Part Four of the Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha

CHAPTER XXVIII

Most happy and fortunate were the days when the bold knight Don Quixote of La Mancha sallied forth into the world, since, because of his honorable resolve to resuscitate and return to the world the lost and dying order of knight errantry, we can now enjoy in our own time, which is so in need of joyful entertainment, not only the sweetness of his true history, but also the stories and episodes that appear in it and are, in some ways, no less agreeable and artful and true than the history itself, which, following its tortuous, winding, and meandering thread, recounts that as the priest was preparing to console Cardenio, he was prevented from doing so by a voice that reached his ears and, in melancholy accents, said:

“Oh, God! Let it be true that I have found the place that can serve as the hidden tomb for the heavy burden of this body, which I so unwillingly bear! It is, if the solitude promised by these mountains is not a lie. Oh, woe is me, what agreeble companions these rocks and brambles will be for my purpose: they will allow me, with my laments, to communicate my affliction to heaven, for there is none on earth from whom one can expect counsel for one’s doubts, relief for one’s complaints, or remedy for one’s ills!”

All of these words were heard and heeded by the priest and his companions, and because it seemed to them, as was the case, that they were being said nearby, they went to look for the one who spoke them, and they had not gone twenty paces when, behind a crag, they saw, sitting at the foot of an ash tree, a boy dressed as a peasant, and since his face was lowered as he bathed his feet in the stream that ran there, for the moment they could not see it; they approached so silently that he did not hear them, for he was attentive to nothing else but bathing his feet, which looked exactly like two pieces of white crystal that had been born there among the other stones in the stream. Stunned by the whiteness and beauty of those feet, which, it seemed to them, were not made to walk on clods or follow after a plow and oxen, as suggested by their owner’s clothing, and seeing that they had not been detected, the priest, who walked at their head, signaled to the others to crouch down and hide behind some nearby rocks, and all of them did so, looking carefully at what the boy was doing; he wore a short dun-colored jerkin wrapped tightly around his body with white fabric. He also wore breeches and leggings of coarse dun wool and on his head a dun cloth cap. The leggings were raised to the middle of his calves, which, beyond all doubt, seemed like white alabaster. He finished washing his beautiful feet, and then, with a scarf that he took from beneath his cap, he dried them, and as he removed the scarf, he lifted his face, and those who were watching had the opportunity to see an incomparable beauty, so great that Cardenio said to the priest in a low voice:

“This, since it is not Luscinda, is no human being but a divine creature.”

The boy removed his cap, shook his head from side to side, and tresses that the rays of the sun might have envied began to loosen and tumble down. With this, they realized that the person who seemed to be a peasant was an exquisite woman, the most beautiful ever seen by the eyes of the priest, the barber, and even Cardenio, if he had not already gazed upon Luscinda; he later affirmed that only Luscinda’s beauty could compare with hers. Her long blond hair covered not only her back, but was so abundant and thick that it concealed the rest of her body as well, except for her feet. For a comb she used her hands, and if her feet in the water had looked like pieces of crystal, her hands in her hair seemed like driven snow, all of which further astonished those who were looking at her and made them even more desirous of knowing who she was.

For this reason they resolved to show themselves, and at the sound they made as they rose to their feet the beautiful girl lifted her head, and moving the hair away from her eyes with both hands, she looked at those who were making the sound; as soon as she saw them she leaped up, and, not taking the time to put on her shoes or pin up her hair, she quickly seized a bundle that was beside her and seemed to contain clothes, and attempted to flee, filled with confusion and alarm; but she had not taken six steps when, her delicate feet unable to withstand the jagged rocks, she fell to the ground. When the three men saw this they drew near, and the priest was the first to speak, saying:

“Stop, Señora, whoever you may be; those you see here intend only to serve you: there is no need for so importunate a flight, because your feet will not endure it, and we shall not consent to it.”

