Don Quixote_ Translation by Edith Grossman (HarperCollins) - Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra [136]
With this the night of my sorrow closed over me and the sun of my joy set; I was left with no light in my eyes and no power of reason in my understanding. I could not find the way into her house, I could not even move, but considering how important my presence was to whatever might occur, I did the best I could to rouse myself, and I walked into her house; since I knew all its entrances and exits very well, and especially because of the secret tumult that reigned there, no one saw me; unseen, I was able to hide in the alcove of a window in the drawing room, concealed by two tapestries hanging next to each other, and looking between them; unseen, I could see everything that happened in the drawing room. How can I tell you now about the pounding of my heart as I stood there, or the thoughts that occurred to me, or the deliberations I made? For there were so many and were of such a nature that they cannot and should not be told. It is enough for you to know that the bridegroom entered the drawing room unadorned, wearing the ordinary clothes he usually wore. As best man he had one of Luscinda’s first cousins, and in the entire drawing room there was no outsider but only the servants of the house.
A short while later, Luscinda emerged from an antechamber, accompanied by her mother and two of her lady’s maids, and she was dressed and adorned as handsomely as her rank and beauty deserved, the very perfection of courtly elegance and charm. My uncertainty and confusion did not permit me to observe and notice the particulars of what she was wearing; I could see only the colors, which were scarlet and white, and the brilliance of the gems and jewels on her headdress and all over her costume, all of it surpassed by the singular beauty of her lovely blond tresses, which, in comparison to the precious stones, and the light from the four flambeaux in the drawing room, offered greater brilliance to the eye. O memory, mortal enemy of my repose! What is the good of picturing for me now the incomparable beauty of my adored enemy? Would it not be better, cruel memory, if you recalled and pictured for me what she did then, so that I, moved by so manifest a wrong, can attempt, if not to avenge it, at least to lose my own life?
Do not be vexed, Señores, at hearing these digressions of mine, for my grief is not the kind that can or should be recounted succinctly and in passing, for each of its circumstances seems to me worthy of a long discourse.”
To which the priest responded that not only were they not vexed at listening to him, they were pleased by the details he recounted, for they were of the sort that should not be passed over in silence and deserved the same attention as the principal part of the story.
“Well, then,” Cardenio continued, “when we were all in the drawing room, the parish priest came in and took both of them by the hand in order to do what the ceremony requires, and when he said: ‘Do you, Señora Luscinda, take Señor Don Fernando, here present, to be your lawful wedded husband, as decreed by Holy Mother Church?’ I extended my head and neck between the two tapestries, and with attentive ears and my soul in distress I listened for Luscinda’s response, expecting her reply to be either a sentence of death or the affirmation of my life. Oh, if only I had dared to come out then and shout: ‘Ah, Luscinda, Luscinda! Think what you are doing; consider what you owe me; remember that you are mine and cannot belong to another! Realize that your saying yes and the end of my life are all one! Ah, you traitor, Don Fernando, thief of my glory, death of my life! What do you want? What are you seeking? Consider that as a Christian you cannot attain the object of your desires because Luscinda is my wife and I am her husband.’
Ah, madman that I am! Now that I am absent and far from danger, I say I should have done what