Читать книгу The Wanderings of Persiles and Sigismunda - Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra - Страница 23

CHAPTER XIV.

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Some Account of the two Persons who came in Chains.

I omit this chapter, as it is quite unnecessary for the story, and an absurd relation concerning the two prisoners who came in the English ship with Maurice. The woman, who is called Rosamund, is a very abandoned and wicked person; and at last, in consequence of the excessive infamy of her conduct, she has been sentenced to banishment, and ordered to be set on shore on a desert island, in company with Clodio, a man, whose crimes do not appear to be of a nature that would have brought him to punishment in the present day. "I have," says he, "a certain satirical spirit, and a backbiting one, a ready pen, and a free tongue, I delight in malicious wit, and for a bon mot, would sacrifice, not only one friend, but a hundred. Prisons could never silence my tongue, nor exile move me; threats could not intimidate, nor punishment mend me."

He thought being chained in company with Rosamund, the worst part of his sentence, and declared that death would have been preferable; whilst she, on her side, assures him, that she would have thrown herself into the sea to escape from him, had she not been deterred by the reflection, that she must have carried him into the other world with her, which would greatly increase her punishment there. "Far better," said she, "had it pleased the king to take away my life in my own country, than to make me expiate my crimes by the wounds thy tongue inflicts at every step, and from which not even angels or saints are safe."