THE DUCHESS got as much pleasure from anything Sancho said, as don Quixote despaired at what he said, and after he told him to be quiet, the Distressed One continued, saying: “So, after many questions and answers, since the princess persisted in not varying her original answer, the vicar found in favor of don Clavijo and gave her to him as his legitimate wife, which so upset the queen, doña Maguncia, that within three days we buried her.”
“Without a doubt, she must have died, ” said Sancho.
“Evidently,” responded Trifaldín. “In Candaya living people aren’t buried—only dead ones.”
“It’s a known fact, señor squire,” replied Sancho, “that people who have just fainted have been buried, having been thought to have died, and it seems to me that Queen Maguncia would have fainted instead of died. «Where there’s life, there’s hope», and the princess’s foolishness was not so great as to be felt so deeply. If this woman had gotten married to some page or some servant from the house, as many others have done, according to what I hear, it would have been past remedy. But having married a knight who was such a gentleman, and one so accomplished as this one has been described, in truth, in truth, although it was foolish, it was not as bad as you might think, because according to the precepts of my master, who is here and won’t let me lie, just as educated men can become bishops, knights—and especially errant ones—can become kings and emperors.”
“You’re quite right, Sancho,” said don Quixote, “because a knight errant, if he has just a bit of luck, is always at the threshold of being the greatest lord in the world. But let señora Distressed go on with her story. It seems to me that what remains to be told is the bitter part, which has been up to now a sweet tale.”
“The bitter part indeed remains to be told,” responded the countess, “and so bitter is it that in comparison with it, bitter apples are sweet, and oleander is tasty. Now that the queen was dead, and not just in a faint, we buried her, and we had hardly covered her with dirt and said our last farewell when quis talia fando temperet a lachrymis? who should appear on the grave of the queen, riding a wooden horse, but the giant Malambruno, Maguncia’s first cousin, who, aside from being cruel was also an enchanter, and who, with his magic, to avenge the death of his cousin, and to punish the daring of don Clavijo, as well as the excesses of Antonomasia, left them enchanted on top of the grave itself. She has been changed into an ape made of bronze and he into a crocodile of some unknown metal, and between them is a column, also made of metal, on which is written in the Syriac language some letters that, having been translated into Candayan, and now into Spanish, read as follows:
“Once this was done, he took from its sheath a wide and very large cutlass, and, taking me by the hair, he threatened to slit my throat, and cut off my head. I became alarmed and my voice stuck in my throat and I was mortified in the extreme. But with a trembling and mournful voice, I told him so many things that I forced him to put off the execution of his severe sentence. Finally, he had all the duennas of the palace brought before him—and they were these present—and after having exaggerated our guilt and condemned the character of duennas in general, and their bad customs and worse tricks, and heaping the guilt onto all of them that I alone had, he said that he didn’t want to impose the death penalty on us but rather other prolonged sentences that would give us a cruel and continuous death, and at the very instant when he pronounced that, we all felt the pores of our faces opening up and it felt like our faces were being pricked with needles. We raised our hands to our faces, and we found them to be the way you’ll now see.”
And then the Distressed One and the others removed the veils they had been wearing, and revealed their faces populated with beards, some of them red, others black, some white, and some brown, at which sight the duke and duchess were astonished, don Quixote and Sancho were stunned, and all the others astounded. Trifaldi continued: “In this way that rogue and bad-intentioned Malambruno, covered the softness and smoothness of our faces with the roughness of these hog’s bristles. It’s too bad heaven didn’t ordain him to chop off our heads with his great cutlass rather than darken the light of our faces with this fur that covers them. If we consider it, señores míos—and what I’m about to say should be said with eyes turned into fountains, but the thought of our misfortune, and the seas of tears that have already rained down, has them without fluid, and dry as chaff, so I’ll say it without tears… So, as I was saying, where can a duenna who has a beard go? What father or mother will have compassion for her? Who will help her? Even when she has a smooth complexion and her face is tortured with a thousand kinds of cosmetics and makeup, she can hardly find anyone to like her, what will she do when she shows a face that looks like a forest? Oh, duennas and my companions, we were born at a bad time, and at a cursed instant our parents begat us!”
And saying this it looked like she were about to faint.