Cristina Guardiola_Sociopolitical Metaphor in Celestina

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    "El secreto oficio de la abeja": A Sociopolitical Metaphor in the "Celestina"

    Author(s): Cristina GuardiolaSource: Diacritics, Vol. 36, No. 3/4, Theories of Medieval Iberia (Fall - Winter, 2006), pp. 147-155Published by: The Johns Hopkins University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20204147.

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    "EL SECRETO OFICIO DE LAABEJA"A SOCIOPOLITICAL METAPHOR INTHECELESTINA

    CRISTINA UARDIOLA

    Rojas returns again and again inLa Celestina to the theme of the disruption ofhuman relationships.

    ?Stephen Gilman, The Spain of Fernando de RojasEnabled by the old bawd Celestina, the loco amor felt by the clandestine lovers Calisto andMelibea exposes a society living in disorder and conflict. Calisto and Melibea'stransgressive desire, and those who make it possible, may be seen as directly contradictingmoral and social laws upon which the tragicomedy claims to be predicated. Most ofthe characters in the work live their lives as transgression; their disorderly conduct leadsinevitably to their death and destruction [Baranda 9]. The negative example offered bythis work was, according toMaravall, what led early readers such as Quevedo to understand how the work: "debaxo del nombre de Comedia, ense?a a vivir bien, moral ypol?ticamente, acreditanto las virtudes y disfamando los vicios [under the title of Comedy,teaches one to live well, both moral and politically, accrediting virtues and discreditingvices]" [qtd. inMaravall 19].1 The Celestina lays bare its social and moralistic messageby exposing the corruption of social and moral values prevalent in this late fifteenthcentury work. Bringing together the aristocratic world of courtly love (already broughtlow through the Calisto's crass treatment of waspish Melibea) and the bawdy world ofthewhorehouse, Rojas debases the people and passions therein. Connecting both worldsthrough her comings and goings is Celestina. Characterized as abeja, a political animalused in theMiddle Ages and early modern period that informs the ideal structure of society, Celestina exposes a satire of society and its corruption of moral values.As the Sig?ese and prologue indicate, the tragicomedy was written with a dual andmoral intent. The author wrote to disabuse the many "galanes y enamorados mancebos[handsome young men and enamored youth]" of his country from the cruel and evil firesof love, but also to expose "enga?os de las alcahuetas y malos y lisonjeros simientes [the

    deceptions of procuresses and evil sycophantic servants]." In the Celestina, the deceitsof the bawd and servants Sempronio and (later) P?rmeno complicate the narrative andmove it to its tragic conclusion. As Celestina and Sempronio set out to profit by Calisto'slovesickness, they aremet with opposition from P?rmeno. The initial resistance P?rmeno

    puts up to defend himself and his master from the economic lust felt by Celestina andSempronio serves to expose a conflict in social class. The heedless attainment of wealthdemonstrated by the servants contradicts amore aristocratic principle thatwas perceivedto guide economic thought in the Middle Ages [Maravall 60]. Celestina's spoken adage, "[a] tuerto o a derecho, nuestra casa hasta el techo [by hook or by crook, our house

    1. All translations, unless otherwise noted, are mine.

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    through the roof]," exposes her unmitigated greed and contrasts sharply with Calisto'smore courtly (if yet parodie) examples of largesse. The alcahuetaos greed is not merelyopportunistic, it belies a certain Schadenfreude felt for Calisto's woes. Like "cirurjanos[ante] los descalabrados [surgeons before patients with head trauma]," Celestina pursues Calisto in search of money, which at this particular moment in history was slippingthrough

    the hands of her real-life counterparts and into those of state-appointed brothelkeepers. As Lacarra notes, the granting of royal mercedes for the incomes derived fromprostitution to royal towns or notable persons became prevalent during the reign of Ferdinand and Isabel [40]. One must imagine women such as Celestina doubly feeling thepinch from this seemingly "catholic" imposition. Income from the alcahueta livelihoodfrom all of Castile certainly must have been dwindling. At the same time, the alcahueta 'sdishonest way of living was being usurped by speciously honorable citizens who no doubt

    maligned the prostitutes on whom their wealth was gained. Despite the growing danger ofher increasingly clandestine profession, Celestina shows little shame or fear. Indeed, hersense of "honor" for theputer?a is so brightly and enthusiastically expressed in the workbearing her name that one wonders if itmight not stem from some ironical understandingof royal patronage.

