Tancredi Kills Guiscardo and Sends His Heart to His Daughter

Tancredi’s killing of Guiscardo and delivery of his heart to Ghismonda is the decisive reversal in their secret love story: the hidden meetings are exposed, the lovers’ private happiness becomes fatal conflict, and a father’s violence takes the form of a message sent directly to his daughter. In Fiammetta’s embedded tale, the passage moves from accidental discovery to deliberate punishment, then from the murder to Ghismonda’s composed reception of its grisly token.

The Secret Meeting and Its Discovery

Ghismonda and Guiscardo have arranged their love in secrecy. A tunnel connects the lovers’ separate worlds: Guiscardo enters it in a leather suit, uses a knotted rope to descend into the grotto, and climbs back out by the same route after their meetings. Ghismonda, meanwhile, creates opportunities to be alone, dismissing her women and opening the private door. Their repeated use of the passage has made the affair a settled practice, carefully concealed from the household.

The discovery begins not with a planned investigation but with Tancredi’s ordinary habit of visiting his daughter. On the day in question, Ghismonda is in the garden with her women. Tancredi enters her chamber without being seen, finds the windows closed and the bed curtains drawn, and falls asleep on a hassock at the foot of the bed, hidden behind a curtain. When Ghismonda later slips in and admits Guiscardo through the secret door, neither lover notices that her father is there.

Tancredi wakes and sees them together. His first impulse is to cry out, but he restrains himself and stays hidden, choosing to wait until he can act privately. The lovers remain unaware of his presence, continue their accustomed meeting, and part without knowing that their concealment has failed. Tancredi leaves unseen through a window and returns to his own chamber in deep distress. His silence preserves the secret for the moment, but transforms accidental witnessing into a calculated response.

From Witness to Captor

That night, at the time of the first sleep, Tancredi has two men seize Guiscardo as he comes out of the tunnel. Guiscardo is still dressed in the leather suit that had protected him among the brambles. Brought secretly before Tancredi, he hears the accusation that his kindness has been repaid with outrage and shame within Tancredi’s own family. Guiscardo offers no denial or elaborate defense; he answers, “Love can far more than either you or I.” The brief reply sets the force of desire against the father’s claim to command and interpret what has happened.

Tancredi orders Guiscardo kept under guard in a chamber of the palace. The next day he confronts Ghismonda, who does not yet know that her lover has been captured. With tears in his eyes, he recalls his confidence in her virtue and the exceptional tenderness with which he has loved her as a daughter. He reproaches her both for loving outside marriage and, especially, for choosing Guiscardo, a young man of low condition who had been raised at court almost as an act of charity. His speech reveals divided feeling: affection draws him toward pardon, while wounded pride and anger urge harshness. He asks to hear what she will say before deciding how to deal with her.

The Killing and the Golden Bowl

Tancredi recognizes the strength of Ghismonda’s spirit, but does not trust that her declared resolve is as firm as her words suggest. Instead of punishing her directly, he decides to make her suffer through the death of the man she loves. He commands Guiscardo’s two guardians to strangle him quietly that night and bring him his heart. The order turns a private love affair into an execution carried out under the authority of Ghismonda’s father.

The next morning Tancredi has a large, handsome golden bowl brought to him. He places Guiscardo’s heart inside and sends it to Ghismonda through a trusted servant, with a message that presents the heart as consolation for the thing she loved most, just as she had supposedly consoled him by taking from him what he loved most. The bowl makes the message tangible: a precious vessel encloses the bodily proof of Tancredi’s power over the lover and his deliberate choice to make his daughter receive the result of that power.

Ghismonda’s Reception of the Token

Before the servant arrives, Ghismonda has prepared poison from herbs and roots, distilled and reduced in water, in case the feared outcome comes to pass. When she receives the bowl and understands both what it contains and what her father’s message means, she remains composed. She acknowledges that a heart such as Guiscardo’s deserved no less worthy a tomb than one of gold, and thanks her father for the gift. Her controlled response reverses the message’s intended power: the object sent to overwhelm her becomes, in her words, an honorable burial for her lover.

Ghismonda kisses the heart and interprets the present through the tenderness she still attributes to her father, even while recognizing his cruelty. She then speaks to the dead Guiscardo, mourning that she must now see with bodily eyes what she had previously held in the mind, and saying that she will give him the tears she had meant to withhold. She joins the golden bowl, the heart, and her prepared poison in a scene where the father’s attempt to control the meaning of the lovers’ relationship meets Ghismonda’s own unwavering account of their love. The episode leaves the violence unmistakable, but gives its final emotional emphasis to the daughter’s response rather than to Tancredi’s command.