Chapter XXXIV. In which the novel of The Ill-Advised Curiosity is continued

As the saying goes, an army without its general is an unsightly thing, and so is a castle without its castellan; and I say that a married woman, and a young one, is a far sorrier sight without her husband, when the most just occasions do not prevent his presence. I find myself so ill without you, and so unable to bear this absence, that if you do not come soon I shall have to go and stay at my parents’ house, even if I leave yours unguarded; for the guard you left me, if indeed it was left with that title, I believe looks more to its own pleasure than to what concerns you; and, since you are a man of good sense, I have no more to say to you, nor is it even right that I should say more.

Anselmo received this letter, and understood from it that Lotario had now begun the enterprise and that Camila must have answered as he wished; and, overjoyed at such news, he sent word back to Camila, by mouth, that she should on no account leave her house, because he would return very soon. Camila was astonished at Anselmo’s answer, which put her in greater confusion than before, for she neither dared to stay in her house nor, still less, to go to her parents’; because in staying her modesty ran a risk, and in going she went against her husband’s command.

In the end she settled on what was worse for her, which was to stay, with the determination not to avoid Lotario’s presence, so as not to give her servants anything to talk about; and she was already sorry she had written what she wrote to her husband, fearing he might think Lotario had seen some forwardness in her that had moved him not to keep the decorum he owed her. But, trusting in her own goodness, she put her trust in God and in her own good intention, with which she meant to resist, by keeping silent, everything Lotario might want to say to her, without giving any further account to her husband, so as not to involve him in a quarrel and trouble. And she was even looking for a way to excuse Lotario to Anselmo when he asked her what had moved her to write him that note. With these thoughts, more honorable than wise or profitable, she sat the next day listening to Lotario, who pressed so hard that Camila’s firmness began to waver, and her modesty had all it could do to rush to her eyes, so that they should not give some sign of the loving pity that Lotario’s tears and words had awakened in her breast. Lotario noticed all this, and all of it inflamed him.

At last it seemed to him that he must, in the time and room that Anselmo’s absence allowed, tighten the siege of that fortress. And so he attacked her self-regard with praises of her beauty, for there is nothing that more quickly overthrows and levels the castled towers of the vanity of beautiful women than that same vanity, set upon the tongues of flattery. In effect, he mined the rock of her integrity with such diligence and with such engines that, had Camila been made all of bronze, she would have come to the ground. Lotario wept, begged, offered, flattered, persisted, and feigned with so much feeling, with signs of such earnestness, that he wrecked Camila’s reserve and came to triumph over what he least expected and most desired. Camila yielded, Camila surrendered; but what wonder, if Lotario’s friendship did not stay standing? A plain example, which shows us that the passion of love is conquered only by fleeing from it, and that no one should come to grips with so powerful an enemy, because divine strength is needed to overcome its human strength. Only Leonela knew of her mistress’s weakness, because the two bad friends and new lovers could not hide it from her. Lotario would not tell Camila of Anselmo’s scheme, or that he had given him the opportunity to reach that point, so that she would not think less of his love and think that he had courted her like that, by chance and without meaning to, and not of his own choosing.

A few days later Anselmo returned home, and did not notice what was missing from it, which was what he held least in his care and prized most. He went off at once to see Lotario, and found him at home; the two embraced, and the one asked for the news of his life or of his death.

“The news I can give you, Anselmo, my friend,” said Lotario, “is that you have a wife who may worthily be the example and crown of all good women. The words I have said to her the wind has carried off, my offers have been held of no account, my gifts have not been accepted, some feigned tears of mine have been made a notable mockery of. In short, just as Camila is the sum of all beauty, she is the archive where modesty dwells and where courtesy and reserve live, and all the virtues that can make an honorable woman praiseworthy and fortunate. Take back your money, my friend, for I have it here, without having had any need to touch it; for Camila’s integrity does not yield to things as base as gifts or promises. Be content, Anselmo, and do not seek to make more trials than those already made; and, since you have crossed dry-shod the sea of the difficulties and suspicions that women usually can and do arouse, do not seek to enter afresh into the deep ocean of new troubles, nor seek to test with another pilot the goodness and strength of the ship heaven gave you as your lot, so that in it you might cross the sea of this world; but take it that you are now in a safe harbor, and moor yourself with the anchors of sound reflection, and rest there until they come to ask of you the debt from whose payment no hidalgo rank on earth can claim exemption.”

