The Ill-Advised Curiosity Begins — Don Quixote

In Florence, Anselmo and Lothario are so close that everyone calls them "The Two Friends," until Anselmo marries the beautiful Camilla and Lothario wisely visits less so gossip will not stain the bride. Anselmo complains that marriage has cooled the bond, wins Lothario back to the house, then confesses a hunger stranger than jealousy: he cannot rest until his friend tries to seduce Camilla so her virtue can be proved in temptation, not merely in safety.

Lothario answers with a marathon of reason, scripture, ermine, diamond, and glass-woman poetry, insisting a chaste wife should never be dragged through engineered mud and that Anselmo asks for proof only a corrupt mind would crave. Anselmo replies like a man craving clay and plaster in pregnancy, and Lothario finally agrees to pretend rather than let a stranger do worse. He sleeps through the first assigned hour, invents progress in letters, and when Anselmo spies through the keyhole and catches the silence, the husband leaves town for eight days to clear the field.

The blind experiment works too well. Lothario, who meant only to fool Anselmo, begins to desire Camilla for real; after three days alone with the husband gone he declares himself with heat she cannot ignore. Camilla retreats to her room, writes Anselmo that very night comparing a wife without her husband to an army without its general, and tries to resist while Leonela alone knows the secret. Even as she rebuffs Lothario at the door, the pressure of the test and his persistence wear her down, and the friendship that began as theatre becomes adultery in earnest.

Anselmo reads the letter as proof the test is working and returns hungrier for sport than ever. Lothario will lie beautifully that Camilla is a saint, recite Chloris sonnets at dinner while the husband listens with delight, and eventually propose hiding Anselmo in a closet when jealousy misreads Leonela's lover at the window. Camilla will turn that trap into theatre with a dagger line on the floor and a staged wound. The curiosity Anselmo thought would crown his happiness has already begun to cost him his friend, his honour, and his wife; the inserted novel will end with the warning that he will pay with his life for hiring this performance.