Don Quixote_ Translation by Edith Grossman (HarperCollins) - Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra [146]
While I was in the city, not knowing what to do since Don Fernando was nowhere to be found, a public proclamation reached my ears, promising a large reward to the person who found me and giving a description of my age and the clothes I was wearing; I heard people saying that I had run off with the servant who accompanied me, and it wounded my very soul to see how my good name had been sullied, besmirched not only by reports of my impetuous departure, but by references to a baseborn person unworthy of my amorous thoughts. As soon as I heard the proclamation, I left the city with my servant, who was already beginning to show signs of wavering in his promise of fidelity to me, and that night we entered a remote part of these mountains, afraid of being discovered. But, as they say, one ill leads to another, and the end of one misfortune tends to be the beginning of another even greater, and that is what happened to me; my good servant, faithful and trustworthy until then, saw me in this desolate place, and inflamed by his own depravity rather than my beauty, attempted to take advantage of the opportunity which, to his mind, this setting offered him; with little shame and less fear of God or respect for me, he tried to persuade me to make love to him, and seeing that I responded with words of censure and rebuke to his outrageous proposals, he set aside the entreaties that he thought at first would succeed and began to use force. But heaven is just, rarely or never failing to regard and favor righteous intentions, and it favored mine, so that with my scant strength, and not too much effort, I pushed him over a precipice, where I left him, not knowing if he was dead or alive; then, with more speed than my fear and exhaustion really allowed, I entered these mountains; my only thought and plan was to hide, to flee my father and those he had sent to look for me.
This was my desire when I came here, I do not know how many months ago; I found a drover who took me on as a servant in a place deep in the sierra, and I have worked as a shepherd’s helper all this time, trying always to be out in the fields in order to hide this hair that now, so unexpectedly, has been revealed. But all my effort and care was and has been to no avail, for my master learned that I was not a man, and the same wicked desire was born in him as in my servant; since fortune does not always give remedies along with difficulties, I found no precipice or ravine where I could push the master and save myself, as I had with the servant, and so I thought it less difficult to leave him and take refuge again in these desolate places than to test my strength or my reasoning with him. Therefore, as I said, I took to the wilds again to find the place where, without impediment, I could, with sighs and tears, beg heaven to take pity on my misfortune, and favor me with the ability either to leave that misfortune behind or to lose my life in the wilderness, and to let the memory be erased of this unfortunate woman, who, through no fault of her own, has become the subject of talk and gossip in her own and other lands.”
CHAPTER XXIX
Which recounts the amusing artifice and arrangement that was devised for freeing our enamored knight from the harsh penance he had imposed on himself 1
“This is, Señores, the true history of my tragedy: now deem and judge if the sighs you heard, the words you listened to, and the tears that flowed from my eyes had sufficient reason to appear in even greater abundance; having considered the nature of my misfortune, you will see that consolation would be useless since the remedy is impossible. All I ask of you (this is something you can and should do very easily) is that you advise me where I can spend my life without being overwhelmed by the fear and terror I have of being discovered by those who are searching for me; although I know the great love my parents have for me guarantees