Don Quixote [Trans. by Edith Grossman] (47 page)

As it happened, on one of these occasions, when the two men were walking through a meadow outside the city, Anselmo said these words to Lotario:

“Did you think, Lotario my friend, that I cannot respond with gratitude that matches the bounty I have received: the mercies God has shown in making me the son of parents such as mine, and granting me with so generous a hand so many advantages, in what is called nature as well as in fortune, and especially His granting me you as a friend and Camila as my wife, two treasures I esteem, if not as much as I ought to, at least as much as I can? Yet despite all these elements that usually make up the whole that allows men to live happily, I am the most desperate and discontented man in the entire world, because for some days now I have been troubled and pursued by a desire so strange and out of the ordinary that I am amazed at myself, and blame and reprimand myself, and attempt to silence it and hide it away from my thoughts, though I have been no more capable of keeping it secret than if my intention actually
had been to reveal it to the entire world. And since, in fact, it must be made public, I want to confide and entrust it to you, certain that with the effort you make, as my true friend, to cure me, I soon shall find myself free of the anguish it causes me, and my joy at your solicitude will be as great as my unhappiness at my own madness.”

Anselmo’s words left Lotario perplexed, and he did not know where so long an introduction or preamble would lead, and although in his imagination he pondered what the desire could be that was troubling his friend, he never hit the mark of the truth, and in order to quickly end the torment that this uncertainty caused him, Lotario said that it was manifestly insulting to their great friendship for Anselmo to go through so many preliminaries before telling him his most secret thoughts, for he was certain he could promise either the advice that would make them bearable or the remedy that would end them.

“What you say is true,” responded Anselmo, “and with that confidence I will tell you, friend Lotario, that the desire that plagues me is my wondering if Camila, my wife, is as good and perfect as I think she is, and I cannot learn the truth except by testing her so that the test reveals the worth of her virtue, as fire shows the worth of gold. Because it seems to me, dear friend, that a woman is not virtuous if she is not solicited, and that she alone is strong who does not bend to promises, gifts, tears, and the constant importunities of lovers who woo her. Why be grateful when a woman is good,” he said, “if no one urges her to be bad? Why is it of consequence that she is shy and reserved if she does not have the occasion to lose her restraint and knows she has a husband who, at her first rash act, would take her life? In short, I do not hold the woman who is virtuous because of fear or lack of opportunity in the same esteem as the one who is courted and pursued and emerges wearing the victor’s crown. For these reasons, and many others I could mention that support and strengthen this opinion, my desire is for Camila, my wife, to pass through these difficulties, and be refined and prove her value in the fire of being wooed and courted by one worthy of desiring her; and if she emerges, as I believe she will, triumphant from this battle, I shall deem my good fortune unparalleled; I shall be able to say that the cup of my desires is filled to overflowing; I shall say that it fell to me to have a wife strong in virtue, about whom the Wise Man says, ‘Who will find her?’ And if the outcome is the contrary of what I expect, the pleasure of seeing that I was correct in my opinion will allow me to bear the sorrow that my costly experiment may reasonably cause me. And because you can say many things against my
desire but none will succeed in stopping me from realizing it, I want you, my dear friend Lotario, to agree to be the instrument that will effect this plan born of my desire: I shall give you the opportunity to do so, and provide you with everything I think necessary for wooing a woman who is virtuous, honorable, reserved, and not mercenary. Among other reasons, I am moved to entrust you with this arduous undertaking because I know that if Camila is conquered by you, you will not carry the conquest to its conclusion but will do only what has to be done according to our agreement, and I shall not be offended except in desire, and the offense will remain hidden in the virtue of your silence, for I know very well that in any matter having to do with me, it will be as eternal as the silence of death. Therefore, if you want me to have a life that can be called a life, you must enter into this amorous battle, not in a lukewarm or dilatory fashion but with the zeal and diligence that my desire demands, and with the trust assured me by our friendship.”

