This short fable, also known as The Cloven Viscount, is set in the eighteenth century. A young nobleman, Medardo of Terralba, is struck by a cannonball in battle and divided into two halves. One half returns home wholly cruel, and the other, later, wholly kind. Narrated by their nephew, the story follows the unsettling effects of each half on the villagers, and a rivalry over a shepherdess. Funny, strange and humane, it explores how goodness and wickedness each fall short when they stand alone.