DON QUIXOTE

Back Forward Menu

night, and tempted by the stillness to give vent to my grief without
apprehension or fear of being heard or seen, then I broke silence and
lifted up my voice in maledictions upon Luscinda and Don Fernando, as if
I could thus avenge the wrong they had done me. I called her cruel,
ungrateful, false, thankless, but above all covetous, since the wealth of
my enemy had blinded the eyes of her affection, and turned it from me to
transfer it to one to whom fortune had been more generous and liberal.
And yet, in the midst of this outburst of execration and upbraiding, I
found excuses for her, saying it was no wonder that a young girl in the
seclusion of her parents' house, trained and schooled to obey them
always, should have been ready to yield to their wishes when they offered
her for a husband a gentleman of such distinction, wealth, and noble
birth, that if she had refused to accept him she would have been thought
out of her senses, or to have set her affection elsewhere, a suspicion
injurious to her fair name and fame. But then again, I said, had she
declared I was her husband, they would have seen that in choosing me she
had not chosen so ill but that they might excuse her, for before Don