These were the words that Anselmo said to Lotario, who listened so attentively to all of them that, except for those that have been recorded here, none passed his lips until Anselmo had finished; seeing that he had nothing else to say, and after looking at him for a long time as if he were looking at something amazing and terrifying that he had never seen before, Lotario said:

“I cannot persuade myself, O my dear friend Anselmo, that the things you have said are not a joke; if I had thought you were speaking in earnest, I would not have allowed you to go so far, and if I had stopped listening, I would have forestalled your long, impassioned speech. It surely seems to me that you don’t know me or I don’t know you. But no; I know very well that you are Anselmo, and you know that I am Lotario; the problem is that I think you are not the Anselmo you used to be, and you must have thought I was not the same Lotario, either, because the things you have said to me would not have been said by my friend Anselmo, and what you have asked of me would not have been asked of the Lotario you knew; good friends may test their friends and make use of them, as a poet said,
usque ad aras,
²
which means that they must not make use of their friendship in things that go against God. If a pagan felt this about friendship, how much more important is it for a Christian to feel the same, for he knows that divine friendship must not be lost for the sake of human friendship. When a friend goes so far as to set aside the demands of
heaven in order to respond to those of his friend, it should not be for vain, trivial things but for those on which the honor and life of his friend depend. Well, Anselmo, tell me now which of these is threatened, so that I can dare oblige you and do something as detestable as what you are asking. Neither one, certainly; rather, if I understand you, you are asking me to attempt and endeavor to take away your honor and your life, and mine as well. Because if I attempt to take away your honor, it is obvious that I take away your life, for the man without honor is worse than dead, and if, as you wish, I become the instrument that inflicts so much evil upon you, do I not lose my honor, and, by the same token, my life? Listen, Anselmo my friend, and have the patience not to respond until I finish telling you what I think of the demands your desire has made of you; there will be time for you to reply and for me to listen.”

“Gladly,” said Anselmo. “Say whatever you wish.”

And Lotario continued, saying:

“It seems to me, my dear Anselmo, that your mind is now in the state in which the Moors have theirs, for they cannot be made to understand the error of their sect with commentaries from Holy Scripture, or arguments that depend on the rational understanding or are founded on articles of faith; instead, they must be presented with palpable, comprehensible, intelligible, demonstrable, indubitable examples, with mathematical proofs that cannot be denied, as when one says, ‘If, from two equal parts, we remove equal parts, those parts that remain are also equal’; if they do not understand the words, as in fact they do not, then it must be shown to them with one’s hands, and placed before their eyes, yet even after all this, no one can persuade them of the truths of my holy religion. I must use the same terms and methods with you, because the desire that has been born in you is so misguided and so far beyond everything that has a shred of rationality in it that I think it would be a waste of time to try to make you understand your foolishness; for the moment I do not wish to give it another name. I am even tempted to leave you to your folly as punishment for your wicked desire, but my friendship for you does not permit me to be so harsh that I leave you in obvious danger of perdition. And so that you can see it clearly, tell me, Anselmo: haven’t you told me that I have to woo a reserved woman, persuade an honest woman, make offers to an unmercenary woman, serve a prudent woman? Yes, you have said that to me. But if you know you have a wife who is reserved, honest, unmercenary, and prudent, what else do you need to know? And if you believe she will emerge victorious from all my
assaults, as she undoubtedly will, what designations do you plan to give her afterward that are better than the ones she has now? What will she be afterward that is better than what she is now? Either your opinion of her is not what you say it is, or you do not know what you are asking. If your opinion of her is not what you say it is, why do you want to test her instead of treating her as an unfaithful woman and chastising her as you see fit? But if she is as virtuous as you believe, it would be reckless to experiment with that truth, for when you have done so, it will still have the same value it had before. Therefore we must conclude that attempting actions more likely to harm us than to benefit us is characteristic of rash minds bereft of reason, especially when they are not forced or compelled to undertake them, and when even from a distance it is obvious that the venture is an act of patent madness.