Frightened and bewildered, she did not say a word in reply. And so they approached her, and the priest, taking her by the hand, continued to speak:

“What your clothes, Señora, deny, your hair reveals: a clear indication that the reasons cannot be inconsequential for disguising your beauty in clothing so unworthy and bringing it to so desolate a place, where it is fortunate we have found you, if not to provide a remedy for your ills, at least to give you counsel; for as long as one has life, no ill can be so worrisome or reach so great an extreme that the one afflicted refuses even to listen to well-intentioned advice. And so, my dear Señora, or Señor, or whatever it is you wish to be, set aside the perturbation that the sight of us has caused you, and recount to us your situation, good or bad; for in all of us together, or in each of us separately, you will find someone to help you lament your misfortunes.”

As the priest spoke these words, the disguised girl seemed stupefied, looking at all of them, not moving her lips or saying a word, like a village rustic who is suddenly shown rare and strange things he has never seen before. But the priest continued speaking to the same effect until she heaved a deep sigh, broke her silence, and said:

“Since the solitude of these mountains has not sufficed to hide me, and the loosening of my disheveled hair does not permit my tongue to lie, it would be useless for me to pretend something that you would believe more for the sake of courtesy than for any other reason. Assuming this, I shall say, Señores, that I thank you for the offer you have made, which places me under the obligation to satisfy you in everything you have asked, although I fear that the recounting of my misfortunes will cause you to feel grief as well as compassion, for you will find no remedy to alleviate them or consolation to allay them. Nonetheless, so that you will have no doubts about my honor, and since you have already learned that I am a woman, and have seen that I am alone and dressed in these clothes, things which, together or separately, can overthrow any honest reputation, I shall tell you what I should prefer to keep quiet, if I could.”

The one who seemed so beautiful a woman said this without hesitating, and with so fluent a tongue and so gentle a voice that they were astounded as much by her intelligence as her beauty. And repeating their offers, and their pleas that she keep her promise, she did not need to be asked again, but after putting on her shoes with all modesty and pinning up her hair, she settled down on a rock, with the three men gathered around her, and making an effort to hold back the tears that came to her eyes, in a calm, clear voice she began the history of her life in this manner:

“Here in Andalucía there is a place from which a duke takes his title, making him one of those who are called the grandees of Spain.¹⁸⁵ He has two sons: the elder, the heir to his estate and, apparently, to his good character, and the younger, and what he is heir to I do not know other than the treacheries of Vellido and the lies of Galalón. My parents, vassals to this lord, are of humble lineage but so wealthy that if the goods of their natural station were equal to those of their fortune, they would have nothing more to desire nor would I have had any fear of finding myself as wretched as I am now, for perhaps my misfortune is born of theirs because they were not born noble. It is certainly true that they are not so lowborn as to be offended by their state, nor so highborn that they can erase from my imagination the idea that my misfortune comes from their humble station. They, in short, are farmers, simple people with no mixture of any objectionable races, what are called the Oldest of Old Christians, but so rich that their wealth and luxurious way of life are slowly gaining for them the name of gentlefolk, even of nobility. The greatest wealth and nobility that they boasted of, however, was having me as their daughter, and since they had no other heir, daughter or son, and were very loving, I was one of the most pampered daughters ever doted on by her parents. I was the mirror in which they saw their reflection, the staff of their old age, and the object, after heaven, of all their desires; these were virtuous and matched mine precisely. And just as I was mistress of their hearts, I was also mistress of their estate: servants were hired and dismissed by me; the accounts of what was planted and harvested passed through my hands, as did the production of the oil and wine presses, the numbers of livestock, large and small, and the beehives. In short, I kept the accounts of everything that a rich farmer like my father can and does have, and was steward and mistress, with so much care on my part and so much satisfaction on theirs that I cannot express it adequately. My times of leisure, after I had attended to overseers, foremen, and other laborers, I spent in activities both proper and necessary for young women, such as those offered by the needle and pincushion and, at times, the distaff; when I left these activities to refresh my spirit, I would spend the time reading a book of devotions, or playing the harp, for experience had shown me that music soothes unsettled minds and alleviates troubles arising from the spirit. This, then, was the life I led in my parents’ house, and if I have recounted it in so much detail, it has not been to boast or to show you that I am rich, but so that you can see how blamelessly I have come from that happy state to the unfortunate one in which I find myself now. The truth is that my life was devoted to so many occupations, and was so cloistered, that it could have been compared to that of a convent, and I was not seen, I thought, by anyone other than the household servants, because on the days I went to Mass it was so early, and I was so well-chaperoned by my mother and by maids, and so modestly covered, that my eyes could barely see more than the ground where I placed my feet; yet the eyes of love, or, rather, of indolence—not even a lynx’s eyes are sharper—saw me, and I attracted the attention of Don Fernando, for this is the name of the younger son of the duke I mentioned to you.”

