Miguel Cervantes

THE HISTORY OF DON QUIXOTE DE LA MANCHA
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CHAPTER LXIX.

Wherein the Countess Trifaldi continues her stupendous and memorable history.

[Pg 308] Every word uttered by Sancho was the cause of much delight to the duchess, and disgust to Don Quixote, who having commanded him to hold his peace, the Afflicted went on. "After many questions and answers," said she, "the infanta stood firm to her engagement, without varying a tittle from her first declaration; the vicar therefore confirmed their union as lawful man and wife, which so affected the Queen Donna Maguncia, mother to the Infanta Antonomasia, that three days after we buried her." "She died then, I suppose," quoth Sancho. "Assuredly," replied the squire Trifaldin; "in Candaya we do not bury the living, but the dead." "Nevertheless," said Sancho, "it has happened before now, that people only in a swoon have been buried for dead; and methinks Queen Maguncia ought rather to have swooned than died in good earnest; for while there is life there is hope; and the young lady's offence was not so much out of the way that her mother should have taken it so to heart. Had she married one of her pages, or some serving-man of the family, as I have been told many have done, it would have been a bad business and past cure; but as she made choice of a well-bred young cavalier of such good parts,—faith and troth, though mayhap it was foolish, it was no such mighty matter; for, as my master says, bishops are made out of learned men, and why may not kings and emperors be made out of cavaliers, especially if they be errant?" "Thou art in the right, Sancho," said Don Quixote; "for a knight-errant, with but two grains of good luck, is next in the order of promotion to the greatest lord in the world. But let the afflicted lady proceed; for I fancy the bitter part of this hitherto sweet story is still behind." "Bitter!" answered the countess, "ay, and so bitter that, in comparison, wormwood is sweet and rue savoury!

"The queen being really dead, and not in a swoon, we buried her; and scarcely had we covered her with earth and pronounced the last farewell, when—'Quis talia fando temperet a lacrymis?'—lo, upon the queen's sepulchre, who should appear, mounted on a wooden horse, but her cousin-german the giant Malambruno! Yes, that cruel necromancer came expressly to revenge the death of his cousin, and to chastise the presumptuous Don Clavijo and the foolish Antonomasia, both of whom, (...)

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