The narrator’s introduction is about virtue and promises.

Zerbin and Gabrina meet Hermonides of Holland (Gabrina’s enemy); Zerbin jousts on her behalf, and wins. After the fight, Hermonides explains how he and Gabrina became enemies. While serving the Greek emperor Heraclion, Hermonides’s brother Philander met a baron named Argeus—Gabrina’s husband. Gabrina tried to seduce Philander, and when he resisted, Gabrina lied to Argeus that Philander forced her to have sex. Argeus imprisoned Philander, and Gabrina continued to try to have sex with him while he was in prison. Then, Gabrina told Philander she feared Argeus’s rival Morando would sneak into her bedroom, and asked Philander to kill him if he entered her room. Instead of Morando, Argeus was naked in her bedroom, so Philander killed him by mistake. Gabrina threatened to expose him as murderer if he did not sleep with her. He conceded and had sex with her in order to escape. Gabrina then poisoned Philander, though the truth was revealed. Gabrina was imprisoned, but eventually escaped.

After hearing this story, Zerbin still keeps his promise to accompany Gabrina through the woods. They hear a battle before the narrator ends the canto.