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“This sad news reached my ears, and instead of my heart freezing over when I heard it, it flamed with so much rage and fury that I almost took to the streets to cry out and proclaim how he had betrayed and deceived me. But then my anger began to cool when I thought of a plan that I put into effect that very night, which was to put on these clothes, given to me by one of the men, called shepherd’s helpers by farmers, who was a servant of my father’s; I told him about my misfortune and asked him to accompany me to the city where I believed my enemy would be found. He, after reprimanding me for my rashness and condemning my decision, saw that I was determined and offered to keep me company, as he called it, to the ends of the earth. I quickly put a dress and some jewels and money into a linen pillowcase, in the event I needed them, and in the silence of the night, without saying anything to my treacherous maid, I left my house, accompanied by my servant and many apprehensions, and started out for the city on foot, although my feet flew with the desire to reach my destination, if not to prevent what I considered already accomplished, at least to ask Don Fernando to tell me how he had had the heart to do it.

I arrived in two and a half days, and as I entered the city I asked for the house of Luscinda’s parents, and the first person I asked responded with more than I wished to hear. He told me where their house was located, and everything that had occurred at the wedding of their daughter, which was so well-known that people throughout the city were gathering in groups to talk about it. He told me that on the night Don Fernando married Luscinda, after she had said her yes, she had fallen into a dead faint, and when her husband came to loosen her bodice and give her air, he had found a letter written in Luscinda’s own hand, which stated and declared that she could not be Don Fernando’s wife because she was the wife of Cardenio, who was, according to what the man told me, a very distinguished gentleman from the same city, and if she had agreed to marry Don Fernando, it was in order not to disobey her parents. In short, he told me that the letter said that she had intended to kill herself when the ceremony was over, and in the letter she gave her reasons for taking her life, all of which, they say, was confirmed by a dagger that was found hidden in her clothing. When Don Fernando saw this, it seemed to him that Luscinda had mocked and scorned and humiliated him, and he threw himself at her while she was still in a swoon, and with the same dagger tried to stab her, and would have done so if her parents and the others present had not stopped him. People also said that Don Fernando left immediately, and Luscinda did not recover from her swoon until the following day, and then she told her parents that she was the true wife of this Cardenio whom I have mentioned.

I learned more: people were saying that Cardenio had been present at the wedding, and when he saw her married, something he never thought possible, he left the city in despair but first wrote a letter in which he revealed how Luscinda had wronged him, and how he was going to a place where no one would ever see him again. All of this was widely known throughout the city, and everyone was talking about it, and talked about it even more when they learned that Luscinda had disappeared from her parents’ house, and from the city, and was nowhere to be found, and that her parents were distraught and did not know what to do to find her. What I heard revived my hopes, and I considered it better not to have found Don Fernando than to have found him married, for it seemed to me that the door to my remedy was still not completely closed, assuming that heaven might have placed that impediment to his second marriage in order to make him realize what he owed the first, and to remember that he was a Christian who had a greater obligation to his soul than to human interests.