Chapter XXXVIII. In which is told the account the Sorrowing Duenna gave of her ill fortune

Behind the mournful musicians there began to come in through the garden as many as twelve duennas, divided into two rows, all dressed in wide nuns’ habits, of fulled serge, it seemed, with white coifs of thin muslin, so long that they showed only the hem of the habit. Behind them came the Countess Trifaldi, led by the hand by the squire Trifaldín of the White Beard, dressed in the finest black baize, unnapped, which, had it been napped, would have shown every nub the size of one of the good chickpeas of Martos. The train, or skirt, or whatever they may like to call it, had three points, which were held up in the hands of three pages, likewise dressed in mourning, making a showy and mathematical figure with those three acute angles that the three points formed, from which all who looked at the pointed skirt gathered that it was from it that she must be called the Countess Trifaldi, as if we were to say the Countess of the Three Skirts; and Benengeli says that this was the truth, and that by her own surname she was called the Countess Lobuna, the Wolfish, because many wolves were bred in her county, and that if instead of wolves they had been foxes, they would have called her the Countess Zorruna, the Foxy, it being the custom in those parts for lords to take the designation of their names from the thing or things their estates most abound in; but this countess, to favor the novelty of her skirt, dropped the Lobuna and took the Trifaldi.

The twelve duennas and their lady came at a processional pace, their faces covered with black veils, not transparent like Trifaldín’s, but so close-woven that nothing could be seen through them.

As soon as the duennaish squadron had come into view, the duke, the duchess, and Don Quixote rose to their feet, as did all who were watching the leisurely procession. The twelve duennas halted and made a lane, down the middle of which the Sorrowing One came forward, Trifaldín still holding her by the hand; on seeing which, the duke, the duchess, and Don Quixote stepped forward some twelve paces to receive her. She, going down on her knees, said in a voice rather coarse and hoarse than fine and delicate:

“May your greatnesses be pleased not to show so much courtesy to this manservant of yours, I mean, to this maidservant of yours, for, sorrowing as I am, I shall not manage to respond as I ought, because my strange and never-seen misfortune has carried my understanding off I know not where, and it must be very far, for the more I look for it the less I find it.”

“He would be without it, lady countess,” answered the duke, “who did not discover your worth by your person, which, without seeing more, deserves all the cream of courtesy and all the flower of well-bred ceremonies.”

And, raising her by the hand, he led her to sit in a chair beside the duchess, who likewise received her with great civility.

Don Quixote was silent, and Sancho was dying to see the face of the Trifaldi and of some of her many duennas, but it was not possible until they uncovered themselves of their own free will.

All being quiet and silent, they were waiting to see who would break the silence, and it was the Sorrowing Duenna, with these words:

“Confident I am, most mighty lord, most beautiful lady, and most sensible company, that my most woefulissima woe will find in your most valorousissimo breasts a welcome no less kindly than generous and dolorous, for it is such that it is enough to soften marble, and melt diamonds, and mollify the steel of the hardest hearts there are; but before it goes out into the square of your hearing, not to say of your ears, I would be informed whether there is in this gathering, circle, and company the most refinedissimo knight Don Quixote of La Manchissima and his most squirissimo Panza.”

“The Panza,” said Sancho, before anyone else could answer, “is here, and the Don Quixotissimo likewise; and so, most dolorousissima duennissima, you may say whatever you wantissimis, for we are all readyissimo and preparedissimo to be your servantissimos.”

At this Don Quixote rose and, directing his words to the Sorrowing Duenna, said:

“If your woes, afflicted lady, may promise themselves any hope of remedy from any valor or strength of any knight-errant, here are mine, which, though weak and slight, shall all be employed in your service. I am Don Quixote of La Mancha, whose calling is to come to the aid of every kind of needy person; and, this being so, as it is, you have no need, lady, to court goodwill or seek preambles, but only, plainly and without circling, to tell your ills, for ears are listening to you that will know, if not how to remedy them, how to grieve for them.”

Hearing which, the Sorrowing Duenna made as if to throw herself at Don Quixote’s feet, and did throw herself, and, struggling to embrace them, said:

“Before these feet and legs I cast myself, O unconquered knight, for they are the bases and columns of knight-errantry; these feet I would kiss, on whose steps hangs and depends the whole remedy of my misfortune, O valiant errant, whose true feats leave behind and darken the fabled ones of the Amadíses, Esplandiáns, and Belianíses!”

And, leaving Don Quixote, she turned to Sancho Panza and, taking him by the hands, said to him:

“O you, the most loyal squire that ever served a knight-errant in present ages or in past, longer in goodness than the beard of Trifaldín, my escort, who is here present! You may well pride yourself that in serving the great Don Quixote you serve in epitome the whole host of knights who have handled arms in the world. I conjure you, by what you owe to your most faithful goodness, to be a good intercessor for me with your master, so that he may straightway favor this most humble and most unfortunate countess.”

To which Sancho answered:

“Whether my goodness is as long and large as your squire’s beard, my ladyship, matters very little to me; may I have my soul bearded and mustached when I leave this life, which is what counts, for I care little or nothing about the beards down here; but, without all this wheedling and pleading, I’ll ask my master, for I know he loves me, and more so now that he needs me for a certain business, to favor and help your grace in everything he can. Let your grace unpack your woe and tell it to us, and leave the rest to us, for we’ll all understand each other.”

