"Such, sirs, is the dismal story of my misfortune: say if it be one that

can be told with less emotion than you have seen in me; and do not

trouble yourselves with urging or pressing upon me what reason suggests

as likely to serve for my relief, for it will avail me as much as the

medicine prescribed by a wise physician avails the sick man who will not

take it. I have no wish for health without Luscinda; and since it is her

pleasure to be another's, when she is or should be mine, let it be mine

to be a prey to misery when I might have enjoyed happiness. She by her

fickleness strove to make my ruin irretrievable; I will strive to gratify

her wishes by seeking destruction; and it will show generations to come

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that I alone was deprived of that of which all others in misfortune have

a superabundance, for to them the impossibility of being consoled is

itself a consolation, while to me it is the cause of greater sorrows and

sufferings, for I think that even in death there will not be an end of

them."

Here Cardenio brought to a close his long discourse and story, as full of

misfortune as it was of love; but just as the curate was going to address

some words of comfort to him, he was stopped by a voice that reached his

ear, saying in melancholy tones what will be told in the Fourth Part of

this narrative; for at this point the sage and sagacious historian, Cide

Hamete Benengeli, brought the Third to a conclusion.




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