Don Félix and Celia's Love Affair

Don Félix and Celia’s love affair is shaped from the outset by the love that precedes it: Don Félix has left Felismena behind in his homeland, and at court he serves Celia while insisting that his new attachment is genuine. Their relationship unfolds through letters and intermediaries rather than uncomplicated exchange. Its central irony is that Felismena, disguised as the page Valerio, helps Don Félix court Celia even as Celia falls in love with the very person carrying his messages. Celia’s sudden death ends the exchange, and Don Félix disappears that same night.

A New Attachment at Court

When Felismena first sees Don Félix at court, he arrives surrounded by richly dressed attendants and wearing a livery of blue, white, and yellow. She learns from Fabio that the colors belong to Celia, the lady Don Félix serves. Fabio adds that Don Félix had previously served another woman in his homeland and had been more favored by her than he is by Celia; absence, he observes, can undo what seems secure. Felismena recognizes herself in this account but conceals her distress. She gives her name as Valerio and accepts the opportunity to become Don Félix’s page.

After about a month, Don Félix confides the history of his relationship with Celia to Valerio. He says that she treated him well at first but later grew tired of favoring him, apparently after hearing of his former love. He admits that he began the courtship as a diversion while attending to business at court, yet claims that he now loves Celia deeply. The admission establishes the affair’s uneven beginning: Celia has reason to doubt him, and his declaration of present devotion follows an acknowledged period of insincerity. Felismena must hear this defense from the man who once loved her, while keeping her own identity and feelings hidden.

Letters, Suspicion, and the Former Love

Celia’s letter makes the conflict explicit. She tells Don Félix that his confession of earlier love has given her grounds to trust her suspicions more than his denials. She also warns that a woman who becomes the occasion for a knight to lose himself may not be the last such occasion. Her response turns his past into evidence against his present assurances: if another woman was displaced for Celia, Celia fears that she too may be displaced.

Don Félix asks Valerio to judge the letter and advise him. Felismena counsels him not to divide his thoughts between a new passion and the first love, which she argues deserves consideration. Don Félix replies that absence cooled his earlier attachment and inflamed the new one. Felismena answers that if absence can command a love so completely, the first woman has been deceived. Her advice is both an appeal to constancy and an indirect judgment on the harm Don Félix has done to her. Yet she still takes his letter to Celia, making herself the instrument of a courtship that contradicts her own interests.

Felismena as Intermediary

When Felismena visits Celia, Celia is visibly unsettled by the page’s appearance and asks how Valerio came to court and entered Don Félix’s service. Felismena praises Celia while presenting herself as a loyal messenger, and asks her to answer Don Félix’s letter. Celia agrees to respond, but makes clear that her favor is owed to Valerio, not to Don Félix. Felismena returns with the answer, and Don Félix is delighted; for her, carrying the reply is another wound inflicted through her own service.

Celia’s attraction to Valerio deepens the entanglement. For more than two months, she conceals her feelings, though Felismena comes to understand them and hopes they might weaken Celia’s attachment to Don Félix. Instead, Celia’s love makes Felismena’s role more painful. She continues to carry messages and plead for Don Félix, sometimes even inventing messages to spare him distress. When other servants deliver his requests, Celia receives them badly, so Don Félix increasingly relies on Valerio alone. The apparent privilege of being his trusted page thus binds Felismena more tightly to the task of sustaining his relationship with another woman.

Misrecognition and Rupture

Celia eventually concludes that Valerio’s pleas for Don Félix are sincere. Until then, she had believed the page requested favors chiefly to secure opportunities to see her; now she takes the service to Don Félix as proof that Valerio does not love her. She feels betrayed by the person for whom she has been setting aside her attachment to Don Félix and orders Valerio not to appear before her again. She also tells the page to warn Don Félix that he must not see her if he wants her to remain alive.

Felismena cannot stop Celia from withdrawing behind a closed door. She tells Don Félix that Celia was occupied with a visitor, concealing what has happened. The following morning, the court learns that Celia suffered a fainting fit during the night and died. Don Félix grieves with uncountable laments, tears, and sighs; Felismena is caught between sorrow for Celia and the pain of witnessing his grief. On that same night Don Félix disappears from his house, and neither his servants nor anyone else knows where he has gone.

The Affair’s Significance

The affair turns the language of fidelity into a test of conduct. Don Félix presents his change of attachment as something caused by absence, while Felismena insists that love vulnerable to absence cannot excuse abandoning the first beloved. Celia, in turn, reads the history of Felismena as a warning about her own security. Their letters and conversations make each new promise answerable to an earlier betrayal, but no shared knowledge allows the three figures to interpret one another accurately.

The disguise intensifies that failure of recognition. As Valerio, Felismena can be trusted with Don Félix’s confidences and welcomed by Celia, but only by hiding the history that would explain the emotional cost of her service. She becomes both messenger and silent witness, carrying one lover’s words to another while Celia directs affection toward her assumed identity. Celia’s death ends the courtship abruptly; Don Félix’s unexplained disappearance leaves its final consequences unresolved.