These were the words that Anselmo said to Lotario, who listened so attentively to all of them that, except for those that have been recorded here, none passed his lips until Anselmo had finished; seeing that he had nothing else to say, and after looking at him for a long time as if he were looking at something amazing and terrifying that he had never seen before, Lotario said:
“I cannot persuade myself, O my dear friend Anselmo, that the things you have said are not a joke; if I had thought you were speaking in earnest, I would not have allowed you to go so far, and if I had stopped listening, I would have forestalled your long, impassioned speech. It surely seems to me that you don’t know me or I don’t know you. But no; I know very well that you are Anselmo, and you know that I am Lotario; the problem is that I think you are not the Anselmo you used to be, and you must have thought I was not the same Lotario, either, because the things you have said to me would not have been said by my friend Anselmo, and what you have asked of me would not have been asked of the Lotario you knew; good friends may test their friends and make use of them, as a poet said, usque ad aras,2 which means that they must not make use of their friendship in things that go against God. If a pagan felt this about friendship, how much more important is it for a Christian to feel the same, for he knows that divine friendship must not be lost for the sake of human friendship. When a friend goes so far as to set aside the demands of heaven in order to respond to those of his friend, it should not be for vain, trivial things but for those on which the honor and life of his friend depend. Well, Anselmo, tell me now which of these is threatened, so that I can dare oblige you and do something as detestable as what you are asking. Neither one, certainly; rather, if I understand you, you are asking me to attempt and endeavor to take away your honor and your life, and mine as well. Because if I attempt to take away your honor, it is obvious that I take away your life, for the man without honor is worse than dead, and if, as you wish, I become the instrument that inflicts so much evil upon you, do I not lose my honor, and, by the same token, my life? Listen, Anselmo my friend, and have the patience not to respond until I finish telling you what I think of the demands your desire has made of you; there will be time for you to reply and for me to listen.”
“Gladly,” said Anselmo. “Say whatever you wish.”
And Lotario continued, saying:
“It seems to me, my dear Anselmo, that your mind is now in the state in which the Moors have theirs, for they cannot be made to understand the error of their sect with commentaries from Holy Scripture, or arguments that depend on the rational understanding or are founded on articles of faith; instead, they must be presented with palpable, comprehensible, intelligible, demonstrable, indubitable examples, with mathematical proofs that cannot be denied, as when one says, ‘If, from two equal parts, we remove equal parts, those parts that remain are also equal’; if they do not understand the words, as in fact they do not, then it must be shown to them with one’s hands, and placed before their eyes, yet even after all this, no one can persuade them of the truths of my holy religion. I must use the same terms and methods with you, because the desire that has been born in you is so misguided and so far beyond everything that has a shred of rationality in it that I think it would be a waste of time to try to make you understand your foolishness; for the moment I do not wish to give it another name. I am even tempted to leave you to your folly as punishment for your wicked desire, but my friendship for you does not permit me to be so harsh that I leave you in obvious danger of perdition. And so that you can see it clearly, tell me, Anselmo: haven’t you told me that I have to woo a reserved woman, persuade an honest woman, make offers to an unmercenary woman, serve a prudent woman? Yes, you have said that to me. But if you know you have a wife who is reserved, honest, unmercenary, and prudent, what else do you need to know? And if you believe she will emerge victorious from all my assaults, as she undoubtedly will, what designations do you plan to give her afterward that are better than the ones she has now? What will she be afterward that is better than what she is now? Either your opinion of her is not what you say it is, or you do not know what you are asking. If your opinion of her is not what you say it is, why do you want to test her instead of treating her as an unfaithful woman and chastising her as you see fit? But if she is as virtuous as you believe, it would be reckless to experiment with that truth, for when you have done so, it will still have the same value it had before. Therefore we must conclude that attempting actions more likely to harm us than to benefit us is characteristic of rash minds bereft of reason, especially when they are not forced or compelled to undertake them, and when even from a distance it is obvious that the venture is an act of patent madness.
One attempts extremely difficult enterprises for the sake of God, or for the sake of the world, or both; those attempted for God are the ones undertaken by the saints, who endeavor to live the lives of angels in human bodies; those attempted with the world in mind are undertaken by men who endure such infinite seas, diverse climates, and strange peoples in order to acquire great riches. And those ventured for God and the world together are undertaken by valiant soldiers who, as soon as they see in the enemy defenses an opening no larger than the one made by a cannon ball, set aside all fear, do not consider or notice the clear danger that threatens them, and, borne on the wings of their desire to defend their faith, their nation, and their king, hurl themselves boldly into the midst of the thousand possible deaths that await them. These are perilous actions that are ordinarily ventured, and it is honor, glory, and advantage to attempt them despite the many obstacles and dangers. But the one you say you wish to attempt and put into effect will not win you the glory of God, or great riches, or fame among men; even if the outcome is as you desire, you will not be more content, more wealthy, more honored than you are now, and if it is not, you will find yourself in the greatest misery imaginable; then it will be to no avail to think that no one is aware of the misfortune that has befallen you; your knowing will be enough to make you suffer and grieve.
