by Lord Byron
Whom I see standing there, and looking sensible
Of having play’d the fool? though both I spurn, he
Deserves the worst, his conduct’s less defensible,
Because, no doubt, ‘t was for his dirty fee,
And not from any love to you nor me.
CLII
“If he comes here to take a deposition,
By all means let the gentleman proceed;
You’ve made the apartment in a fit condition:
There’s pen and ink for you, sir, when you need —
Let every thing be noted with precision,
I would not you for nothing should be fee’d —
But, as my maid’s undrest, pray turn your spies out.”
“Oh!” sobb’d Antonia, “I could tear their eyes out.”
CLIII
“There is the closet, there the toilet, there
The antechamber — search them under, over;
There is the sofa, there the great arm-chair,
The chimney — which would really hold a lover.
I wish to sleep, and beg you will take care
And make no further noise, till you discover
The secret cavern of this lurking treasure —
And when ‘t is found, let me, too, have that pleasure.
CLIV
“And now, Hidalgo! now that you have thrown
Doubt upon me, confusion over all,
Pray have the courtesy to make it known
Who is the man you search for? how d’ ye call
Him? what’s his lineage? let him but be shown —
I hope he’s young and handsome — is he tall?
Tell me — and be assured, that since you stain
My honour thus, it shall not be in vain.
CLV
“At least, perhaps, he has not sixty years,
At that age he would be too old for slaughter,
Or for so young a husband’s jealous fears
(Antonia! let me have a glass of water).
I am ashamed of having shed these tears,
They are unworthy of my father’s daughter;
My mother dream’d not in my natal hour
That I should fall into a monster’s power.
CLVI
“Perhaps ‘t is of Antonia you are jealous,
You saw that she was sleeping by my side
When you broke in upon us with your fellows:
Look where you please — we’ve nothing, sir, to hide;
Only another time, I trust, you’ll tell us,
Or for the sake of decency abide
A moment at the door, that we may be
Drest to receive so much good company.
CLVII
“And now, sir, I have done, and say no more;
The little I have said may serve to show
The guileless heart in silence may grieve o’er
The wrongs to whose exposure it is slow:
I leave you to your conscience as before,
’T will one day ask you why you used me so?
God grant you feel not then the bitterest grief! —
Antonia! where’s my pocket-handkerchief?”
CLVIII
She ceased, and turn’d upon her pillow; pale
She lay, her dark eyes flashing through their tears,
Like skies that rain and lighten; as a veil,
Waved and o’ershading her wan cheek, appears
Her streaming hair; the black curls strive, but fail,
To hide the glossy shoulder, which uprears
Its snow through all; — her soft lips lie apart,
And louder than her breathing beats her heart.
CLIX
The Senhor Don Alfonso stood confused;
Antonia bustled round the ransack’d room,
And, turning up her nose, with looks abused
Her master and his myrmidons, of whom
Not one, except the attorney, was amused;
He, like Achates, faithful to the tomb,
So there were quarrels, cared not for the cause,
Knowing they must be settled by the laws.
CLX
With prying snub-nose, and small eyes, he stood,
Following Antonia’s motions here and there,
With much suspicion in his attitude;
For reputations he had little care;
So that a suit or action were made good,
Small pity had he for the young and fair,
And ne’er believed in negatives, till these
Were proved by competent false witnesses.
CLXI
But Don Alfonso stood with downcast looks,
And, truth to say, he made a foolish figure;
When, after searching in five hundred nooks,
And treating a young wife with so much rigour,
He gain’d no point, except some self-rebukes,
Added to those his lady with such vigour
Had pour’d upon him for the last half-hour,
Quick, thick, and heavy — as a thunder-shower.
CLXII
At first he tried to hammer an excuse,
To which the sole reply was tears and sobs,
And indications of hysterics, whose
Prologue is always certain throes, and throbs,
Gasps, and whatever else the owners choose:
Alfonso saw his wife, and thought of Job’s;
He saw too, in perspective, her relations,
And then he tried to muster all his patience.
CLXIII
He stood in act to speak, or rather stammer,
But sage Antonia cut him short before
The anvil of his speech received the hammer,
With “Pray, sir, leave the room, and say no more,
Or madam dies.” — Alfonso mutter’d, “D — n her,”
But nothing else, the time of words was o’er;
He cast a rueful look or two, and did,
He knew not wherefore, that which he was bid.
CLXIV
With him retired his “posse comitatus,”
The attorney last, who linger’d near the door
Reluctantly, still tarrying there as late as
Antonia let him — not a little sore
At this most strange and unexplain’d “hiatus”
In Don Alfonso’s facts, which just now wore
An awkward look; as he revolved the case,
The door was fasten’d in his legal face.
