Chapter LII

. Where the adventure of the second Distressed (or Afflicted) Duenna, otherwise named doña Rodríguez, is related.

CIDE HAMETE relates that after don Quixote was healed from his scratches it seemed to him that the life he was leading in that castle went against the order of knighthood that he professed, so he decided to ask permission of the duke and duchess to leave for Zaragoza, whose festival was fast approaching, and where he planned to win the suit of armor that is contested at such festivals.

One day at the table with the duke and duchess, just when he was about to make his intention known, who should enter through the great hall door but two women, as was later proved, covered in mourning from head to foot. One of them approached don Quixote and threw herself at his feet, stretched fully out, her lips sewn to don Quixote’s feet, and emitted some sighs, so sad and profound, and so doleful that all who saw and heard her were put in a state of bewilderment. Although the duke and duchess thought that it must be some joke that their servants wanted to play on don Quixote, still, seeing with what zeal the woman was sighing, moaning, and crying, it made them wonder and kept them perplexed, until the compassionate don Quixote had her get up from the floor and asked her to say who she was, and take the veil from her tearful face.

She did it, and it turned out to be what no one would have ever expected, because she revealed the face of doña Rodríguez, the duenna of the house, and the other woman in mourning was her daughter, the one who had been taken advantage of by the rich peasant. Everyone who knew her was astonished, and the duke and duchess more than anyone else. Although they held her to be a fool, they didn’t think she would go so far as to engage in such nonsense.

So, doña Rodríguez, turning toward her master and mistress, said to them: “May it please your excellencies to grant me leave to speak with this knight, so that I can get out of a situation in which I’ve been put by the insolence of a bad-intentioned rustic.”

The duke said that he gave her permission and that she could talk with don Quixote as much as she wanted to. She, turning to face and directing her voice to don Quixote, said: “It has been many days, brave knight, since I revealed to you the injustice and treachery that an evil peasant has done to my very dear and beloved daughter, who is this unfortunate girl, here present, and you promised me to rescue her, righting the wrong done to her, and now, news has come to me that you are planning to leave this castle to search for adventures God may offer you. And I would like you, before you roam those roads, to challenge this untamed rustic and force him to marry my daughter, and fulfill the promise that he’d made to be her husband before he lay with her. To think that the duke my master will get me justice is like «trying to get blood from a turnip», for the reasons I’ve revealed to your grace in secret. And with this, may the Lord give your grace much health and may He not abandon us.”

To these words don Quixote responded with much gravity and pomposity: “Good duenna, restrain your tears, or better said, dry them and spare your sighs. I’ll take on the welfare of your daughter, who would have done better if she hadn’t been so easily swayed by a lover’s promises, which generally are easy to give and difficult to keep. So, with the permission of my lord the duke I’ll leave immediately to look for this soulless young man, and I’ll find him and I’ll challenge him, and I’ll kill him if he fails to comply with his given word. The main thrust of my calling is to pardon the humble and punish the arrogant. I mean, to help the wretched and destroy their oppressors.”

“Your grace doesn’t need,” responded the duke, “to go to the trouble of seeking the rustic about whom this good duenna is complaining, nor do you have to ask my permission to challenge him. I consider him challenged already and I take upon myself to make this challenge known to him, to force him to accept, and to come to answer for himself in this my castle, where I shall give you both a jousting field, keeping all the conditions usual to such deeds, and also ensuring fair play for both of you, as all noblemen must do who offer an open field to those who do battle within their dominion.”

“With that assurance and with your highness’ good leave,” replied don Quixote, “from this moment I renounce my title of hidalgo and I lower myself to the level of the offender, and I make myself equal with him. So even though he’s not here, I challenge him because he seduced this poor girl, who was a maiden, but is no longer one because of him. He must fulfill the promise he gave to be her legitimate husband, or die in the enterprise.”

