Chapter XXVIII. Which deals with the new and pleasant adventure that befell the priest and the barber in the same mountains

Most happy and fortunate were the times in which the most daring knight Don Quixote of La Mancha was launched upon the world, for, because he made so honorable a resolution as to wish to revive and restore to the world the already lost and well-nigh dead order of knight-errantry, we now enjoy, in this our age, so in need of cheerful entertainment, not only the sweetness of his true history but also the tales and episodes in it, which are in part no less pleasing and artful and true than the history itself; which, carrying on with its heckled, twisted, and reeled thread, tells that, just as the priest began to prepare himself to console Cardenio, it was prevented by a voice that reached their ears, which, in sad accents, spoke in this manner:

“Ah, God! Can it be that I have found at last a place that may serve as a hidden grave for the heavy burden of this body, which I bear so much against my will? Yes, it can, if the solitude these mountains promise does not lie to me. Ah, unhappy woman that I am, and how much more agreeable to my purpose the company of these crags and thickets will be than that of any human man, for they will give me room to share my misfortune with heaven in complaints, since there is no one on earth from whom one may hope for counsel in doubts, relief in complaints, or remedy in ills!”

The priest and those who were with him heard and took in all these words, and, since it seemed to them, as was the case, that they were being spoken close by, they got up to look for the speaker, and they had not gone twenty paces when, behind a crag, they saw, sitting at the foot of an ash tree, a youth dressed like a farmhand, whose face, because he had it bent down while he washed his feet in the brook that ran there, they could not see just then. And they came up so silently that he did not hear them, nor was he attending to anything but washing his feet, which were such that they looked like nothing so much as two pieces of white crystal that had grown there among the other stones of the brook. They stood in suspense at how white and lovely those feet were, for it seemed to them that they were not made for treading clods or walking behind the plow and the oxen, as their owner’s dress suggested; and so, seeing that they had not been heard, the priest, who was in front, signed to the other two to crouch down or hide behind some pieces of rock that were there, and they all did so, watching closely what the youth was doing; he had on a little brown coat with two skirts, drawn tight about his body with a white towel. He also wore breeches and leggings of brown cloth, and on his head a brown hunting cap. He had his leggings pulled up to the middle of his leg, which, without any doubt, seemed to be of white alabaster. He finished washing his beautiful feet, and then, with a head-cloth he drew out from under his cap, he dried them; and, as he went to take it off, he raised his face, and those who were watching him had the chance to see a beauty beyond compare; such that Cardenio said to the priest, in a low voice:

“Since this is not Luscinda, this is no human person but a divine one.”

The youth took off his cap and, shaking his head from side to side, began to loosen and spread out a head of hair that the sun’s own might have envied. With this they knew that the one who seemed a farmhand was a woman, and a delicate one, and indeed the most beautiful the eyes of the two had seen until then, and even those of Cardenio, had they not looked on and known Luscinda; for he afterward declared that only Luscinda’s beauty could vie with this one. The long golden hair not only covered her shoulders but hid her all around beneath it, so that, except for her feet, no other part of her body could be seen: such and so much of it there was. For a comb she used a pair of hands which, if her feet in the water had looked like pieces of crystal, among her hair resembled pieces of packed snow; all of which filled the three who were watching her with more wonder and a greater wish to know who she was.

For this reason they decided to show themselves, and, at the movement they made in getting to their feet, the beautiful girl raised her head and, parting the hair from before her eyes with both hands, looked at those who were making the noise; and she had hardly seen them when she sprang up and, not stopping to put her shoes on or to bind up her hair, she very quickly seized a bundle, as of clothes, that she had beside her, and tried to take to flight, full of confusion and alarm; but she had not gone six paces when, her delicate feet unable to bear the roughness of the stones, she fell to the ground. Seeing this, the three came out to her, and the priest was the first to speak to her: “Stop, madam, whoever you may be, for those you see here mean only to serve you. There is no reason for you to take to such needless flight, for neither will your feet be able to bear it nor shall we allow it.” To all this she answered not a word, astonished and bewildered. They came up to her, then, and the priest, taking her by the hand, went on to say:

“What your dress denies us, madam, your hair reveals to us: clear signs that the causes that have disguised your beauty in so unworthy a garb and brought it to such a solitude as this must be of no small moment; and it has been our good fortune to find you here, if not to give remedy for your ills, at least to give them counsel, for no ill can weary a person so much, or reach such an extreme of ill, while life does not end, that the sufferer should refuse even to listen to the counsel given him with good intention. So, my lady, or my lord, or whatever you would be, put away the alarm the sight of us has caused you and tell us your good or bad fortune; for in all of us together, or in each one, you will find someone to help you feel your misfortunes.”

