Don Quixote [Trans. by Edith Grossman] (48 page)

In similar fashion, the chaste woman is like a mirror of clear, shining glass, liable to be clouded and darkened by any breath that touches it. One must treat the virtuous woman as one treats relics: adore them but not touch them. One must protect and esteem the chaste woman as one protects and esteems a beautiful garden filled with flowers and roses; its owner does not permit people to pass through and handle the flowers; it is enough that from a distance, through the iron bars of the fence, they enjoy its fragrance and beauty.

Finally, I want to recite for you some verses that have just come to mind; I heard them in a modern play, and I think they are relevant to what we are discussing. A prudent old man was advising the father of a young girl to shelter her, protect her, and keep her secluded, and among many other reasons, he mentioned these:

Everything I have said so far, Anselmo, refers to you; now it is time for you to hear something that has to do with me, and if it takes a long time, forgive me, but it is demanded by the labyrinth into which you have walked and from which you wish me to free you. You consider me your friend, yet you wish to take my honor, which is counter to all friendship; not only that, but you want me to try to take yours. It is clear that you want to take mine, for when Camila sees me wooing her, as you are asking me to do, surely she will look upon me as a man without honor or worth because I am attempting and doing something so far removed from the obligations I have as the man I am, and as your friend. There is no doubt that you want me to take your honor, for when Camila sees me wooing her, she will think that I saw in her some looseness of behavior that gave me the audacity to reveal my evil desire, and thinking herself dishonored, her dishonor affects you, for you are part of her. For this reason people commonly say that the husband of an adulterous woman, even though he has no knowledge of wife’s adultery and has given her no reason to be what she should not be, and it was not in his power to prevent his misfortune for he was neither negligent nor careless, yet despite all this he is called and characterized by base names that revile him, and in a certain sense those who know of his wife’s wickedness look at him with scornful rather than compassionate eyes, even though responsibility for his difficulties lies not with him but with the desires of his unvirtuous wife.

But I want to tell you why it is reasonable and just for the husband of
an immodest woman to be dishonored, even if he does not know about her lack of virtue, and is not responsible for it, and has not been a party to it or given her reason to be unchaste. And do not grow weary of listening to me; everything will redound to your benefit. When God created our first father in the Earthly Paradise, Holy Scripture says that God put Adam to sleep, and as he slept He took a rib out of his left side and from it He formed our mother Eve; when Adam awoke and saw her, he said: ‘This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh,’ and God said: ‘Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.’ That was when the divine sacrament of marriage was established, with bonds so strong that death alone can undo them. And this miraculous sacrament is so strong and powerful that it makes one flesh of two different people, and in virtuous spouses it does even more, for although they have two souls, they have only one will. And from this it follows that since the flesh of the wife is one with the flesh of the husband, any stain that besmirches her, or any defect that appears in her, redounds to the flesh of the husband even if he has not given her, as I have said, any reason for her wickedness. Just as discomfort in the foot or any other member of the body is felt throughout the entire body because it is all one flesh, and the head feels the ankle’s pain although it has not caused it, so the husband participates in his wife’s dishonor because he is one with her. And since honors and dishonors in this world are all born of flesh and blood, and those of the un-chaste woman are of this kind, it is unavoidable that the husband is party to them and is considered dishonored even if he has no knowledge of them.

Therefore consider, Anselmo, the danger in which you place yourself by wanting to disturb the tranquility in which your virtuous wife lives; think of how, because of a futile and rash inquisitiveness, you wish to disturb the humors that now rest tranquilly in the bosom of your chaste wife; be aware that what you may gain is little, and what you may lose is so great that I will not even mention it because I lack the words to describe it. But if everything I have said is not enough to dissuade you from your evil purpose, then you can find another instrument for your dishonor and misfortune, for I do not intend to be that instrument, even if I lose your friendship, which is the greatest loss I can imagine.”

When he had said this, the virtuous and prudent Lotario fell silent, and Anselmo was left so perplexed and pensive that for some time he could not say a word, but at last he said:

“You have seen, Lotario my friend, how attentively I have listened to
everything you wanted to say to me, and in your arguments, examples, and comparisons I have seen the great discernment you possess and the far reaches of your true friendship; I also see and confess that if I do not follow your way of thinking but pursue my own, I am fleeing the good and going after the bad. Assuming this, you must consider that I suffer now from the disease that afflicts some women, filling them with the desire to eat earth, plaster, charcoal, and other things that are even worse, and sickening to look at, let alone to eat; therefore it is necessary to use some artifice to cure me, and this could be done with ease if you simply start, even if indifferently and falsely, to woo Camila, who will not be so fragile that your first encounters will bring down her virtue; I will be content with this simple beginning, and you will have fulfilled what you owe to our friendship, not only by giving me back my life, but by persuading me not to lose my honor. You are obliged to do this for only one reason: being determined, as I am, to make this test a reality, you must not allow me to recount my madness to someone else who would endanger the honor that you insist on my not losing; yours not being as high as it should be, in Camila’s opinion, while you woo her, matters little or not at all, for in a very short time, when we see in her the integrity we desire, you will be able to tell her the truth of our scheme, and this will return your standing to where it was before. Since you risk so little and can make me so happy by taking that small risk, do not refuse to do it even if greater obstacles are placed before you; as I have said, if you simply begin, I shall consider the matter concluded.”

