Chapter XXXIX. In which the Trifaldi continues her stupendous and memorable story
The duchess relished every word Sancho said as much as Don Quixote despaired of it; and, the knight bidding him be quiet, the Sorrowing One went on, saying:
“In the end, after many questions and answers, as the princess held stubbornly to her ground, without departing from or varying her first declaration, the vicar gave judgment in favor of Don Clavijo and handed her over to him as his lawful wife, at which Queen Doña Maguncia, the mother of the Princess Antonomasia, took such offense that within three days we buried her.”
“She must have died, no doubt,” said Sancho.
“Of course!” answered Trifaldín. “For in Candaya they do not bury the living, only the dead.”
“It’s been known before now, sir squire,” replied Sancho, “for them to bury a man in a faint, thinking him dead, and it seemed to me that Queen Maguncia was obliged to faint rather than to die; for with life many things can be mended, and the princess’s folly wasn’t so great that she had to take it so hard. If that lady had married some page of hers, or another servant of her household, as many others have done, from what I’ve heard tell, the harm would have been past mending; but marrying a knight so much the gentleman and so clever as they’ve painted him for us here, truly, truly, though it was foolishness, it wasn’t as great as people think; because, according to the rules of my master, who is here present and won’t let me lie, just as bishops are made out of learned men, so kings and emperors can be made out of knights, and all the more if they’re errant.”
“You are right, Sancho,” said Don Quixote, “for a knight-errant, provided he has two fingers’ worth of luck, is in proximate potency to becoming the greatest lord in the world. But let the lady Sorrowing One go on, for I suspect that she has still to tell the bitter part of this history, so far so sweet.”
“And is there a bitter part left!” answered the countess. “And so bitter that by comparison colocynths are sweet and oleanders savory. ‘The queen being dead, then, and not fainted, we buried her; and we had scarcely covered her with earth and scarcely given her the last farewell when,
“quis talia fando temperet a lachrymis? (who, in telling such things, could keep from tears?),
“there appeared on top of the queen’s grave, astride a wooden horse, the giant Malambruno, own cousin to Maguncia, an enchanter as well as a cruel man, who with his arts, in revenge for the death of his cousin, and as punishment for Don Clavijo’s daring, and in spite at Antonomasia’s excess, left them enchanted on the very grave: her turned into a bronze she-ape, and him into a frightful crocodile of some unknown metal, and between the two of them stands a pillar, likewise of metal, and on it are written in the Syriac tongue some letters which, having been rendered into Candayan, and now into Castilian, contain this sentence: “These two daring lovers shall not regain their first form until the valiant Manchegan comes to grips with me in single combat, for the fates keep this never-seen adventure for his great valor alone.” This done, he drew from its scabbard a broad and enormous scimitar and, seizing me by the hair, made a feint of slitting my gullet and lopping my head clean off. I was struck with confusion, my voice stuck in my throat, I was down in the dumps to the last degree; but, for all that, I took heart as much as I could, and in a trembling and doleful voice I said so many and such things to him that they made him suspend the execution of so harsh a punishment. Finally, he had all the duennas of the palace brought before him, who were these here present, and, after making much of our guilt and reviling the ways of duennas, their bad habits and worse schemes, and laying on all of them the guilt that I alone bore, he said he did not want to punish us with the death penalty, but with other drawn-out penalties that would give us a civil and continual death; and in the very moment and instant he finished saying this, we all felt the pores of our faces opening, and felt pricking all over them as if from the points of needles. At once we put our hands to our faces, and found ourselves in the state you will now see.’”
And then the Sorrowing One and the other duennas raised the masks they had come covered with, and uncovered their faces, all thick with beards, some fair, some black, some white, and some grizzled, at the sight of which the duke and duchess appeared amazed, Don Quixote and Sancho dumbfounded, and all those present astonished.
And the Trifaldi went on:
“In this way that caitiff and ill-intentioned Malambruno punished us, covering the softness and smoothness of our faces with the roughness of these bristles; and would to heaven he had rather struck off our heads with his enormous scimitar than darkened the light of our faces with this fluff that covers us; for if we go into the reckoning, my lords and ladies (and this that I am about to say now I should like to say with my eyes turned into fountains, but the thought of our misfortune, and the seas they have rained till now, have left them without moisture and as dry as chaff, and so I shall say it without tears), I say, then: where can a duenna with a beard go? What father or what mother will grieve for her? Who will give her help? For if, even when she has a smooth skin and a face martyred with a thousand kinds of concoctions and lotions, she scarcely finds anyone to love her, what will she do when she shows her face turned into a forest? O duennas and companions of mine, in an unlucky moment we were born, in an evil hour our fathers begot us!”
And, saying this, she gave signs of fainting.