Anselmo was delighted with Lotario’s words, and believed them as if they had been spoken by some oracle. But, for all that, he begged him not to abandon the enterprise, even if only out of curiosity and for amusement, though he need not from then on use such earnest efforts as before; and he said that all he wanted was for him to write some verses in her praise under the name of Clori, because he would give Camila to understand that Lotario was in love with a lady, to whom he had given that name so as to be able to celebrate her with the decorum due to her modesty; and that, if Lotario did not want to take the trouble of writing the verses, he would make them himself.

“That will not be needed,” said Lotario, “for the Muses are not such enemies of mine that they do not visit me at some times of the year. Tell Camila what you have said about my pretended love, for I will make the verses; if not as good as the subject deserves, they will at least be the best I can.”

So the ill-advised friend and the treacherous one agreed; and, when Anselmo was back home, he asked Camila what she had already been wondering at his not asking her: which was that she tell him the reason why she had written him the note she sent. Camila answered that it had seemed to her that Lotario looked at her a little more freely than when he was at home; but that she was now undeceived and believed it had been her imagination, because by now Lotario avoided seeing her and being alone with her. Anselmo told her that she might rest easy about that suspicion, because he knew that Lotario was in love with a young lady of rank in the city, whose praises he sang as Clori, and that, even if he were not, there was nothing to fear from Lotario’s truth and the great friendship of the two of them. And had Camila not been warned by Lotario that those loves of Clori were feigned, and that he had told Anselmo of them so as to be able to spend some of his time in praising Camila herself, she would no doubt have fallen into the desperate net of jealousy; but, being forewarned, she got past that alarm without distress.

The next day, as the three of them sat at table after the meal, Anselmo begged Lotario to recite something of what he had composed for his beloved Clori; for, since Camila did not know her, he could safely say whatever he liked.

“Even if she knew her,” answered Lotario, “I would hide nothing, for when a lover praises his lady for her beauty and taxes her with cruelty, he does no injury to her good name. But, be that as it may, I can tell you this much: only yesterday I wrote a sonnet on this Clori’s ingratitude, which goes like this: Sonnet

In the silence of the night, when sweet sleep
lies heavy on the eyes of mortal men,
the poor account of all my wealth of woes
I sit and render up to heaven and Clori.
And at the hour the sun begins to show
himself through the rosy portals of the east,
with sighs and broken, ill-according cries
I go on renewing my old complaint.
And when the sun, from his starry seat, sends down
his beams straight down upon the earth,
my weeping grows, and I redouble my groans.
Night comes again, and I return to my sad tale,
and always find, in my mortal persistence,
heaven deaf to me, and Clori without ears.”

Camila liked the sonnet, but Anselmo liked it better, for he praised it and said that the lady who did not respond to such plain truths was excessively cruel. To which Camila said:

“Then is everything that poets in love say true?”

“As poets, they do not tell the truth,” answered Lotario, “but, as lovers, they always fall as short as they are truthful.”

“There is no doubt of that,” replied Anselmo, wholly to support and lend credit to Lotario’s thoughts with Camila, who was as heedless of Anselmo’s scheme as she was already in love with Lotario.

And so, with the pleasure she took in everything of his, and still more, since she understood that his desires and writings were aimed at her and that she was the true Clori, she begged him that, if he knew another sonnet or other verses, he should say them:

“Yes, I do,” answered Lotario, “but I do not think it is as good as the first, or, to put it better, it is less bad. And you will be able to judge it well, for here it is:

Sonnet

I know that I am dying; and if I am not believed,
my death is all the surer, as it is surer
that I shall lie dead at your feet, O fair ungrateful one,
before I lie repentant of adoring you.
I may come to find myself in the land of oblivion,
bereft of life and glory and of favor,
and there, within my breast laid open, may be seen
how your lovely face lies carved upon my heart.
For this relic I keep against the hard
ordeal with which my persistence threatens me,
which grows the stronger on your very rigor.
Alas for him who sails beneath a darkened sky
an untried sea upon a perilous course,
where neither north star nor harbor shows itself!”