The duke and duchess were bursting with laughter at these things, as people who had taken the pulse of that adventure, and they praised between themselves the sharpness and dissembling of the Trifaldi, who, sitting down again, said:

“Of the famous kingdom of Candaya, which lies between the great Trapobana and the South Sea, two leagues beyond Cape Comorín, the queen Doña Maguncia was mistress, widow of King Archipiela, her lord and husband, of which marriage they had and begot the Princess Antonomasia, heiress to the kingdom, which said Princess Antonomasia was reared and grew up under my tutelage and teaching, since I was the oldest and the most important duenna of her mother. It happened, then, that, days going and days coming, the girl Antonomasia reached the age of fourteen, with so great a perfection of beauty that nature could not have raised it a point higher. And now shall we say her wits were still snot-nosed? She was as wise as she was beautiful, and she was the most beautiful in the world, and is, unless the envious fates and the hard-hearted Parcae have already cut her thread of life. But they will not have, for the heavens will not permit so much harm to be done to the earth as it would be to pluck unripe the cluster of the fairest vine on its soil. With this beauty, never duly extolled by my clumsy tongue, an infinite number of princes fell in love, native as well as foreign, among whom a private gentleman of the court made bold to lift his thoughts to the heaven of such loveliness, trusting in his youth and his gallantry, and in his many talents and graces, and the ease and happiness of his wit; for I would have your greatnesses know, if you do not take it amiss, that he played a guitar so that he made it talk, and, what is more, he was a poet and a great dancer, and knew how to make a birdcage, so that by making them alone he could have earned his living if he ever found himself in extreme need; for all these parts and graces are enough to topple a mountain, let alone a delicate maiden. But all his elegance and fine air and all his graces and talents would have counted for little or nothing toward taking my girl’s fortress, if the face-flaying thief had not used the remedy of taking me first. First the miscreant and soulless vagabond sought to win my goodwill and bribe my liking, so that I, a bad warden, would hand over to him the keys of the fortress I was guarding. In short, he flattered my understanding and captured my will with I know not what trinkets and baubles he gave me; but what most laid me low and brought me to the ground was some verses I heard him sing one night from a window grating that gave on an alley where he was standing, which, if I remember rightly, went:

“‘From my sweet enemy there grows
an ill that wounds the soul within,
and, to make the torment worse,
wills it be felt and never told.’

“The verse seemed to me pearls, and his voice syrup, and ever since, I mean, from then on, seeing the ill I fell into through these and other such verses, I have considered that poets ought to be banished from good and well-ordered commonwealths, as Plato advised, at least the lascivious ones, because they write verses, not like those of the Marquis of Mantua, which entertain and make children and women cry, but sharp conceits which, like soft thorns, pierce your soul, and like lightning wound you in it while leaving your clothing whole. And another time he sang:

“‘Come, death, so hidden and so still
that I may never feel you come,
lest the pleasure of my dying
should give me back my life again.’

“And other little verses and tail-pieces of this stamp, which sung enchant and written entrance. And what of when they stoop to compose a kind of verse that was in use in Candaya then, which they called seguidillas? There was the leaping of souls, the frolicking of laughter, the restlessness of bodies, and, in short, the quicksilver of all the senses. And so I say, my lords and ladies, that such troubadours ought by just title to be banished to the Isles of the Lizards. But it is not they who are to blame, but the simpletons who praise them and the silly girls who believe them; and if I had been the good duenna I ought to have been, their stale conceits would not have moved me, nor would I have believed that saying to be true: ‘I live dying, I burn in the ice, I tremble in the fire, I hope without hope, I go away and I stay,’ with other impossibilities of that breed, which their writings are full of. And what of when they promise the Arabian phoenix, Aridiana’s crown, the Sun’s horses, the South’s pearls, Tíbar’s gold, and the balm of Pancaya? Here is where they stretch their pens the furthest, as it costs them little to promise what they never mean to keep or can. But where am I straying? Ah, wretched me! What madness or what folly leads me to tell other people’s faults, when I have so much to say of my own? Ah, luckless me, once more! For it was not the verses that conquered me, but my simplicity; it was not the music that softened me, but my lightness: my great ignorance and my little foresight opened the way and cleared the path for the steps of Don Clavijo, for that is the name of the said gentleman; and so, with me as go-between, he found himself once and very many times in the chamber of Antonomasia, deceived by me, and not by him, under the title of her true husband; for, sinner though I am, I would not have consented, without his being her husband, to his coming near so much as the welt on the sole of her slippers. No, no, never that: in any business of this sort that passes through my hands, marriage has to lead the way! There was only one drawback in this business, which was the inequality, Don Clavijo being a private gentleman, and the Princess Antonomasia heiress, as I have said, to the kingdom. For some days this tangle stayed hidden and covered up in the shrewdness of my caution, until it seemed to me that a certain swelling of Antonomasia’s belly was fast uncovering it, and the fear of it made the three of us go into council, and out of it came that, before the bad business came to light, Don Clavijo should ask for Antonomasia as his wife before the vicar, on the strength of a written pledge the princess had given him to be his wife, drawn up by my wits, so binding that the strength of Samson could not have broken it. The steps were taken, the vicar saw the pledge, the said vicar took the lady’s confession, she confessed outright, he ordered her placed in custody in the house of a very honorable court constable…”

At this point Sancho said:

“So in Candaya too there are court constables, poets, and seguidillas, from which I can swear I imagine the whole world is one. But hurry up, your grace, Señora Trifaldi, for it’s late, and I’m dying to know the end of this very long history.”

“I shall,” answered the countess.