Don Quixote

WHICH DEALS WITH WHAT THE GOATHERD TOLD THOSE WHO WERE CARRYING OFF DON
QUIXOTE
Three leagues from this valley there is a village which, though small,
is one of the richest in all this neighbourhood, and in it there lived
a farmer, a very worthy man, and so much respected that, although to be
so is the natural consequence of being rich, he was even more respected
for his virtue than for the wealth he had acquired. But what made him
still more fortunate, as he said himself, was having a daughter of such
exceeding beauty, rare intelligence, gracefulness, and virtue, that
everyone who knew her and beheld her marvelled at the extraordinary
gifts with which heaven and nature had endowed her. As a child she was
beautiful, she continued to grow in beauty, and at the age of sixteen
she was most lovely. The fame of her beauty began to spread abroad
through all the villages around—but why do I say the villages around,
merely, when it spread to distant cities, and even made its way into
the halls of royalty and reached the ears of people of every class, who
came from all sides to see her as if to see something rare and curious,
or some wonder-working image?

Her father watched over her and she watched over herself; for there are
no locks, or guards, or bolts that can protect a young girl better than
her own modesty. The wealth of the father and the beauty of the
daughter led many neighbours as well as strangers to seek her for a
wife; but he, as one might well be who had the disposal of so rich a
jewel, was perplexed and unable to make up his mind to which of her
countless suitors he should entrust her. I was one among the many who
felt a desire so natural, and, as her father knew who I was, and I was
of the same town, of pure blood, in the bloom of life, and very rich in
possessions, I had great hopes of success. There was another of the
same place and qualifications who also sought her, and this made her
father’s choice hang in the balance, for he felt that on either of us
his daughter would be well bestowed; so to escape from this state of
perplexity he resolved to refer the matter to Leandra (for that is the
name of the rich damsel who has reduced me to misery), reflecting that
as we were both equal it would be best to leave it to his dear daughter
to choose according to her inclination—a course that is worthy of
imitation by all fathers who wish to settle their children in life. I
do not mean that they ought to leave them to make a choice of what is
contemptible and bad, but that they should place before them what is
good and then allow them to make a good choice as they please. I do not
know which Leandra chose; I only know her father put us both off with
the tender age of his daughter and vague words that neither bound him
nor dismissed us. My rival is called Anselmo and I myself Eugenio—that
you may know the names of the personages that figure in this tragedy,
the end of which is still in suspense, though it is plain to see it
must be disastrous.

About this time there arrived in our town one Vicente de la Roca, the
son of a poor peasant of the same town, the said Vicente having
returned from service as a soldier in Italy and divers other parts. A
captain who chanced to pass that way with his company had carried him
off from our village when he was a boy of about twelve years, and now
twelve years later the young man came back in a soldier’s uniform,
arrayed in a thousand colours, and all over glass trinkets and fine
steel chains. To-day he would appear in one gay dress, to-morrow in
another; but all flimsy and gaudy, of little substance and less worth.
The peasant folk, who are naturally malicious, and when they have
nothing to do can be malice itself, remarked all this, and took note of
his finery and jewellery, piece by piece, and discovered that he had
three suits of different colours, with garters and stockings to match;
but he made so many arrangements and combinations out of them, that if
they had not counted them, anyone would have sworn that he had made a
display of more than ten suits of clothes and twenty plumes. Do not
look upon all this that I am telling you about the clothes as uncalled
for or spun out, for they have a great deal to do with the story. He
used to seat himself on a bench under the great poplar in our plaza,
and there he would keep us all hanging open-mouthed on the stories he
told us of his exploits. There was no country on the face of the globe
he had not seen, nor battle he had not been engaged in; he had killed
more Moors than there are in Morocco and Tunis, and fought more single
combats, according to his own account, than Garcilaso, Diego García de
Paredes and a thousand others he named, and out of all he had come
victorious without losing a drop of blood. On the other hand he showed
marks of wounds, which, though they could not be made out, he said were
gunshot wounds received in divers encounters and actions. Lastly, with
monstrous impudence he used to say “you” to his equals and even those
who knew what he was, and declare that his arm was his father and his
deeds his pedigree, and that being a soldier he was as good as the king
himself. And to add to these swaggering ways he was a trifle of a
musician, and played the guitar with such a flourish that some said he
made it speak; nor did his accomplishments end here, for he was
something of a poet too, and on every trifle that happened in the town
he made a ballad a league long.
This soldier, then, that I have described, this Vicente de la Roca,
this bravo, gallant, musician, poet, was often seen and watched by
Leandra from a window of her house which looked out on the plaza. The
glitter of his showy attire took her fancy, his ballads bewitched her
(for he gave away twenty copies of every one he made), the tales of his
exploits which he told about himself came to her ears; and in short, as
the devil no doubt had arranged it, she fell in love with him before
the presumption of making love to her had suggested itself to him; and
as in love-affairs none are more easily brought to an issue than those
which have the inclination of the lady for an ally, Leandra and Vicente
came to an understanding without any difficulty; and before any of her
numerous suitors had any suspicion of her design, she had already
carried it into effect, having left the house of her dearly beloved
father (for mother she had none), and disappeared from the village with
the soldier, who came more triumphantly out of this enterprise than out
of any of the large number he laid claim to. All the village and all
who heard of it were amazed at the affair; I was aghast, Anselmo
thunderstruck, her father full of grief, her relations indignant, the
authorities all in a ferment, the officers of the Brotherhood in arms.
They scoured the roads, they searched the woods and all quarters, and
at the end of three days they found the flighty Leandra in a mountain
cave, stript to her shift, and robbed of all the money and precious
jewels she had carried away from home with her.
They brought her back to her unhappy father, and questioned her as to
her misfortune, and she confessed without pressure that Vicente de la
Roca had deceived her, and under promise of marrying her had induced
her to leave her father’s house, as he meant to take her to the richest
and most delightful city in the whole world, which was Naples; and that
she, ill-advised and deluded, had believed him, and robbed her father,
and handed over all to him the night she disappeared; and that he had
carried her away to a rugged mountain and shut her up in the cave where
they had found her. She said, moreover, that the soldier, without
robbing her of her honour, had taken from her everything she had, and
made off, leaving her in the cave, a thing that still further surprised
everybody. It was not easy for us to credit the young man’s continence,
but she asserted it with such earnestness that it helped to console her
distressed father, who thought nothing of what had been taken since the
jewel that once lost can never be recovered had been left to his
daughter. The same day that Leandra made her appearance her father
removed her from our sight and took her away to shut her up in a
convent in a town near this, in the hope that time may wear away some
of the disgrace she has incurred. Leandra’s youth furnished an excuse
for her fault, at least with those to whom it was of no consequence
whether she was good or bad; but those who knew her shrewdness and
intelligence did not attribute her misdemeanour to ignorance but to
wantonness and the natural disposition of women, which is for the most
part flighty and ill-regulated.