And then, taking off a glove he threw it into the middle of the hall, and the duke picked it up, saying that, as he’d said, he would accept that challenge in the name of his vassal, and he fixed the event for six days hence, and said that the field would be the castle yard, and that the arms would be those customary to knights—lance and shield, articulated armor with all of its pieces, without deceit, fraud, or any talisman, and overseen by field judges.

“But before anything else, it’s necessary for the good duenna and this unfortunate girl to put their cause in the hands of señor don Quixote, otherwise this challenge cannot take place.”

“I so agree,” responded the duenna.

“Me too,” said the daughter, all tearful and ashamed, and in a bad state.

Now that this agreement was reached, and the duke had figured out what to do, the mourning women left, and the duchess ordered that from then on they were not to be treated as servants, but rather as ladies errant who had come to their house asking for justice. So they were given a room to themselves and were served as outsiders would be, not without astonishment on the part of the other female servants, who didn’t know where the folly and brazenness of doña Rodríguez and her ill-faring daughter would end.

At that moment, to end the dinner with rejoicing, who should enter into the hall but the page who had taken the letters and presents to Teresa Panza, the wife of the governor Sancho Panza, and whose arrival caused the duke and duchess great satisfaction, for they wanted to find out what had happened on his mission. They asked him and he answered that he couldn’t say with so many people around, nor with few words, stating that their excellencies should let it rest until they were alone, and meanwhile they could be entertained with those letters. He took two letters out and put them in the hands of the duchess. One of them was addressed thus: LETTER TO MY LADY THE DUCHESS SO-AND-SO, OF I-DON’T-KNOW-WHERE, and the other: TO MY HUSBAND SANCHO PANZA, GOVERNOR OF THE ÍNSULA BARATARIA WHO MAY GOD PROSPER MORE YEARS THAN MYSELF. The duchess’s «bread wouldn’t bake», as they say, until she read her letter, and after she opened it and read it to herself, seeing that she could read it aloud for the duke and the bystanders to hear, she read it in this way:

Señora mía, the letter your highness wrote me gave me great pleasure. The coral necklace is very fine, and my husband’s hunting outfit is not far behind. That your ladyship has made a governor of Sancho, my husband, has been received with great pleasure in this town, even though nobody believes it, mainly the priest and maese Nicolás, the barber, and Sansón Carrasco, the bachelor. But I couldn’t care less—since it’s a fact, as it is, let anyone say what they will, although, if the truth be known, if the coral necklace hadn’t come together with the outfit, I wouldn’t have believed it either, because in this town everyone holds my husband to be a blockhead; and unless it was to govern a herd of goats, they can’t imagine what kind of government he’d be suited for. But may God grant it, and have him see to the needs of his children.

With your grace’s leave, señora of my soul, I’ve resolved to take advantage of this situation by going to court and stretching out in a coach in order to make the eyes of the thousand people who envy me pop. So I beg your excellency to have my husband send me a bit of money, and make sure it’s quite a bit, because at court expenses are hefty: a loaf of bread costs a real, and a pound of meat costs thirty maravedís—it’s shocking. And if he doesn’t want me to come, have him tell me in time because my feet are eager to get on the road. My friends and neighbors tell me that if my daughter and I go around puffed up and pompous at court, my husband will be better known through me than I through him, since many people will have to ask: “Who are those two women in the coach?” and a servant of mine will answer: “Why, it’s the wife and daughter of Sancho Panza, the governor of the ínsula Barataria,” and in this way Sancho will get to be well-known and I’ll be admired, and the sky’s the limit!

It grieves me as much as it can that this year there was no harvest of acorns in this town. Even so, I’m sending your highness about a quarter of a peck I went into the forest to collect, and I found no larger ones than the ones I am sending. I wish they could be the size of ostrich eggs.

Don’t forget, your pomposity, to write me, and I’ll be sure to answer, telling you about my health and everything that you should know about what’s going on in this village, from where I beg God to keep your greatness, and not forget me either. Sancha, my daughter, and my son, kiss your hands.