As confirmation of this truth, I want to recite for you a stanza written by the famous poet Luis Tansilo,3 at the end of the first part of his The Tears of St. Peter, which says:
There grows grief and there grows shame
in Peter, when the day has dawned,
and though he sees no one is near
he feels a deep shame for his sin:
for a great heart will be moved
to shame, even if unseen,
when it transgresses, shame though
seen by nought but earth and sky.
In similar fashion, you will not escape sorrow even if it is secret; instead, you will weep constantly, if not tears from your eyes, then tears of blood from your heart, like those shed by the simple doctor who, as our poet recounts, agreed to the test of the goblet,4 while the prudent and more rational Reinaldos refused; although this is poetic fiction, it contains hidden moral truths worthy of being heeded and understood and imitated, especially if, in light of what I am going to say to you now, you come to realize the magnitude of the error you wish to commit.
Tell me, Anselmo: if heaven, or good luck, had made you the possessor and legitimate owner of a fine diamond whose worth and value satisfied every jeweler who saw it, and all of them were of one opinion and said in one voice that in value, size, and purity it was all that such a stone could be, and you believed this as well, having no knowledge to the contrary, would it be reasonable for you to take that diamond, and place it between an anvil and a hammer, and by dint of powerful blows test if it was as hard and fine as they said? Moreover, in the event you did this, and the stone withstood so foolish a test, it would not, for that reason, gain in value or fame, but if it shattered, which is possible, wouldn’t everything be lost? Yes, certainly, and its owner would be thought a fool by everyone.
Then understand, Anselmo my friend, that Camila is a fine diamond, both in your estimation and in that of others, and there is no reason to put her at risk of shattering, for
even if she remains whole, she cannot become more precious than she is now; and if she fails and does not resist, consider how you would feel without her, and how correctly you would blame yourself for having been the cause of her ruination and your own. For there is no jewel in the world as valuable as a chaste and honorable woman, and women’s honor consists entirely of the good opinion others have of them; since you know that the good opinion people have of your wife is as high as it can be, why do you want to cast doubt upon this truth? Look, my friend: woman is an imperfect creature, and one should not lay down obstacles where she can stumble and fall; instead, one should remove them and clear all impediments from her path so that she may run easily and quickly to reach the perfection she lacks, which consists in being virtuous.
Naturalists tells us that the ermine is an animal with pure white fur, and when hunters want to trap it, they use this trick: knowing the places where it customarily travels and can be found, they obstruct those places with mud, and then they beat the bushes and drive it toward that spot, and when the ermine reaches the mud it stops and lets itself be captured and caught rather than pass through the mire and risk soiling and losing the whiteness that it values more than liberty and life. The honest and chaste woman is the ermine, and the purity of her virtue is whiter and cleaner than snow; the man who wants her not to lose it but to keep and preserve it must treat her in a manner different from the one used with an ermine; he should not place mud before her—I mean the gifts and wooing of importunate lovers—because perhaps, and there is no perhaps about it, she does not have enough virtue and natural strength to overcome and surmount those obstacles by herself; it is necessary to remove them and place before her the purity of virtue and the beauty that lies in a good reputation.
In similar fashion, the chaste woman is like a mirror of clear, shining glass, liable to be clouded and darkened by any breath that touches it. One must treat the virtuous woman as one treats relics: adore them but not touch them. One must protect and esteem the chaste woman as one protects and esteems a beautiful garden filled with flowers and roses; its owner does not permit people to pass through and handle the flowers; it is enough that from a distance, through the iron bars of the fence, they enjoy its fragrance and beauty.
Finally, I want to recite for you some verses that have just come to mind; I heard them in a modern play, and I think they are relevant to what we are discussing. A prudent old man was advising the father of a young girl to shelter her, protect her, and keep her secluded, and among many other reasons, he mentioned these:
Woman is made of fragile glass;
but do not put her to the test
to see if she will break,
for that might come to pass.
She is too apt to shatter,
and wisdom is surely ended
if what can ne’er be mended
is put in the way of danger.
What I say to you is true,
and let us all agree:
wherever Danae may be,
showers of gold are there, too.5
Everything I have said so far, Anselmo, refers to you; now it is time for you to hear something that has to do with me, and if it takes a long time, forgive me, but it is demanded by the labyrinth into which you have walked and from which you wish me to free you. You consider me your friend, yet you wish to take my honor, which is counter to all friendship; not only that, but you want me to try to take yours. It is clear that you want to take mine, for when Camila sees me wooing her, as you are asking me to do, surely she will look upon me as a man without honor or worth because I am attempting and doing something so far removed from the obligations I have as the man I am, and as your friend. There is no doubt that you want me to take your honor, for when Camila sees me wooing her, she will think that I saw in her some looseness of behavior that gave me the audacity to reveal my evil desire, and thinking herself dishonored, her dishonor affects you, for you are part of her. For this reason people commonly say that the husband of an adulterous woman, even though he has no knowledge of wife’s adultery and has given her no reason to be what she should not be, and it was not in his power to prevent his misfortune for he was neither negligent nor careless, yet despite all this he is called and characterized by base names that revile him, and in a certain sense those who know of his wife’s wickedness look at him with scornful rather than compassionate eyes, even though responsibility for his difficulties lies not with him but with the desires of his unvirtuous wife.
