Solomon’s Advice to Melisso and Giosefo turns two brief answers from Solomon into a pair of contrasting lessons about affection and authority. Melisso learns that generosity without genuine love cannot win love in return; Giosefo takes the direction to Goosebridge as counsel to beat his disobedient wife, and the story presents her subsequent obedience as the result. The tale’s bluntly different outcomes make its moral force depend on interpretation: one answer is clarified by reflection, the other by a muleteer’s example and violence.

The Two Travelers and Their Questions

Emilia’s story begins with the widespread renown of Solomon’s wisdom and liberality. People come from many parts of the world seeking counsel in urgent difficulties. Among them are Melisso, a wealthy young gentleman from Lajazzo, and Giosefo, whom Melisso meets on the road after leaving Antioch. They are traveling toward Jerusalem for advice, though their problems are different.

Giosefo is troubled by his wife, whom he considers exceptionally wayward. He has tried prayers and blandishments, but says he cannot correct her behavior. Melisso, by contrast, is wealthy and keeps open house for his fellow townsmen, spending generously to entertain them. Despite these honors and services, he cannot find anyone who wishes him well. Their journey brings together a complaint about an unmanageable marriage and a question about how to earn affection.

Solomon’s Compressed Counsel

At Jerusalem, an introduction from one of Solomon’s barons gains the travelers an audience. Melisso briefly explains his difficulty, and Solomon answers with a single instruction: love. Melisso is dismissed, and Giosefo is given a different, equally cryptic direction: go to Goosebridge. Neither man can initially see how the answer applies to his problem. They leave believing they have been flouted, and set out for home without understanding the counsel they sought.

The story makes the difference between the two answers consequential. Melisso’s advice names an inward quality but leaves him to discover what is missing in his conduct. Giosefo receives a place-name whose significance remains obscure until an incident on the return journey supplies him with an interpretation. In both cases, Solomon’s brief speech does not itself explain the lesson; the travelers must meet circumstances that make its meaning legible.

The Mule at Goosebridge

On the road, the travelers reach a river crossed by a fine bridge. A caravan of pack-mules and sumpter-horses is crossing, so they must wait. One mule takes fright and refuses to proceed. Its muleteer first tries moderate blows, but the animal shies from side to side and even turns back. The man then beats it heavily on the head, flanks, and rump. Melisso and Giosefo protest that the muleteer should use gentler treatment, warning that he may kill the beast; the muleteer replies that they know horses while he knows his mule. He continues striking until the mule crosses and he wins the contest.

When the travelers ask a poor man sitting at the bridge-head for the place’s name, he tells them it is Goosebridge. Giosefo immediately recalls Solomon’s direction and decides that he has now learned how to beat his wife. The episode turns a riddle into a practical example, but the meaning Giosefo extracts is his own: he treats the muleteer’s success through force as a model for marital control. The bridge is thus not simply a destination in Solomon’s answer; it is the setting where Giosefo converts an ambiguous instruction into a violent plan.

Giosefo’s Lesson at Home

At Antioch, Giosefo invites Melisso to stay for a day or two. His wife receives them poorly, and Giosefo asks her to prepare supper as Melisso directs. She does almost the opposite of what she has been told. When her husband challenges her, she answers haughtily that she chose to do as she pleased and that he can accept it or leave it. Melisso is astonished and rebukes her; Giosefo says she remains as she always has been and promises to change her manner.

Giosefo asks Melisso to watch what follows and recalls the muleteer’s insistence that he knew his own animal. He takes a round stick of young oak into the chamber where his wife has gone after leaving the table in anger. Seizing her by the hair, he throws her down and beats her. She first cries out and threatens him; when the blows continue and she is bruised, she begs him not to kill her and promises never again to depart from his wishes. Giosefo does not stop at her plea: he continues until he is weary and her back is bruised throughout.

The next morning the wife rises in pain and asks what he wants prepared for dinner. This time she follows his instructions, and the meal is done as ordered. Giosefo and Melisso praise the counsel they had misunderstood. The result is presented as an immediate change in her conduct, but the account also makes clear that this change follows severe physical punishment rather than persuasion or reconciliation.

What the Counsel Reveals

After several days, Melisso takes leave of Giosefo and returns home. He recounts Solomon’s answer to a man of understanding, who explains that Melisso has mistaken display for affection: he entertains and honors others not because he loves them, but for pomp and ostentation. Solomon’s instruction was therefore not a technique for acquiring admirers through greater expenditure. Melisso must genuinely love others if he wishes to be loved. The story closes by joining the corrected husband’s household to Melisso’s new understanding, while giving the two lessons sharply unequal ethical weight.

The tale’s structure depends on delayed recognition. Goosebridge acquires meaning through the mule’s passage and the muleteer’s blows; Solomon’s word to Melisso becomes intelligible only through another person’s explanation after the journey. The two answers thus expose different errors: Giosefo has failed to control his wife, in the story’s patriarchal framing, while Melisso has confused conspicuous generosity with affection. The ending resolves both problems, but does not present them as equivalent: Melisso is asked to change the motive behind his own actions, whereas Giosefo’s solution is imposed on his wife by force.