Ricciardo and Catella
Intro
- Storyteller: Fiammetta
- Fiammetta goes back to Naples for this story of a woman who gets duped into taking a lover.
- It's a cautionary tale for the ladies, she says, but also one that should make them laugh.
Story
- A nobleman called Ricciardo is married to a lovely and young wife but falls in love with a woman called Catella, who's the most beautiful woman in all of Naples.
- But Catella won't have anything to do with Ricciardo, because she's horribly, jealously in love with her own husband, Filippello.
- Imagine.
- Naturally, Ricciardo pines away for her until he learns just how insanely jealous she is of her husband.
- Then he devises a plan to get what he wants. First, he makes everyone believe that he's transferred his love from Catella to another woman.
- Then, he tells Catella quite casually about an affair that her husband's having.
- Ricciardo claims that it's with his own wife. He tells Catella that he knows about it because his wife has revealed all to him and he's been directing her responses to Filippello.
- He also explains that Filippello and his (Ricciardo's) wife are supposed to meet at a Turkish bath house in the city the next afternoon.
- Ricciardo has no intention of sending his wife to such a meeting, but he advises Catella to show up and give her husband a good scolding.
- Of course, Catella swallows the story whole.
- Ricciardo goes to the bath house and arranges with the woman who runs it to play along with his little joke. She reserves the darkest room in the place for them.
- The next day, Catella arrives and asks for Filippello. The woman quickly leads her to a waiting Ricciardo.
- The room's so dark that Catella doesn't realize her mistake. Ricciardo whispers to her so she doesn't recognize him and gets her to bed as quickly as possible.
- Catella expects that she's tricked her husband into having sex with her when he meant to have an adulterous tryst with Ricciardo's wife.
- After they do their thing, Catella reveals who she really is and gives Ricciardo—who she still thinks is her husband—a tongue-lashing.
- I could have had Ricciardo, she tells him, since you've gone ahead and had an affair with his wife.
- Ricciardo speaks up and reveals his true identity. Catella freaks out.
- This is where things get a little creepy. Ricciardo holds Catella down so that she can't storm out of the room and forces her to see his point of view.
- After he whispers sweet nothings in her ear, she changes her mind and learns to enjoy the fruits of Ricciardo's trick.
- Catella enjoys it so much that she and Ricciardo find ways to carry on the relationship to their hearts' content.