CLXV
No sooner was it bolted, than — Oh shame!
Oh sin! Oh sorrow! and oh womankind!
How can you do such things and keep your fame,
Unless this world, and t’ other too, be blind?
Nothing so dear as an unfilch’d good name!
But to proceed — for there is more behind:
With much heartfelt reluctance be it said,
Young Juan slipp’d half-smother’d, from the bed.
CLXVI
He had been hid — I don’t pretend to say
How, nor can I indeed describe the where —
Young, slender, and pack’d easily, he lay,
No doubt, in little compass, round or square;
But pity him I neither must nor may
His suffocation by that pretty pair;
‘T were better, sure, to die so, than be shut
With maudlin Clarence in his Malmsey butt.
CLXVII
And, secondly, I pity not, because
He had no business to commit a sin,
Forbid by heavenly, fined by human laws,
At least ‘t was rather early to begin;
But at sixteen the conscience rarely gnaws
So much as when we call our old debts in
At sixty years, and draw the accompts of evil,
And find a deuced
balance with the devil.
CLXVIII
Of his position I can give no notion:
’T is written in the Hebrew Chronicle,
How the physicians, leaving pill and potion,
Prescribed, by way of blister, a young belle,
When old King David’s blood grew dull in motion,
And that the medicine answer’d very well;
Perhaps ‘t was in a different way applied,
For David lived, but Juan nearly died.
CLXIX
What’s to be done? Alfonso will be back
The moment he has sent his fools away.
Antonia’s skill was put upon the rack,
But no device could be brought into play —
And how to parry the renew’d attack?
Besides, it wanted but few hours of day:
Antonia puzzled; Julia did not speak,
But press’d her bloodless lip to Juan’s cheek.
CLXX
He turn’d his lip to hers, and with his hand
Call’d back the tangles of her wandering hair;
Even then their love they could not all command,
And half forgot their danger and despair:
Antonia’s patience now was at a stand —
”Come, come, ‘t is no time now for fooling there,”
She whisper’d, in great wrath — ”I must deposit
This pretty gentleman within the closet:
CLXXI
“Pray, keep your nonsense for some luckier night —
Who can have put my master in this mood?
What will become on ‘t — I’m in such a fright,
The devil’s in the urchin, and no good —
Is this a time for giggling? this a plight?
Why, don’t you know that it may end in blood?
You’ll lose your life, and I shall lose my place,
My mistress all, for that half-girlish face.
CLXXII
“Had it but been for a stout cavalier
Of twenty-five or thirty (come, make haste) —
But for a child, what piece of work is here!
I really, madam, wonder at your taste
(Come, sir, get in) — my master must be near:
There, for the present, at the least, he’s fast,
And if we can but till the morning keep
Our counsel — (Juan, mind, you must not sleep).”
CLXXIII
Now, Don Alfonso entering, but alone,
Closed the oration of the trusty maid:
She loiter’d, and he told her to be gone,
An order somewhat sullenly obey’d;
However, present remedy was none,
And no great good seem’d answer’d if she stay’d:
Regarding both with slow and sidelong view,
She snuff’d the candle, curtsied, and withdrew.
CLXXIV
Alfonso paused a minute — then begun
Some strange excuses for his late proceeding;
He would not justify what he had done,
To say the best, it was extreme ill-breeding;
But there were ample reasons for it, none
Of which he specified in this his pleading:
His speech was a fine sample, on the whole,
Of rhetoric, which the learn’d call “rigmarole.”
CLXXV
Julia said nought; though all the while there rose
A ready answer, which at once enables
A matron, who her husband’s foible knows,
By a few timely words to turn the tables,
Which, if it does not silence, still must pose, —
Even if it should comprise a pack of fables;
‘T is to retort with firmness, and when he
Suspects with one, do you reproach with three.
CLXXVI
Julia, in fact, had tolerable grounds, —
Alfonso’s loves with Inez were well known,
But whether ‘t was that one’s own guilt confounds —
But that can’t be, as has been often shown,
A lady with apologies abounds; —
It might be that her silence sprang alone
From delicacy to Don Juan’s ear,
To whom she knew his mother’s fame was dear.
CLXXVII
There might be one more motive, which makes two;
Alfonso ne’er to Juan had alluded, —
Mention’d his jealousy but never who
Had been the happy lover, he concluded,
Conceal’d amongst his premises; ‘t is true,
His mind the more o’er this its mystery brooded;
To speak of Inez now were, one may say,
Like throwing Juan in Alfonso’s way.