But I want to tell you why it is reasonable and just for the husband of an immodest woman to be dishonored, even if he does not know about her lack of virtue, and is not responsible for it, and has not been a party to it or given her reason to be unchaste. And do not grow weary of listening to me; everything will redound to your benefit. When God created our first father in the Earthly Paradise, Holy Scripture says that God put Adam to sleep, and as he slept He took a rib out of his left side and from it He formed our mother Eve; when Adam awoke and saw her, he said: ‘This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh,’ and God said: ‘Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.’ That was when the divine sacrament of marriage was established, with bonds so strong that death alone can undo them. And this miraculous sacrament is so strong and powerful that it makes one flesh of two different people, and in virtuous spouses it does even more, for although they have two souls, they have only one will. And from this it follows that since the flesh of the wife is one with the flesh of the husband, any stain that besmirches her, or any defect that appears in her, redounds to the flesh of the husband even if he has not given her, as I have said, any reason for her wickedness. Just as discomfort in the foot or any other member of the body is felt throughout the entire body because it is all one flesh, and the head feels the ankle’s pain although it has not caused it, so the husband participates in his wife’s dishonor because he is one with her. And since honors and dishonors in this world are all born of flesh and blood, and those of the un-chaste woman are of this kind, it is unavoidable that the husband is party to them and is considered dishonored even if he has no knowledge of them.
Therefore consider, Anselmo, the danger in which you place yourself by wanting to disturb the tranquility in which your virtuous wife lives; think of how, because of a futile and rash inquisitiveness, you wish to disturb the humors that now rest tranquilly in the bosom of your chaste wife; be aware that what you may gain is little, and what you may lose is so great that I will not even mention it because I lack the words to describe it. But if everything I have said is not enough to dissuade you from your evil purpose, then you can find another instrument for your dishonor and misfortune, for I do not intend to be that instrument, even if I lose your friendship, which is the greatest loss I can imagine.”
When he had said this, the virtuous and prudent Lotario fell silent, and Anselmo was left so perplexed and pensive that for some time he could not say a word, but at last he said:
“You have seen, Lotario my friend, how attentively I have listened to everything you wanted to say to me, and in your arguments, examples, and comparisons I have seen the great discernment you possess and the far reaches of your true friendship; I also see and confess that if I do not follow your way of thinking but pursue my own, I am fleeing the good and going after the bad. Assuming this, you must consider that I suffer now from the disease that afflicts some women, filling them with the desire to eat earth, plaster, charcoal, and other things that are even worse, and sickening to look at, let alone to eat; therefore it is necessary to use some artifice to cure me, and this could be done with ease if you simply start, even if indifferently and falsely, to woo Camila, who will not be so fragile that your first encounters will bring down her virtue; I will be content with this simple beginning, and you will have fulfilled what you owe to our friendship, not only by giving me back my life, but by persuading me not to lose my honor. You are obliged to do this for only one reason: being
determined, as I am, to make this test a reality, you must not allow me to recount my madness to someone else who would endanger the honor that you insist on my not losing; yours not being as high as it should be, in Camila’s opinion, while you woo her, matters little or not at all, for in a very short time, when we see in her the integrity we desire, you will be able to tell her the truth of our scheme, and this will return your standing to where it was before. Since you risk so little and can make me so happy by taking that small risk, do not refuse to do it even if greater obstacles are placed before you; as I have said, if you simply begin, I shall consider the matter concluded.”
Seeing Anselmo’s resolute will, and not knowing what other examples to cite or arguments to present that would dissuade him, and hearing that he threatened to tell someone else about his wicked desire, and wanting to avoid an even greater evil, Lotario decided to agree and do what Anselmo asked; his purpose and intention was to guide the matter in such a way that Camila’s thoughts would not be disturbed and Anselmo would be satisfied, and therefore Lotario told Anselmo not to communicate his thought to anyone else and that he would undertake the enterprise and begin whenever his friend wished. Anselmo embraced him tenderly and lovingly and thanked him for his offer as if Lotario had done him a great favor; the two of them agreed that the plan would begin the following day; Anselmo would give Lotario time and opportunity to speak to Camila alone and also provide him with money and jewels to give and present to her. He advised Lotario to play music for her and write verses in her praise, and if he did not wish to take the trouble to do so, Anselmo would write them himself. Lotario agreed to everything, with intentions quite different from what Anselmo believed them to be.
Don Quixote Page 38