The Pilgrim of Castile; or, El Pelegrino in Su Patria

by Lope de Vega

Whilst the sad and afflicted Celio entered into France by the mountains of Jaca to see if he could find his dear Finia, our pilgrim Pamphilus having gotten out of the prison, as a madman whose fury was over, was admitted to the table where others did eat, where also sat his fair Nisa; near unto whom he did always endeavour to sit, and there and in all other convenient places he told her his fortunes. She blamed him for putting himself into this place, although she did acknowledge how she was tied unto him, for this his great folly.

Pamphilus as a true lover, who only aimed at the end of his love, which was to marry her, and who had sworn by a thousand oaths to resist the violence of his desires until a lawful marriage would suffer him to accomplish them, said unto her in comforting her, that if she had suffered this misery for him, and that they ought to be all one, there was no reason but he should have his part of this misery, to the end that equal in all things, their marriage might be without advantage of one side or another, and that his love unto her did prevail so far as not to let pass one day without seeing her, notwithstanding any danger, and although his honour were thereby in hazard. The servants of the house did not hinder their speaking together, because that Nisa being apparelled like a man, and having a care that her hair should not reveal her sex, everybody did believe that she was as she seemed to be. For although that her beauty were extreme, yet the world hath not any so great, but it appeareth little, being much neglected; especially seeing that if art do not polish the beautifullest and finest diamonds, and that they be not set in gold with enamelling and other necessary ornaments, they show not the lustre, grace nor beauty which they have being artificially cut and set in a foil by cunning workmen.

The misery of this kind of life seemed unto our two lovers as nothing in regard of the former travails which they had suffered, as I have heard it often said by many: and I myself know by experience that if two lovers may see and speak together, they have no feeling of the miseries which do serve them as means to attain thereunto. Oh what will not those which love resolve of! What is it, which doth not seem possible unto them? What travails can weary them? And what dangers can make them fear? O love strong as death: seeing that a lover living in that which he loves, and being dead in himself, hath no more feeling of torment then a body deprived of a soul. With what tears were these two separated at night, by the cruel officers of this prison? (If it be cruelty to deal rigorously with mad folks) with what care and languishment did they attend the day that they might see one the other? What discreet follies did they utter in public, full of equivocations to deceive those who heard them, and to divert the evils which they suffered? And with what amorous discourses did they in particular warm their desires to marry? How much doth he commend Nisa’s virtue, and the chaste but loving defence which she made of her honour, for Pamphilus being a man had yielded often unto his passion, if she had not moderated his violence? With what grace they gave madly, favours one unto another, of the wildest things they could find upon the ground, which Pamphilus stuck in his hat, instead of jewels or feathers which he was wont to wear. But fortune envying their contentedness, even in this misery, would not let them live in this place at rest, but arming himself anew against them, even at that time when as they thought (by Jacinth's help) to get out of that prison, there came unto this city an Italian earl, of the house of Aguilora, called Emilio, who desiring to have a Fool with him, promised a great alms unto their house if they would give him a madman, who having lost his fury might entertain him with sport. Those of the hospital failed not to promise him one, and withal to bring him to his lodging some of their most peaceable madmen, amongst whom were the pilgrim Pamphilus and the fair Nisa. The Earl joyful to see them, inquired of their keepers their conditions, one of whom answered thus:

This man strong and able who you see there, was sometimes a brave soldier, who having served upon many occasions like a Hector, desired the reward of his valour which he had merited above all other. But he finding himself denied, and that it was given unto the cowardliest fellow in the army, fell from this imagination into so profound a melancholy, that he lost his wits. He hath lost his fury in the prison although oftentimes it returns. His discourse is always of marshalling an army, of besieging a fort, of lodging a camp, or causing it to march. All is sluices, dykes, trenches, platforms, ravelins, casemates, flankers, palisadoes, counterscarps, squadrons, cannons, muskets, pistols, corselets, pikes. This weak and pale man is of another humour, who having given himself too much to the study of philosophy, lost his understanding. Of this man the Earl demanded, which was the Primum Mobile, either Coelum Imperium, or Coelum Crystallinum? unto whom the madman answered thus:

"After moving the spheres by a local motion, the divines do teach us that there is another heaven perpetually in rest from all motion, created from the beginning, and full of an innumerable thousands of intelligences and of happy spirits, which were created together in it and with it. In such sort as the mingled bodies are accustomed to engender some things in inferior places, as fishes in the water, birds in the air and the vegetative creatures, plants and minerals in the earth. This heaven for its greatness and for its inestimable light, is called Imperial, as who should say Fiery (not for the natural property of fire, but for the glorious clearness wherewith it shineth) is the throne destined before the constitution of the world, and as a royal palace ordained from the beginning, for all those who are to reign before the face of God, the light whereof is so lustrous and clear, that the corporal eyes cannot behold or look upon it, no more than the birds of the night can the sun."