As soon as the one telling the tale mentioned Don Fernando, Cardenio turned pale, and began to perspire, and became so agitated that when the priest and the barber looked at him, they feared he would suffer an attack of the madness that, they had been told, overcame him from time to time. But Cardenio did nothing more than perspire and remain very still, staring fixedly at her and imagining who she was, and she, not observing the changes in Cardenio, continued her history, saying:

“No sooner had he seen me than, as he said later, he was smitten with love, as his subsequent actions made clear. But to conclude quickly with the story of my misfortunes, which have no conclusion, I want to pass over in silence the efforts of Don Fernando to declare his desire to me. He bribed all the household servants and gave and offered gifts and favors to my kin. The days were all celebrations and festivals on my street; at night the music prevented everyone from sleeping. The love letters that mysteriously came into my hands were infinite, filled with a lover’s words and offers, and more promises and vows than the letters used to write them. All of which not only did not soften my heart, but hardened it as if he were my mortal enemy, and everything he did to turn me to his will had the contrary effect, not because I disliked Don Fernando’s gallantry or thought his wooing excessive, for it pleased me somehow to find myself so loved and esteemed by so distinguished a gentleman, nor did it trouble me to see my praises in his letters, for no matter how homely we women may be, it seems to me we always like to hear ourselves called beautiful. But my modesty opposed all this, as did the continual advice offered by my parents, who were well aware of Don Fernando’s desire, for by now he did not care at all if everyone knew about it. My parents would tell me that their honor and reputation had been placed for safekeeping in my virtue and chastity, and I should consider the difference in rank between me and Don Fernando, which would allow me to see that his thoughts, although he said otherwise, were directed more toward his pleasure than my benefit, and if I wished to put up some kind of obstacle to make him abandon his unwarranted courtship, they would marry me immediately to whomever I chose from among the most notable men in our town and all the neighboring towns; everything could be hoped for because of their great wealth and my good reputation. With these firm promises, as well as the truth of what my parents were telling me, I strengthened my resolve and refused to say a single word to Don Fernando in reply that might suggest even a distant hope of achieving his desire. All my precautions, which he probably interpreted as disdain, must have been the reason for his lascivious appetite becoming even more inflamed, for that is the name I wish to give to the desire he revealed to me; if it had been what it should have been, you would not know of it now because there would have been no occasion for me to tell you about it.