Anselmo praised this second sonnet too, as he had the first, and in this way he kept adding link to link to the chain with which he was binding and fastening his own dishonor, for when Lotario was dishonoring him most, then he would tell him that he was most honored; and so every step that Camila went down toward the depths of her disgrace she climbed, in her husband’s opinion, toward the summit of virtue and of her good fame. It happened meanwhile that, finding herself alone with her maid on one occasion among others, Camila said to her:

“I am ashamed, Leonela, my friend, to see how little I have known how to value myself, since I did not even make Lotario buy with time the full possession of my will that I gave him so quickly. I fear he will set it down to my readiness, or lightness, without considering the force he used on me, which left me unable to resist him.”

“Don’t let that trouble you, my lady,” answered Leonela, “for it makes no difference, and it is no reason to lower the esteem, that what is given is given quickly, if, in effect, what is given is good and worthy in itself to be esteemed. And they even say that he who gives quickly gives twice.”

“They also say,” said Camila, “that what costs little is valued less.”

“That reasoning doesn’t apply to you,” answered Leonela, “because love, as I have heard tell, sometimes flies and sometimes walks, runs with this one and goes slowly with that one, cools some and burns others, wounds some and kills others, at one and the same point begins the race of its desires and at that same point ends and concludes it, in the morning lays siege to a fortress and by night has it surrendered, for there is no strength that can withstand it. And, this being so, what are you frightened of, or what do you fear, if the same must have happened to Lotario, since love took my master’s absence as the instrument for conquering us? And it was bound to happen that what love had determined should be concluded during it, without giving time to time for Anselmo to have any to come back, and leave the work unfinished with his presence. For love has no better minister to carry out what it desires than opportunity: it makes use of opportunity in all its doings, especially at the beginning. All this I know very well, more from experience than from hearsay, and someday I’ll tell you about it, my lady, for I too am of flesh and of young blood. All the more, Señora Camila, since you did not surrender and give yourself so soon that you had not first seen in Lotario’s eyes, in his sighs, in his words, and in his promises and gifts his whole soul, seeing in it and in his virtues how worthy Lotario was of being loved. Well, if this is so, don’t let those scrupulous and squeamish thoughts assail your imagination, but rest assured that Lotario esteems you as you esteem him, and live content and satisfied that, since you have fallen into the snare of love, the one that holds you fast is a man of worth and esteem. And that he has not only the four S’s they say good lovers must have, but a whole ABC: if not, listen to me and you’ll see how I say it to you by heart. He is, as I see it and as it seems to me, appreciative, bountiful, courtly, decent, enamored, faithful, gallant, honorable, illustrious, loyal, manly, noble, onest, prominent, of quality, rich, and the S’s they speak of; and then tight-lipped, veracious. The X doesn’t suit him, because it’s a harsh letter; the Y has been said already; the Z, zealous guardian of your honor.”

Camila laughed at her maid’s ABC, and took her to be more practiced in matters of love than she let on; and so Leonela confessed it, revealing to Camila that she was carrying on a love affair with a wellborn young man of the same city; at which Camila was troubled, fearing that this was a road by which her honor might run a risk. She pressed her to say whether their dealings went beyond talk. Leonela, with little shame and much forwardness, answered that they did go beyond it; for it is a thing well established that the lapses of mistresses take away the shame of maids, who, when they see their mistresses stumble, think nothing of limping themselves, nor of its being known.

Camila could do nothing but beg Leonela to say nothing of her affair to the man she said was her lover, and to conduct her own affairs in secret, so that they should not come to the knowledge of Anselmo or Lotario. Leonela answered that she would do so, but she kept her word in such a way that she made Camila’s fear come true, that through her she would lose her good name. For the shameless and bold Leonela, once she saw that her mistress’s conduct was not what it used to be, made bold to bring her lover in and keep him inside the house, trusting that, her mistress would not dare give him away, even if she saw him; for this is one of the harms the sins of mistresses bring with them, among others: that they make themselves the slaves of their own maids and bind themselves to cover up their wantonness and baseness, as happened with Camila; for, though she saw once and many times that her Leonela was with her gallant in a room of her house, not only did she not dare to scold her, but she gave her the chance to lock him in, and removed every obstacle, so that he should not be seen by her husband.

