Salabaetto Turns the Tables on Biancofiore is the reversal at the heart of Dioneo’s tale of a Florentine merchant and a Sicilian swindler. Salabaetto first mistakes calculated seduction for affection and loses five hundred gold florins; after learning how little his promises and desire can protect him, he counters with a deception built from false cargo, apparent credit, and Biancofiore’s own appetite for a larger profit. Her discovery that the goods securing her advance are mostly tow and seawater turns the story’s governing proverb into its outcome: the practiced deceiver becomes the person deceived.

A Merchant in Palermo

The story is introduced as an example of a familiar maritime custom: merchants arriving with merchandise declare it at the port’s customhouse, where their goods are entered in a register and stored under lock. Brokers can use those records to learn what a merchant possesses and judge how much credit he might be worth. Dioneo describes this commercial setting as a place where women who make a living by seduction can identify and exploit visiting traders. The warehouse and its written entries will later give Salabaetto a way to make his fabricated wealth look officially documented.

Salabaetto, whose full name is given as Niccolo da Cignano, comes to Palermo on behalf of his Florentine masters. He carries woollen cloth left over from the Salerno fair, worth about five hundred gold florins. He registers the goods, stores them, and takes his time about selling them, going about the city for pleasure. His youthful appearance and easy manner attract Madam Biancofiore, who learns something of his affairs. He notices her attention but supposes she is a great lady captivated by his looks; she, meanwhile, sets about drawing him into her confidence.

The First Deception and Its Cost

Biancofiore has a woman in her service approach Salabaetto with a story of her mistress’s overwhelming love and a proposal for a private meeting at a bathhouse. The messenger gives him a ring on Biancofiore’s behalf. Delighted, Salabaetto accepts the invitation and answers as though he, too, is entirely devoted to her. The story makes his error more than a bad commercial calculation: he mistakes a carefully managed performance for a personal attachment and allows that belief to weaken his judgment.

Biancofiore develops the deception by receiving him warmly, showering him with caresses, and appearing generous. After Salabaetto has sold his cloth at a good profit, she stages a sudden crisis. A slave-girl summons her; returning in tears, Biancofiore claims that a letter from Messina says her brother will be beheaded unless she sends him a thousand florins within eight days. She pretends that she cannot raise the money in time and that only a longer delay would let her find funds or sell an estate.

Salabaetto believes her distress and offers five hundred florins, explaining that he has only just sold his goods and cannot provide the full sum. Biancofiore feigns reluctance to accept help from a merchant, then represents his offer as proof of his true love. The next morning he brings her the gold without requiring a written acknowledgment or other security. Her tears accompany the payment, while the narrator makes clear that her apparent sorrow masks satisfaction.

Once she has the money, her welcome changes. Salabaetto can no longer gain admission whenever he wishes; when admitted, he receives fewer caresses, and the promised repayment date passes by a month or two. He understands that he has been deceived, but has no document to establish the debt. Ashamed to complain and anticipating ridicule, he bears the loss in silence. His masters’ letters demanding that he arrange the money and remit it make his private mistake a business danger: he has spent funds entrusted to him and cannot simply remain in Palermo.

Return with Counterfeit Wealth

Rather than return to Florence and expose his failure, Salabaetto leaves by ship for Naples, although his proper destination should have been Pisa. There he turns to Pietro dello Canigiano, treasurer to the Empress of Constantinople and a trusted friend of Salabaetto and his family. Salabaetto tells him what happened and asks for advice. Pietro rebukes his conduct, but treats the damage as a problem still to be managed and devises a counterplot.

With some money of his own and a loan from Pietro, Salabaetto assembles a shipment designed to look substantial. He packs and cords a number of bales, buys twenty oil casks, and fills them with seawater. He then carries the goods back to Palermo and has the cargo and its declared value entered at the customhouse. He says he will leave the shipment untouched until other merchandise he expects has arrived. The formal registration lends a commercial appearance to the trick, while the locked goods themselves conceal how little value they contain.

Biancofiore hears that Salabaetto has returned with goods supposedly worth more than two thousand florins, besides another shipment valued at over three thousand. She decides that she had taken too little from him and that recovering the original five hundred will let her pursue a much larger gain. Her renewed warmth is therefore another calculated display, but this time Salabaetto knows what it is. He accepts her affectionate welcome and claims that he has sold most of his property, brought more than two thousand florins’ worth of merchandise, and expects another valuable cargo from the west. He says he intends to establish a warehouse in Palermo and stay near her.

The Loan and the Exposure

Biancofiore excuses her earlier coldness by saying that she had been distressed and unable to find the thousand florins she needed. She claims to have obtained the money shortly after his departure but says she did not know where to send it. Producing a purse, she returns the original five hundred florins. Salabaetto accepts the money and encourages her to believe that his affection remains undiminished. The repayment is not a restoration of trust: it is a deliberate part of his plan, making her more willing to risk a larger sum.

When Biancofiore later invites him to supper, Salabaetto appears deeply troubled. He invents a new emergency: a ship carrying merchandise he expects has been seized by corsairs of Monaco, who demand ten thousand gold florins in ransom, of which he supposedly owes a thousand. He claims to have sent the five hundred she returned to Naples to buy cloth and says that selling his present stock would bring almost nothing because the market is poor. This time he uses the appearance of impending loss to invite the very form of assistance that had made him vulnerable before.

Biancofiore fears that Salabaetto may leave Palermo altogether. She says she would lend him the money if she had it, then proposes a lender who charges thirty per hundred and requires good security. She offers to pledge her own possessions and person, while asking how Salabaetto will secure the rest. He recognizes that she intends to lend through an intermediary and accepts the arrangement. He offers the merchandise entered at the customhouse as collateral, but insists that the warehouse key remain with him so he can show the goods and prevent them from being touched or altered.

Biancofiore agrees. She sends for a broker she trusts and supplies a thousand gold florins, which are lent to Salabaetto under the broker’s name and secured against the warehouse goods. After the papers are drawn up, Salabaetto departs as soon as he can, carrying the thousand florins from the loan and the five hundred returned to him. At Naples he repays Pietro and his other creditors and sends his masters a full account of the entrusted goods. Having escaped the immediate business consequences of his first loss, he celebrates the counter-deception with Pietro and resolves to give up merchant trading, going on to Ferrara.

What the Warehouse Reveals

Biancofiore waits about two months for Salabaetto to return. When he does not, she has the broker force open the warehouse. The casks she thought contained oil prove to be seawater, except for a small quantity of oil near each bung; the bales are full of tow, apart from two that contain cloth. All the goods together are worth no more than two hundred florins. The apparent cargo that secured the thousand-florin advance was never the valuable stock Biancofiore believed it to be.

Her losses therefore arise from two connected reversals. She first gives back the five hundred florins she had taken, hoping the repayment will help her obtain a still greater sum; then she advances a thousand florins against cargo whose true value is only a fraction of the loan. Salabaetto does not expose her by proving his case in court or by recovering the money through a formal complaint. He escapes by making her own habits of calculation and deception work against her, then leaves Palermo before the false security can be examined.

Biancofiore repeatedly laments that she lost both the five hundred florins she returned and the thousand she lent. Her final proverb about dealing with a Tuscan acknowledges the skill with which Salabaetto has outwitted her, but also preserves the story’s irony: the person famed for shaving others of their goods discovers that she has misjudged the man she meant to exploit. In Dioneo’s framing, the tale’s pleasure lies in this reversal of expertise. Salabaetto’s first credulity makes him vulnerable; after recognizing it, he turns the customhouse record, the apparent cargo, and Biancofiore’s expectation of profit into instruments of escape.