While the priest was saying these words, the disguised girl stood as though spellbound, looking at them all without moving her lips or saying a word: just like a rustic villager who is suddenly shown rare things he has never seen. But when the priest went on to say other words aimed at the same end, she heaved a deep sigh, broke her silence, and said:

“Since the solitude of these mountains has not been able to hide me, and the loosening of my disordered hair has not allowed my tongue to lie, it would be useless for me now to pretend anew what, if I were believed, would be believed more out of courtesy than for any other reason. This being granted, I say, gentlemen, that I thank you for the offer you have made me, which has put me under an obligation to satisfy you in all you have asked of me, though I fear that the account I give you of my misfortunes will cause you, along with compassion, sorrow, for you will find no remedy to remedy them nor comfort to relieve them. But, for all that, so that my honor may not waver in your minds, now that you have recognized me as a woman and see me young, alone, and in this dress, things that all together, and each by itself, can bring down any honest reputation, I shall have to tell you what I would keep silent if I could.”

All this she who seemed so beautiful a woman said without stopping, with so ready a tongue and so gentle a voice that her good sense amazed them no less than her beauty. And, when they made her fresh offers and fresh entreaties to fulfill what she had promised, she, without waiting to be begged further, putting on her shoes with all modesty and gathering up her hair, settled herself on a stone for a seat, and, with the three placed around her, forcing herself to hold back some tears that came to her eyes, in a calm, clear voice she began the story of her life in this manner:

“In this Andalusia there is a town from which a duke takes his title, which makes him one of those they call grandees in Spain. He has two sons: the elder, heir to his estate and, it seems, to his good ways; and the younger, I do not know what he is heir to, unless it is the treacheries of Vellido and the lies of Galalón. My parents are vassals of this lord, humble in lineage but so rich that, if the goods of their birth had equaled those of their fortune, neither would they have had anything more to desire nor would I have feared to see myself in the misfortune in which I now see myself; for perhaps my ill luck springs from theirs in not having been born illustrious. It is true that they are not so low that they need be ashamed of their state, nor so high as to rid me of the idea I have that my misfortune comes from their humbleness. They are, in short, farmers, plain people, with no mixture of any ill-sounding race, and, as the saying goes, Old Christians of the rankest, oldest stock; but so rich that their wealth and their lavish way of life are little by little gaining them the name of hidalgos, and even of gentlemen. Though the greatest wealth and nobility they prided themselves on was having me for a daughter; and, as much because they had no other daughter or son to inherit from them as because they were parents, and fond ones, I was one of the most pampered daughters parents ever pampered. I was the mirror in which they looked at themselves, the staff of their old age, and the object toward which they directed all their desires, measuring them by heaven; from which, since they were so good, mine did not stray one jot. And just as I was mistress of their hearts, so I was of their estate: through me servants were taken on and dismissed; the reckoning and account of what was sown and harvested passed through my hands, and of the oil mills, the winepresses, the number of the cattle large and small, and of the beehives. In short, of everything that so rich a farmer as my father can have and does have, I kept the account, and I was the steward and mistress, with such diligence on my part and such pleasure on theirs that I cannot well exaggerate it. The spare hours left me in the day, after I had given what was due to the head shepherds, the overseers, and the other day laborers, I spent in occupations as proper as they are necessary for maidens, such as those offered by the needle and the sewing cushion, and the distaff many times; and if I ever left these occupations to refresh my spirits, I took refuge in the pastime of reading some devout book or playing a harp, for experience showed me that music composes disordered spirits and eases the troubles that are born of the mind. Such, then, was my life under my parents’ roof, and if I have told it so particularly, it has not been out of vanity or to let you know that I am rich, but so that it may be seen how blamelessly I have come from that good state I have spoken of to the unhappy one in which I now find myself. The case, then, is this: that, as I passed my life in so many occupations and in a seclusion that might be compared to that of a convent, seen, as I believed, by no other person than the servants of the house, for on the days I went to Mass it was so early, and I was so accompanied by my mother and other maidservants, and so covered and guarded, that my eyes hardly saw more ground than where I set my feet; even so, the eyes of love, or of idleness, to put it better, which a lynx’s cannot equal, saw me, set as they were in the eager desire of Don Fernando, for this is the name of the duke’s younger son of whom I have told you.”

