Bertuccio's devoted sister-in-law, tortured and burned to death by her foster son Benedetto for her savings.
Assunta, Bertuccio's widowed sister-in-law and the doting foster-mother of Benedetto, met a horrific end. Having refused, on Bertuccio's advice, to keep supplying the wicked boy with money, she was set upon one night by Benedetto and two companions, who barricaded the house and dragged her toward the brazier to torture out where her savings lay. Her clothes caught fire; the attackers fled to save themselves, and she was found the next morning by the authorities, dreadfully burnt and barely breathing, every drawer forced and the money stolen.
She died of the ordeal—punished, as the guilt-stricken Bertuccio sees it, for the family's crimes, destroyed by the very child her kindness had saved and spoiled.
A tender-hearted Corsican widow of Rogliano, otherwise undescribed—last seen dreadfully burned and dying.
Benedetto's murdered foster-mother, a martyr to her own misplaced love.