Exemplary Novels by Miguel De Cervantes

Author:Miguel De Cervantes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2016-01-07T16:00:00+00:00

THE NOVEL OF THE JEALOUS EXTREMADURAN

Not many years ago a gentleman, born of noble parents, left a village in Extremadura and, like a second Prodigal Son, traveled through Spain, Italy, and Flanders, spending in this way both years and riches; and after many travels, his parents already dead and his patrimony spent, he came to the great city of Sevilla, where he found ample opportunity to finish consuming the little he had left. Finding himself so lacking in money, and not yet possessing many friends, he resorted to the remedy used by many others who had been lost in that city, which is to sail to the Indies, refuge and shelter to the desperate of Spain, church to swindlers, deliverance to murderers, shield and protection to the gamblers called ciertos by experts in the art of marking cards, general snare to unattached women, and personal solution to very few.

In brief, after a time a fleet was leaving for Tierra Firme, and having reached an agreement with the admiral, he assembled his possessions and his straw-mat shroud, and embarking in Cádiz, having finished with Spain, the fleet set sail, and to widespread joy unfurled its sails to a gentle, favorable wind that in a few hours hid the land from sight and revealed the broad, spacious plains of the great father of waters, the Ocean Sea.

Our passenger was pensive, turning over in his memory the many different dangers he had faced and the bad judgment he had used in the course of his life, and as a result of this self-examination, he made a firm resolution to change the way he lived, manage differently the goods that God was pleased to grant him, and proceed with more prudence where women were concerned.

The fleet was in a dead calm when this storm broke over Felipo de Carrizales, for this is the name of the man who has provided the material for our tale. When the wind blew again, it impelled the ships forward with so much force that no one was left in his place; and so Carrizales was obliged to leave his imaginings and begin to face the concerns of the voyage, which was so successful that, with no reversals or sudden changes in the wind, they reached the port of Cartagena. And to conclude with everything that does not contribute to our purposes, I say that Filipo’s age when he went to the Indies was forty-eight, and in the twenty years he spent there, aided by his ability and perseverance, he acquired more than one hundred fifty thousand pesos in ingots of unadulterated silver.

Finding himself rich and prosperous, and touched by the natural desire that everyone has to return to his homeland, he postponed important business transactions that had been offered to him, left Perú, where he had acquired all his wealth, which he carried in ingots of gold and silver, registered it to avoid difficulties, and returned to Spain. He disembarked in Sanlúcar, arrived in Sevilla, as full of

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