The Decameron

Emilia is crowned queen for the ninth day. She says that the theme should be open, so that the individuals have free rein over their choice of stories.

The first storyteller is Filomena. Francesca is a widow who lives outside of Florence. Rinuccio and Alessandro are two men who have been “banished from Florence” (963) and now have their sights set on Francesca. However, she is uninterested in either man. Her plan to rid herself of the men is to trick them into competing against one another in an impossible task which she is “certain they will fail to accomplish” (964). Following the death of a widely-disliked man, she tells Alessandro to pose as the dead man when the body is exhumed and she tells Rinuccio to bring her the body of the supposed dead man. When neither man is able to complete the assignment, she is able to laugh at their respective failures as “she neatly rid herself of both” (969).

The next storyteller is Elissa. In Lombardy, a nun named Isabetta conducts an affair with a younger man “for some considerable time” (971). When he visits her in the convent, he manages to hide his presence. One night, however, he is spotted.