T HREE LEAGUES from thiS valley there’s a small village that is among the wealthiest in this whole region. In it there lived a very rich farmer, and although being honored goes along with being rich, he was held in greater esteem for his virtue than for the riches he’d acquired. But what made him most fortunate, according to what he said, was that he had a daughter who was so beautiful, with such rare intelligence, charm, and virtue, that anyone who knew her and looked at her, marveled at the remarkable gifts that heaven and nature had bestowed upon her. As a child, she was pretty, and kept growing in her beauty. At age sixteen she was very beautiful. The fame of her beauty began to spread throughout the nearby villages. Why do I say just the nearby villages? It spread to distant cities, and even extended into the palace of the king and queen, and went into the ears of people of all walks of life who came from all over to see her, as if she were a rare thing or a miracle-working image.
Her father watched over her, and she watched over herself—for there are no padlocks, bolts, or locks that protect a maiden better than her own chastity. The wealth of her father and the beauty of the daughter moved many men from our village, as well as outsiders, to ask for her hand in marriage. But he—just like a person whose responsibility it was to place a fine jewel with the best person—was very perplexed, not knowing how to determine to whom he should award her from among the infinite number of suitors she had. I was one among those who had this worthy desire, and because her father knew who I was, born in the same village, clean in blood, in the flower of youth, with a large income, and no less endowed in intelligence, I had great hopes of success.
Another fellow from the same village, with similar qualities, also asked to marry her, and this was enough to cause her father to postpone his decision and let it hang in the balance, for it seemed to him that with either one of us his daughter would have a good marriage. To escape from this perplexing state, he resolved to tell Leandra—that’s the name of that rich girl who has left me in such poverty—that since we were equal, it was better to let his beloved daughter make the choice, which is what all fathers who want to marry off their children should do. I’m not saying that they should allow them to choose bad things, but rather should propose only good things, and have them choose what they want from among them. I don’t know what her choice was—I only know that her father put both of us off saying she was too young, among other things, which didn’t oblige him, and didn’t free us either. My rival is named Anselmo, and I’m Eugenio, so that you’ll know the names of the actors that have a role in this tragedy, whose ending is still up in the air, though it’s clearly destined to be disastrous.
At about that time, a certain Vicente de la Rosa came to our town, the son of a poor peasant of the same village. Now, this Vicente was coming back from Italy and other places where he was a soldier. When he was a child, maybe twelve years old, a captain—who happened to come through with his company of soldiers—took him off, and the young man came back twelve years later, in a soldier’s uniform, arrayed in a thousand colors and with a thousand trinkets of glass and fine steel chains. Today he’d be in one dress uniform and tomorrow in another, but all of them flimsy, showy, not very substantial, and of less worth. Peasants—who are mischievous by nature, and when they have nothing to do can be rascality itself—noticed everything and counted all his finery and trinkets, piece by piece, and found that he had just three different outfits of different colors, with their garters and stockings, but he made so many different arrangements and combinations, that if you didn’t count you’d swear that he had more than ten outfits and twenty feathered hats. And don’t think this business of his dress is beside the point or inconsequential, because it plays an important role in this story.
He would sit on a bench under a large poplar tree in our plaza, and there he’d keep us all agape, telling of his exploits—there was no country in the world he hadn’t seen, nor any battle he hadn’t engaged in. He’d killed more Moors than there are in Morocco and Tunisia combined, and had participated in more singular combats, according to him, than Gante y Luna, Diego García de Paredes, and a thousand others that he named, and he was victorious in all of them, without shedding a single drop of blood, but on the other hand, he showed us scars, which—although we couldn’t make them out—made us think that they were musket wounds received in different battles and actions. Finally, with incredible arrogance, he would address his equals, and anyone who knew him, as VOS, and he said that his father was his right arm, his lineage was his deeds, and that, as a soldier, he owed nothing, even to the king himself. To these pretensions it should be added that he was something of a musician, and played the guitar with rasgueados in such a way that some said he made it speak. But his talents didn’t end there, for he was also something of a poet and wrote a romance a league and half long about every bit of nonsense that happened in the village.
This soldier that I’ve described, this Vicente de la Rosa, this brave, handsome man, this musician, this poet, was frequently seen and watched by Leandra from a window in her house that overlooked the plaza. She was enamored of the tinsel on his colorful outfits; his romances enchanted her—and he handed out twenty copies of every one he wrote; the deeds that he himself had related wafted up to her ears; and, in short—and the devil must have ordained it so—she fell in love with him before he’d conceived the presumption of wooing her, and since in cases of love there is none more easily concluded than the ones in which the woman has the desire, Leandra and Vicente came to an understanding easily, and before any of her many suitors realized what her desire was, she’d already carried it out, having left the house of her beloved father (since she had no mother), and leaving the town with this soldier, he fared better in this enterprise than any of the others he boasted of.
