Don Quixote_ Translation by Edith Grossman (HarperCollins) - Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra [184]
“Lotario, listen to what I am saying: if by some chance you dare to cross this line, or even approach it, at the very moment I see what you are attempting, I shall plunge the dagger I am holding into my breast. And before you say a word in response, I want you to listen to a few more of mine, and then you can say whatever you wish. First, I want you to tell me, Lotario, if you know my husband Anselmo, and what opinion you have of him; second, I also want to know if you know me. Answer me this, and do not be confused or think too much about how you will reply, for my questions are not difficult.”
Lotario was not so simpleminded that he had not realized what Camila intended from the moment she told him to have Anselmo hide, and he responded so cleverly and so appropriately to her intention that the two of them made the lie appear to be the absolute truth, and so he replied to Camila in this fashion:
“I did not think, O beautiful Camila, that you called me in order to ask me things so far from the intention with which I come here. If you are doing this in order to delay granting me the promised favor, you should have done so from a greater distance, for the nearer we are to the object of our desire, the greater our hope of possessing it; but, so that you cannot say I do not answer your questions, I will say that I know your husband, Anselmo, and he and I have known each other since we were children; I do not want to say what you know all too well about our friendship, so that I do not bear witness to the offense that love, which is a powerful excuse for even greater crimes, forces me to commit against him. I know you and hold you in the same high esteem that he does; otherwise, I would not, for any lesser prize, violate what I owe my own person and the holy laws of true friendship, infringed and broken by me on account of an enemy as powerful as love.”
“If you confess to that,” responded Camila, “mortal enemy of all that justly deserves to be loved, how do you dare appear before the one who, as you know, is the mirror that reflects him? If you looked in it carefully, you would see how little justification you have for offending him. But oh, woe is me, now I realize what has made you disregard what you owe to yourself: it must have been negligence on my part; I do not wish to call it immodesty, since it did not follow from a deliberate decision but from the sort of careless act that women often commit inadvertently when they think they have no reason to be cautious. Otherwise tell me, O traitor, when did I ever respond to your entreaties with a word or gesture that could have awakened in you even the shadow of a hope of satisfying your base desires? When were your amorous words not rejected and reproached with severity and harshness? When were your many promises and gifts ever believed or accepted? But since it seems to me that no one can persevere in his amorous intention for very long if he is not sustained by some hope, I shall blame myself for your impertinence, for no doubt some negligence on my part has sustained your desire for so long, and therefore I shall impose the punishment and penalty on myself that your crime deserves. And so that you may see that if I am cruel with myself, I could be no less cruel with you, I wanted to bring you here to be a witness to the sacrifice I intend to make to the insulted honor of my honorable husband; you offended him with all possible deliberation, as I offended him by my carelessness in giving you the opportunity, if in fact I gave you one, that would favor and condone your wicked intentions. I say again: the suspicion I have that some carelessness of mine engendered those monstrous thoughts in you troubles