Don Quixote_ Translation by Edith Grossman (HarperCollins) - Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra [141]
“Here in Andalucía there is a place from which a duke takes his title, making him one of those who are called the grandees of Spain.1 He has two sons: the elder, the heir to his estate and, apparently, to his good character, and the younger, and what he is heir to I do not know other than the treacheries of Vellido and the lies of Galalón. My parents, vassals to this lord, are of humble lineage but so wealthy that if the goods of their natural station were equal to those of their fortune, they would have nothing more to desire nor would I have had any fear of finding myself as wretched as I am now, for perhaps my misfortune is born of theirs because they were not born noble. It is certainly true that they are not so lowborn as to be offended by their state, nor so highborn that they can erase from my imagination the idea that my misfortune comes from their humble station. They, in short, are farmers, simple people with no mixture of any objectionable races, what are called the Oldest of Old Christians, but so rich that their wealth and luxurious way of life are slowly gaining for them the name of gentlefolk, even of nobility. The greatest wealth and nobility that they boasted of, however, was having me as their daughter, and since they had no other heir, daughter or son, and were very loving, I was one of the most pampered daughters ever doted on by her parents. I was the mirror in which they saw their reflection, the staff of their old age, and the object, after heaven, of all their desires; these were virtuous and matched mine precisely. And just as I was mistress of their hearts, I was also mistress of their estate: servants were hired and dismissed by me; the accounts of what was planted and harvested passed through my hands, as did the production of the oil and wine presses, the numbers of livestock, large and small, and the beehives. In short, I kept the accounts of everything that a rich farmer like my father can and does have, and was steward and mistress, with so much care on my part and so much satisfaction on theirs that I cannot express it adequately. My times of leisure, after I had attended to overseers, foremen, and other laborers, I spent in activities both proper and necessary for young women, such as those offered by the needle and pincushion and, at times, the distaff; when I left these activities to refresh my spirit, I would spend the time reading a book of devotions, or playing the harp, for experience had shown me that music soothes unsettled minds and alleviates troubles arising from the spirit. This, then, was the life I led in my parents’ house, and if I have recounted it in so much detail, it has not been to boast or to show you that I am rich, but so that you can see how blamelessly I have come from that happy state to the unfortunate one in which I find myself now. The truth is that my life was devoted to so many occupations, and was so cloistered, that it could have been compared to that of a convent, and I was not seen, I thought, by anyone other than the household servants, because on the days I went to Mass it was so early, and I was so well-chaperoned by my mother and by maids, and so modestly covered, that my eyes could barely see more than the ground where I placed my feet; yet the eyes of love, or, rather, of indolence—not even a lynx’s eyes are sharper—saw me, and I attracted the attention of Don Fernando, for this is the name of the younger son of the duke I mentioned to you.”
As soon as the one telling the tale mentioned Don Fernando, Cardenio turned pale, and began to perspire, and became so agitated that when the priest and the barber looked at him, they feared he would suffer an attack of the madness that, they had been told, overcame him from time to time. But Cardenio did nothing more than perspire and remain very still, staring fixedly at her and imagining who she was, and she, not observing the changes in Cardenio, continued her history,