The caprices are dedicated to the Florentine merchant Tommaso Baroncelli. These are ten dialogues between "a certain Giusto cooper from San Pier Maggiore" and his soul: they take place at dawn in the cold little room where Giusto lives, before the old craftsman goes off to do his daily chores. The narrative frame seems to introduce the reader into a comic world, a parody and degradation of those dialogues which, in the treatises of the early sixteenth century, debated high moral, educational and behavioral problems in the courts and gardens of aristocratic palaces: here we have instead a Ser Bindo notary who, listening to the old man chatter to himself, intrigued by his "whims", decides to transcribe them. In reality, Gelli set out to develop an organic discourse on man in his dialogues, exposing a real system of thought.