But she could not remove them so well that Lotario did not once see him leaving at the break of dawn; and Lotario, not knowing who he was, thought at first it must be some phantom; but, when he saw him walking, muffling himself up, and hiding his face with care and caution, he dropped his simple thought and fell into another, which would have been the ruin of them all if Camila had not remedied it. Lotario thought that the man he had seen leaving Anselmo’s house at so unseasonable an hour had not gone in for Leonela, nor did he even remember whether there was a Leonela in the world; he believed only that Camila, in the same way she had been easy and light with him, was so with another; for the wickedness of the wicked woman brings these extras with it: she loses the credit of her honor with the very man to whom she gave herself, begged and persuaded, and he believes that she gives herself to others with greater ease, and gives infallible credit to any suspicion of this that comes to him. And it seems that at this point Lotario lacked all his good understanding, and all his prudent reasonings went out of his memory, for, without making a single one that was good, or even reasonable, without more ado, before Anselmo was up, impatient and blinded by the jealous rage that gnawed at his vitals, dying to be revenged on Camila, who had offended him in nothing, he went to Anselmo and said to him:

“Know, Anselmo, that for many days I have been fighting with myself, forcing myself not to tell you what it is no longer possible or right to hide from you any longer. Know that Camila’s fortress has now surrendered and is subject to whatever I may wish to do with it; and if I have been slow to reveal this truth to you, it has been to see whether it was some light whim of hers, or whether she was doing it to test me and see whether the love I began with her, with your leave, was pursued with a firm purpose. I believed, likewise, that if she were what she ought to be and what we both thought her, she would already have told you of my courtship; but, having seen that she delays, I know that the promises she has given me are true, that, the next time you are away from home, she will speak to me in the closet where your valuables are kept—and it was the truth that Camila used to talk to him there—; and I do not want you to rush headlong to take some revenge, since the sin is as yet committed only in thought, and it may be that, between this one and the time of putting it into effect, Camila’s thought may change and repentance be born in its place. And so, since you have always followed my advice, in whole or in part, follow and keep one I shall give you now, so that without being deceived and with fearful watchfulness you may satisfy yourself of whatever you see most suits you. Pretend to go away for two or three days, as you have done at other times, and arrange to stay hidden in your closet, since the tapestries there and other things you can hide behind offer you every convenience, and then you will see with your own eyes, and I with mine, what Camila wants; and if it is the wickedness that is to be feared rather than expected, with silence, shrewdness, and discretion you may be the executioner of your own wrong.”

Anselmo was left absorbed, astounded, and amazed by Lotario’s words, because they took him by surprise just when he least looked to hear such things, for by now he held Camila to be the victor over Lotario’s feigned assaults and was beginning to enjoy the glory of the victory. He stood silent for a good while, looking at the ground without moving an eyelash, and at last he said:

“You have acted, Lotario, as I expected of your friendship; in everything I shall follow your advice: do what you will and keep the secret you see is called for in a case so unforeseen.”

Lotario promised him, and, as soon as he left him, he repented wholly of everything he had said to him, seeing how foolishly he had acted, since he could have taken revenge on Camila, and not by a road so cruel and so dishonorable. He cursed his own understanding, condemned his hasty decision, and did not know what means to take to undo what was done, or to find some reasonable way out of it. At last he decided to tell Camila everything; and, as there was no lack of opportunity to do it, that same day he found her alone, and she, as soon as she saw she could speak to him, said to him:

“You must know, Lotario, my friend, that I have a grief in my heart that so oppresses it that it seems about to burst in my breast, and it will be a wonder if it does not, for Leonela’s shamelessness has come to such a pass that every night she shuts a gallant of hers up in this house and stays with him till daylight, so much at the cost of my good name that anyone who sees him leaving my house at such unusual hours will have an open field to judge it as he likes. And what wearies me is that I can neither punish nor scold her: for her being the secretary of our dealings has put a bridle on my mouth to keep silent about hers, and I fear some ill outcome will be born of this.”