Seeing Anselmo’s resolute will, and not knowing what other examples to cite or arguments to present that would dissuade him, and hearing that he threatened to tell someone else about his wicked desire, and wanting to avoid an even greater evil, Lotario decided to agree and do what Anselmo asked; his purpose and intention was to guide the matter in such a way that Camila’s thoughts would not be disturbed and Anselmo would be satisfied, and therefore Lotario told Anselmo not to communicate his thought to anyone else and that he would undertake the enterprise and begin whenever his friend wished. Anselmo embraced him tenderly and lovingly and thanked him for his offer as if Lotario had done him a great favor; the two of them agreed that the plan would begin the following day; Anselmo would give Lotario time and opportunity to speak to Camila alone and also provide him with money and jewels to give and present to her. He advised Lotario to play music for her and write verses in her praise, and if he did not wish to take the trouble to do so, Anselmo would write them himself. Lotario agreed to
everything, with intentions quite different from what Anselmo believed them to be.

And having come to this understanding, they went back to Anselmo’s house, where they found Camila waiting for her husband, troubled and concerned because he came home later than usual that day.

Lotario returned to his house and Anselmo remained in his, and he was as pleased as Lotario was thoughtful, not knowing what course to follow in order to succeed in that rash affair. But that night he thought of how to deceive Anselmo without offending Camila, and the next day he went to eat with his friend and was welcomed by Camila, who always received and treated him warmly, knowing the good opinion her husband had of him.

They finished eating, the table was cleared, and Anselmo asked Lotario to stay with Camila while he went out to tend to a pressing matter; he said he would be back in an hour and a half. Camila asked him not to leave, and Lotario offered to accompany him, but nothing could sway Anselmo; instead, he urged Lotario to wait until he returned because he had to discuss a matter of great importance with him. He also told Camila not to leave Lotario alone while he was out. In short, he knew so well how to feign the necessity or nonsensicality of his absence that no one could have realized it was mere pretense. Anselmo left, and Camila and Lotario remained alone at the table because the servants had gone to have their own meal. Lotario saw himself placed in precisely the dangerous position that his friend desired, facing an enemy who, with no more than her beauty, could conquer an entire squadron of armed knights: Lotario surely had good reason to fear her.

But what he did was to place his elbow on the arm of his chair and rest his cheek on his open hand, and begging Camila’s pardon for his rudeness, he said that he wanted to rest for a while until Anselmo returned. Camila responded that he would be more comfortable in the drawing room than in the chair, and she asked him to go in there to sleep. Lotario refused and dozed in the chair until the return of Anselmo, who found Camila in her bedroom and Lotario asleep and thought that since he had come home so late, they had already had the opportunity to talk and even to sleep; he was impatient for Lotario to awaken so that he could go out again with him and ask if he had been successful.

Everything happened as he wished: Lotario awoke, and they left the house together, and Anselmo asked what he wanted to know, and Lotario replied that he had not thought it a good idea to reveal his intentions completely the first time, and so he had done no more than
praise Camila for her loveliness, saying that the sole topic of conversation throughout the city was her beauty and discretion; this had seemed to him a good start to winning her over, disposing her to listen to him with pleasure the next time by using the stratagem the devil uses when he wants to deceive someone who is wary and vigilant: he transforms himself into an angel of light, though he is an angel of darkness, and hides behind an appearance of virtue until finally he reveals his identity and achieves his purpose, unless the deception is discovered at the very start. This pleased Anselmo very much, and he said he would provide the same opportunity every day, because even if he did not leave the house, he would occupy himself with other matters, and Camila would not become aware of the ruse.

Many days went by, and though he did not say a word to Camila, Lotario told Anselmo that he was speaking to her but could never elicit from her the slightest interest in anything unchaste or the smallest shred of hope; on the contrary, he said she had warned him that if he did not rid himself of evil thoughts, she would have to tell her husband.

“Good,” said Anselmo. “So far Camila has resisted words; it is necessary to see how she resists actions: tomorrow I shall give you two thousand gold
escudos
to offer her, or even give to her, and another two thousand to buy jewels with which to tempt her; for women, no matter how chaste they are, and especially if they are beautiful, tend to be very fond of dressing well and looking elegant; if she resists this temptation, I will be satisfied and trouble you no more.”

Lotario responded that since he had begun it, he would see this undertaking through to its conclusion, although he knew that in the end he would be thwarted and defeated. On the following day he received the four thousand
escudos,
and with them four thousand perplexities, because he did not know what new lies he could tell, but finally he decided to tell Anselmo that Camila was as steadfast in her resistance to gifts and promises of gifts as she was to words, and there was no reason to expend any more effort because it was always a waste of time.

But Fate, which arranged matters differently, decreed that Anselmo, having left Lotario and Camila alone as he had done so many other times before, hid in a small antechamber and watched and listened to them through the keyhole, and he saw that in over half an hour Lotario did not speak a word to Camila and would not have spoken to her if he had been there for a century, and Anselmo realized that everything his friend had told him about Camila’s responses was a fiction and a lie. To see if this really was true, he walked out of the antechamber and called
Lotario aside, then asked if there was any news and inquired about Camila’s mood. Lotario replied that he did not intend to take matters further because her responses had been so harsh and unpleasant; he did not have the heart to say anything else to her.

“Ah,” said Anselmo, “Lotario, Lotario, how badly you have fulfilled your duty to me and responded to the trust I put in you! I have been watching through the keyhole of the door to that room, and I have seen that you did not say a word to Camila, which leads me to think you have not said even the first word to her; if this is true, as it undoubtedly is, why have you deceived me, and why do you wish by your actions to take from me the only means I have found to satisfy my desire?”