    Celestina's skill as bawd has led to an analysis of women-led social structures withinthe novel in dialogue. Opposite the fleeting microsociety inhabited by Melibea and Lucrecia, Celestina's proletarian-based community doggedly continues, its reduced state, areflection of the Catholic Kings' tightening restrictions imposed on prostitution. Marginalized from control over the town's sexual economy, Celestina is no longer courted bypriests and ministers. Her brothel has been reduced drastically in number. Its continuedexistence perhaps only is due to her frank enjoyment of all things sexual. Celestina givesus a colorful account of her past regrets and her delight in themanagement of society'sillegal pleasures.

    Celestina. [Gjozad vuestras frescas mocedades, que quien tiempo tiene y mejor le espera, tiempo viene que se arrepiente, como yo fago agora por algunashoras que dex? perder quando moca, quando me preciava, quando me quer?an,que ya, mal pecado, caducado he; nadie no me quiere, que sabe Dios mi buendesseo. Besaos y abr?caos, que a m? no me queda otra cosa sino gozarme devello. Mientra a la mesa est?ys, de la cinta arriba todo se perdona; quandose?ys aparte, no quiero poner tassa, pues que el rey no la pone, que yo s? por las

    mochachas que nunca de importunos os acusen, y la vieja Celestina maxcar?de dentera con sus botas enzias las migajas de los manteles. ?Bend?gaos Diosc?mo lo rey s y holg?ys, putillos, loquillos, traviessos; En esto av?a de parar elnublado de las questioncillas, que au?s tenido; mira no derribes lamesa [Celestina 231-32]

    [Celestina. [EJnjoy theflower of y our fresh and lively age. For he who waits fora better time, will repent for time lost, as I do now repent for thefew hours I lostwhen I was young, when men did esteem me, and when they loved me, for now,tomy misfortune, I am past my prime; nobody loves me, although God knowsmy true desire. So kiss and embrace one another, since I have nothing else todo but delight in the sight of you. While you sit at the table, anything from thewaist up ispardoned; when you are alone by yourselves, Iwill not clap afine onyour heads, since the king does not impose any such taxation. And I know fromthese young girls that they will never accuse you of inappropriate behavior, andold Celestina here will grind her teeth down to the gums from the crumbs of thetablecloth. God love you, how you laugh and delight, you mischievous scamps;

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    more social than the bee, but basing his knowledge on Aristotle, encouraged the comparison and emphasized man's unique need to subsist in a ruled and orderly community [Deregimine principum 1.1]. Each man endeavors to fulfill his own particular interests, butbeyond those interests he ismoved to fulfill the common good, which is promoted by ajust king. The industrious nature of the bee, which similarly allows its collective to flourish, thusmay be likened to that of man.

    The descriptions of the body politic exposed in these political writings lay bare thepossible satire in the Celestina text. Celestina, as abeja, promotes her own desires abovethose of the society. She reneges on her word with the servants and refuses to share thewealth fleeced from Calisto. Her greed becomes apparent early on in the text, and quicklycauses the distrust and antipathy felt by the servants. Motivating that greed is the desireto return to her past status (social as well as economic, one must imagine), which promptsher visit first to Calisto and then toMelibea. Celestina is propelled by her own individualyearnings, which run contrary to the greater common good. Perhaps wishing to recuperate her past glory and heedless of the dishonor and shame she will bring upon two houses,Celestina is quick to take up her procuress hat and cure Calisto of his love malady. Shelikens her oficio to the "secret office of the bee":

    La mayor gloria, que al secreto officio del abeja se da, a la quai los discretosdeven ymitar, es que todas las cosas por ella tocadas convierte en mejor de loque son. Desta manera me he ?vido con las cahare?as razones y esquivas de

    Melibea; todo su rigor traygo conuertido en miel, su yra en mansedumbre, suaceleramiento en sossiego. [Celestina 179]4

    4. Castro Guisasola notes the existence of an index of Petrarchan sententiae as probablesource for Celestina 's reference to bees. The Index lists two sententiae regarding bees: "Apes ininventionibus sunt imitandae [Bees are to be imitated in inventiveness]" and "Apibus nulla esset

