CHAPTER 39
IN WHICH THE TRIFALDI CONTINUES HER MARVELLOUS AND MEMORABLE STORY
By every word that Sancho uttered, the duchess was as much delighted as
Don Quixote was driven to desperation. He bade him hold his tongue, and
the Distressed One went on to say: “At length, after much questioning and
answering, as the princess held to her story, without changing or varying
her previous declaration, the Vicar gave his decision in favour of Don Clav-
ijo, and she was delivered over to him as his lawful wife; which the Queen
Dona Maguncia, the Princess Antonomasia’s mother, so took to heart, that
within the space of three days we buried her.”
“She died, no doubt,” said Sancho.
“Of course,” said Trifaldin; “they don’t bury living people in Kandy, only
the dead.”
“Senor Squire,” said Sancho, “a man in a swoon has been known to be
buried before now, in the belief that he was dead; and it struck me that
Queen Maguncia ought to have swooned rather than died; because with life
a great many things come right, and the princess’s folly was not so great that
she need feel it so keenly. If the lady had married some page of hers, or
some other servant of the house, as many another has done, so I have heard
say, then the mischief would have been past curing. But to marry such an
elegant accomplished gentleman as has been just now described to us—in-
deed, indeed, though it was a folly, it was not such a great one as you think;
for according to the rules of my master here—and he won’t allow me to lie
—as of men of letters bishops are made, so of gentlemen knights, specially
if they be errant, kings and emperors may be made.”
“Thou art right, Sancho,” said Don Quixote, “for with a knight-errant, if
he has but two fingers’ breadth of good fortune, it is on the cards to become
the mightiest lord on earth. But let senora the Distressed One proceed; for I
suspect she has got yet to tell us the bitter part of this so far sweet story.”
“The bitter is indeed to come,” said the countess; “and such bitter that
colocynth is sweet and oleander toothsome in comparison. The queen, then,
being dead, and not in a swoon, we buried her; and hardly had we covered
her with earth, hardly had we said our last farewells, when, quis talia fando
temperet a lachrymis? over the queen’s grave there appeared, mounted upon
a wooden horse, the giant Malambruno, Maguncia’s first cousin, who be-
sides being cruel is an enchanter; and he, to revenge the death of his cousin,
punish the audacity of Don Clavijo, and in wrath at the contumacy of
Antonomasia, left them both enchanted by his art on the grave itself; she
being changed into an ape of brass, and he into a horrible crocodile of some
unknown metal; while between the two there stands a pillar, also of metal,
with certain characters in the Syriac language inscribed upon it, which, be-
ing translated into Kandian, and now into Castilian, contain the following
sentence: ‘These two rash lovers shall not recover their former shape until
the valiant Manchegan comes to do battle with me in single combat; for the
Fates reserve this unexampled adventure for his mighty valour alone.’ This
done, he drew from its sheath a huge broad scimitar, and seizing me by the
hair he made as though he meant to cut my throat and shear my head clean
off. I was terror-stricken, my voice stuck in my throat, and I was in the
deepest distress; nevertheless I summoned up my strength as well as I
could, and in a trembling and piteous voice I addressed such words to him
as induced him to stay the infliction of a punishment so severe. He then
caused all the duennas of the palace, those that are here present, to be
brought before him; and after having dwelt upon the enormity of our of-
fence, and denounced duennas, their characters, their evil ways and worse
intrigues, laying to the charge of all what I alone was guilty of, he said he
would not visit us with capital punishment, but with others of a slow nature
which would be in effect civil death for ever; and the very instant he ceased
speaking we all felt the pores of our faces opening, and pricking us, as if
with the points of needles. We at once put our hands up to our faces and
found ourselves in the state you now see.”
Here the Distressed One and the other duennas raised the veils with
which they were covered, and disclosed countenances all bristling with
beards, some red, some black, some white, and some grizzled, at which
spectacle the duke and duchess made a show of being filled with wonder.
Don Quixote and Sancho were overwhelmed with amazement, and the by-
standers lost in astonishment, while the Trifaldi went on to say: “Thus did
that malevolent villain Malambruno punish us, covering the tenderness and
softness of our faces with these rough bristles! Would to heaven that he had
swept off our heads with his enormous scimitar instead of obscuring the
light of our countenances with these wool-combings that cover us! For if
we look into the matter, sirs (and what I am now going to say I would say
with eyes flowing like fountains, only that the thought of our misfortune
and the oceans they have already wept, keep them as dry as barley spears,
and so I say it without tears), where, I ask, can a duenna with a beard to to?
What father or mother will feel pity for her? Who will help her? For, if even
when she has a smooth skin, and a face tortured by a thousand kinds of
washes and cosmetics, she can hardly get anybody to love her, what will she
do when she shows a countenace turned into a thicket? Oh duennas, com-
panions mine! it was an unlucky moment when we were born and an ill-
starred hour when our fathers begot us!” And as she said this she showed
signs of being about to faint.
