A merchant brags to his fellows about his wife's chastity. He bets a huge amount of money that none of them could seduce her, and one of them sets out to try. However, despite all his efforts, the wife is unmoved. The would-be-lover despairs, until he is offered a solution by a pious-seeming monk. The monk contrives an excuse to have a large chest delivered to the merchant's wife's chambers, with the would-be-over concealed inside. Once there, the man collects some of her belongings - a belt, a ring - and also spies on her in her sleep, observing that she has a mole under her right breast. Armed with this false evidence, he returns to the merchant, who believes that his wife has indeed been unfaithful. The merchant sends a servant to his household ahead of his return, with instructions to take his wife out into the woods and murder her. Taking pity on her, the servant lets the wife escape, and brings her bloody nightgown to his master as evidence of her death.
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Nishimura notes motif types for this story (TMI K1342, K2112.1, ATU 882, TU5194), and several analogues and reference stories:
Analogues: Hagen, Gesamtabenteuer, 68 ‘Zwei Kaufmänner und die treue Hausfrau’ (by Ruprecht von Würzburg); Gesta Romanorum, 69 ‘Das Hemd der Treue’; Decameron, 2.9 (possibly the original source for this); Bandello, Le Novelle, 21; Shakespeare, Cymbeline (up to the second act); Rosen, Das Papageienbuch, Night 7: ‘Geschichte vom indischen Königssohn und dem Weibe des Kriegers’; Grimm, Deutsche Sagen, 531 ‚Der Mann im Pflug‘.
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| Vadium appears in the following versions and secondary versions
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| Vadium is narrated in the following occurrences
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| Vadium appears in the following manuscripts
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