CHAPTER LI

“Three leagues from this valley is a village that, although small, is one of the richest in the entire region; in it there lived a farmer who was very well respected, so respected, in fact, that although honor tends to go with wealth, he was more honored for his virtue than for the riches he had achieved. But his greatest happiness, as he would say, was having a daughter of such extraordinary beauty and exceptional intelligence, grace, and virtue, that whoever knew her and saw her marveled to see the unsurpassed gifts that heaven and nature had granted her. As a child she was comely, and as she grew so did her loveliness, and at the age of sixteen she was exceedingly beautiful. The fame of her beauty began to spread to all the neighboring villages. Why do I say neighboring? It spread to distant cities, and even entered the royal salons, and came to the attention of all kinds of people, and as if she were a rare object or a miraculous image, they came from far and near to see her. Her father watched over her, and she watched over herself, for there are no locks or bars or bolts that protect a maiden better than her own modesty and virtue.

The father’s wealth and the daughter’s beauty moved many, from the village as well as strangers, to ask for her hand, but the farmer, in possession of so rich a jewel, was somewhat perplexed and could not decide to which of the countless suitors he should give her. I was one of the many who had this virtuous desire, and I had many great hopes of success knowing that her father knew who I was, since I came from the same village, and was pure of blood, and in the flower of my youth, and had a rich estate, and was not lacking in intelligence. Another man from our village, with the same qualifications, had also asked for her hand, causing her father to hesitate, unable to reach a decision, for it seemed to him that either one of us would be a good match for his daughter.

In order to resolve the problem, he determined to discuss it with Leandra, which is the name of the wealthy maiden who keeps me in misery, for he believed that since we were equally qualified, it was a good idea to allow his beloved daughter to choose to her liking, a course of action worthy of imitation by all parents who wish their children to marry; I don’t say they should be permitted to choose the base or wicked, but they should be offered the good and then be allowed to choose freely. I don’t know which of us Leandra chose; I know only that her father put off both of us with references to his daughter’s youth and other general remarks that did not commit him but did not dismiss us, either. My rival’s name is Anselmo, and I am called Eugenio, so now you know the names of all the persons who take part in this tragedy, which is not yet concluded, though it seems clear enough that its end will be calamitous.

At about this time a certain Vicente de la Rosa²⁹⁹ came to town; he was the son of a poor farmer from our village and had been a soldier in Italy and in many other places. He had been taken away from our village when he was a boy of twelve by a captain passing through with his troops, and the boy returned twelve years later dressed as a soldier, decked out in a thousand colors and wearing a thousand glass trinkets and thin metal chains. One day he would put on one piece of finery, and the next day another, but all of them were flimsy and garish, lightweight and worthless. Farmers, who by nature are crafty, and who become the very embodiment of craftiness when idleness gives them the opportunity, noticed this, and counted each object and piece of finery, and discovered that he had three outfits, each a different color, with garters and hose to match, but he mixed and combined them so cleverly that if you did not keep count, you would have sworn he had displayed more than ten matched outfits and more than twenty proud plumes. And do not think that what I am saying about his clothes is irrelevant or trivial, because they play an important part in this story.

He would sit on a stone bench that is under a great poplar tree in our village square, and there he would keep us all openmouthed with suspense as he recounted great deeds to us. There was no land anywhere in the world that he had not seen, and no battle in which he had not fought; he had killed as many Moors as live in Morocco and Tunis and had engaged in more single combat than Gante and Luna,³⁰⁰ Diego García de Paredes, and another thousand men he named, and from all of them he had emerged victorious, without shedding a single drop of blood. On the other hand, he would show us the scars of wounds, and even though we could not make them out, he let us know that they had been caused by shots from flintlocks in various battles and skirmishes. Finally, with unparalleled arrogance, he would address his equals, even those who knew him, as vos, ³⁰¹ saying that his father was his fighting arm, his lineage his deeds, and as a soldier he owed nothing to no man, not even the king. In addition to this arrogance, he was something of a musician who could strum a guitar so well that some said he could make it speak, but his talents did not end here; he also was a poet, and for each trivial event in the village he would compose a ballad at least a league and a half long.

