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By Root 635 0

about it; I was stunned, Anselmo shocked, her father grief-stricken, her kinfolk humiliated, the law solicitous, and its officers alert; they took to the roads, searched the woods and everything they ran across, and at the end of three days they found the capricious Leandra in a cave in the wild, wearing only her chemise and without the great quantity of money and precious jewels she had taken from her house. They brought her back to her anguished father and questioned her about her misfortune; she confessed willingly that Vicente de la Rosa had deceived her, promising to be her husband and persuading her to leave her father’s house, saying that he would take her to the richest and most joyous city in the world, which was Naples; ill-advised and badly deceived, she had believed him and, after robbing her father, had entrusted herself to him on the night she had fled, and he had taken her to a rugged mountain and confined her to the cave where she had been found. She also said that the soldier did not take her honor but robbed her of everything else she had, and left her in that cave, and went away, a series of events that astonished everyone a second time. It was hard for us to believe in the young man’s restraint, but she affirmed it so insistently that her disconsolate father found reason to be consoled, caring nothing for the treasure that had been taken from him, for his daughter had preserved the jewel that, once lost, can never be recovered.

On the same day that Leandra appeared, her father removed her from our sight and locked her away in a convent in a town not far from here, hoping that time would dissipate some of the shame that had fallen on his daughter. Leandra’s extreme youth helped to excuse some of her inexcusable behavior, at least for those who had nothing to gain from her being either wicked or virtuous; but those who were familiar with her considerable intelligence and perspicacity attributed her sin not to ignorance but to her boldness and the natural inclination of women, which, for the most part, tends to be imprudent and irrational.

With Leandra cloistered, Anselmo’s eyes were left sightless, at least they saw nothing that made him happy; mine were darkened, lacking a light that could lead them to any joy; with Leandra’s absence our sorrow grew, our patience lessened, and we cursed the soldier’s finery and despised her father’s lack of foresight. Finally, Anselmo and I agreed to leave the village and come to this valley, where he pastures a large number of sheep that belong to him and I graze a large flock of my goats, and we spend our lives among the trees, proclaiming our passions or together singing the praises of Leandra, or reviling her, or sighing alone and communicating our laments to heaven. In imitation of us, many of Leandra’s other suitors have come to these wild mountains to follow our example, and there are so many of them that this place, so crowded with shepherds and sheepfolds, seems to have been transformed into the pastoral Arcadia,4 and no matter where you go you will hear the name of the beautiful Leandra. One curses her and calls her unpredictable, inconstant, and immodest, another condemns her as forward and flighty; one absolves and pardons her, another judges and censures her; one celebrates her beauty, another denounces her nature; in short, all despise her, and all adore her, and the madness goes so far that there are some who complain of her disdain but never spoke to her, and some even lament their fate and feel the raging disease of jealousy though she never gave anyone reason to feel jealousy because, as I have said, her sin was discovered before her desire. There is no hollow rock, no bank of a stream, no shade of a tree, that is not occupied by a shepherd telling his misfortunes to the air; the echoes repeat the name of Leandra wherever it can be sounded: the mountains ring with the name of Leandra, the streams murmur Leandra, and Leandra has us all bewitched and enchanted, hoping without hope and fearing without knowing what it is we fear.

Among all these madmen,