The Decameron (Day 5)

8:7 This story shows that a person can only be intelligent to a certain extent, but when fueled by other emotions, said person's intelligence can drop to the bare minimum, and in doing so, harm the intelligent person. Meanwhile, the intelligence of others can drop to the point at which they cease to take into account the various outside factors which can affect those that they love, or can drop to the point at which they no longer care about what happens at the present time. In both cases, pain can be derived from a lack of intelligence as a result of being overwhelmed. This is evident in the first case (the former description of the lack of intelligence) and the second case (the latter description of the lack of intelligence). However, intelligence is used in part with the second case, as Elena is made to do such acts by way of deception.
8:7  The reader is supposed to take neither side within the context of this story, as both parties cease to be intelligent, and act as fools. Despite this, Rinieri does show more intelligence when it comes to the entire story, even if such intelligence comes at the cost of being stupid. Boccaccio creates empathy by creating vivid situations and emotional disturbances within the characters as they mourn for the disappearance, or rather, lack of appearance for their loved ones, due to the fact that they chose not to be intelligent, and are thus, being combated with intelligence. At the end of the story, however, no one is clearly being intelligent.