The Cloven Viscount

Servants at Terralba castle discover Viscount Medardo’s rooms empty and follow his trail through the countryside, finding a path of precisely halved objects—pears, a living frog, a melon, and various mushrooms, both edible and poisonous. They locate Medardo at a pool where the edible halves of mushrooms float, while the poisonous halves are missing.

On the way home, the servants encounter the narrator, Medardo’s young nephew, carrying these poisonous mushroom halves. He tells them that Medardo told him to cook and eat the mushrooms, but the servants stop him. Nurse Sebastiana declares that the evil half of Medardo has returned to Terralba.

Medardo’s malevolence becomes fully evident when he presides over a trial where he condemns brigands, their victims, and the arresting constables all to death by hanging. Master Pietrochiodo, the castle carpenter, is forced to build an elaborate multi-noose gibbet for the mass execution. Medardo has the men hanged alongside 10 cats and leaves the corpses displayed for three days, establishing his reign of cruelty.

The narrator spends his days with Dr. Trelawney, an English physician who is more interested in researching cemetery will-o’-the-wisps than practicing medicine.