Julia

Julia is Diego’s beloved, and her fear that his nose might confirm her suspicions turns a moment of doubt into a painful separation. The story gives her presence first through Diego’s broken, anxious addresses to her as he rides away, then through the account of her illness and the letter she sends after him. In that letter, Julia does not deny the suspicion that precipitated their parting; she confesses instead that she lacked the firmness to test it further, and asks whether Diego was right to take her rash dismissal as final.

Suspicion and separation

Julia’s relationship with Diego is disrupted by suspicion about his nose. In her letter she does not settle whether her suspicions were justified: that question, she says, is no longer the point, because she did not have the courage to put them to further trial. The unresolved doubt matters. Her grief does not rest on a newly established truth about Diego’s appearance, but on how quickly uncertainty became separation.

She recalls sending her duenna to forbid Diego from coming beneath her window, then reproaches herself for failing to understand either her own feelings or his. She had imagined that Diego would not stay even a day in Valladolid to relieve her doubts; after he left, she asks whether he was entitled to abandon her merely because she had been deceived, and whether it was kind to obey her words when their justice was uncertain. The letter therefore presents the parting as a mutual failure of interpretation: Julia’s command was rash, while Diego’s compliance left her alone with the very uncertainty she had hoped to resolve.

Regret and illness

Julia’s reversal comes almost at once. Her brother Fernandez tells Diego, through the letter, that she repented within moments of sending her message. She hurried to her window and remained there, leaning on her elbow, watching for the road by which Diego used to come. The window, once the setting for her prohibition, becomes the place where she waits for the return she had forbidden.

When Julia heard that Diego had departed, her spirits failed and her heart sickened. Her brother describes her mourning and lowered head, while Julia’s own letter recalls the days and nights she spent looking toward the familiar route. She could not continue beyond Lyons, where illness forced her to take to bed. Even then she had just enough strength to write to Diego and charge Fernandez never to see her again until he had found him and placed the letter in his hands. The order gives her regret a concrete purpose: the brother’s journey is not complete until Diego receives her appeal.

Fernandez carries the appeal

Fernandez has accompanied Julia from Valladolid across the Pyrenees and through France in pursuit of Diego. His route is described as a maze of turns, fitting the difficulty of following a lover’s path after suspicion and separation have made direct understanding impossible. Julia’s illness stops her journey at Lyons, so Fernandez continues on her behalf, carrying both her written words and the account of how she has suffered since Diego left.

The two men meet after the stranger’s ride away from Strasbourg. When Fernandez hears that the traveller has a remarkably long nose, the recognition confirms that he has found Diego; he then delivers Julia’s letter the following morning. The discovery gives physical form to the doubt that began the lovers’ quarrel, but the letter redirects attention from the nose itself to the consequences of suspicion, rash speech, and literal obedience. Fernandez’s role is practical and emotional at once: he bridges the distance Julia can no longer travel and explains the distress her written message cannot fully convey.

The letter and its closing urgency

Julia’s letter combines reproach with self-accusation. She asks why she knew so little of herself when she sent Diego away and so little of him when she assumed he would not remain in Valladolid to ease her doubts. She does not present herself as free of responsibility; she admits her own rashness, while insisting that Diego’s departure turned a moment of distrust into prolonged uncertainty and sorrow. Her appeal depends on the possibility that his gentleness has not misrepresented his heart.

At the close, Julia urges Diego to fly back to her almost as quickly as he fled from her, but her request is shadowed by the fear that he will arrive too late. She warns that, however hastily he comes, he may find her dying. The story thus leaves her reunion with Diego unresolved at the moment of appeal. Julia’s letter makes her absence powerfully present: she cannot meet him herself, yet her words reverse the separation and direct him toward her, with urgency measured against the possibility of death.