Salabaetto—Biancofiore

Salabaetto and Biancofiore are joined by a contest of money and misdirection in which the apparent balance of power reverses. Their dealings include a thousand-florin loan and a repayment of five hundred florins; when Salabaetto’s counterplot is exposed, Biancofiore discovers that the goods she had treated as valuable security were mostly a deception.

A Relationship Shaped by Financial Dealings

The evidence of their relationship is commercial as well as personal: money changes hands, and each party’s understanding of the transaction determines who holds the advantage. Biancofiore initially appears to have outmaneuvered Salabaetto. The final discovery, however, shows that his departure from Palermo was part of a counter-deception, not simply an end to their dealings.

The amounts sharpen the reversal. Biancofiore laments both the five hundred florins she had repaid and, more bitterly, the thousand she had lent. Her losses are not presented as an abstract setback: she is left to confront the gap between the value she expected to recover and what Salabaetto actually left behind.

The Warehouse Discovery

After Salabaetto has been gone for two months, Biancofiore grows suspicious and has the broker force open the magazines. The first casks she tests, which she believed contained oil, hold seawater instead; only a small runlet of oil has been placed at the top near each bunghole. When the bales are opened, they prove to be filled with tow, apart from two that contain cloth. The whole store amounts to no more than two hundred florins’ worth.

The staged cargo makes the trick legible piece by piece. A thin layer of oil disguises the water beneath it, while the few real stuffs lend the other bales a misleading appearance of value. The discovery turns the warehouse into an accounting of the deception: what seemed substantial proves nearly empty of worth.

Reversal and Aftermath

Biancofiore confesses herself outwitted and laments the loss, especially the thousand-florin loan. Her repeated proverb, “Who with a Tuscan hath to do, Must nor be blind nor see askew,” gives her defeat a bitterly comic edge: she recognizes that she has misjudged her opponent, but only after the contents of the stores have made the truth unavoidable.

The relation therefore ends in a reversal rather than a reconciliation. Biancofiore has the goods examined, but Salabaetto has already left Palermo, and the exposed cargo yields little against the money at issue. Her loss and scorn mark the consequence of his counterplot; the story’s closing emphasis falls on the fact that deception can be answered in kind.