Leandra withdrawn from sight, Anselmo’s eyes grew blind, or at any rate
found nothing to look at that gave them any pleasure, and mine were in
darkness without a ray of light to direct them to anything enjoyable
while Leandra was away. Our melancholy grew greater, our patience grew
less; we cursed the soldier’s finery and railed at the carelessness of
Leandra’s father. At last Anselmo and I agreed to leave the village and
come to this valley; and, he feeding a great flock of sheep of his own,
and I a large herd of goats of mine, we pass our life among the trees,
giving vent to our sorrows, together singing the fair Leandra’s
praises, or upbraiding her, or else sighing alone, and to heaven
pouring forth our complaints in solitude. Following our example, many
more of Leandra’s lovers have come to these rude mountains and adopted
our mode of life, and they are so numerous that one would fancy the
place had been turned into the pastoral Arcadia, so full is it of
shepherds and sheep-folds; nor is there a spot in it where the name of
the fair Leandra is not heard. Here one curses her and calls her
capricious, fickle, and immodest, there another condemns her as frail
and frivolous; this pardons and absolves her, that spurns and reviles
her; one extols her beauty, another assails her character, and in short
all abuse her, and all adore her, and to such a pitch has this general
infatuation gone that there are some who complain of her scorn without
ever having exchanged a word with her, and even some that bewail and
mourn the raging fever of jealousy, for which she never gave anyone
cause, for, as I have already said, her misconduct was known before her
passion. There is no nook among the rocks, no brookside, no shade
beneath the trees that is not haunted by some shepherd telling his woes
to the breezes; wherever there is an echo it repeats the name of
Leandra; the mountains ring with “Leandra,” “Leandra” murmur the
brooks, and Leandra keeps us all bewildered and bewitched, hoping
without hope and fearing without knowing what we fear. Of all this
silly set the one that shows the least and also the most sense is my
rival Anselmo, for having so many other things to complain of, he only
complains of separation, and to the accompaniment of a rebeck, which he
plays admirably, he sings his complaints in verses that show his
ingenuity. I follow another, easier, and to my mind wiser course, and
that is to rail at the frivolity of women, at their inconstancy, their
double dealing, their broken promises, their unkept pledges, and in
short the want of reflection they show in fixing their affections and
inclinations. This, sirs, was the reason of words and expressions I
made use of to this goat when I came up just now; for as she is a
female I have a contempt for her, though she is the best in all my
fold. This is the story I promised to tell you, and if I have been
tedious in telling it, I will not be slow to serve you; my hut is close
by, and I have fresh milk and dainty cheese there, as well as a variety
of toothsome fruit, no less pleasing to the eye than to the palate.

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