Vicente deceives Leandra with promises of marriage, takes her valuables, and abandons her

Leandra and Vicente de la Roca are linked by a courtship in which display is mistaken for substance, and promises of marriage end in abandonment. Leandra, the wealthy farmer’s only daughter, is captivated by a returned soldier whose bright clothes, songs, and tales make him seem more distinguished than his origins or possessions warrant. She leaves her father’s house with him; after he takes her valuables and abandons her in a cave, she is returned home and sent to a convent. Told by Eugenio, the episode follows not only the collapse of the pair’s promised future but also the village’s transformation of Leandra’s experience into a lasting pastoral grievance.

The Pair and Their Unequal Expectations

Leandra is presented as the daughter of a prosperous household and as a young woman whose father’s wealth and care have given her considerable comfort. Her mother is dead, and she is her father’s sole child. The account of her departure places the relationship against a background of marriage negotiations: her father had left her choice between two suitors, Eugenio and Anselmo, unresolved, partly on the grounds of her youth. That delay does not itself explain her decision, but it establishes that her future was already a matter of family expectation and public interest before Vicente appeared.

Vicente, by contrast, comes from a poor peasant family in the same town. A captain had taken him away when he was about twelve; after roughly twelve years of service in Italy and elsewhere, he returns in a soldier’s uniform. Eugenio describes the difference between the man’s origins and the image he assembles on his return. Vicente has three suits in different colors, with matching stockings and garters, and ornaments of glass and steel. By recombining these few outfits, he gives the impression of owning far more. His appearance is elaborate, but, in Eugenio’s telling, the clothes are flimsy and of little value. That contrast supplies the first measure of the relationship: Leandra responds to a carefully staged image, while the narrator reveals how little material substance stands behind it.

The Courtship and Leandra’s Departure

Vicente makes himself a public spectacle beneath the great poplar in the town square. He tells stories of countries visited and battles fought, claiming victories on an extravagant scale; he also points to marks he identifies as wounds, though the villagers cannot make them out. His self-presentation extends beyond military exploits. He addresses even his social equals familiarly, boasts that his own arm is his father and his deeds his pedigree, plays the guitar, and composes long ballads about local events. The details matter because they show how he manufactures distinction through performance rather than inherited rank or demonstrated wealth.

Leandra watches him from a window overlooking the square. His clothes attract her, his widely circulated ballads reach her, and his stories of adventure shape the impression she forms of him. Eugenio says that she falls in love before Vicente has even thought of courting her. They soon reach an understanding, and, before her numerous suitors know of her plan, Leandra leaves her father’s house with him. The suddenness of her departure is central to the episode: a relationship that has seemed to grow through spectacle and private agreement becomes an act with immediate consequences for her family and the entire town.

The Promise and Its Reversal

After three days of searching, the villagers find Leandra in a mountain cave, deprived of the money and precious jewels she had taken from home. In her account, Vicente had promised to marry her and to take her to Naples, described to her as the richest and most delightful city in the world. She says that she believed him, left her father’s house, and handed over her possessions. Instead of carrying out the promised future, he took what she had brought and left her in the cave. The gap between his assurances and his actions turns the courtship’s central promise into its betrayal.

Leandra also insists that Vicente left her chastity intact. Her father, distressed by the loss of the valuables but more concerned with her honor, takes comfort from that claim. The distinction affects how her return is received, but it does not undo the deception or the public disgrace attached to her departure. Her testimony is the account available to the village through Eugenio; the narrative does not provide Vicente’s version of events. The relationship therefore reaches its ending through Leandra’s report of what he promised, took, and did, rather than through a reconciliation or an explanation from him.

Family and Village Aftermath

Leandra’s father removes her from public view and places her in a convent in a nearby town, hoping that time will diminish the disgrace associated with the episode. This response closes off any further course for the relationship in the account: Vicente has disappeared, while Leandra is withdrawn from the village. Her father’s decision also turns a private family crisis into a lasting separation between her and the community that had watched her courtship unfold.

The villagers’ reactions divide between astonishment, grief, indignation, and blame. Eugenio is aghast, Anselmo is thunderstruck, Leandra’s relations are angry, and the officers of the Holy Brotherhood join the search. Once she is removed, Eugenio and Anselmo leave the village and live among their flocks in the hills. Other men who had loved Leandra follow them, until the area seems to Eugenio like a pastoral Arcadia filled with shepherds and sheepfolds. Their songs and complaints keep her name present even though she is no longer there. Some condemn her as fickle; others praise her beauty, excuse her, or mourn a jealousy she had not given them grounds to feel. The episode thus ends not with the pair together, but with a divided community repeatedly retelling and judging the rupture.

Narrative Significance

Because Eugenio tells the story, the reader encounters Leandra and Vicente through the perspective of one of her disappointed suitors. His account is vivid about Vicente’s vanity and the effects of the elopement, but it also records how the men around Leandra turn her into the subject of competing praise and blame. The narrative makes that mismatch visible: they continue to speak of her, adore her, and reproach her, although some had never exchanged a word with her. Their pastoral lament sustains their own attachment as much as it describes Leandra.

The relationship’s decisive irony lies in the contrast between Vicente’s claim that his deeds supply his pedigree and the conduct that finally defines him in this story. The colorful clothes, martial boasts, guitar playing, and ballads create an appearance of distinction; the promised marriage and journey to Naples give that appearance a future; abandonment in the cave exposes its emptiness. Leandra’s removal to the convent and the shepherds’ ongoing fixation show the consequences extending beyond the failed courtship: her freedom of movement is curtailed, while the men’s account of her becomes an enduring part of their lives.