Mistress Tessa’s phantom exorcism is a comic tale of adultery, misdirection, and improvised performance. When her lover arrives at the house unexpectedly, she persuades her husband that the knocking at the door comes from a phantom, then conducts a bawdy conjuration that sends the visitor to a meal hidden in the garden. The scene makes the household’s religious habits part of the deception: Gianni Lotteringhi trusts prayers and ritual, while Tessa uses his confidence to protect her affair. The tale is told by Lauretta as the second story of the Seventh Day, with its supernatural threat finally made to seem a convenient fiction—and with an alternative version that complicates any simple claim about what happened.

Household and Secret Arrangement

Gianni is a wool-comber in Florence’s San Brancazio quarter, more fortunate in his craft than wise in other matters. His generosity to the clergy brings him offices among the Laudsingers of Santa Maria Novella and a store of prayers and religious songs, which he values as safeguards for his soul. The tale presents this piety alongside his simplicity: he takes pride in the confraternity and its observances, but lacks the worldly suspicion that might expose what happens under his own roof.

His wife, Mistress Tessa, is beautiful, discreet, and well advised. She is in love with Federigo di Neri Pegolotti, a handsome young man who returns her affection. During the summer she stays at her husband’s country house in Camerata, where Federigo is able to visit when Gianni is away. On their first night together there, Tessa teaches him some of her husband’s lauds, an irreverent joining of devotional language and private intimacy. Neither intends the meeting to be their last.

To avoid depending on the serving-maid to arrange each visit, the lovers establish a signal visible from a neighboring vineyard. An ass’s skull is set on a vine pole: when its muzzle points toward Florence, Federigo should come after dark; when it points toward Fiesole, he should stay away because Gianni is present. The signal turns a feature of the rural landscape into a private instrument of communication. The lovers also agree that Federigo can knock softly three times if the door is shut. Their discreet system works repeatedly, until a night when the household’s plans and the signal no longer align.

The Unexpected Arrival

On one such evening, Tessa expects to dine with Federigo and has two fat capons cooked for him. Gianni, who is not expected, arrives late. Tessa is vexed, but conceals the two birds, along with newly laid eggs and a flask of wine, in a white napkin. She has the maid carry the provisions to the garden and place them at the foot of a peach tree, where she sometimes meets her lover without passing through the house.

In her agitation, however, Tessa fails to tell the maid to wait for Federigo and warn him that Gianni has come. She and Gianni go to bed, as does the maid. Federigo arrives, knocks once, waits, and knocks again. The door is close enough to the bedroom that Gianni hears the sound at once. Tessa hears it too, but pretends to have been asleep, keeping her husband from suspecting that she recognizes the visitor.

Gianni nudges her and draws her attention to the knocking. Tessa answers as though she has just woken, then identifies the sound as the work of a phantom that has frightened her on recent nights. Gianni reassures her with the prayers he has said before bed and the crosses he has made over it, confident that such devotions protect them both. His religious observances, which he treats as real defense against harm, give Tessa the opening for her story.

A Conjuration at the Bedroom Door

Tessa insists that she will not feel safe until they exorcise the phantom. She claims to know an effective prayer taught by a holy anchoress at Fiesole, and says she had been too afraid to try it alone. With Gianni now beside her, she proposes to perform the rite. Her explanation lets her leave the bed without raising suspicion: she can tell Federigo that Gianni is there, while making the movement appear to be part of a pious response to danger.

The couple go quietly to the door, where Federigo is still waiting. Tessa instructs Gianni to spit when she tells him. She then recites a mock exorcism, directing the phantom to leave and go into the garden, where it will find food and drink at the foot of the peach tree. Her supposed sacred remedy thus conveys practical instructions to the lover outside. The capons, eggs, and wine become both the bait in the conjuration and the means of repairing the meal Tessa had intended to share with Federigo.

The prayer’s obscenity is concealed beneath its ritual form. Its directions point the visitor to the provisions, while Gianni’s required spit makes him an unwitting participant in the performance. Federigo, hearing the conjuration, understands what has happened. He is relieved of jealousy about the unexplained signal, though still vexed to be kept from Tessa; the words nevertheless amuse him so much that Gianni’s spit prompts a muttered joke. The husband believes the ritual has addressed a phantom. The lover recognizes that the ritual has addressed him.

The Garden and the Tale’s Uncertain Ending

After Tessa has repeated the conjuration three times, she returns to bed with Gianni. Federigo, who has not eaten, goes to the peach tree, finds the food and wine, and carries them home for supper. When he meets Tessa again, the two share a hearty laugh about the exorcism. The threatened exposure has instead ended in a meal for the lover and a joke shared by the people who understand the deception.

Lauretta’s conclusion does not leave the account wholly settled. She reports another explanation in which the skull, rather than being deliberately turned toward Florence, is accidentally rotated by a passing husbandman. In that version, Federigo comes because he mistakes the changed direction for Tessa’s signal; she tells him to go away and explains that she is in bed with Gianni. He departs without supper or lodging. An elderly neighbor, however, has heard that both versions are true, but that the accidental-signal episode happened not to Gianni Lotteringhi but to another Gianni, Gianni di Nello, who was just as much of a simpleton.

The alternative preserves the story’s comic uncertainty without making the supernatural explanation necessary: the phantom is an invention in the principal account, while the second version turns the skull’s movement into a mistake with a different outcome. Lauretta leaves the audience to choose which conjuration it prefers, or to accept both as stories attached to different men. In the central episode, Tessa’s wit consists not in defeating a phantom but in directing what each person believes: Gianni hears a pious remedy, Federigo hears a coded explanation, and the audience sees how a household ritual can be made to serve as cover for an affair.