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"So I think too," replied Vivaldo, "and I would delay not to say a day, but four, for the sake of seeing it." Don Quixote asked them what it was they had heard of Marcela and Chrysostom.
Señor Vivaldo thought it would be a great pity to do away with such beautiful verses, and he pleaded with Ambrosio against their consignment to oblivion. As he was speaking, he reached out his hand for some of the papers that were close to him, and Ambrosio considerately permitted him to keep them. The remaining ones were burned.
One of those on horseback addressing his companion said to him, "It seems to me, Senor Vivaldo, that we may reckon as well spent the delay we shall incur in seeing this remarkable funeral, for remarkable it cannot but be judging by the strange things these shepherds have told us, of both the dead shepherd and homicide shepherdess."
"We should like to know her lineage, race, and ancestry," said Vivaldo.
They closed the grave with a heavy stone until a slab was ready which Ambrosio said he meant to have prepared, with an epitaph which was to be to this effect: They then strewed upon the grave a profusion of flowers and branches, and all expressing their condolence with his friend ambrosio, took their Vivaldo and his companion did the same; and Don Quixote bade farewell to his hosts and to the travellers, who pressed him to come with them to Seville, as being such a convenient place for finding adventures, for they presented themselves in every street and round every corner oftener than anywhere else.
By these words of his the travellers were able to satisfy themselves of Don Quixote's being out of his senses and of the form of madness that overmastered him, at which they felt the same astonishment that all felt on first becoming acquainted with it; and Vivaldo, who was a person of great shrewdness and of a lively temperament, in order to beguile the short journey which they said was required to reach the mountain, the scene of the burial, sought to give him an opportunity of going on with his absurdities.
The instant they heard this all set him down as mad, and the better to settle the point and discover what kind of madness his was, Vivaldo proceeded to ask him what knights-errant meant.
Señor Vivaldo glanced through the papers eagerly and read the title "Lay of Despair." When Ambrosio heard this, he asked him to read the words aloud that all those assembled might hear the last verses of the dead shepherd. And while Señor Vivaldo spoke the despairing lines, some of the shepherds were digging the grave for their friend.
"I will do so very willingly," said Vivaldo; and as all the bystanders were equally eager they gathered round him, and he, reading in a loud voice, found that it ran as follows.
Señor Vivaldo had finished the last verse and was about to glance through the rest of the papers he had saved from the fire, when suddenly on the summit of the rock by the grave he saw a most glorious apparition. It was no other than Marcela, the shepherdess, and every-one was aghast at her presence. The moment Ambrosio saw her, he became indignant beyond words and commanded her to leave.
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