Sismonda’s maid-substitution ruse

Madam Sismonda’s maid-substitution ruse turns a jealous husband’s attempt at surveillance into a trap of mistaken identity. When Arriguccio Berlinghieri discovers the thread she uses to signal Ruberto, he rushes out after him; while the two men are away, Madam Sismonda puts her maid in her place in bed. Arriguccio beats the maid, believing her to be his wife, and then summons her relatives as witnesses to his accusation. By the time they arrive, Madam Sismonda has restored her appearance and prepared a counter-story. Her composure and the visible mismatch between Arriguccio’s claims and the evidence defeat his effort to expose her.

Marriage and the Conditions of Secrecy

Neifile introduces Madam Sismonda as a young gentlewoman married to Arriguccio, a wealthy merchant who had foolishly imagined that marriage to a woman above his station would ennoble him. His business takes him abroad and keeps him from home, and during these absences Madam Sismonda enters a secret relationship with Ruberto, who had long courted her. The tale presents her affair as the immediate context for the husband’s suspicion, but makes his response—abandoning his ordinary concerns to watch her—an escalating force in its own right.

Arriguccio will not fall asleep until he has felt Madam Sismonda come to bed beside him. This habit imposes a watchful routine on the household and makes an ordinary meeting with Ruberto difficult. Rather than confront her husband openly, Madam Sismonda devises a signal that lets her judge whether it is safe to leave the room. The ruse is therefore made necessary by the very surveillance intended to prevent her from acting independently.

The Thread and the Pursuit

Madam Sismonda hangs a thin cord from the bedchamber window, which faces the street. She runs one end across the floor to the bed and conceals it beneath the covers, where she ties it to her great toe. Ruberto is to pull the cord when he arrives around midnight. If Arriguccio is asleep, she releases it and goes to let Ruberto in; if her husband is still awake, she holds it and draws it toward herself, telling Ruberto not to wait. The arrangement has worked inconsistently: he has sometimes been able to meet her and sometimes has had to leave without seeing her.

One night, while Madam Sismonda is asleep, Arriguccio feels the cord with his foot. He traces it to her toe, quietly cuts it free, and ties it to his own so that he can wait for whoever is pulling from outside. When Ruberto arrives and tugs as usual, the cord comes loose from Arriguccio’s poorly secured toe. Ruberto understands that he should wait, while Arriguccio gets up, takes his arms, and hurries toward the door to discover and confront the intruder.

The door itself gives Ruberto warning. Arriguccio opens it less quietly than Madam Sismonda would have done, and Ruberto recognizes that it is the husband who has answered. He flees, with Arriguccio pursuing him. The chase carries them a long way before Ruberto turns with his sword and the two men exchange blows. Neighbors wake at the noise and scold them; afraid of being recognized, Arriguccio lets Ruberto go without learning his identity or injuring him. The husband returns home furious, but the interruption has given Madam Sismonda time to recognize that her signal has been discovered and to prepare another deception.

The Substitution and the Counter-Story

As soon as she realizes that Arriguccio has left in pursuit of Ruberto, Madam Sismonda calls her maid, who knows about the affair. She persuades her to take her place in bed and asks her to endure whatever blows Arriguccio may inflict without revealing herself, promising that she will make it up to her. Madam Sismonda extinguishes the chamber light, leaves the room, and hides elsewhere in the house. The substitution depends on darkness, the husband’s rage, and his confidence that the person in the bed must be his wife.

Arriguccio returns and, unable to see clearly, seizes the maid as though she were Madam Sismonda. He strikes her with his hands and feet until her face is bruised, cuts off her hair, and berates her. The maid pleads for mercy, but her sobbing voice is so broken and Arriguccio so consumed by anger that he does not recognize it as another woman’s. He declares that he will not touch his wife further, but will fetch her brothers and leave them to decide what should be done with her. He locks the chamber door from outside and goes to summon them.

Once he has gone, Madam Sismonda rekindles the light and tends to the injured maid. She takes her back to her own room, arranges for her care in private, and rewards her with money taken from Arriguccio’s funds. She then remakes her bed as though no one had lain in it, dresses as if she had not gone to bed, lights a lamp, and sits sewing at the head of the stairs. The restored room, her unruffled appearance, and the ordinary domestic gesture of sewing give her a credible position from which to deny Arriguccio’s account.

Exposure Reversed

Arriguccio goes to the home of Madam Sismonda’s three brothers and their mother. He explains the thread, the chase, the beating, and the cut hair, producing what he believes is proof that he punished his wife. The brothers are angered and set out with him, while their mother follows, urging them not to accept his accusation without seeing more. She suggests that he may have beaten his wife for some other reason and now be using the charge to excuse himself.

When the relatives reach the house, they find Madam Sismonda seated and sewing, with no marks on her face. Arriguccio stares at her in bewilderment, recalling how severely he believes he beat her. She denies knowing what he means and asks him to show where she has been beaten. She then removes her veil to show that her hair remains whole, directly contradicting his claim that he cut it off. The physical signs on which he has relied now expose the gap between what he says happened and what the family can see.

Madam Sismonda supplies an alternative explanation: she claims that Arriguccio, after drinking in taverns and consorting with women, must have found the thread tied to another woman’s foot, mistaken her for his wife, and beaten her instead. This is her counter-accusation, not a fact independently confirmed by the tale. Her family accepts it more readily than his story. Their mother denounces him, and the brothers rebuke him, pardon him as a drunken man, and warn him not to bring them such a matter again. Arriguccio leaves aghast, unsure whether what he remembers truly happened or whether he dreamed it.

The ending makes the consequences of the substitution larger than the immediate escape. Madam Sismonda not only avoids the peril of her husband’s accusation but also secures his silence and peace at home; the tale says she has opened a way to pursue her pleasures without further fear of him. The thread that was meant to reveal her lover instead supplies the confusion through which she defeats her husband’s control. Neifile’s sequence moves from the discovery of a concealed signal, to a mistaken act of violence, to a public reversal in which the supposed evidence of misconduct becomes evidence against the accuser. The maid bears the bodily cost of the stratagem, while Madam Sismonda converts a moment of danger into lasting freedom of action.