The Mistaken Beds at the Mugnone Inn turns a cramped sleeping arrangement and a misplaced cradle into a comedy of crossed identities, illicit desire, and improvised cover stories. Pinuccio’s secret visit to Niccolosa sets off a chain of mistakes: her mother unwittingly shares Adriano’s bed, Pinuccio returns to the innkeeper’s bed by error, and the innkeeper nearly uncovers the young lovers. The wife’s quick invention, supported by Adriano, transforms a potentially scandalous discovery into an account of drunken dreaming—and leaves her with a private knowledge that no one else acknowledges.

Story and Setting

Pamfilo tells the episode on the ninth day, after Calandrino’s name has reminded him of another Niccolosa and he has introduced the tale as an example of a wife’s readiness of wit averting scandal. The story’s modest setting suits its tightly interlocked comedy: an inn in the plain of Mugnone, kept by a poor man who earns money by feeding travelers and sometimes gives acquaintances a night’s lodging. His household includes his wife, their unmarried daughter Niccolosa, about fifteen or sixteen, and a baby whom the mother is still nursing.

Pinuccio, a lively young gentleman from Florence who often passes through the district, has fallen ardently in love with Niccolosa. She is pleased that a young man of his standing desires her, and his affection is returned. Their meetings have already been successful more than once, but Pinuccio fears bringing reproach on either of them. As his desire grows, he decides to obtain a night under her father’s roof, trusting that familiarity with the household’s arrangements will let him reach Niccolosa without being discovered.

He brings Adriano, a trusted friend who knows about the affair. They hire two horses, load them with saddle-bags apparently filled with straw, and ride away from Florence late in the evening. After circling around, they arrive at the inn and pretend to be returning from Romagna, saying that nightfall has prevented them from reaching Florence. The host knows them well and, despite having little room, agrees to put them up. They bring their own provisions, eat with him, and settle into the one small bedroom.

The Night of Mistaken Beds

The room contains three pallet-beds: two at one end and a third opposite, with barely enough space to move between them. The host prepares the least uncomfortable bed for his guests. Later, Niccolosa takes one of the other beds, while the host lies in the remaining one with his wife. She places the baby’s cradle beside their bed. Everyone appears to settle for the night, but Pinuccio and Adriano are both awake.

Once he thinks the household is asleep, Pinuccio slips into Niccolosa’s bed. Though she receives him nervously, she is glad he has come, and the two take the pleasure they have both desired. Their secret meeting is interrupted not by a person but by a cat, which knocks something over. The noise wakes the innkeeper’s wife; fearing that something more serious has happened, she gets up in the dark to investigate.

At the same time, Adriano rises for a natural necessity. The cradle blocks his way, so he lifts it and sets it beside his own bed before returning to sleep. The wife finds that the noise was harmless and goes back without lighting a lamp. Discovering the cradle is no longer where she left it, she assumes she has nearly gone to the guests’ bed by mistake. Feeling her way through the darkness, she finds the cradle beside Adriano and lies down next to him, believing him to be her husband. Adriano is awake; he welcomes her, and she responds willingly, unaware of the mistaken identity.

Meanwhile, after satisfying his desire, Pinuccio leaves Niccolosa’s bed to return to his own. The displaced cradle confuses his way, and he takes the bed beside it for the host’s. He goes farther and lies down beside the actual innkeeper. The host wakes. Pinuccio, still supposing himself beside Adriano, boasts that Niccolosa is an exceptionally sweet lover and says he has gone to her more than six times since leaving his friend. The innkeeper understands that Pinuccio has been with his daughter and angrily accuses him of betraying his hospitality.

The Cover Story

Pinuccio realizes his mistake but does not manage to silence himself or repair it. Instead, he challenges the host’s threat, making the situation still more perilous. The wife, who thinks she is lying beside her husband, hears the men quarrelling and asks Adriano what is happening. Adriano answers as if nothing is amiss, attributing the guests’ words to having drunk too much the night before. At that point the wife hears her supposed husband’s voice and recognizes where she is and whom she has embraced.

She responds without argument or hesitation. In the dark, she carries the cradle over to the bed where Niccolosa is sleeping and lies down beside her daughter. Then she calls to the innkeeper as though she has been roused by his shouting and asks what has happened. When he repeats Pinuccio’s claim, she insists that it is a drunken dream: she has been lying beside her daughter all night and has not slept a wink. She adds that men drink so much in the evening that they dream they are wandering about and mistake their dreams for real exploits. Her account gives the host a way to treat the accusation as nonsense rather than face its implications.

Adriano recognizes the wife’s effort to protect both herself and Niccolosa and reinforces it. He says that Pinuccio has a habit of getting up in his sleep and reporting his fancies as truth, then urges him to return to bed. The host, hearing both of them, begins to believe that Pinuccio is dreaming. He shakes Pinuccio by the shoulders and tells him to wake and go back to his own bed. Pinuccio follows the fiction, rambling as though still asleep until the host’s laughter breaks the tension; he then pretends to wake and returns to Adriano.

Aftermath and Comic Design

In the morning, the host laughs at Pinuccio’s supposed dreams, and the party moves from one joke to another. The two young men saddle their horses, drink with their host, and ride back to Florence, pleased with how the night has turned out. Pinuccio later finds other ways to meet Niccolosa. She assures her mother that he must truly have dreamed what he described. The mother, remembering Adriano’s embraces, privately knows that she herself had been awake.

The comedy depends on the contrast between what each person knows and what can safely be said. Pinuccio’s boast is true in its essentials but delivered to the wrong man; the innkeeper hears the truth but is persuaded to accept it as sleep-talk; and the wife, who has participated unknowingly in the confusion, becomes its most effective manager once she understands it. The cradle first misdirects her and then helps her relocate beside Niccolosa, making the domestic object that caused the mistaken encounter part of the explanation that conceals it.

The ending does not restore the household to innocence or expose every secret. Instead, the host’s laughter seals the public version of events, while the wife’s inward recognition preserves the difference between that version and the night’s reality. Pinuccio and Niccolosa continue their meetings, and the mother alone carries the knowledge of her own mistaken intimacy with Adriano. The episode’s final joke rests on this divided outcome: a story accepted as a dream by the household, but remembered as an unmistakably real night by the woman who helped make it disappear.