    Gloria nisi in aliud et in melius inventa converterent [There would be no glory for the bees if theydid not transform those things they find into something else or something better]" [138, 140-41].They are taken from the seventh letter of Petrarch's Epistulae familiares, which Castro Guisasolasummarizes thus:

    De hac re non amplius quam unicum consilium est. . . cujus summa est: Apes in inventionibus imitandae, quae flores, non quales acceperint, referunt, sed ceras ac mella mirifica quadam permixtione conficiunt. Ejus autem non modo sensum sed verba Macrobiusin Satumalibus posuit. . . .Nos autem, quibus non tam magna contigerunt, apes imitari

    non pudeat. . . .Haec visa sunt de apium imitatione quae dicerem, quarum exemplo excunctis quae occurrent electiora in alveario cordis absconde.... Nulla quidem esset apibus gloria nisi in aliud et melius inventa converterent. [140-41]

    The quote is taken from Petrarch's letter to Tommaso da Messina, on inventiveness and talent. Amore comprehensive (yet by no means complete) translation of the passage reads:

    [I]n this matter I cannot give much more than a single piece of advice_In short Iwantyou to realize that [Seneca] is the source of this advice. His loftiest advice about invention is to imitate the bees which through an astonishing process produce wax and honeyfrom the flowers they leave behind. Macrobius in his Saturnalia reported not only thesense but the very words of Seneca so that to me at the very time he seemed to be following this advice in his reading and writing, he seemed to be disapproving of it by what he

    did. For he did not try to produce honey from the flowers culled from Seneca but insteadproduced them whole and in the very form in which he had found them on the stems....These are the things I thought I should say about imitating the bees. From their example,select and conceal the better ones in the beehive of your heart and hold on to them withthe greatest diligence and preserve them steadfastly, lest anything should possibly perish.

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    [The greatest glory, which is given to that secret office of the Bee, which thediscreet ought to imitate, is that whatever she comes into contact with she turnsinto a better substance. Thus I have dealt with Melibea 's cold and disdainfultreatment of me; but all her scorn I have turned into honey; her anger intomildness; her fury into gentleness.]

    Recounting, with not a little bravado, her meeting with Melibea, Celestina underscores toCalisto the exemplary behavior of her actions and equates them with the bee. Celestinadescribes in exquisite detail her second meeting with Calisto's beloved and emphasizesher industry. By thinking quickly on her feet, she was able to respond toMelibea's belligerence, subdue the young lady, and gain her confidence. As the industrious bee of

    Petrarch's seventh epistle, Celestina has improved upon the person with whom she hadcome into contact. In doing so, she facilitated the lover's encounter and made possibletheir illicit passions. According to the anonymous author of the Celestina comentada, thepassage evokes Seneca's Epistulae morales:

    Apes ut aiunt debemus immitari quae vagantur etflores ad mel faciendum idoneos carpunt, deinde quicquid attulere disponunt [ac] per favos digerunt. [84.3;qtd. inCel. comentada 249]

    [We should follow, men say, the example of the bees, thatflit about and cull theflowers suitable for producing honey, and then arrange and assort in their honeycomb cells all that they have brought in.]

    The dulcet etymology of Melibea's name, as suggested by Cejador y Frauca, furthers thenotion that Celestina's alcahueta employment is directly related to her beelike qualities.Melibea is the ideal flower, and Celestina the ideal culler. The digressing conversationsengaged in by Celestina and Melibea eventually prompt the lady's surrender to Calisto.Eliciting Melibea's feelings for Calisto, Celestina thus is able to arrange the lovers' firstmeeting and enable their love. One might see Celestina's culling capabilities in the rendevous she also arranges between P?rmeno and Are?sa. This twinned encounter, parodiefor the more decorous exchanges between the servant and harlot than noble and lady,shows how well Celestina can turn a woman's initial disinclination into the sweetesthoney of the bee's secret office. As indicated in the aforementioned epistle, the qualitiesexhibited by the bee are worthy of imitation, and one may then see who she is and whatshe does: both honorable and good. If the prudent should imitate her, as Celestina claimsin the prior quote, one must see the bawd as an object of emulation, awalking speculumprincipis, a prince among people.5 It would not be implausible to suggest that she thinks

