Ricciardo Deceives Catella with a Bathhouse Ruse

Ricciardo Deceives Catella with a Bathhouse Ruse is the central stratagem in Fiammetta’s story of the Third Day: a wealthy Neapolitan lover manipulates Catella’s jealousy until she goes willingly to a secluded bathhouse, believing she will catch her husband in an affair. In a dark room she embraces and lies with Ricciardo, mistaking him for Filippello Fighinolfi; her discovery comes only when she speaks. The trick turns suspicion into the instrument of the very intimacy Catella would have resisted, while the tale’s carefully staged darkness makes mistaken identity bodily and immediate.

Setting and Dramatic Premise

Fiammetta introduces the episode as a tale from Naples, an ancient and celebrated city. She frames it as an example of how a woman who affects indifference to love may be brought, by a lover’s ingenuity, to experience its consequences before understanding how she has been led there. The setting is not merely scenic: the story moves from public sociability on the seashore to a privately managed bathhouse, then into a chamber where darkness prevents recognition.

The predicament begins with an unequal distribution of knowledge. Ricciardo knows both his own desire and the weakness he means to exploit; Catella does not know that he still loves her or that his apparent change of heart is staged. Filippello, the husband around whom Ricciardo constructs his lie, is not shown arranging the meeting or pursuing the alleged affair. The deception works because Catella is supplied with a convincing story about her marriage, then encouraged to take action before she has independently tested it.

Desire and the Manufacture of a Rumor

Ricciardo is a young man of distinguished birth and considerable wealth. Though he has a beautiful and desirable wife, he falls in love with Catella, whom public opinion regards as the loveliest woman in Naples. Catella, in turn, loves and cherishes her own husband, Filippello, above all others. Ricciardo tries the customary means of winning her favor, but his efforts bring him no closer to his desire. He becomes so consumed by frustrated passion that neither living nor dying seems to offer him relief.

The turning point is not a new declaration of love but Ricciardo’s recognition of Catella’s jealousy. He is told by women among his relatives that she is devoted to Filippello and so suspicious of losing him that she imagines any passing bird might carry him away. Ricciardo converts that trait into a plan. He pretends to have abandoned his pursuit of Catella and begins publicly courting the appearance of love for another woman, displaying himself in jousts and tournaments as he had formerly done for Catella. The performance persuades the Neapolitans, and eventually Catella herself, that his desire has shifted elsewhere.

Once she believes he is no longer pursuing her, Catella relaxes the reserve with which she had treated him and greets him familiarly, as she greets other acquaintances. Ricciardo has altered not her feelings but the conditions under which she interprets his attention. His feigned withdrawal gives him a new kind of access: Catella’s guardedness lessens just as he needs her to trust him enough to accept his account of her husband.

The Bathhouse Invitation

The opportunity comes during a warm-weather outing on the shore, where companies of Neapolitan ladies and gentlemen gather to dine and spend time together. Ricciardo joins Catella’s party only after allowing himself to be pressed to stay, preserving the impression that he is not seeking her company. The women tease him about his supposed new love, and he continues to act the part. When Catella is briefly left with only a few people near him, he hints at an affair involving Filippello. That insinuation makes her suddenly eager to know more.

Catella asks him to explain what he means and swears to keep the information secret until she has seen for herself whether it is true. Ricciardo presents his invention as reluctant confidence. He claims that Filippello has secretly sent messages to Ricciardo’s wife, who has answered according to Ricciardo’s instructions. He further alleges that a female go-between has come to arrange a private meeting at a bathhouse. In his account, Filippello’s request is for the next day at noon, while Ricciardo’s wife has supposedly agreed to be there.

The invented story supplies Catella with both an apparent betrayal and a way to witness it. Ricciardo suggests that instead of sending his wife, he would put Catella in her place, allowing her to catch Filippello and shame him. Catella accepts the proposal without suspecting that its author is the man who once pursued her. Her jealousy turns the fabrication into something she treats as evidence: she fits prior occurrences to Ricciardo’s tale, grows angry, and promises to follow his advice. He reinforces her confidence while asking her not to reveal where she heard the accusation.

A Dark Room and a Delayed Recognition

The next morning Ricciardo enlists a woman who keeps the bathhouse, explains his purpose, and asks for her cooperation. In the house is a very dark chamber with no window to admit light. The keeper prepares a bed there, and after dining Ricciardo lies down to await Catella. The concealed room is essential to the plot: Catella will be able to act on her mistaken belief, but neither sight nor ordinary recognition can correct it before the meeting takes place.

Catella returns home full of resentment. When Filippello happens to seem distracted and fails to show his usual affection, she reads this ordinary circumstance as confirmation of the imagined rendezvous. She spends much of the night thinking about what she will say when she confronts him. At noon the next day, she takes her waiting-woman to the bathhouse and asks whether Filippello has arrived. The keeper, prepared by Ricciardo, asks whether Catella is the lady expected to speak with him and directs her into the chamber.

Catella enters with her head covered and locks herself in. Ricciardo rises joyfully and welcomes her softly, but she does not answer, fearing her voice will disclose her identity. In the darkness, each believes the arrangement to be going as intended: Ricciardo receives the woman he desired, while Catella believes she is with Filippello. They embrace and kiss, then lie together without speaking, because sound might expose the mistake. The same darkness that protects Ricciardo’s deception also prevents Catella from recognizing him through sight.

The Exposure and Its Irony

After they have been together for some time, Catella decides that the moment has come to vent her anger. She identifies herself and reproaches the man she believes to be Filippello for betraying the love she says she has given him for eight years. She declares that he has been with his own wife rather than the woman he thought he had found, and complains that he has shown her more tenderness in this encounter than throughout their life together. The contrast she draws—between the husband she believes neglects her and the lover she thinks has been deceived—reveals how completely she has entered Ricciardo’s false account.

Her speech is the point at which the deception becomes explicit to her: she names herself as Catella, and the supposed husband is exposed as Ricciardo. The encounter has not resulted from a direct declaration or an informed choice; it has been engineered by a false rumor, a carefully maintained public performance, an accomplice at the bathhouse, and a room without light. Ricciardo has turned Catella’s suspicion of sexual betrayal into the means by which she is deceived into intimacy with him. The episode’s dramatic force lies in that reversal: she arrives intending to expose an unfaithful husband, only to discover that the apparent proof was a lure and that the man in the bed is the lover whose pursuit she had thought had ended.