Don Félix disappears, and Felismena continues her search
DianaDon Félix’s disappearance turns Felismena’s devotion into a prolonged search: after Celia’s death, he vanishes without telling his servants or anyone else where he has gone. Felismena adopts a shepherdess’s dress and looks for him across many places for more than two years, until her wandering brings her to the three nymphs to whom she tells her story.
The Disappearance
Don Félix vanishes on the very night Celia dies. The timing follows his profound grief at her death: his lament, tears, and sighs are described as beyond measure, and then he is gone from his house. Neither his servants nor anyone else can say where he has gone. The account establishes the disappearance through its suddenness and the failure of those around him to trace him, rather than explaining where he went or why he left.
Felismena’s Search
Unable to find Don Félix despite considerable effort, Felismena decides to leave her natural attire and take on the dress of a shepherdess. She travels through many places looking for him and has been doing so for more than two years by the time she recounts the search. Her disguise is therefore not a brief expedient: it marks an extended life organized around seeking the missing man.
The search remains unresolved in her account. Felismena says that fortune has prevented her from finding Don Félix, even as it has brought her to an occasion when she can render a small service to the nymphs. Her wandering thus has two concurrent results: it fails, so far, to deliver the person she seeks, but it places her among new companions and gives her a chance to help them.
The Story Told to the Nymphs
Felismena relates these events to three nymphs after they have encountered one another in the forest. The nymphs had been seated among golden flowers, dressed in white garments embroidered with gold foliage; pearls fastened their hair, and each wore a golden eagle holding a diamond. Their concerted playing and singing provides the setting for Felismena’s account, which shifts the scene from their music to the history of her loss and pursuit.
The nymphs respond with astonishment at Felismena’s constancy and pity for the tears and sighs with which she tells her love story. Their reaction makes the search more than a report of travel: it reveals the emotional cost of a journey prolonged by absence, while leaving its central practical question open. Don Félix remains missing, and Felismena has not yet found him.