When Camila first began saying this, Lotario believed it was a trick to make him think the man he had seen leaving was Leonela’s and not hers; but, seeing her weep and grieve and beg him for a remedy, he came to believe the truth, and, in believing it, was left utterly confused and wholly repentant. But, for all that, he answered Camila that she should not grieve, for he would arrange a remedy to cut short Leonela’s insolence. He also told her what, spurred by the furious rage of jealousy, he had said to Anselmo, and how it was agreed that he should hide in the closet, to see plainly from there how little loyalty she kept toward him. He begged her pardon for this madness, and her advice on how to remedy it and come safely out of so tangled a labyrinth as his bad reasoning had put him in.

Camila was horrified to hear what Lotario was telling her, and with great anger and many sensible words she scolded him and reproached him for his wicked thought and the foolish and wicked decision he had made. But, as woman by nature has a readier wit for good and for ill than man, though it begins to fail her when she sets herself on purpose to reason things out, Camila at once, on the instant, found the way to remedy so seemingly irremediable a business, and told Lotario to see to it that the next day Anselmo should hide where he said, for she meant to draw from his hiding the convenience for the two of them to enjoy each other from then on without any alarm; and, without disclosing her thought to him fully, she warned him to take care that, once Anselmo was hidden, he should come when Leonela called him, and that he should answer everything she said to him as he would answer if he did not know Anselmo was listening. Lotario insisted that she tell him her intention in full, so that he might observe with more certainty and care everything he saw was necessary.

“I say,” said Camila, “that there is nothing more to observe, except to answer me as I shall question you” (Camila not wanting to tell him beforehand what she meant to do, fearing that he might not want to follow the plan that seemed so good to her, and might follow or look for others that could not be as good).

With this, Lotario went away; and Anselmo, the next day, on the pretext of going to that village of his friend’s, set out, and came back to hide: which he could do easily, because Camila and Leonela gave him the chance on purpose. Anselmo being hidden, then, with that dread one can imagine in a man who expected to see with his own eyes the dissection of the entrails of his honor, he was on the point of losing the supreme good he thought he had in his beloved Camila. Camila and Leonela, now sure and certain that Anselmo was hidden, came into the closet; and Camila had hardly set foot in it when, heaving a great sigh, she said:

“Ah, Leonela, my friend! Would it not be better, before I come to carry out what I do not want you to know, lest you try to prevent it, for you to take Anselmo’s dagger, which I asked you for, and run it through this infamous breast of mine? But do no such thing, for it will not be right that I should bear the penalty of another’s fault. First I want to know what it was the bold and wanton eyes of Lotario saw in me that gave him the boldness to reveal to me so wicked a desire as the one he has revealed, in contempt of his friend and in dishonor of me. Go to that window, Leonela, and call him, for no doubt he must be in the street, waiting to carry out his wicked intention. But first my own will be carried out, as cruel as it is honorable.”

“Ah, my lady!” answered the shrewd and wary Leonela. “And what is it you want to do with this dagger? Do you mean, perhaps, to take your own life or Lotario’s? For whichever of these things you want must end in the loss of your good name and fame. It’s better for you to hide your wrong, and not give this wicked man a chance to come into this house now and find us alone. Consider, my lady, that we are weak women, and he is a man, and a determined one; and, since he comes with that wicked purpose, blind and in the grip of passion, perhaps before you carry out yours he’ll do what would be worse for you than taking your life. A curse on my master Anselmo, who has been willing to give so much rein to this brazen scoundrel in his house! And then, my lady, supposing you kill him, as I think you mean to do, what are we to do with him once he’s dead?”

“What, my friend?” answered Camila. “We shall leave him for Anselmo to bury, for it will be just that he should take as a rest the labor of putting his own infamy under the earth. Call him, go on, for all the time I delay in taking due vengeance for my wrong I seem to offend against the loyalty I owe my husband.”

Anselmo was listening to all this, and at every word Camila said his thoughts changed; but, when he understood that she was resolved to kill Lotario, he wanted to come out and show himself, so that such a thing should not be done; but he was held back by the desire to see where so much spirit and virtuous resolution would end, meaning to come out in time to prevent it.