She, who wants to see your ladyship more than to write her,

All those who heard Teresa Panza’s letter were very pleased, mainly the duke and duchess; and the duchess asked don Quixote if it would be all right to read the letter that came from the governor, for she thought it would be very good. Don Quixote said that he would open it to give them pleasure, and he saw that it read this way:

I received your letter, Sancho mío of my heart, and I promise you and swear to you as a Catholic Christian that I was an inch away from going crazy with happiness. Look, brother, when I heard that you were a governor, I thought I’d drop dead out of unbridled joy. You know that they say that a sudden joy can kill just like a great sadness. Sanchica, your daughter, wet herself out of sheer happiness, without realizing it. Even with the outfit that you sent me right in front of me, the coral necklace from my lady the duchess, the letters in my hands, and the messenger who brought them, also present—with all that, I still believed and thought that everything I saw and touched was all a dream. Who could have thought that a goatherd could rise to be the governor of ínsulas? You know, my friend, that my mother always used to say that «you have to live a long time to see a lot». I say this because I plan to see more, if I live longer, because I don’t plan to stop until I see you a landlord or a tax collector, which are offices—although the devil snatches away those who abuse them—that always bring in lots of money. My lady the duchess will tell you the desire I have to go to court. Look into it, and tell me what your pleasure is, for I plan to honor you there by going around in a coach.

The priest, the barber, the bachelor, and even the sexton, can’t believe that you’re a governor, and they say it’s all a deception or something done by enchantment, as are all things that happen to your master; and Sansón says that he’s going to come to look for you and take that government out of your head, and the madness out of don Quixote’s brain, but I just stand there and laugh and look at my necklace and think about the dress I’ll make for our daughter from your outfit.

I sent some acorns to my lady the duchess. I wish they were of gold. Send me some pearl necklaces if they’re fashionable in that ínsula.

Here’s some news from around town: Berrueca married her daughter to a not-so-skilled painter who came to this town to do odd jobs. The Town Council hired him to paint the royal arms over the door of the town hall. He asked for two ducados and they paid him in advance. He worked a whole week at the end of which he hadn’t painted anything and said he couldn’t paint junk like that. He returned the money, and with all that, he got married as if he were a good artisan. It’s true that since then he’s abandoned the paintbrush and taken up the hoe, and he goes to work in the fields like a gentleman. The son of Pedro de Lobo has received the minor orders of the church and now has a tonsure, and he intends to become a priest. Minguilla, the grand-daughter of Mingo Silvato, found out and is suing him for breach of promise. Evil tongues say that she’s pregnant by him, but he denies it staunchly.

This year there’s been no olives, nor is there a drop of vinegar to be found in the whole town. A company of soldiers came through and carried off three of the village girls, but I don’t want to tell you who they are. Maybe they’ll come back and there will be no lack of young men who will take them as their wives, with their flaws—good or bad.

Sanchica is making lace and earns eight maravedís every day free and clear, and she’s saving them in a money box to help with her trousseau. But now that she’s the daughter of a governor, you will give her a dowry without her having to work for it. The fountain in the plaza dried up, a lightning bolt fell on the pillory, and I could care less.

I’ll wait for an answer to this letter, and what’s to happen about me going to court. And with this, may God keep you more years than myself, or at least as many, because I wouldn’t want to leave you without me in this world.

The letters were applauded, laughed over, approved, and admired, and to cap it off, the courier came with a letter Sancho was sending to don Quixote that they also read publicly, and it made them wonder if the governor was really a fool.

The duchess withdrew with the page to find out what had happened in Sancho’s village; he told her in great detail, and no aspect was left untouched. He gave her the acorns and some cheese that Teresa gave her that was better than Tronchón. The duchess received it with great pleasure, and we’ll leave her with that in order to relate the end of the government of the great Sancho Panza, flower and mirror of all governors of ínsulas.