FOLLOWING THE SAD MUSICIANS, as many as twelve duennas entered the garden in a double file, all dressed in roomy nuns’ habits made, seemingly of fine lightweight wool, with white headdresses made of fine muslin. These were so long that only the hems of the habits were visible. Following them came the Countess Trifaldi, whom Trifaldín of the White Beard was leading by the hand. She was dressed in a high-quality and very dark un-napped flannel (for if it had been napped, each tuft would have been the size of a chickpea from Martos ). The tail or skirt, or whatever you might want to call it, ended in three trains, each of which was being held in the hands of three pages, also dressed in mourning, making a handsome and mathematical figure with those three acute angles formed by the three trains, and all of them realized when they saw that the three-pointed dress, that was why she was called the COUNTESS TRIFALDI, as if we were saying the COUNTESS OF THE THREE SKIRTS. And Benengeli says that it was true and that her real name was COUNTESS LOBUNA because many wolves were bred in her county, and, if instead of wolves they were foxes, they would have called her the COUNTESS ZORRUNA, because it’s the custom in those parts for the people to take the names of things that abound on their estates. However this countess, to favor the novelty of her skirt, dropped LOBUNA and took up TRIFALDI.
The twelve duennas and the lady came in slowly, their faces covered with black veils, and not of the kind you could see through, like the squire’s, but so dense that nothing could be seen behind them.
As soon as the squadron of duennas appeared, the duke, the duchess, don Quixote, and everyone else who was looking at that slow procession, stood up. The twelve duennas stopped and made a passage through the middle of which the Distressed Duenna came forward, without releasing Trifaldín’s hand, and when the duke, the duchess, and don Quixote saw them, they strode out a dozen paces to welcome her.
She, kneeling on the ground, with a voice that was more coarse and rasping than soft and delicate, said: “May it please your greatnesses not to show so much courtesy to this your man-servant, I mean, to this your maid-servant—since I’m so distressed, I can’t say what I should, since my strange and never-before-seen misfortune has carried away my senses. I don’t know where they are, and they must be a long way away, for the more I search for them, the less I find of them.”
“Without senses would be the person,” responded the duke, “señora Countess, who couldn’t see how worthy you are and that you’re deserving of the cream of courtesy and the flower of politest ceremonies.”
And taking her by the hand, he led her to sit next to the duchess who received her with great courtesy as well.
Don Quixote said nothing and Sancho was dying to see Trifaldi’s face and also the faces of some of her many duennas, but it was not possible until they revealed them of their pleasure and free will.
Once they all settled down and were quiet, everyone was waiting to see who would break the silence, and it was the Distressed Duenna, with these words: “I’m confident, most powerful lord, most beautiful lady, and very discreet company, that my great affliction will find in your worthy hearts a no less attentive than generous and sympathetic reception. This affliction is such that it can make marble tender, soften diamonds, and mollify the steel of the hardest hearts in the world. But before I announce it to your sense of hearing, not to mention your ears, I would like you to make known to me if in this fellowship, group, and company, is to be found the very unblemished don Quixote de La Manchísima, and his squirísimo Panza.”
“The Panza,” Sancho said, before anyone else could respond, “is here, and don Quixotísimo as well. So you can, needy duennísima, say what you would likísimo. We’re all ready and preparedísimo to be your servantísimos.”
At this, don Quixote stood, and directing his words to the Distressed One, said: “If your afflictions, needy señora, can promise some hope of relief by the bravery or strength of some knight errant, here are mine, which, although feeble and limited, can be used in your service. I’m don Quixote de La Mancha, whose business is to help all kinds of people in need, and that being so, as it is, you need not, señora, beg for favors nor use preambles, but in plain terms and without beating around the bush, state what your afflictions are. Listeners will hear you, and if they can’t help you, at least they will commiserate with you.”
When she heard this, the distressed duenna gave every indication that she would throw herself at the feet of don Quixote, and in fact she did so, and struggling to embrace them, she said: “Before these feet and legs I throw myself, unconquered knight, since they’re the pedestals and columns of knight errantry. I want to kiss these feet, on whose footsteps hangs the entirety of my relief, brave errant, whose deeds leave behind and dim the fabled ones of the Amadises, Esplandianes, and Belianises!”
And turning away from don Quixote, she faced Sancho Panza, and grasping him by the hands, said to him: “Oh, you, the most loyal squire that ever served a knight errant in modern or in ancient times, whose goodness is more expansive than the beard of Trifaldín, my companion here present! You can well pride yourself that in serving the great don Quixote you’re serving in effect the whole multitude of knights who have ever borne arms in the world. I beg you, by what you owe to your most loyal goodness, to be a just intercessor for me with your master, so that he’ll aid this most humble and most unfortunate countess.”
To which Sancho responded: “That my goodness, señora mía, is as long and large as the beard of your squire doesn’t matter very much to me. As long as my soul has a beard and a mustache when I leave this life is what is important. I care little or not at all about beards here on earth. But without these schemes or supplications, I’ll beg my master—who I know loves me, and more so now that he needs me for a certain favor—to help you insofar as he can. Disclose your affliction and tell it to us, and leave it to us, for we’ll all understand.”