At this point Camila was seized with a deep swoon, and, as she threw herself onto a bed that was there, Leonela began to weep very bitterly and to say: “Ah, woe is me if I should be so unlucky that the flower of the world’s modesty should die here in my arms, the crown of good women, the pattern of chastity…!”

With other things like these, so that no one who heard her would not have taken her for the most grief-stricken and loyal maid in the world, and her mistress for another, new, and persecuted Penelope. Camila was not long in coming out of her swoon; and, as she came to herself, she said:

“Why do you not go, Leonela, and call the most loyal friend to his friend that the sun ever saw or the night ever covered? Go on, run, hurry, be off, lest the fire of my anger burn itself out with the delay, and the just vengeance I hope for pass away in threats and curses.”

“I’m going to call him now, my lady,” said Leonela, “but first you must give me that dagger, so that while I’m gone you don’t do something with it that will leave all who love you weeping their whole lives long.”

“Go and fear nothing, Leonela, my friend, for I will not,” answered Camila, “because, though I may be bold and simple in your opinion in standing up for my honor, I shall not be so much so as that Lucretia who, they say, took her own life though she had done nothing wrong, and without first having killed the man who was the cause of her misfortune. I shall die, if I die, but it must be when I am avenged and satisfied on the man who has given me cause to come to this place and weep over his boldness, born so without fault of mine.”

Leonela made them beg her a long time before she went out to call Lotario, but at last she went; and, while she was coming back, Camila stayed saying, as though she were talking to herself:

“God help me! Would it not have been wiser to have sent Lotario away, as I have done many other times, than to put him in a position, as I have now put him, to take me for wanton and wicked, if only for the time I shall take to undeceive him? It would have been better, no doubt; but I would not be avenged, nor my husband’s honor satisfied, if he went back out so easily, with his hands so clean and his way so smooth, from the place his wicked thoughts brought him into. Let the traitor pay with his life for what he attempted with so lustful a desire: let the world know, if by chance it comes to know it, that Camila not only kept faith with her husband, but gave him vengeance on the man who dared to offend him. But, for all that, I think it would be better to tell Anselmo of this, but I did start to tell him in the letter I wrote to him at the village, and I think that his not coming to remedy the harm I pointed out to him there must have been because, from pure goodness and trust, he would not and could not believe that any kind of thought against his honor could find room in the breast of so steadfast a friend; nor did I believe it myself afterward, for many days, nor would I ever have believed it, had his insolence not gone so far that his open gifts and lavish promises and continual tears made it plain to me. But why am I making these reasonings now? Does a gallant resolution, by any chance, need any counsel? No, assuredly. Away, then, with traitors; here, vengeance! Let the false one come in, let him come, let him approach, let him die and be done with, and let come what may! Pure I came into the power of him whom heaven gave me for my own, pure I shall leave it; and, at worst, I shall leave it bathed in my own chaste blood, and in the impure blood of the falsest friend friendship has ever looked upon.”

And, saying this, she paced up and down the room with the dagger unsheathed, taking such wild and disordered strides, and making such gestures, that it seemed nothing less than that she had lost her wits, and that she was no delicate woman but some desperate ruffian.

Anselmo watched it all, hidden behind some tapestries where he had concealed himself, and marveled at it all, and it already seemed to him that what he had seen and heard was satisfaction enough for greater suspicions; and by now he would have liked the test of Lotario’s coming to fall through, fearing some sudden mishap. And, as he was on the point of showing himself and coming out, to embrace and undeceive his wife, he stopped, because he saw Leonela coming back leading Lotario by the hand; and, as soon as Camila saw him, drawing with the dagger a great line on the floor in front of her, she said to him:

“Lotario, mark what I tell you: if by chance you dare to cross this line you see, or even come up to it, the moment I see you attempt it, in that same moment I shall pierce my breast with this dagger I hold in my hands. And, before you answer me a word to this, I want you to hear a few others from me; afterward you shall answer what you please. First, Lotario, I want you to tell me whether you know Anselmo, my husband, and in what opinion you hold him; and second, I want to know also whether you know me. Answer me this, and do not be flustered, or think long about what you are to answer, for these are no hard questions I am asking you.”

