Messer Egano de' Gulluzzi

Messer Egano is a wealthy, good-natured gentleman of Florence whose chief flaw is a complacent trust in his beautiful wife and in the young man he treats as a friend. While he obediently follows his wife's instructions into the forest to test a supposed rival, the lover slips into his house and his bed, and Egano returns only to be thrashed by his own servants for disturbing the household. His credulity and the wife's cool ingenuity make him the pivot of a tale about how easily authority is outmaneuvered by desire and wit.