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Updated: June 19, 2025
The girls sat on one side of the hall, chaperoned by their mothers or some old duennas, and the men on the other. When the music struck up each man asked the lady whom his eyes had already selected to dance with him, and it was not etiquette for her to refuse no engagements being allowed before the music began.
My virtue needs no more protection from etiquette than that of any other woman. Heretofore the Queens of France have been nothing but Marionettes in the hands of their high-born duennas.
On the moss-covered rocks sat groups of young ladies, guarded by their amiable mothers or discreet duennas, as the case might be, trying hard not to see any of the young gentlemen who lounged about in the same vicinity; and young gentlemen prowled about puffing cigars as if they didn't care a straw whether the young ladies looked at them or not both being, of course, according to the established usages of society, natural enemies of each other.
The duke and duchess were extremely glad to see how readily Don Quixote fell in with their scheme; but at this moment Sancho observed, "I hope this senora duenna won't be putting any difficulties in the way of the promise of my government; for I have heard a Toledo apothecary, who talked like a goldfinch, say that where duennas were mixed up nothing good could happen.
Don Quixote was now feeling the necessity for his mid-day nap, and begged to be permitted to retire. Sancho wanted to do the same, and remarked to the Duchess that he usually slept about four or five hours in the middle of a warm summer day; but upon her earnest request he promised her to try to wake up after an hour and come and visit with her and her duennas.
Cide Hamete, the painstaking investigator of the minute points of this veracious history, says that when Dona Rodriguez left her own room to go to Don Quixote's, another duenna who slept with her observed her, and as all duennas are fond of prying, listening, and sniffing, she followed her so silently that the good Rodriguez never perceived it; and as soon as the duenna saw her enter Don Quixote's room, not to fail in a duenna's invariable practice of tattling, she hurried off that instant to report to the duchess how Dona Rodriguez was closeted with Don Quixote.
In rural neighborhoods where there are no grooms, and where a young lady and gentleman go off for a drive unattended, they have thrown Old-World etiquette out of the window, and must make a new etiquette of their own. Propriety, mutual respect, and American chivalry have done for women what all the surveillance of Spanish duennas and of French etiquette has done for the young girl of Europe.
His wife either is there with him, or perhaps she prefers a different house, and frequents it alone. His sons and daughters are left to manage matters as they best can. The sons, therefore, frequent their favourite caffés, whilst the daughters remain confined under the care of their bonnes or duennas.
Having sentenced them thus, he summoned all the duennas in the castle, charging them with the responsibility of the evil match, and saying that since he did not wish them to suffer death, he would punish them in some other way.
"For all that," said Sancho, "there's so much to be clipped about duennas, so my barber said, that 'it will be better not to stir the rice even though it sticks."
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