Federigo degli Alberighi and the Falcon
Intro
- Storyteller: Fiammetta
- Fiammetta will tell a story sort of like the one Filomena's just told.
- She wants to make sure the ladies understand the power their beauty has over noble men and to show that everyone has the ability to choose where they apply their generosity.
- Fiammetta does something unusual here: she gives credit to a specific person for telling this story first. Coppo di Borghese Domenichi was a real person back in Boccaccio's day and he knew how to spin a tale.
Story
- A nobleman called Federigo Alberighi falls in love with a woman named Monna Giovanna.
- She is, of course, beautiful beyond all imagination. She's also married.
- Federigo spends a lot of effort and money on showing Giovanna that he's in love with her, but to no avail.
- Federigo realizes that she'll never dishonor her husband, but too late—he's spent all his money and now has only his good falcon and a small farm in the country.
- Monna Giovanna carries on with her husband until he dies early. She's left with only one son to inherit all of his father's wealth.
- As a fashionable Florentine woman, Giovanna takes her son to spend the summer in their country house. It happens to be near Federigo's farm.
- Giovanna's young son loves birds and dogs, so he quickly becomes friends with their neighbor. He's especially enamored of Federigo's falcon.
- The boy then falls ill and believes that he might have something to live for if only his mother can get Federigo's falcon for him.
- This puts Giovanna on the spot: she knows that Federigo loved her so much that he was reduced to poverty, but she never gave him the time of day before. How can she now ask for the falcon?
- But things go from bad to worse for the boy, and Giovanna's maternal instincts get the better of her. She takes a companion with her and sets off for Federigo's farm.
- You can imagine his surprise when she appears and says she wants to have breakfast with him, to make amends for ignoring him all this time.
- Federigo's overjoyed, but now he realizes just how poor he is: he has nothing to put on the table for breakfast.
- In his panic, he reaches for the only edible thing in the house—his falcon.
- O.M.G. Totally O. Henry.
- Federigo and the lady eat up the bird and then Giovanna tells him the real reason for coming.
- Federigo's inconsolable and has to explain the problem to Giovanna.
- At first, she admonishes him for killing so good a bird just to feed a woman. Then she's utterly blown away by his generosity.
- And then she's dismayed, because now her son can't have his falcon.
- Sure enough, the lad dies some days later. Fiammetta isn't really willing to say it was because of the falcon mishap (he might have had some incurable disease, after all).
- Giovanna inherits the estate from her son (note the line of inheritance, ladies), and her brothers urge her to marry after a period of mourning.
- She swears she'll only marry Federigo even though her brothers laugh at her, because he's truly noble (check out Fiammetta's last story at IV.1—she's kind of stuck on this theme).
- So Federigo marries Giovanna, becomes a wealthy man again (and smarter about his money), and lives happily ever after.