In short, Don Fernando learned that my parents were about to arrange my marriage in order to deprive him of any hope of possessing me, or, at least, to provide me with more safeguards to protect me, and this news or suspicion was the reason for his doing what you will now hear. One night I was in my bedroom, my sole companion a lady’s maid, the doors carefully locked so that my virtue would not be endangered through some oversight; without knowing or imagining how, despite these precautions and preventive measures, and in the solitude of this silent retreat, I found him standing before me; the sight of him perturbed me so much that I lost the sight in my own eyes, and my tongue became mute and I was incapable of crying out, nor do I think he would have allowed me to do so, because he immediately approached and took me in his arms (because, as I have said, I was so distraught I did not have the strength to defend myself), and began to speak in such a manner that I do not know how it is possible for a lie to be so skillful and its words so cleverly arranged that they seem to be the truth. The traitor’s tears gave credibility to his words, his sighs confirmed their intention. I, poor girl, alone in the midst of my people, and inexperienced in such matters, began, I do not know how, to think his falsehoods were true, though his tears and sighs could not move me to a compassion that was less than virtuous. And so, as my initial fright faded, I began to recover some of my courage, and with more spirit than I thought I had, I said to him: ‘If, Señor, I were in the clutches of a savage lion as I am in your arms now, and I could be sure of freeing myself by doing or saying something to the detriment of my modesty, I could no more do or say it than I could undo the past. Therefore, if you hold my body fast in your arms, my soul is bound by my virtuous desires, which are entirely different from yours, as you will see if you attempt to achieve them by force. I am your vassal, but not your slave; the nobility of your blood does not have nor should it have the power to dishonor and scorn the humbleness of mine; I, a low-born farmer, esteem myself as much as you, a noble lord, esteem yourself. Your force will have no effect on me, your wealth will hold no value for me, your words will not deceive me, and your sighs and tears will not soften me. If I were to see any of the things that I have mentioned in the man to whom my parents were to give me in marriage, I would adjust my will to his, and my will would not deviate from his in any way; as long as I were to keep my honor, even without desire I should willingly give what you, Señor, are now attempting to obtain by force. I have said this because you must not think that a man who is not my legitimate husband can obtain anything from me.’

‘If this is all that concerns you, O beautiful Dorotea’ (for that is the name of this unfortunate woman), said the traitorous nobleman, ‘here and now I offer you my hand to be your husband, and let heaven, which sees all things, and the image of Our Lady that you have here, bear witness to this truth.’”

When Cardenio heard her say that her name was Dorotea, he be-came agitated again, confirming the truth of his initial suspicion, but he did not want to interrupt the story, for he wished to see how it turned out, although he almost knew the ending; he said only:

“Then Dorotea is your name, Señora? I have heard of another with the same name whose misfortunes may be equal to your own. Go on, then, and in time I shall tell you things that will cause you both astonishment and compassion.”

Dorotea listened to Cardenio’s words and noticed his strange, ragged clothes and asked that if he knew anything about her affairs, he should tell her so immediately, for if fortune had left her with anything of value, it was the courage to endure any disaster that might occur, since in her opinion nothing could be worse than the one that had already befallen her.

“If what I imagine were true, I should lose no time, Señora,” responded Cardenio, “in telling you what I think, but now is not the right time, and it is not at all important that you know it.”

“Whatever it may be,” responded Dorotea, “I shall go on with my story. Don Fernando picked up a holy image that was in the room and called on it to witness our betrothal. With persuasive words and extraordinary vows, he promised to be my husband, although before he finished speaking, I told him to think about what he was doing and to consider how angry his father would be to see him married to a peasant, his vassal; he should not allow my beauty, such as it was, to blind him, for it was not great enough for him to find in it an excuse for his mistake; if he wished to do me a good turn for the sake of the love he felt for me, he would let my fate conform to the demands of my rank, for in marriages that are so unequal, the joy with which they begin never lasts very long.

All of these words that I have said now I said to him then, as well as many others that I cannot recall, but they had no effect and could not deflect him from his purpose, just as a man who has no intention of paying buys in haste, ignoring all the reasons he should not make the purchase. And then I had a brief dialogue with myself, saying: ‘Yes, I shall not be the first woman who by way of matrimony has risen from a humble to a noble estate, and Don Fernando will not be the first man moved by beauty, or irrational attraction, which is more likely, to take a wife unequal to him in rank. If I am not doing anything that has not been done before, it is a good idea to accept the honor that fate offers me, even if the love he shows me lasts no longer than the satisfaction of his desire, for after all, in the sight of God I shall be his wife. And if I try to reject him with disdain, I can see that if he does not achieve his ends in the proper way, he will use force, and I shall be dishonored and have no excuse when I am blamed by those who do not know how blamelessly I find myself in this situation. What arguments will be enough to persuade my parents, and others, that this nobleman entered my bedroom without my consent?’