This soldier, then, whom I have just described, this Vicente de la Rosa, this brave gallant, this musician and poet, was often seen and observed by Leandra from a window in her house that overlooked the square. She became infatuated with the glitter of his bright clothes and enchanted by his ballads, for he made twenty copies of each one he composed; she heard of the deeds that he himself attributed to himself, and finally, as the devil must have ordained, she fell in love with him before the presumptuousness of asking for her hand had even occurred to him. And since, in matters of love, no affair is easier to conclude successfully than the one supported by the lady’s desire, Leandra and Vicente easily reached an understanding, and before any of her many suitors became aware of her desire, she had satisfied it by leaving the house of her dearly loved father, for she had no mother, and fleeing the village with the soldier, who emerged more triumphant from this undertaking than from the many others he had claimed for himself.

This turn of events astonished the entire village, as well as anyone who even heard about it; I was stunned, Anselmo shocked, her father grief-stricken, her kinfolk humiliated, the law solicitous, and its officers alert; they took to the roads, searched the woods and everything they ran across, and at the end of three days they found the capricious Leandra in a cave in the wild, wearing only her chemise and without the great quantity of money and precious jewels she had taken from her house. They brought her back to her anguished father and questioned her about her misfortune; she confessed willingly that Vicente de la Rosa had deceived her, promising to be her husband and persuading her to leave her father’s house, saying that he would take her to the richest and most joyous city in the world, which was Naples; ill-advised and badly deceived, she had believed him and, after robbing her father, had entrusted herself to him on the night she had fled, and he had taken her to a rugged mountain and confined her to the cave where she had been found. She also said that the soldier did not take her honor but robbed her of everything else she had, and left her in that cave, and went away, a series of events that astonished everyone a second time. It was hard for us to believe in the young man’s restraint, but she affirmed it so insistently that her disconsolate father found reason to be consoled, caring nothing for the treasure that had been taken from him, for his daughter had preserved the jewel that, once lost, can never be recovered.

On the same day that Leandra appeared, her father removed her from our sight and locked her away in a convent in a town not far from here, hoping that time would dissipate some of the shame that had fallen on his daughter. Leandra’s extreme youth helped to excuse some of her inexcusable behavior, at least for those who had nothing to gain from her being either wicked or virtuous; but those who were familiar with her considerable intelligence and perspicacity attributed her sin not to ignorance but to her boldness and the natural inclination of women, which, for the most part, tends to be imprudent and irrational.

With Leandra cloistered, Anselmo’s eyes were left sightless, at least they saw nothing that made him happy; mine were darkened, lacking a light that could lead them to any joy; with Leandra’s absence our sorrow grew, our patience lessened, and we cursed the soldier’s finery and despised her father’s lack of foresight. Finally, Anselmo and I agreed to leave the village and come to this valley, where he pastures a large number of sheep that belong to him and I graze a large flock of my goats, and we spend our lives among the trees, proclaiming our passions or together singing the praises of Leandra, or reviling her, or sighing alone and communicating our laments to heaven. In imitation of us, many of Leandra’s other suitors have come to these wild mountains to follow our example, and there are so many of them that this place, so crowded with shepherds and sheepfolds, seems to have been transformed into the pastoral Arcadia,³⁰² and no matter where you go you will hear the name of the beautiful Leandra. One curses her and calls her unpredictable, inconstant, and immodest, another condemns her as forward and flighty; one absolves and pardons her, another judges and censures her; one celebrates her beauty, another denounces her nature; in short, all despise her, and all adore her, and the madness goes so far that there are some who complain of her disdain but never spoke to her, and some even lament their fate and feel the raging disease of jealousy though she never gave anyone reason to feel jealousy because, as I have said, her sin was discovered before her desire. There is no hollow rock, no bank of a stream, no shade of a tree, that is not occupied by a shepherd telling his misfortunes to the air; the echoes repeat the name of Leandra wherever it can be sounded: the mountains ring with the name of Leandra, the streams murmur Leandra, and Leandra has us all bewitched and enchanted, hoping without hope and fearing without knowing what it is we fear.

Among all these madmen, the one who shows the least distraction and has the most judgment is my rival Anselmo, who, having so many other things to complain of, complains only of her absence, and to the sound of a rebec, which he plays admirably, and in verses that show his fine intelligence, he sings his complaints. I follow another path, which is easier and, in my opinion, more correct, which is to speak ill of the fickle nature of women, and their inconstancy, their double dealings, their dead promises, their broken vows, and, finally, their irrationality in choosing the objects of their desire and affection. And this was the reason, Señores, for the words and arguments I addressed to this goat when I arrived here, for since she is a female, I hold her in small esteem, though she is the best in my flock. This is the history I promised to tell; if I have gone on too long, I will not give short shrift to serving you: my sheepfold is close by, and there I have fresh milk and delicious cheese and a variety of seasonal fruits as pleasing to the sight as to the taste.”