attentions have not moved her. Others tell Francesco that he may obtain the horse because of Ricciardo’s love for his wife. Francesco summons Ricciardo and asks to buy the animal, expecting that the offer will lead to a gift.

Ricciardo refuses to sell the palfrey, but offers it as a gift on one condition: before taking it, he must be allowed to speak with Francesco’s wife in her husband’s presence, far enough from the others that no one else can hear. Covetousness overcomes Francesco’s caution. He agrees, believing that he can secure the horse while controlling the encounter, and instructs his wife to listen without replying. The bargain links the Milan appointment to the plot’s central miscalculation: Francesco obtains the mount he wants, but cannot govern what his wife hears or what she will later choose.

The departure creates an opening

When Ricciardo is left alone with the wife at a distance from the company, he declares his love and offers himself and everything he owns to her. She remains silent as ordered. Yet his speech, together with his long courtship, serenades, and jousts held in her honor, moves her. She cannot answer openly, but her sighs and glances disclose a response that her silence was meant to conceal.

Ricciardo recognizes that Francesco has arranged for the wife to remain mute, and answers his own declaration as if speaking in her voice. In that invented reply, he imagines her confessing that she has loved him all along, while saying she had to protect her reputation. He gives this imagined answer a practical consequence: Francesco will soon leave for Milan, and after his departure the lovers can meet in secret. He proposes two napkins displayed at her garden window as the signal for a nighttime visit. The wife says nothing, but her visible reaction gives Ricciardo hope.

Francesco returns, pleased with what he believes he has achieved. He asks whether Ricciardo has been allowed to speak with his wife; Ricciardo replies that he has spoken with a marble statue. Taking her silence as proof of fidelity, Francesco claims the palfrey and sets out for Milan a few days later. His departure changes the meaning of the earlier scene: what he regarded as a successful test has instead given his wife Ricciardo’s words, a signal, and time without her husband’s supervision.

Milan as an offstage interval

Once Francesco is gone, his wife recalls Ricciardo’s declaration and the horse he surrendered for her sake. She knows Francesco will be away for six months, and reasons that waiting for his return would waste her youth. She is alone, believes she has no one to fear, and decides to seize an opportunity that may not come again. The story presents the decision as hers: the husband’s absence creates the circumstances, but she chooses to act within them.

She displays the two napkins in the garden window. That evening Ricciardo comes alone to the garden gate, finds it open, and proceeds through another door into the house, where she is waiting. They meet in her chamber and become lovers. The signal converts the imagined promise from Ricciardo’s performance into a real arrangement initiated by the wife.

The affair does not end with Francesco’s return. Ricciardo visits again while Francesco is in Milan and continues to return after he has come home, to the satisfaction of both lovers. The narrative gives no description of Milan itself or of the provost’s duties there; instead, the city measures the period of separation and then remains the destination against which the lovers’ repeated meetings are set. Its narrative force lies in that contrast: Francesco travels to Milan to take up public office, while at home the private consequence of his bargain escapes his control.