She who was telling the tale had scarcely named Don Fernando when the color of Cardenio’s face changed and he began to sweat, with such great agitation that the priest and the barber, who noticed it, feared that the fit of madness they had heard came upon him from time to time was coming on him. But Cardenio did nothing but sweat and keep still, staring fixedly at the farm girl, imagining who she was; and she, without noticing Cardenio’s movements, went on with her story, saying:

“And they had scarcely seen me when, as he said afterward, he was as taken with love for me as his demonstrations showed clearly enough. But, to finish quickly with the account, which has no counting, of my misfortunes, I wish to pass over in silence the efforts Don Fernando made to declare his love to me. He bribed all the people of my house, he gave and offered gifts and favors to my relatives. The days were all feasting and rejoicing in my street; at night the music let no one sleep. The notes that came to my hands, without my knowing how, were countless, full of loving words and offers, with fewer letters in them than promises and oaths. All of which not only did not soften me but hardened me as if he were my mortal enemy, and as if everything he did to bring me round to his will he did for the opposite effect; not because Don Fernando’s gallantry seemed bad to me, nor because I thought his attentions excessive; for it gave me some sort of pleasure to see myself so loved and esteemed by so distinguished a gentleman, and I was not sorry to see my praises in his papers: for in this, however ugly we women may be, it seems to me that it always pleases us to hear ourselves called beautiful. But against all this stood my modesty and the constant counsel my parents gave me, who by now knew Don Fernando’s intentions quite openly, for he no longer cared a bit if the whole world knew them. My parents told me that in my virtue and goodness alone they left and placed their honor and good name, and that I should consider the inequality there was between Don Fernando and me, and that from this I would see that his thoughts, though he might say otherwise, were aimed more at his own pleasure than at my good; and that if I wished in any way to set some obstacle in his path so that he would give up his unjust suit, they would marry me at once to whomever I liked best, from among the most distinguished men of our town as well as of all the towns around, since anything could be hoped for from their great wealth and my good name. With these sure promises, and with the truth they told me, I fortified my integrity, and I never would answer Don Fernando a word that might show him, even from very far off, any hope of attaining his desire.

“All these precautions of mine, which he must have taken for disdain, must have served to inflame his lustful appetite all the more, for that is the name I wish to give to the love he showed me; which, had it been as it should have been, you would not be hearing of now, for there would have been no occasion to tell it to you. In the end, Don Fernando learned that my parents were seeking to settle me in marriage, to take from him the hope of possessing me, or at least so that I might have more guards to guard me; and this news or suspicion was the cause of his doing what you shall now hear. And it was that one night, when I was in my room with no other company than a maid who served me, with the doors well shut for fear that through some carelessness my modesty might be put in danger, without my knowing or imagining how, in the midst of these precautions and safeguards, and in the solitude of this silence and seclusion, I found him standing before me, and the sight of him so disturbed me that it took away the sight of my eyes and struck my tongue dumb; and so I was not able to cry out, nor, I think, would he have let me, for at once he came up to me and, taking me in his arms (for I, as I say, had no strength to defend myself, so disturbed was I), he began to say such things to me that I do not know how it is possible for falsehood to have so much skill as to put them together so that they seem so true. The traitor made his tears vouch for his words and his sighs for his intentions. I, poor thing, alone among my own people, ill practiced in such cases, began, I do not know how, to take so many falsehoods for truths, but not in such a way that his tears and sighs moved me to any compassion that was less than virtuous.

