Don Félix's Infatuation with Celia

Don Félix’s infatuation with Celia is the intervening attachment that leads him to forget Felismena and become answerable for the hurt he caused her. Its significance lies not in a detailed account of a courtship, which the available narration does not provide, but in the contrast between his admitted change of affection and Felismena’s enduring love—and in the remorse and reconciliation that follow.

Place in Don Félix’s Story

The account of this attachment comes into focus after Felismena has rescued Don Félix from three attacking knights. He has been badly wounded, and Dorida brings two vessels: water from a silver vessel restores him from his faint, while water from a golden vessel heals the wounds inflicted by the knights and the suffering attributed to his love for Celia. The scene makes his infatuation part of a larger crisis in which physical injury, past betrayal, and the possibility of renewed love converge.

The episode does not recount how Don Félix and Celia met or describe the course of their relationship. Its decisive fact is supplied by Don Félix himself: he says that he loved Celia and forgot Felismena. The attachment matters because it displaced a prior bond, not because the narrative elaborates a separate romance between them.

Confession and Excuses

Once restored, Don Félix turns to Felismena and asks how he can look upon her without remembering the wrongs he has done. He names Celia’s beauty as a possible explanation for his change of heart, but immediately concedes that Felismena’s beauty surpasses hers and that of every other woman. He also considers changing times and the treachery of absence as causes, then questions whether either can excuse him: absence should not have prevented him from sustaining Felismena’s image in his memory.

His confession therefore distinguishes explanation from absolution. Don Félix acknowledges that he chose to love Celia and that he forgot Felismena; he does not present the intervening passion as proof that his earlier attachment never existed. What pains him most is the prospect that, even if Felismena forgives him, every future glance at her will recall the injury he inflicted. His words reveal both renewed love and a lasting awareness of his own failure.

Consequences and Narrative Significance

Dorida’s water removes the pain associated with Don Félix’s love for Celia, but the emotional resolution comes through his return to Felismena and her response. Felismena tells him that she forgives him because her love cannot bear otherwise; she adds that she would not have endured so many hardships for his sake if she had intended never to pardon him. His restored affection is thus met not with a claim that the betrayal was harmless, but with forgiveness grounded in her own long constancy.

The attachment to Celia functions as a sharp counterpoint to that constancy. Don Félix’s admission exposes the asymmetry between his capacity to turn elsewhere and Felismena’s sustained devotion, while his later remorse prevents the episode from ending at the moment of betrayal. The narrative moves from his love for Celia and neglect of Felismena, through confession and healing, to reconciliation with Felismena; the infatuation is consequential chiefly as the rupture that makes that return morally and emotionally necessary.