Lotario was not so dull that, from the first moment Camila told him to make Anselmo hide, he had not seen what she meant to do; and so he played up to her intention so cleverly and so promptly that the two of them made that lie pass for more than certain truth; and so he answered Camila in this way:

“I did not think, beautiful Camila, that you were calling me to ask me things so remote from the intention with which I come here. If you do it to put off the promised favor, you might have held it off from farther away, for the longed-for good wearies the more the nearer the hope is of possessing it; but, so that you may not say I do not answer your questions, I say that I know your husband Anselmo, and that we have known each other from our tenderest years; and I will not speak of what you know so well of our friendship, so as not to make myself a witness to the wrong that love makes me do him, love, the powerful excuse for greater errors. You I know and hold in the same possession in which he holds you; for, were it not so, for lesser gifts than yours I would not have gone against what I owe to being who I am and against the holy laws of true friendship, which I have now broken and violated because of so powerful an enemy as love.”

“If you confess that,” answered Camila, “mortal enemy of all that justly deserves to be loved, with what face do you dare appear before one who you know is the mirror in which he looks at himself in whom you ought to look at yourself, so as to see how little cause you have to wrong him? But now, ah, unhappy that I am, I see what it is that has made you take so little account of what you owe yourself, for it must have been some forwardness of mine, which I will not call wantonness, since it cannot have come from deliberate resolve, but from one of those lapses that women who think they have no one to be wary of commit without noticing. If not, tell me: when, O traitor, did I answer your pleas with any word or sign that could awaken in you any shadow of hope of fulfilling your infamous desires? When were your loving words not undone and rebuked by mine with rigor and harshness? When were your many promises and greater gifts believed or accepted by me? But, since it seems to me that no one can persevere long in the pursuit of love unless sustained by some hope, I will lay the blame for your ill-advised persistence on myself, since no doubt some carelessness of mine has kept your care alive for so long; and so I mean to punish myself and give myself the penalty your fault deserves. And, so that you might see that, being so inhuman to myself, I could not help being so to you, I chose to bring you here to witness the sacrifice I mean to make to the offended honor of my most honorable husband, wronged by you with all the care you could manage, and by me as well, through the little caution I have taken to avoid giving you occasion, if I gave you any, to favor and sanctify your wicked intentions. I say again that the suspicion I have that some carelessness of mine bred such wild thoughts in you is what wearies me most, and what I most desire to punish with my own hands, because, if another executioner punished me, my fault might be more public; but, before I do this, I mean to kill as I die, and take with me one who will fully satisfy my desire for the vengeance I hope for and have, seeing there, wherever it may be, the penalty that justice, impartial and unbending, deals out to the man who has brought me to so desperate a pass.”

And, saying these words, with incredible strength and swiftness she rushed at Lotario with the dagger unsheathed, with such signs of wanting to bury it in his breast that he himself was almost in doubt whether those demonstrations were false or true, for he was forced to use his skill and his strength to keep Camila from striking him. And she so vividly played out that strange deception and ugliness that, to give it the color of truth, she chose to stain it with her own blood; for, seeing that she could not reach Lotario, or pretending that she could not, she said:

“Since fortune will not fully satisfy my so just desire, at least it shall not be so powerful as to keep me from satisfying it in part.” And, wrenching to free the hand with the dagger, which Lotario was holding, she pulled it away, and, guiding its point to a place where it could wound without going deep, she drove it in and buried it a little above the armpit on the left side, near the shoulder, and then let herself fall to the floor as if in a faint.

Leonela and Lotario stood astounded and aghast at such an event, and still doubted the truth of that deed, seeing Camila stretched on the floor and bathed in her blood. Lotario ran very quickly, terrified and breathless, to pull out the dagger, and, on seeing the small wound, came out of the fear he had felt until then, and marveled anew at the shrewdness, prudence, and great good sense of the beautiful Camila; and, to play the part that fell to him, he began to make a long and mournful lament over Camila’s body, as if she were dead, calling down many curses, not only on himself but on the one who had been the cause of putting him in that pass. And, since he knew that his friend Anselmo was listening, he said things such that anyone who heard him would have pitied him far more than Camila, even had he judged her dead.