“And so, when that first alarm had passed, I began to recover my lost spirits somewhat, and with more courage than I thought I could have, I said to him: ‘If, as I am now in your arms, sir, I were in those of a fierce lion, and my release from them were assured me on condition that I did or said something to the harm of my modesty, it would be as possible for me to do it or say it as it is possible for what has been not to have been. So, if you have my body clasped in your arms, I have my soul bound fast by my good desires, which are as different from yours as you will see if you try to go further with them by force. I am your vassal, but not your slave; nor has the nobility of your blood, nor should it have, any power to dishonor and hold cheap the humbleness of mine; and I, a peasant and a farmer’s daughter, esteem myself as highly as you, a lord and a gentleman. With me your force shall have no effect, nor your riches any worth, nor shall your words be able to deceive me, nor your sighs and tears to soften me. If I saw any one of all these things I have said in the man my parents gave me for a husband, my will would conform itself to his, and my will would not depart from his; so that, provided I kept my honor, though I lost my pleasure, I would freely give you what you, sir, are now trying so hard to take. All this I have said because it is not to be thought that anyone who is not my lawful husband shall obtain anything from me.’ ‘If that is all that stops you, most beautiful Dorotea’ (for that is the name of this unhappy woman), said the faithless gentleman, ‘see: here I give you my hand to be yours, and let the heavens be witness to this truth, from which nothing is hidden, and this image of Our Lady that you have here.’”

When Cardenio heard her say that her name was Dorotea, he was thrown back into his agitation and became quite sure that his first opinion was true; but he did not want to interrupt the tale, so as to see how what he almost knew already would turn out; he only said:

“So Dorotea is your name, lady? I have heard tell of another of the same name, whose misfortunes perhaps run neck and neck with yours. Go on, for a time will come when I shall tell you things that will astonish you as much as they will grieve you.” Dorotea took note of Cardenio’s words and of his strange and wretched dress, and begged him, if he knew anything of her affairs, to tell her at once; for if fortune had left her anything good, it was the courage she had to bear any disaster that might befall her, sure as she was that, to her mind, none could come that would increase the one she had by a single jot. “I would not lose the chance, lady,” answered Cardenio, “of telling you what I think, if what I imagine were true; and so far the opportunity is not lost, nor does it matter to you at all to know it.”

“Be that as it may,” answered Dorotea, “what happens next in my tale is that Don Fernando, taking an image that was in that room, set it up as witness to our betrothal. With most effective words and extraordinary oaths he gave me his word to be my husband, though, before he had finished saying them, I told him to look well at what he was doing and to consider the anger his father was bound to feel at seeing him married to a peasant girl, his vassal; that he should not let my beauty, such as it was, blind him, for it was not enough to excuse his error; and that if he wished to do me any good, for the love he bore me, it should be to let my fortune run level with what my rank could reach, for such unequal marriages are never enjoyed, nor do they last long in the pleasure with which they begin. All these words I have told you here I said to him, and many others I do not remember, but they were not enough to make him give up his purpose, just like the man who does not mean to pay, who, in striking the bargain, sticks at no difficulty. At that moment I held a brief debate with myself, and said to myself: ‘Yes, for I shall not be the first who has risen by way of marriage from a humble to a great estate, nor will Don Fernando be the first whom beauty, or blind fancy, which is the likelier, has made take a companion unequal to his greatness. Well, then, if I make neither a new world nor a new custom, it is well to seize this honor that fortune offers me, even if in him the love he shows me should last no longer than the fulfillment of his desire; for, in the end, before God I shall be his wife. And if I try to send him away with disdain, I see him in such a state that, not using the means he ought, he will use force, and I shall end up dishonored and without excuse for the blame that anyone might lay on me who does not know how blamelessly I have come to this pass. For what reasons would be enough to persuade my parents, and others, that this gentleman came into my room without my consent?’

“All these questions and answers I turned over in my imagination in an instant; and, above all, what began to press on me and incline me to what was, without my thinking it, my ruin were Don Fernando’s oaths, the witnesses he called, the tears he shed, and, in the end, his fine figure and gallantry, which, accompanied by so many signs of true love, might have conquered any other heart as free and as guarded as mine. I called my maid, so that on earth she might join the witnesses of heaven; Don Fernando went on to repeat and confirm his oaths; to the first ones he added new saints as witnesses; he called down on himself a thousand curses for the future if he did not fulfill what he was promising me; he moistened his eyes again and redoubled his sighs; he pressed me closer in his arms, from which he had never let me go; and with this, and with my maid’s going out of the room again, I ceased to be a maid and he finished becoming a traitor and a perjurer.