One attempts extremely difficult enterprises for the sake of God, or for the sake of the world, or both; those attempted for God are the ones undertaken by the saints, who endeavor to live the lives of angels in human bodies; those attempted with the world in mind are undertaken by men who endure such infinite seas, diverse climates, and strange peoples in order to acquire great riches. And those ventured for God and the world together are undertaken by valiant soldiers who, as soon as they see in the enemy defenses an opening no larger than the one made by a cannon ball, set aside all fear, do not consider or notice the clear danger that threatens them, and, borne on the wings of their desire to defend their faith, their nation, and their king, hurl themselves boldly into the midst of the thousand possible deaths that await them. These are perilous actions that are ordinarily ventured, and it is honor, glory, and advantage to attempt them despite the many obstacles and dangers. But the one you say you wish to attempt and put into effect will not win you the glory of God, or great riches, or fame among men; even if the outcome is as you desire, you will not be more content, more wealthy, more honored than you are now, and if it is not, you will find yourself in the greatest misery imaginable; then it will be to no avail to think that no one is aware of the misfortune that has befallen you; your knowing will be enough to make you suffer and grieve.

As confirmation of this truth, I want to recite for you a stanza written by the famous poet Luis Tansilo,
³
at the end of the first part of his
The Tears of St. Peter,
which says:

In similar fashion, you will not escape sorrow even if it is secret; instead, you will weep constantly, if not tears from your eyes, then tears of blood from your heart, like those shed by the simple doctor who, as our poet recounts, agreed to the test of the goblet,
⁴
while the prudent and more rational Reinaldos refused; although this is poetic fiction, it contains hidden moral truths worthy of being heeded and understood and imitated, especially if, in light of what I am going to say to you now, you come to realize the magnitude of the error you wish to commit.

Tell me, Anselmo: if heaven, or good luck, had made you the possessor and legitimate owner of a fine diamond whose worth and value satisfied every jeweler who saw it, and all of them were of one opinion and said in one voice that in value, size, and purity it was all that such a stone could be, and you believed this as well, having no knowledge to the contrary, would it be reasonable for you to take that diamond, and place it between an anvil and a hammer, and by dint of powerful blows test if it was as hard and fine as they said? Moreover, in the event you did this, and the stone withstood so foolish a test, it would not, for that reason, gain in value or fame, but if it shattered, which is possible, wouldn’t everything be lost? Yes, certainly, and its owner would be thought a fool by everyone.

Then understand, Anselmo my friend, that Camila is a fine diamond, both in your estimation and in that of others, and there is no reason to put her at risk of shattering, for even if she remains whole, she cannot become more precious than she is now; and if she fails and does not resist, consider how you would feel without her, and how correctly you would blame yourself for having been the cause of her ruination and your own. For there is no jewel in the world as valuable
as a chaste and honorable woman, and women’s honor consists entirely of the good opinion others have of them; since you know that the good opinion people have of your wife is as high as it can be, why do you want to cast doubt upon this truth? Look, my friend: woman is an imperfect creature, and one should not lay down obstacles where she can stumble and fall; instead, one should remove them and clear all impediments from her path so that she may run easily and quickly to reach the perfection she lacks, which consists in being virtuous.

Naturalists tells us that the ermine is an animal with pure white fur, and when hunters want to trap it, they use this trick: knowing the places where it customarily travels and can be found, they obstruct those places with mud, and then they beat the bushes and drive it toward that spot, and when the ermine reaches the mud it stops and lets itself be captured and caught rather than pass through the mire and risk soiling and losing the whiteness that it values more than liberty and life. The honest and chaste woman is the ermine, and the purity of her virtue is whiter and cleaner than snow; the man who wants her not to lose it but to keep and preserve it must treat her in a manner different from the one used with an ermine; he should not place mud before her—I mean the gifts and wooing of importunate lovers—because perhaps, and there is no perhaps about it, she does not have enough virtue and natural strength to overcome and surmount those obstacles by herself; it is necessary to remove them and place before her the purity of virtue and the beauty that lies in a good reputation.