All of these questions and answers I resolved in an instant in my imagination, and even more important, I began to feel inclined to what was, without my knowing it, my perdition, convinced by Don Fernando’s vows, the witnesses he called upon, the tears he shed, and, finally, his disposition and gallantry, which, along with so many displays of true love, were enough to vanquish even a heart as unencumbered and chaste as mine. I called my maid so that a witness on earth might join those in heaven; Don Fernando again repeated and confirmed his vows; as witnesses he added new saints to the earlier ones; he called down on himself a thousand future curses if he did not keep his promise to me; tears filled his eyes again and his sighs increased; he clasped me even tighter in his arms, from which he had never released me; then my maid left the room, I ceased to be one, and he became a traitor and a liar.

The day following the night of my misfortune did not come as quickly as I think Don Fernando desired, for when the demands of the appetites are met, the greatest pleasure is to leave the place where one has satisfied them. I say this because Don Fernando hastened to leave me, and through the ingenuity of my maid, the same one who had brought him there, before dawn he found himself on the street. And when he took his leave, he said, though not with the same eagerness and fervor as when he had arrived, that I could be certain that his faith was true and his vows steadfast and unalterable; as further confirmation of his word, he removed a magnificent ring from his finger and put it on mine. Then he left, and I do not know if I was sad or happy; I can say that I was confused and pensive and almost beside myself because of this new turn of events; I did not have the heart, or did not think, to reprimand my maid for her treachery at allowing Don Fernando into my bedroom, because I had not yet decided if what had happened to me was good or bad.

When he left, I told Don Fernando that he could use the same means to visit me on other nights, for now I was his, until such time as he wished to make the matter public. But except for the following night, he did not come again, and I did not see him on the street or in church for more than a month; I tried in vain to communicate with him, for I knew he was in the city and went hunting almost every day; he was an enthusiastic hunter. I can say that for me those days and hours were ominous and filled with shame; and I can say that I began to doubt and even to distrust the good faith of Don Fernando; and I can say that my maid heard then the words she had not heard before, reprimanding her audacity; and I can say that it was necessary for me to contain my tears and control the expression on my face so that my parents would have no reason to ask why I was unhappy, and I would not be obliged to think of a lie to tell them. But all of this came to an abrupt halt when all propriety was trampled, honorable speeches ended, forbearance was lost, and my secret thoughts were made public. And this happened because some days later, the talk was that in a nearby city, Don Fernando had married an extremely beautiful girl, of very distinguished parentage, though not so rich that her dowry would lead her to aspire to so noble a marriage. People said her name was Luscinda, and that certain extraordinary things had happened at the wedding.”

Cardenio heard the name of Luscinda and could do nothing but hunch his shoulders, bite his lips, scowl, and then let tears stream from his eyes. But this did not stop Dorotea from continuing her story, and she said:

“This sad news reached my ears, and instead of my heart freezing over when I heard it, it flamed with so much rage and fury that I almost took to the streets to cry out and proclaim how he had betrayed and deceived me. But then my anger began to cool when I thought of a plan that I put into effect that very night, which was to put on these clothes, given to me by one of the men, called shepherd’s helpers by farmers, who was a servant of my father’s; I told him about my misfortune and asked him to accompany me to the city where I believed my enemy would be found. He, after reprimanding me for my rashness and condemning my decision, saw that I was determined and offered to keep me company, as he called it, to the ends of the earth. I quickly put a dress and some jewels and money into a linen pillowcase, in the event I needed them, and in the silence of the night, without saying anything to my treacherous maid, I left my house, accompanied by my servant and many apprehensions, and started out for the city on foot, although my feet flew with the desire to reach my destination, if not to prevent what I considered already accomplished, at least to ask Don Fernando to tell me how he had had the heart to do it.