“The day that followed the night of my misfortune came on, though not as fast, I think, as Don Fernando wished, for, once what appetite demands has been fulfilled, the greatest pleasure that can come is to get away from the place where it was attained. I say this because Don Fernando made haste to leave me, and, by the contrivance of my maid, who was the same one who had brought him there, he found himself in the street before dawn. And, in taking leave of me, though not with as much eagerness and ardor as when he came, he told me I might be sure of his faith and that his oaths were firm and true; and, to confirm his word further, he took a rich ring from his finger and put it on mine. In effect, he went away and I was left, I do not know whether sad or glad; this I can well say: that I was left confused and thoughtful, and almost beside myself at what had newly happened, and I had not the heart, or it did not occur to me, to scold my maid for the treachery she had committed in shutting Don Fernando up in my own room, because I had not yet made up my mind whether what had befallen me was good or bad. I told Don Fernando, as he left, that he could see me on other nights by the same way as that one, since I was now his, until, when he wished, the deed should be made public. But he came on no other night, unless it was the next one, nor could I see him in the street or in church for more than a month; for in vain I wearied myself in seeking him, though I learned that he was in the town and went hunting most days, a pastime he was very fond of. Those days and those hours, I know well, were ill-starred and luckless for me, and I know well that in them I began to doubt, and even to disbelieve, Don Fernando’s faith; and I know too that my maid heard then the words of reproof for her boldness that she had not heard before; and I know that I was forced to keep a watch over my tears and the composure of my face, so as not to give my parents occasion to ask me why I was unhappy and oblige me to look for lies to tell them. But all this came to an end in a moment, when a moment came in which all respect was trampled underfoot and honorable reasoning came to an end, and in which patience was lost and my secret thoughts came out into the open. And this was because, a few days later, it was said in the town that in a city near by Don Fernando had married a maiden beautiful in the extreme, and of very distinguished parents, though not so rich that she could, by her dowry, have aspired to so noble a marriage. It was said that her name was Luscinda, along with other things worthy of wonder that had happened at their betrothal.”

Cardenio heard the name of Luscinda, and did nothing but shrug his shoulders, bite his lips, arch his brows, and soon after let two fountains of tears fall from his eyes. But not for this did Dorotea stop going on with her tale, saying:

“This sad news reached my ears, and, instead of my heart freezing at hearing it, such was the anger and rage that kindled in it that it was little short of my running out into the streets crying aloud, proclaiming the perfidy and treachery that had been done me. But this fury was tempered for the time being by the thought of putting into practice that very night what I did put into practice: which was to put on this dress, which one of those they call lads in farmers’ houses gave me, a servant of my father’s, to whom I revealed all my misfortune, and I begged him to go with me as far as the city where I understood my enemy to be. He, after he had rebuked my boldness and condemned my resolve, seeing me set in my purpose, offered to keep me company, as he said, to the ends of the earth. At once, that very moment, I packed into a linen pillowcase a woman’s dress, and some jewels and money, in case of what might happen. And in the silence of that night, without telling my treacherous maid, I left my house, accompanied by my servant and by many imaginings, and set out for the city on foot, carried on the wings of my wish to arrive, if not to prevent what I took to be done, at least to ask Don Fernando to tell me with what soul he had done it. I arrived where I wanted in two and a half days, and, on entering the city, I asked for the house of Luscinda’s parents, and the first person I put the question to answered me more than I would have wished to hear. He told me the house and everything that had happened at their daughter’s betrothal, a thing so public in the city that people gathered in little knots to tell it all over town. He told me that on the night Don Fernando was betrothed to Luscinda, after she had given her yes to be his wife, a heavy faint had come over her, and that, as her husband went to unfasten her bodice to give her air, he found on her a paper written in Luscinda’s own hand, in which she said and declared that she could not be Don Fernando’s wife because she was Cardenio’s, who, from what the man told me, was a gentleman of high standing of the same city; and that if she had given her yes to Don Fernando, it was so as not to depart from obedience to her parents. In short, he said the paper contained such words as gave it to be understood that she had intended to kill herself as soon as the betrothal was over, and gave there the reasons why she had taken her life. All of which, they say, was confirmed by a dagger they found somewhere or other in her clothes. When Don Fernando saw all this, it seeming to him that Luscinda had mocked and scorned him and held him cheap, he fell upon her, before she came out of her faint, and tried to stab her with the very dagger they had found on her; and he would have done it if her parents and those who were present had not prevented him. They said further that Don Fernando went away at once, and that Luscinda did not come out of her swoon until the next day, when she told her parents how she was the true wife of that Cardenio I have mentioned. I learned more: that Cardenio, so they said, had been present at the betrothal, and that, on seeing her betrothed, which he had never thought would happen, he had left the city in despair, first leaving a letter written for her in which he gave her to understand the wrong Luscinda had done him, and how he was going where people would not see him.