The whole town was amazed, as was everyone else who heard of the matter. I was aghast, Anselmo was astonished, her father sad, her relatives offended, the forces of justice were ready, the officers prepared. They took to the roads, they scoured the forests and everywhere else, and at the end of three days, they found the wayward Leandra in a mountain cave, wearing only a slip, and stripped of the money and precious jewels she’d taken from her house. They took her back to the presence of her despondent father and questioned her about her misfortune. She confessed without hesitation that Vicente de la Roca had deceived her, and on his word that he would become her husband, persuaded her to leave her father’s house, and he would take her to the richest and most luxurious city in the whole world, which was Naples, and she—ill-advised and worse deceived—had believed him. She stole from her father, and gave him everything the night she disappeared, and he took her to a desolate mountain and shut her up in that cave where they had found her. She also related how the soldier, without robbing her of her honor, took everything else and then left her in that cave and went away—something that further astonished everyone.
It was hard for us to believe the restraint of the young man, but she confirmed it with such great sincerity that it helped to console her grief-stricken father, not caring about the valuables that had been taken, since his daughter still had that jewel that, once lost, has no hope of being recovered.
The same day Leandra came back, her father made her disappear from our eyes, and he had her placed in a convent in a town near here, hoping that time would wear away part of the disgrace that she’d brought upon herself. Leandra’s tender age served as an excuse for her failing, at least to those who didn’t care if she was good or bad. But those of us who knew of her shrewdness and great intelligence didn’t attribute her sin to ignorance, but rather to her frivolity and the natural inclination of women, who tend to be reckless and unbalanced.
Since Leandra was shut up, Anselmo’s eyes were blinded, at least, since he had nothing to look at that made him happy. My eyes were in darkness, without the light to lead them toward anything that gives pleasure. With Leandra’s absence, our sadness increased, our patience diminished, we cursed the soldier’s outfits, and condemned her father’s carelessness. Finally, Anselmo and I agreed to leave the village and come to this valley, where he, letting a large number of his own sheep graze, and I, a large flock of goats, also mine, spend our lives among the trees, giving vent to our passions, or singing together the praises or curses of the beautiful Leandra, or sighing alone, communicating our complaints to heaven.
Many others of Leandra’s suitors have imitated us and have come to this harsh place, adopting our same occupation, and there are so many of them, it seems like this area has been converted into a pastoral Arcadia, such is the number of shepherds and flocks, and there’s nowhere in this area where you won’t you hear the name of the beautiful Leandra. This one curses her and calls her capricious, indifferent, and immodest; that one condemns her as being frail and frivolous; another absolves and pardons her; one condemns and censures her, one celebrates her beauty, another complains about her character, and finally, all of them malign and all of them adore her; and their madness goes so far that some who have never even spoken to her complain of her scorn, and even some who lament and feel the raging illness of jealousy, which she never gave to anybody, because—as I already said—her sin was discovered before her passion was known. There is no nook among the boulders, nor the bank of a brook, nor the shade of a tree, which is not prowled by some shepherd who relates his misfortune to the wind. Wherever an echo can resonate, you hear the name of Leandra—LEANDRA resounds in the forests, LEANDRA murmurs in the brooks, and LEANDRA keeps us all bewildered and enchanted, hoping without hope, and afraid, not knowing what to fear.
Among all of these fools, the one who shows the least, and yet the most sense, is my competitor Anselmo, who, having so many things to complain about, only laments her absence; and accompanied by a rabel—which he plays admirably well—and in verses in which he shows his keen intelligence, sings his fate. I’ve taken an easier path, and to my way of looking at things, the best one, which is to curse the fickleness of women, their inconstancy, double-dealing, their worthless promises, and finally the little judgment they show in establishing their affections and inclinations. And this is what caused me, señores, to say the words I said to this goat when I came here—that is, since she’s a female, I hold her in little esteem, even though she’s the best one of my flock.
This is the story that I promised to tell you. If I’ve been long in telling it, I’ll not be short in serving you. Near here I have my hut, and in it I have fresh milk and very delicious cheese, which, with other various seasonal fruits, are no less pleasing to see than they are to eat.