All the assistants remaining astonished at this discourse, another one of the madmen began to cry, calling his dogs, and luring his hawks like the great falconer and huntsman as he had been; of whom, as the Earl began to laugh, Pamphilus said thus unto him; you ought not mock at this exercise, but at those who exercise it unorderly and untimely, without respecting either season or place: for according to Xenophon and Athenaeus, hunting was famous amongst the Persians. Homer said it was practised amongst the Greeks that thereby their young men might become hardier; for as Horace writes, the Hunter often lies abroad in the cold night without remembering his wife. Philon the Hebrew tells notable things of hunting, in his Preface unto his Warfare. Cicero says no less, in his book of The Nature of the Gods. And Peter Gregory says that the original thereof, was in the beginning of the world to the end that men should be able to free themselves from the persecutions of beasts. If hunting, replied the Earl, (who was a man of great knowledge) had not passed from the honest exercise (the imitation of war) unto that of pleasure, who would doubt of the excellence thereof? But in regard of the hurt it doth in the fields, and the expense which it brings unto him who follows it? Louis the Twelfth King of France justly forbade it: for what else is the meaning of the fable of Actaeon, devoured by his dogs, but that overmuch hunting wastes both goods and life? And passing by many other things, which might be gathered from this verse of Virgil, where he says, Aeneas and sad Dido went a-hunting together in a wood: joined also the dangers of life which cannot be told, neither is it to be wondered at, that this man became mad, seeing that as Dion assureth the same exercise made the Emperor Adrian a fool. Then answered the mad hunter, that with more reason should he be laid in this place for a madman, because he would persuade madmen, and reason with them who had no reason.

The discourse of this madman, said the Earl savouring nothing of madness, obliges me to answer: for a man must fight with those who give occasion, play with such as have money, and answer unto everyone in the same manner he speaks. But if all the madmen in Spain were as you, and that my children should remain there, I should rather desire to have them ignorant than learned; know said the fool that if it were possible a man should desire to be born in France, to live in Italy and to die in Spain, to be born for the nobleness of the French, who always have had their king of their own nation, and never mingled with any other; to live, for the liberty and felicity of Italy: and to die for the Catholic faith which is so certain in all Spain. And as concerning your children, whatsoever happens of it, suffer them not to live in ignorance; for there is less danger in being mad, than in being ignorant. Whilst this man spoke, another singing near to him let the Earl know that music had brought him to that estate, for it is said; that it is a kinswoman to poetry: the ancients said the madmen have comprised music amongst the liberal sciences. Aristotle in his Politics, Budeus in his Commentary upon the Greek tongue and Caelius the Rhodian do say that music is a mixture compounded of sounds sweet, flat and sharp. Plutarch in the life of Homer puts one voice flat and the other sharp, the flat voice proceeds from within and the sharp from the area of the mouth, and from their divers tempering make the harmony; the object of the hearing is the sound, and the reflection of the air, as Galen teaches; and the sound is made from the act of some one thing into another, by the means of the stroke which causes it: two bodies are required to make a sound, because that one cannot do it. The echo is an air struck into hollow places, which resisting the stroke of the voice, return the same words which are spoken. So say Themiserus, Pliny, Ovid and Macrobius in his Saturnales. The voice and the word are not one thing, the word holds the ground from the tongue helped by the nostrils, the lips and the teeth: and the instruments of the voice are the throat, the muscles which move, and the nerves which come down from the brain. Who was the first inventor of music? asked the Earl. The madman answered, Josephus said that it was Tubal, Adam's nephew, although that others give the invention to Mercury, as Gregory Gerand: and Philostratus said that Mercury learned it from Orpheus and Amphion. But Eusebius attributes it to Dionysus. Then asked the Earl, into how many parts music was divided? The madman answered, according to Boetius, into the theoretical and the practical, be it either natural, artificial, celestial or human; the natural and celestial is that which is considered in the harmony of all the parts of the world: the human is that which treats of the proportions of the body and of the soul, and their parts: for Plato, Pythagoras and Architas have thought that the motions and conversions of the stars cannot be without music. And Vitruvius is of the opinion that buildings are not framed without music. Leaving celestial and human, there follows artificial, divided into musical organs and Instruments.

