Montano's Love for Selvagia

Montano's love for Selvagia is one link in the shifting chain of desire Selvagia recounts: Montano turns toward her just as she remains attached to Alanio, leaving his pursuit unanswered. Their connection matters less as a settled romance than as a sharp turn in an unstable pattern, where each change of affection creates a new grievance without dissolving the old one.

Circumstances of the Change

Selvagia places Montano's turn toward her amid business between their fathers. Her father and Felino, Montano's father, had matters concerning the pastures of the Extremo, and they came repeatedly to her village. By then, Montano's love for Ismenia had begun to cool. Selvagia offers two possible explanations rather than settling on one: Ismenia's excessive favor may have wearied a man of low spirit, or Montano may have become jealous of Alanio's attentions to her. The account thus locates the change within a network of prior attachments, not in a separate courtship between Montano and Selvagia.

The turning point comes when Montano sees Selvagia bringing her sheep to the fold. From then on, she says, he began to love her, and his conduct showed the strength of that new affection day by day. Selvagia measures its intensity against the others' feelings: she says that her love for Alanio, Alanio's for Ismenia, and Ismenia's for Montano could not exceed Montano's new love for her. The symmetry is striking, but it is not reciprocity. Montano's feeling has changed its object; Selvagia's has not.

A Chain of Pursuit and Refusal

Selvagia renders the four attachments as movement through the landscape. When Ismenia goes into the fields, Alanio follows her; when Montano goes to the flock, Ismenia follows him; when Selvagia takes her sheep to the mountain, Montano follows her. Selvagia, in turn, seeks Alanio when she learns where he is grazing. Each person moves toward someone whose attention is fixed elsewhere. In this repeated pursuit, Montano's love is not simply an inward state: it becomes one of the visible actions that keeps the chain in motion.

The four eventually meet in the forest of the valley. Alanio has gone after Ismenia, whom he finds by a stream combing her golden hair. Selvagia arrives after a neighboring shepherd tells her Alanio is heading to the forest; she takes goats from the enclosure by her house so that she has a pretext for going there. Montano comes after being told by Solisa, one of Selvagia's friends, that Selvagia is on her way with the goats. Their convergence makes the crossed desires impossible to ignore: Alanio laments Ismenia, Ismenia calls for Montano, Montano for Selvagia, and Selvagia for Alanio.

The Forest Encounter

At the meeting, Montano complains of Selvagia's cruelty, while Selvagia asks Alanio why he has forgotten her. Alanio seeks mercy from Ismenia, and Ismenia complains of Montano's coldness. Montano's love therefore gives him a place in the scene as both pursuer and rejected lover: he directs his appeal toward Selvagia, but her attention remains elsewhere. The setting gathers the four into one place without bringing their desires into agreement.

Montano sings of love as a madness in which one person loves while the other loves someone else. His song names the predicament he inhabits, but it does not change it. After the final stanza, Selvagia says that the group remains in such agony that they could scarcely bear seeing Montano ask her to temper the pleasure of looking at him with the presence of his rival, Alanio. She rejects the idea that her thoughts could be diverted by such appearances. Her response makes the limit of Montano's appeal plain: his new devotion cannot displace the love she already holds.

Significance and Limits

Selvagia frames the episode as evidence that she has conducted herself better in love than the others present. She takes up her zither and sings, seeking to show the difference between her own constancy and the others' changing or divided attachments. Montano's turn toward her is thus part of her account of being caught in a sequence of unstable loves, not proof that the two become a couple. The evidence here records his pursuit, his complaint, and her continued devotion to Alanio; it does not establish a later union between Montano and Selvagia.