Don Quixote_ Translation by Edith Grossman (HarperCollins) - Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra [56]
“That is true,” said Don Quixote, “and please continue; the story is very good, and you, my good Pedro, tell it with a good deal of grace.”
“May God’s grace be with me, that’s the one that matters. As for the rest, you should know that even though the uncle suggested names to his niece, and told her the qualities of each of the many suitors begging for her hand, and asked her to choose and marry a man she liked, she never said anything except that she didn’t want to marry just then, and since she was so young she didn’t feel able to bear the burdens of matrimony. Hearing these excuses, which seemed so reasonable, the uncle stopped asking and waited for her to get a little older, when she would be able to choose a husband she liked. Because he said, and rightly so, that parents shouldn’t force their children into marriage against their will.
But then one day, to everybody’s surprise, the finicky Marcela appeared dressed like a shepherdess, and paying no attention to her uncle or to all the villagers, who warned her not to do it, she started to go out to the countryside with the other shepherdesses and to watch over her own flock. And as soon as she appeared in public and her beauty was seen in the open, I can’t tell you how many rich young men, noblemen and farmers, began to dress up like Grisóstomo and to court her in these fields. One of them, as I’ve said, was our dead man, who, people said, had stopped loving her and begun to worship her. And don’t think that just because Marcela took on the liberty of a life that’s so free, with so little seclusion, or none at all, she gave any sign or suggestion that would damage her modesty and virtue; instead, she watches over her honor with so much vigilance that of all the men who woo and court her, not one has boasted or could truthfully claim that she’s given him any hope of achieving his desire. For though she doesn’t run from or avoid the company and conversation of the shepherds, and treats them with courtesy and friendship, if any of them reveals his desire to her, even one as honest and holy as matrimony, she hurls it away from her like a stone in a catapult. And by living this way, she does more harm in this land than the plague, because her affability and beauty attract the hearts of those who try to woo her and love her, but her disdain and reproaches drive them to despair so that they don’t know what to say about her except to call her cruel and ungrateful and other names that plainly show the nature of her disposition. And if you spent one day here, Señor, you’d hear these mountains and valleys echoing with the lamentations of the disappointed men who follow her.
Not very far from here is a place where there are almost two dozen tall beech trees, and there’s not one that doesn’t have the name of Marcela carved and written on its smooth bark, and at the top of some there’s a crown carved into the tree, as if the lover were saying even more clearly that Marcela wears and deserves the crown more than any other human beauty. Here a shepherd sighs, there another moans, over yonder amorous songs are heard, and farther on desperate lamentations. One spends all the hours of the night sitting at the foot of an oak tree or a rocky crag, not closing his weeping eyes, and the sun finds him in the morning absorbed and lost in his thoughts; another gives no respite or rest to his sighs, and in the middle of the burning heat of the fiercest summer afternoon, lying on the burning sand, he sends his complaints up to merciful heaven. And over this one, that one, and all of them, the beautiful Marcela, free and self-assured, triumphs, and those of us who know her are waiting to see where her haughtiness will end and who will be the fortunate man to conquer so difficult a nature and enjoy such extreme beauty.
Since everything I’ve told you