Leonela took her in her arms and laid her on the bed, begging Lotario to go and find someone who might tend Camila in secret; she also asked him for counsel and his opinion as to what they should tell Anselmo about this wound of her mistress’s, if by chance he should come back before it was healed. He answered that they should say what they liked, for he was in no state to give advice that would be of any use; he told her only to try to stanch the blood, for he was going where people would not see him. And, with signs of great grief and sorrow, he left the house; and, when he found himself alone and in a place where no one saw him, he never stopped crossing himself, marveling at Camila’s ingenuity and at Leonela’s so fitting gestures. He considered how convinced Anselmo must be left that he had a second Portia for a wife, and he longed to be with him so that the two of them might celebrate the lie and the truth most cunningly disguised that could ever be imagined.

Leonela, as has been said, stanched her mistress’s blood, which was no more than enough to lend credit to her deception; and, after washing the cut with a little wine, she tied it up as best she could, saying such things while she tended her that, even if no others had gone before, they would have been enough to make Anselmo believe he had in Camila a very image of modesty. To Leonela’s words were joined others of Camila’s, calling herself a coward and faint of heart, since her courage had failed her at the moment when it was most needed, to take her own life, which she so abhorred. She asked her maid’s advice as to whether or not she should tell her beloved husband the whole of what had happened; and the maid told her not to tell him, because it would put him under the obligation of taking revenge on Lotario, which could not be done without great risk to himself, and that a good wife was bound not to give her husband cause to quarrel, but to take away from him every cause she could.

Camila answered that she thought her opinion very good and that she would follow it; but that in any case they must find something to tell Anselmo about the cause of that wound, which he could not fail to see; to which Leonela answered that she did not know how to lie, not even in jest.

“Then I, sister,” replied Camila, “what am I to know about it, I who would not dare to forge or sustain a lie even if my life depended on it? And if we cannot find a way out of this, it will be better to tell him the naked truth than for him to catch us in a lying tale.”

“Don’t be troubled, my lady: between now and tomorrow,” answered Leonela, “I’ll think of what we’re to tell him, and perhaps, since the wound is where it is, you’ll be able to hide it without his seeing it, and heaven will be pleased to favor our so just and so honorable thoughts. Calm yourself, my lady, and try to calm your agitation, so that my master doesn’t find you upset, and leave the rest to me, and to God, who always comes to the aid of good intentions.” Anselmo had been most attentive in listening to and watching the performance of the tragedy of the death of his honor; which its players acted with such strange and powerful feeling that it seemed they had been transformed into the very truth of what they were feigning. He longed for night, and for the chance to slip out of his house and go and meet his good friend Lotario, rejoicing with him over the precious pearl he had found in the proof of his wife’s goodness. The two women took care to give him the opportunity and the means to leave, and he, not losing it, went out and at once went to look for Lotario; and, once he had found him, there is no telling properly the embraces Anselmo gave him, the things he told him of his happiness, the praises he gave Camila. Lotario listened to all of it without being able to show any sign of gladness, because there came into his memory how deceived his friend was and how unjustly he was wronging him. And, although Anselmo saw that Lotario was not glad, he believed the reason was that he had left Camila wounded and had himself been the cause of it; and so, along with much else, he urged him not to grieve over what had happened to Camila, because the wound was no doubt slight, since the women had agreed to hide it from him; and that, accordingly, there was nothing to fear, but that from then on Lotario should rejoice and be glad with him, since through his skill and his means he saw himself raised to the highest happiness anyone could think to wish for, and he wanted their pastimes to be nothing other than writing verses in praise of Camila that would make her eternal in the memory of ages to come. Lotario praised his good resolve and said that he, for his part, would help to raise so illustrious an edifice. With this, Anselmo was left the most delightfully deceived man there could be in the world: he himself led home by the hand, believing he was leading the instrument of his glory, the whole ruin of his good name. Camila received Lotario with a face that seemed displeased, though with a laughing soul. This deception lasted some days, until, a few months later, Fortune gave her wheel a turn, and the wickedness until then so artfully concealed came out into the open, and his ill-advised curiosity cost Anselmo his life.