Saladin and Messer Torello
Intro
- Storyteller: Panfilo
- Panfilo follows Filomena's story so that Dioneo can go last.
- He wants to use his story to reinforce Filomena's ideas of friendship. These days, you won't find too many people like those guys Titus and Gisippus.
- The moral? Be nice, because karma.
Story
- Panfilo sets his story during the Third Crusade (about 1189, led by Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa).
- Saladin, the legendary Sultan of Babylon, disguises himself as a merchant and tours Europe to scout out the countries of the Christian crusaders coming to destroy him.
- On their way to Pavia, he and his companions run into a gentleman called Torello.
- Torello is so impressed by the merchants that he arranges, with a little deception, for them to stay at his country home.
- Saladin and Torello admire each other.
- Saladin speaks Italian, so he's able to converse freely with Torello.
- Torello thinks Saladin is the finest guy ever and wants to impress the "merchant" even more, so he sends a message to his wife in the city of Pavia asking her to prepare a little something for his guests.
- Torello pretends to bring them to the finest inn in Pavia, but really he's bringing them to his own mansion.
- Saladin doesn't know what to make of this guy. He's so generous that he can't be for real.
- When they get to town, his wife has set up a feast with lots of VIPs to entertain the merchants.
- Saladin's kind of exasperated. He's trying to be under the radar and Torello isn't having it.
- Torello's wife gives Saladin and his companions two sumptuous robes apiece as parting gifts.
- Torello himself replaces their old, tired horses with new ones.
- Saladin suspects that Torello sees through his disguise. Otherwise, why would an ordinary citizen go through the trouble of entertaining merchants as if they were emperors?
- He tells his companions that he's never met anyone like Torello before.
- As they're saying their goodbyes, Torello tells Saladin that he can't believe his new friends are merchants.
- Saladin replies that one day, he'll prove the "quality of his merchandise" to Torello. What could that mean?
- Saladin also promises himself that he'll repay Torello's kindness if he survives the coming wars.
- He returns home and makes plans to fight the Crusaders.
- Torello makes plans to join the Crusade. His wife is not happy.
- He tells her that if he doesn't return in a year, a month, and a day, and if she doesn't have proof that he's alive, she should re-marry.
- She gives him a ring so that in case she should die, it would remind him of her.
- Torello makes it as far as Acre, but the crusading troops are afflicted with an epidemic of fever and Saladin captures everyone else.
- Torello hides his identity to protect himself, and gets a job training hawks. He's so good at it that Saladin makes him his personal falconer.
- So here's the problem with disguises: you don't recognize a good friend when you see him.
- Saladin never learns Torello's name. He calls him "the Christian."
- Torello tries without luck to escape. He manages to get a letter off to his wife by way of some Italian emissaries.
- Eventually, Saladin recognizes a certain expression on Torello's face. But Torello insists that he's just a poor man.
- (ISHO, we'd fess up ASAP and hope to be saved.)
- Saladin devises a test: he lays out all of his robes and asks Torello if he recognizes any of them.
- Torello says that two of them remind him of robes his wife once gave to some merchants.
- Saladin hugs him and tells him that now "he will prove the quality of his merchandise."
- Saladin entertains Torello as his equal and Torello kind of likes it. He totally forgets about his wife and his promise to her.
- OTOH, he believes that his letter has been delivered.
- It hasn't.
- Also, another Torello, a Provençal nobody who was with the Crusaders, had died. Everybody thought it our Torello.
- Word gets back to his wife that Torello's dead. Her family pressures her to re-marry.
- Torello finally gets word that the ship carrying his letter sank. The deadline he'd given his wife is fast approaching. Now he wants to die for reals.
- But Saladin tells him to cheer up. He's got an ace up his sleeve.
- He gets his conjurer to make an enchanted bed that will fly Torello home in an instant.
- Wow—we want one of those. Beam us up, Saladin.
- Saladin wants Torello to stay and rule with him—a political version of bromance. He's also bummed that he can't send Torello back to Pavia in style.
- So he decks out the bed as much as he can (read that however you like) and dresses Torello in funky, expensive eastern clothes.
- At departure time, Saladin is grieved that he can't go with his friend and begs Torello to come back to him or at least to write.
- Then he "enfolds [Torello] tenderly in his arms."
- Torello's given a sleeping potion to make the transport smooth, kind of like Ripley and crew in "Alien."
- Saladin places a crown with a gift tag to Torello's wife on it, a ring on Torello's finger, a sword by his side and other precious things around him.
- Torello zips away and wakes up in the church near his home, where his uncle's the abbot.
- He scares the bejeebers out of the clergy, who are under the impression that he's dead.
- Now he has to crash his wife's wedding, which is taking place that day.
- No one recognizes him. Torello decides to reveal himself to his wife at her wedding feast.
- He pretends that it's a custom of his country for the bride to ask a valued guest to drink wine from her cup and for the guest to send it back so she can drink the last drops.
- So he gets the cup from her and slips her ring into the dregs.
- When she recognizes it, she knocks over the table and claims him as her true husband.
- Torello reclaims her from her new bridegroom. She takes off her crown and new wedding ring and replaces them with the ring and the crown from Saladin.
- And of course, they live happily ever after. Nothing further is said about Saladin, however.