Thereupon the other madmen began to put in practice that whereof he only showed the theory, and began to make such a noise with confused and discording voices, that it was impossible to understand them. But being appeased, he who kept the madmen made great account unto the Earle of a mad astrologer, who by the contemplation of such high things was fallen into this abasement. Hardly had the Earl looked upon him, when he began to tell him that the composition and figure of the world in its form was called a sphere which was solid, and that passing through the middle, the poles were placed in the extremes or vertical points immovable: one made the North on this side of the Bear, and from the stars of that part of heaven called Aquila, Boreal or Arctic; The other which was opposite by diameter was called Antarctic and meridional; there was he interrupted by others, who would not let him proceed, and after it was not possible to appease them, although there were a great many more painters, poets and mathematicians, but above all there was an alchemist, a famous disciple of Raymundus Lullius.

At this time Emilio had fixed his eyes upon Nisa, and beholding the sadness with which she was silent, he demanded of the Master the humour of this mad creature? Who answered him, that love had brought him to his folly. Her delicate face, and the occasion of her evil, gave him at the same time desire and compassion with such affection, that agreeing with the Master at the price of a hundred crowns, he made choice of her from amongst all the other to lead her into Italy. But hardly had Pamphilus seen the effects of this election, when as his fury increasing truly, which was before but feigned, he struck, he bit and took on, as if he had been enraged against those who took his dear Nisa away. But they being a great many against him alone, the Earl took her from the house, and shortly after from Valencia. And Pamphilus tied up as a madman, was had back again with many grievous blows, bewailing bitterly the loss of his dear Nisa. And by how much he endeavoured to make the officers believe that he was not mad, by so much the more he persuaded them that he was not well in his wits: because being oppressed with grief he told them plainly that he had caused himself to be brought thither only to see this young mad creature, whom they had accounted to be a man, but indeed was a woman and his wife, whom he had concealed under this habit for fear of her father, from whom he had stolen her away.

But they were so confirmed in their opinion of his madness, that by those reasons whereby he did think they were tied to give him his liberty, he made them more obstinate to refuse him, until they might have more evident tokens of the tranquillity of his mind. Whilst he did complain to see that it served him to no purpose to tell the truth, which of all things in the world doth most enrage a man, and that in regard of Jacinth's absence, he could not tell unto whom to have recourse. The unfortunate Nisa was meanwhile come to Barcelona, with so much sorrow and tears that Emilio already repented that he had bought her: inasmuch as there is nothing more unprofitable than a sad fool. The Earl embarked, not knowing that she whom he led with him had the fortune of Scianus' horse, which cost his masters their lives: He endeavoured to rejoice Nisa, causing her to sit at his table, to make her eat meat, because it was told him that she would famish herself to death, where earnestly beholding her face, and considering her actions, he did suspect, that she was neither mad, nor a man: He let this day pass over, and the next day he was assured of both; Inasmuch as so great a sadness could not be feigned; and that Nisa’s reserved speech and the modesty of her looks declared openly that which upon other occasions she had hidden with so much care; Emilio being then persuaded that this mad creature was a woman, or at the least having evident tokens thereof, inquired with great care of her sadness, using her as a gentlewoman, and with respect due unto her sex. Nisa who had now neither care to disguise herself nor to live, confessed she was a woman, and would not be comforted by Emilio’s words: but Emilio, who the more he conversed with her the more was engaged in her love, in the end suffered himself to be vanquished in her beauty: for Nisa now ceasing to appear as a man captivated all those who beheld her with her marvellous grace. Love then began to make himself master over Emilio through pity, which is the cloak under which it enters into our minds; as the pill under gold, that the bitterness may not offend: and his passion increased so far as to desire to know her evil and to procure her remedy. But neither for any effect of love, nor hope of remedy that he could give her would Nisa witness any feeling of pleasure, or obligation to him: all which served to sharpen Emilio's desires, which he did make appear with greater demonstrations: whereat Nisa being grieved, endeavoured to divert him from her love, conjuring him with tears that he would not lead her in this indecent habit. The Earl being courteous offered her other clothes, but she assured him that she had made a vow never to wear any but pilgrim's habit, until she had seen the Patron of Spain in Galicia. Emilio nevertheless did make her one of serge, and the pilgrim being new clothed appeared more beautiful, there being no new apparel which doth not embellish, nor so poor a habit new which doth not enrich a well-proportioned body.