CLXXVIII
A hint, in tender cases, is enough;
Silence is best, besides there is a tact —
(That modern phrase appears to me sad stuff,
But it will serve to keep my verse compact) —
Which keeps, when push’d by questions rather rough,
A lady always distant from the fact:
The charming creatures lie with such a grace,
There’s nothing so becoming to the face.
CLXXIX
They blush, and we believe them; at least I
Have always done so; ‘t is of no great use,
In any case, attempting a reply,
For then their eloquence grows quite profuse;
And when at length they ‘re out of breath, they sigh,
And cast their languid eyes down, and let loose
A tear or two, and then we make it up;
And then — and then — and then — sit down and sup.
CLXXX
Alfonso closed his speech, and begg’d her pardon,
Which Julia half withheld, and then half granted,
And laid conditions he thought very hard on,
Denying several little things he wanted:
He stood like Adam lingering near his garden,
With useless penitence perplex’d and haunted,
Beseeching she no further would refuse,
When, lo! he stumbled o’er a pair of shoes.
CLXXXI
A pair of shoes! — what then? not much, if they
Are such as fit with ladies’ feet, but these
(No one can tell how much I grieve to say)
Were masculine; to see them, and to seize,
Was but a moment’s act. — Ah! well-a-day!
My teeth begin to chatter, my veins freeze —
Alfonso first examined well their fashion,
And then flew out into another passion.
CLXXXII
He left the room for his relinquish’d sword,
And Julia instant to the closet flew.
“Fly, Juan, fly! for heaven’s sake — not a word —
The door is open — you may yet slip through
The passage you so often have explored —
Here is the garden-key — Fly — fly — Adieu!
Haste — haste! I hear Alfonso’s hurrying feet —
Day has not broke — there’s no one in the street:”
CLXXXIII
None can say that this was not good advice,
The only mischief was, it came too late;
Of all experience ‘t is the usual price,
A sort of income-tax laid on by fate:
Juan had reach’d the room-door in a trice,
And might have done so by the garden-gate,
But met Alfonso in his dressing-gown,
Who threaten’d death — so Juan knock’d him down.
CLXXXIV
Dire was the scuffle, and out went the light;
Antonia cried out “Rape!” and Julia “Fire!”
But not a servant stirr’d to aid
the fight.
Alfonso, pommell’d to his heart’s desire,
Swore lustily he’d be revenged this night;
And Juan, too, blasphemed an octave higher;
His blood was up: though young, he was a Tartar,
And not at all disposed to prove a martyr.
CLXXXV
Alfonso’s sword had dropp’d ere he could draw it,
And they continued battling hand to hand,
For Juan very luckily ne’er saw it;
His temper not being under great command,
If at that moment he had chanced to claw it,
Alfonso’s days had not been in the land
Much longer. — Think of husbands’, lovers’ lives!
And how ye may be doubly widows — wives!
CLXXXVI
Alfonso grappled to detain the foe,
And Juan throttled him to get away,
And blood (‘t was from the nose) began to flow;
At last, as they more faintly wrestling lay,
Juan contrived to give an awkward blow,
And then his only garment quite gave way;
He fled, like Joseph, leaving it; but there,
I doubt, all likeness ends between the pair.
CLXXXVII
Lights came at length, and men, and maids, who found
An awkward spectacle their eyes before;
Antonia in hysterics, Julia swoon’d,
Alfonso leaning, breathless, by the door;
Some half-torn drapery scatter’d on the ground,
Some blood, and several footsteps, but no more:
Juan the gate gain’d, turn’d the key about,
And liking not the inside, lock’d the out.
CLXXXVIII
Here ends this canto. — Need I sing, or say,
How Juan naked, favour’d by the night,
Who favours what she should not, found his way,
And reach’d his home in an unseemly plight?
The pleasant scandal which arose next day,
The nine days’ wonder which was brought to light,
And how Alfonso sued for a divorce,
Were in the English newspapers, of course.
CLXXXIX
If you would like to see the whole proceedings,
The depositions, and the cause at full,
The names of all the witnesses, the pleadings
Of counsel to nonsuit, or to annul,
There’s more than one edition, and the readings
Are various, but they none of them are dull;
The best is that in short-hand ta’en by Gurney,
Who to Madrid on purpose made a journey.
CXC
But Donna Inez, to divert the train
Of one of the most circulating scandals
That had for centuries been known in Spain,
At least since the retirement of the Vandals,
First vow’d (and never had she vow’d in vain)