“All this was public and notorious throughout the city, and everyone was talking about it; and they talked more when they learned that Luscinda was missing from her parents’ house and from the city, for they could not find her anywhere in it, at which her parents were losing their minds and did not know what means to take to find her. What I learned set my hopes astir, and I held it better to have missed Don Fernando than to have found him a married man, since it seemed to me that the door to my remedy was not yet quite shut, as I gave myself to understand that it might be that heaven had put that impediment in the way of the second marriage so as to bring him to recognize what he owed to the first, and to realize that he was a Christian and more bound to his soul than to worldly considerations. All these things I turned over in my fancy, and I consoled myself without having consolation, feigning some long and fainting hopes to keep up a life that I now loathe.

“While I was in the city, then, not knowing what to do with myself, since I could not find Don Fernando, a public proclamation reached my ears in which a great reward was promised to whoever found me, giving the marks of my age and of the very dress I was wearing; and I heard it said that it was said that the lad who came with me had carried me off from my parents’ house, a thing that cut me to the soul, seeing how low my good name had fallen, for it was not enough to lose it by my coming away but they must add with whom, he being a person so low and so unworthy of my good thoughts. The moment I heard the proclamation, I left the city with my servant, who was already beginning to show signs of wavering in the faith of loyalty he had promised me, and that night we went into the thick of these mountains, for fear of being found. But, as they say that one ill calls another, and that the end of one misfortune is usually the beginning of a greater one, so it happened to me, for my good servant, until then faithful and trustworthy, as soon as he saw me in this solitude, spurred on by his own villainy rather than by my beauty, wished to take advantage of the opportunity that these wilds, as he thought, offered him; and, with little shame and less fear of God or respect for me, he made love to me; and, seeing that I answered the shamelessness of his proposals with harsh and just words, he set aside the entreaties he had first thought to make use of and began to use force. But just heaven, which seldom or never fails to watch over and favor just intentions, favored mine, so that with my little strength, and with little trouble, I pushed him over a precipice, where I left him, I do not know whether dead or alive; and then, with more speed than my fright and weariness allowed, I went into these mountains, with no other thought or design than to hide in them and flee from my father and from those who were searching for me on his behalf.

“With this wish, I do not know how many months ago I came into them, where I found a herdsman who took me on as his servant to a village that lies in the heart of this sierra, and I have served him as a herd lad all this time, trying always to be out in the fields so as to hide this hair, which now, so unexpectedly, has given me away. But all my contriving and all my care was and has been of no use, for my master came to know that I was not a man, and the same wicked thought was born in him as in my servant; and, since fortune does not always give remedies along with troubles, I found no precipice or ravine from which to send the master headlong and out of his pain, as I found one for the servant; and so I thought it less of a hardship to leave him and hide myself again among these rugged places than to try my strength or my excuses on him. I say, then, that I took to the woods again, and to looking for a place where, without any hindrance, I might with sighs and tears beg heaven to pity my misfortune and give me the skill and favor to get out of it, or else to leave my life among these wildernesses, without any memory remaining of this unhappy woman, who, through no fault of her own, will have given matter for being talked of and gossiped about in her own country and in others.”