Don Quixote_ Translation by Edith Grossman (HarperCollins) - Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra [180]
Camila laughed at her maid’s alphabet and considered her more experienced in matters of love than she said; in fact, she confessed to this, revealing to Camila her love for a wellborn young man from their city; this troubled Camila, for she feared that here was where her honor could be endangered. She pressed Leonela to find out if their love had gone beyond words. With little shame and a good deal of audacity, she responded that it had. For it is certainly true that negligence in ladies destroys shame in their maids: when they see their mistresses stumble, they do not care if they stumble, too, or if anyone knows about it.
All that Camila could do was to implore Leonela not to say anything about her mistress’s affair to the man she said was her lover, and to keep her own secret so that it would not come to the attention of either Anselmo or Lotario. Leonela responded that she would, but she kept her word in a way that affirmed Camila’s fear that she would lose her reputation because of her maid, for the immodest and brazen Leonela, when she saw that her mistress’s behavior was not what it had once been, dared to bring her lover into the house and keep him there, confident that even if Camila saw him, she would not venture to reveal it; this is one of the many misfortunes caused by the sins of ladies: they become the slaves of their own servants and are obliged to conceal their maids’ immodest and base behavior, which is what happened to Camila; although she often saw Leonela with her lover in one of the rooms of her house, she not only did not dare to reprimand her, but provided Leonela with the opportunity to hide him, clearing away every obstacle so that he would not be seen by her husband.
But she could not keep Lotario from seeing him one day as he left the house at dawn; Lotario did not know who he was and at first thought it was a ghost, but when he saw him walk, and muffle his face, and conceal himself with care and caution, he abandoned his simple idea and took up another that would have meant the ruin of them all if Camila had not rectified it. Lotario thought that the man he had seen leaving Anselmo’s house at so unusual an hour had not gone there because of Leonela; he did not even remember that there was a Leonela in the world; he be-lieved only that Camila, who had been easy and loose with him, was being just as easy and loose with another man, for the immorality of the immoral woman brings with it this effect: she loses her good name and honor with the very man to whose entreaties and enticements she succumbed; he believes she surrenders more easily to other men and takes as absolute truth any suspicion of the kind that may occur to him. It certainly seems that at this point Lotario lost his good sense and forgot all his skillful reasoning; without a second or even a rational thought, filled with impatience and blinded by the jealous rage gnawing at his entrails and driving him to take his revenge on Camila, who in no way had offended him, he went to see Anselmo, who was still in bed, and said:
“You should know, Anselmo, that for many days I have been struggling with myself, forcing myself not to tell you what it is no longer possible or fair to keep from you. You should know that the fortress of Camila has surrendered and submitted to everything I wished, and if I have delayed in disclosing this to you, it was to see if it was a passing whim, or if she was testing