I arrived in two and a half days, and as I entered the city I asked for the house of Luscinda’s parents, and the first person I asked responded with more than I wished to hear. He told me where their house was located, and everything that had occurred at the wedding of their daughter, which was so well-known that people throughout the city were gathering in groups to talk about it. He told me that on the night Don Fernando married Luscinda, after she had said her yes, she had fallen into a dead faint, and when her husband came to loosen her bodice and give her air, he had found a letter written in Luscinda’s own hand, which stated and declared that she could not be Don Fernando’s wife because she was the wife of Cardenio, who was, according to what the man told me, a very distinguished gentleman from the same city, and if she had agreed to marry Don Fernando, it was in order not to disobey her parents. In short, he told me that the letter said that she had intended to kill herself when the ceremony was over, and in the letter she gave her reasons for taking her life, all of which, they say, was confirmed by a dagger that was found hidden in her clothing. When Don Fernando saw this, it seemed to him that Luscinda had mocked and scorned and humiliated him, and he threw himself at her while she was still in a swoon, and with the same dagger tried to stab her, and would have done so if her parents and the others present had not stopped him. People also said that Don Fernando left immediately, and Luscinda did not recover from her swoon until the following day, and then she told her parents that she was the true wife of this Cardenio whom I have mentioned.

I learned more: people were saying that Cardenio had been present at the wedding, and when he saw her married, something he never thought possible, he left the city in despair but first wrote a letter in which he revealed how Luscinda had wronged him, and how he was going to a place where no one would ever see him again. All of this was widely known throughout the city, and everyone was talking about it, and talked about it even more when they learned that Luscinda had disappeared from her parents’ house, and from the city, and was nowhere to be found, and that her parents were distraught and did not know what to do to find her. What I heard revived my hopes, and I considered it better not to have found Don Fernando than to have found him married, for it seemed to me that the door to my remedy was still not completely closed, assuming that heaven might have placed that impediment to his second marriage in order to make him realize what he owed the first, and to remember that he was a Christian who had a greater obligation to his soul than to human interests. I resolved all of these things in my imagination and was consoled without consolation, inventing distant faint hopes in order to live a life which I now despise.

While I was in the city, not knowing what to do since Don Fernando was nowhere to be found, a public proclamation reached my ears, promising a large reward to the person who found me and giving a description of my age and the clothes I was wearing; I heard people saying that I had run off with the servant who accompanied me, and it wounded my very soul to see how my good name had been sullied, besmirched not only by reports of my impetuous departure, but by references to a baseborn person unworthy of my amorous thoughts. As soon as I heard the proclamation, I left the city with my servant, who was already beginning to show signs of wavering in his promise of fidelity to me, and that night we entered a remote part of these mountains, afraid of being discovered. But, as they say, one ill leads to another, and the end of one misfortune tends to be the beginning of another even greater, and that is what happened to me; my good servant, faithful and trustworthy until then, saw me in this desolate place, and inflamed by his own depravity rather than my beauty, attempted to take advantage of the opportunity which, to his mind, this setting offered him; with little shame and less fear of God or respect for me, he tried to persuade me to make love to him, and seeing that I responded with words of censure and rebuke to his outrageous proposals, he set aside the entreaties that he thought at first would succeed and began to use force. But heaven is just, rarely or never failing to regard and favor righteous intentions, and it favored mine, so that with my scant strength, and not too much effort, I pushed him over a precipice, where I left him, not knowing if he was dead or alive; then, with more speed than my fear and exhaustion really allowed, I entered these mountains; my only thought and plan was to hide, to flee my father and those he had sent to look for me.

This was my desire when I came here, I do not know how many months ago; I found a drover who took me on as a servant in a place deep in the sierra, and I have worked as a shepherd’s helper all this time, trying always to be out in the fields in order to hide this hair that now, so unexpectedly, has been revealed. But all my effort and care was and has been to no avail, for my master learned that I was not a man, and the same wicked desire was born in him as in my servant; since fortune does not always give remedies along with difficulties, I found no precipice or ravine where I could push the master and save myself, as I had with the servant, and so I thought it less difficult to leave him and take refuge again in these desolate places than to test my strength or my reasoning with him. Therefore, as I said, I took to the wilds again to find the place where, without impediment, I could, with sighs and tears, beg heaven to take pity on my misfortune, and favor me with the ability either to leave that misfortune behind or to lose my life in the wilderness, and to let the memory be erased of this unfortunate woman, who, through no fault of her own, has become the subject of talk and gossip in her own and other lands.”