• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Anselmo received this letter and understood that Lotario had begun his suit and that Camila must have reacted just as he wished; extraordinarily happy at the news, he responded by sending a message to Camila, telling her not to leave his house under any circumstances because he would return very shortly. Camila was astonished by Anselmo’s reply, which left her more perplexed than she had been earlier: she did not dare either to remain in her house or to go to the house of her parents; if she remained, her virtue would be at risk, and if she left, she would be disobeying her husband.

In short, she made a choice, and chose badly, for she resolved to remain, determined not to flee Lotario’s presence and give the servants reason to gossip; she regretted having written what she wrote to her husband, fearful he would think that Lotario had seen some boldness in her that moved him to treat her with less than proper decorum. But, confident of her virtue, she put her trust in God and in her own innocence and planned to resist with silence everything that Lotario said to her, not informing her husband in order to spare him disputes or difficulties. She even tried to think of a way to excuse Lotario to Anselmo when he asked her the reason for writing that letter. With these thoughts, more honorable than accurate or beneficial, she spent another day listening to Lotario, who was so persistent and persuasive that Camila’s resolve began to waver, and it was all her virtue could do to attend to her eyes and keep them from showing any sign of the amorous compassion awakened in her bosom by Lotario’s tears and words. Lotario noted all of this, and it all set him ablaze.

Finally, it seemed to him that it was necessary, in the time and circumstance allowed by Anselmo’s absence, to tighten the siege around the fortress, and so he launched an attack on her conceit with praises of her beauty, because there is nothing more likely to defeat and bring down the haughty towers of beautiful women’s vanity than that same vanity, set in words of adulation. In effect, with utmost diligence, he undermined the rock face of her integrity with such effective tools that even if Camila had been made entirely of bronze, she would have fallen. Lotario wept, pleaded, offered, adored, persisted, and deceived with so much emotion and so many signs of sincerity that he brought down Camila’s chastity and won the victory he had least expected and most desired.

Camila surrendered; Camila surrendered, but is that any wonder if the friendship of Lotario could not remain standing? A clear example demonstrating that the only way to defeat the amorous passion is to flee it, that no one should attempt to struggle against so powerful an enemy because divine forces are needed to vanquish its human ones. Only Leonela knew of her mistress’s frailty, because the two unfaithful friends and new lovers could not hide it from her. Lotario did not want to tell Camila of Anselmo’s scheme, or that Anselmo had provided him with the opportunity to come so far: he did not want her to have a low opinion of his love, or to think he had courted her thoughtlessly and by chance rather than intentionally.

A few days later, Anselmo returned to his house and did not notice what was missing, the thing he had treated most contemptuously and valued most highly. He went to see Lotario immediately and found him at home; the two men embraced, and one asked for the news that would give him either life or death.

“The news I can give you, Anselmo my friend,” said Lotario, “is that you have a wife worthy of being the model and paragon of all virtuous women. The words I said to her were carried away by the wind; my offers were scorned, my gifts were refused, and a few feigned tears of mine were mocked beyond measure. In short, just as Camila is the sum total of all beauty, she is the treasure house where chastity dwells and discretion and modesty reside, along with all the virtues that make an honorable woman praiseworthy and fortunate. Here is your money, friend;