The wolves falsely reported to have eaten Ginevra

The wolves falsely reported to have eaten Ginevra are never shown attacking her: they exist in the tale as a story told to conceal an attempted murder. Bernabo Lomellini’s servant claims that Ginevra has been killed and left to wolves, and Bernabo later accepts that she was devoured. The report makes the animals seem to have completed a sentence that human deception and jealousy set in motion. Ginevra, however, survives, and the lie ultimately helps frame the contrast between the violence people commit and the violence they attribute to animals.

The Report of the Wolves

The wolves enter the story after Ambrogiuolo of Piacenza convinces Bernabo Lomellini that his wife, Ginevra, has been unfaithful. Bernabo accepts Ambrogiuolo’s claim and orders a trusted servant to kill Ginevra on the road, threatening the servant with hanging if he disobeys. The order is Bernabo’s; the wolves are not witnesses to it, nor are they shown carrying it out. They become part of the cover story only after the servant chooses not to murder her.

In a deep, lonely valley among high rocks and trees, the servant draws his knife and tells Ginevra that she must die. When she asks what she has done to him, he explains that her husband commanded the killing. Ginevra pleads with him not to become a murderer for another man’s sake and proposes a way for him to obey Bernabo without taking her life: he can take her clothes, return to her husband, and report her dead. The servant is moved to pity. He gives her his own doublet and a hood, leaves her some money, and lets her go.

The servant then tells Bernabo that he has carried out the command and left Ginevra’s dead body among a pack of wolves. The account converts an act of mercy into apparent proof of a killing: the report conceals both the servant’s disobedience and Ginevra’s survival. Bernabo returns to Genoa believing the story, while Ginevra remains alive, alone in the valley and dressed in the servant’s clothes.

A Disappearance Mistaken for a Death

That night Ginevra reaches a nearby village, where an old woman helps her obtain what she needs. She alters the doublet to fit, makes linen breeches from her shift, cuts her hair, and changes her appearance into that of a sailor. Taking the name Sicurano da Finale, she enters the service of a Catalan gentleman and later wins the confidence of the Soldan in Alexandria. The wolf story thus accompanies a disappearance that is achieved not by any animal attack but by Ginevra’s survival, disguise, and movement through successive households.

Six years later, Ginevra uses her position to bring Bernabo to Alexandria and arrange for Ambrogiuolo’s boast to be examined before the Soldan. Under questioning, Ambrogiuolo recounts how he deceived Bernabo. Bernabo, in turn, admits that he ordered Ginevra killed and believed she had been eaten by wolves. His account shows how completely he has treated the servant’s report as fact: he has mistaken an invented animal fate for the outcome of his own order.

Ginevra Exposes the Lie

Sicurano then reveals herself as Ginevra, explaining that she has spent six years wandering in men’s clothing after Ambrogiuolo’s slander and Bernabo’s command. Her appearance overturns the supposed certainty of the wolves’ meal. Bernabo had believed Ginevra dead; Ambrogiuolo had believed his deception would remain secure. In the Soldan’s presence, Ginevra’s survival makes both men’s claims answerable to the person they had presumed absent.

The Soldan praises Ginevra’s conduct and, at her request, pardons Bernabo. Bernabo falls at her feet and asks forgiveness; she grants it and embraces him. The lie about the wolves is therefore exposed in a public reckoning that restores Ginevra’s identity and changes the men’s standing: Bernabo is spared, while Ambrogiuolo is condemned. The animals never confirm the story attributed to them; Ginevra’s living body does what the imagined wolves could not—ends the false account.

Imagined Predators and Actual Punishment

The tale’s ending sharply separates the supposed wolf attack from the real animal punishment. The Soldan orders Ambrogiuolo bound to a stake, smeared with honey, and exposed in a high place until he falls of himself. Flies, wasps, and gadflies consume him to the bones. Unlike the wolves in the servant’s fabrication, these creatures do appear as agents of bodily destruction, and their attack is presented as the consequence imposed on the deceiver.

This reversal gives the wolves a precise narrative function. First, they make Ginevra’s absence appear irreversible and allow Bernabo to believe that his order has been carried out. Later, the living Ginevra disproves that account, while the insects’ actual consumption of Ambrogiuolo supplies the story with a grotesque, visible counterpart to the fictional fate assigned to her. The tale places animal violence in two different registers: the wolves belong to a lie that hides human wrongdoing, whereas the insects enact a punishment that the Soldan has deliberately commanded.