The duke and duchess were bursting with laughter at these things, as the others were who had taken the pulse of that adventure, and they praised among themselves the shrewdness and ingenuity of Trifaldi, who sat down and said: “Queen Maguncia, widow of King Archipiela, her lord and husband, from whose marriage was born the princess Antonomasia, heiress of the realm, reigned over the famous kingdom of Candaya, which lies between Trapobana and the Southern Sea, two leagues away from Cape Comorín. Antonomasia was raised and grew up under my protection and instruction, since I was the most important duenna, and the one of longest service to her mother. It happened, then, as days came and went, the girl Antonomasia came to be fourteen years old and with such a perfection of beauty that Nature couldn’t improve on it. And should we say that she had the mind of a child? Her mind was as great as her beauty, and she was the most beautiful girl in the world, and still would be, if the envious fates and the Three Sisters haven’t cut the yarn of her life. But they haven’t yet, for heaven will not allow such a bad thing to happen on earth. It would be like plucking a bunch of premature grapes from the best grapevine.
“An infinite number of princes, both foreign and domestic, fell in love with this beauty whom I hardly have the words to describe—among whom a certain knight at court dared to raise his eyes to the heaven of so much beauty, trusting in his youth, elegance, and in his many skills, gallantry, accomplishments, and charm. I’ll have you know, if it won’t bore you, that he played the guitar and could almost make it speak, and what’s more he was a poet and a great dancer, and he could make birdcages, and if he made only them, he could have earned a living, if he should find himself in great need. All of these skills and graces are sufficient to demolish a mountain, not to mention to move a delicate maiden. But all his elegance and charms, and all his skills and abilities were of little, or even no use to subdue the fortress of my girl, if that shameless thief hadn’t gotten to me first. At the outset, the brigand and soulless vagabond made sure to win my will over and overcome it, so that I, a bad governess, would give him the keys to the fortress I was supposed to be guarding.
“Finally, he flattered my senses and overcame my will with I don’t know what trinkets and headdress pins. But what most humbled me and brought my downfall were the verses that I heard him sing one night from the grating that looked out onto a narrow street where he was, and if I don’t remember badly, they were these:
“The verses seemed like pearls to me, and his voice sweet as syrup; and afterwards, ever since then, looking at the misfortune into which I’ve fallen, I’ve thought that poets, as Plato admonished, should be banished from all well ordered states—at least the lascivious ones, for they write verses, not like those dealing with the Marqués de Mantua, that entertain and draw tears from women and children, but subtleties of the kind that pierce your heart like soft thorns, and like the lightning bolts that strike you there, without tearing your dress. And he sang another one:
“And other little verses in this same style, and refrains when sung were enchanting and when written would amaze. Well, what happens when they humble themselves to write a type of verse common in Candaya, and which was called SEGUIDILLAS? There’s where souls would dance about, laughter would ring out, and bodies would become restless, and finally agitate all the senses. And so I say, señores, that they should rightly exile troubadours to the Islands of Lizards. But they’re really not to blame—those who praise them and the foolish women who believe them are. And if I’d been as good a duenna as I should have been, his stale conceits wouldn’t have moved me, nor should I have thought his statement to be true to the effect: ‘I live dying, I burn up in the ice, I shiver in the fire, I hope without hope, I leave and I stay’ along with other impossible things of that kind which his writings were full of. What should I do when they promise the Phœnix of Arabia, the Crown of Aridiana, the horses of the Sun, pearls from the Southern Sea, the gold of Tíbar, the balm of Pancaya ? In these promises they let their pens run free since it costs them little to promise what they have no intention of delivering, nor could they deliver. But I wander. Woe is me, unfortunate one! What crazy act or what folly leads me to tell of the defects of others when I have so much to say about my own. Woe is me, once again, luckless person that I am! The verses didn’t overcome me—my foolishness did. The music didn’t make me soft—my frivolity did. My great ignorance and my lack of caution opened the way and cleared the path for the footsteps of don Clavijo, for this is the name of the knight I mentioned. And with me as the go-between, he found his way many times in the bed chambers of that deceived—not by him but by me—Antonomasia, under the title of her lawful husband, because, although I’m a sinner, I wouldn’t consent—unless he was her husband—to his getting even as far as the welt of the sole of her slippers. No, no, not that! Marriage has to precede any affair like this that I have anything to do with! But there was a flaw in this business, and it was that there was no equality, since don Clavijo was an ordinary knight and Antonomasia was a princess, heiress, as I said, to the kingdom.
“This intrigue continued, concealed and hidden by the cleverness of my prudence, until I noticed a certain swelling growing swiftly in the tummy of Antonomasia, the fear of which made the three of us go into a secret meeting and the result was that before this bad news was made public, don Clavijo would ask to marry Antonomasia before the vicar to fulfill a contract that the princess had made agreeing to be his wife, and was written at my insistence in such a binding way that even Samson’s strength couldn’t break it. The preparations were made, the vicar saw the contract and he heard the confession of the lady. She confessed openly, and he placed her in the custody of a very honorable bailiff…”
Just then Sancho interrupted, saying: “So, there are bailiffs, poets, and seguidillas in Candaya, too. It seems to me that the world is the same everywhere. But hurry up a bit your grace, señora Trifaldi, because it’s getting late and I’m dying to find out the end of this long history.”
“All right,” responded the countess.