    And be careful not to let any of those things that you have plucked remain with you toolong, for the bees would enjoy no glory if they did not transform those things they foundinto something else which was better. [Bernardo, Rerum Familiarum: Libri I-VIII 1.8,41, 46]5. The Celestina comentada glosses the text with two additional sources. Two Renaissance

    legal codes [Tiraquellus, Legibus connubialibus; Guillermus Benedictus, Caput Rainuntius/ helpreinforce the text's interpretation. The Caput Rainuntius repeats Seneca's epistle, and also adds:"Et sic vivunt apes, quod, rege amisso, totum examen dilabitur. Tarnen rex apum caret ac?leo. Nee

    natura voluit eum esse saevum a quo detraxit telum, quod est dignum exemplus regibus et principibus [And thus live bees, that when their king dies, the entire hive disperses. However, the kingof the bees lacks a stinger. Nature did not wish that he be cruel and so she took his arms; whichis a worthy example for kings and princes]." The Legibus connubialibus states: "Apes omnium

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    herself a queen bee.6The Aberdeen Bestiary describes the bees foraging with a subtle sexuality not ap

    parent in the previous epistles. In the bestiary, a king bee leads a devoted following toenticing gardens. A locus amoenus of flowers, meadows, flowing river, and pleasant riverbanks awaits the hungry bees.

    Thus no peoples serve their king with the devotion shown by the bees. [...] Theirdevotion is such that no bees dare leave their living areas in search of food, unless the king has gone first and has claimed his place at the head of theflight.Their flight takes them over a scented landscape, where there are gardens of

    flowers, where a stream flows through meadows, where there are pleasant placeson its banks. There, young people play lively games, there men exercise in thefields, there you find release from care. [Aberdeen Bestiary 63v-64r]

    The space is shared by young people, wherein lively games and lack of care may betinged with the hue of sensuality. It is a garden of pleasure, and calls tomind the garden ofcolored lilies and roses that isMelibea's huerta. Having led Calisto to the garden's sweetdelights and its nighttime diversions, Celestina has provided her devoted and enamoredclient with the ideal amorous repast.

    Like the king bee returning to the hive, with the bountiful news of her successfulflight, Celestina conveys Melibea's willingness to an enamored Calisto and eavesdropping servants. Celestina's exaggerated emphasis of her role in thematter provokes P?rmeno to anger. In an aside he irascibly exclaims:

    ?Ass?, ass?, a la vieja todo porque venga cargada de mentiras como abeja y a m?que me arrastren Tras esto anda ella oy todo el d?a con sus rodeos. [Celestina185][Ha All for the old woman and for me nothing, because like the Bee she comeshome laden with lies (as the Bee does with honey) That [Calisto's reward] iswhat she's been beating the bus hfor all day long.]

    Celestina's rhetoric emphasizes her sly cleverness not only in describing her role in seducing Melibea but also in procuring a deserving reward. She receives a new cape andtunic as recompense for her troubles, which causes P?rmeno's surly displeasure. P?rmenobelieves himself in need while Celestina has received plenty, and doubts that the promiseto share all will extend to the clothing Calisto has given her. P?rmeno's vituperationsunderscore the criticism of the old bawd's activities. Celestina's house is a brothel andhouse of assignation as well as a center of commerce and light industry [Deyermond,Female Societies 6]. Her competent dealings with Calisto contain the potential for a return to a more profitable time [Severin 18]. Despite her resigned words about the future,Celestina's wistful reminiscences of past days show just how much they still lingered inher mind. P?rmeno undoubtedly remembered these days. His grumblings against her,however hypocritically offered, speak volumes. She is not like the bee of the venerable

    formosissima in reges deligunt [Bees choose the most beautiful of all things in kings]" [qtd. in Cel.comentada, 249, fn 15].

    6. Given the Celestina 's composition during the reign of the Catholic monarchs, one couldjust as easily see the embodiment of sovereignty in a man as in a woman. To see a direct comparison between queen and bawd perhaps goes too far; nevertheless, it is suggestive to understandCelestina's conflicting gender construction in light of the transgressive use of normative, essentialist gender characteristics that Isabelline supporters and critics used to identify her.

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    bestiary.7 The old prostitute, whose occupations range from restoring virgins to witchcraft, undermines themoral laws that shielded women from any damage to her honor. AsPastor insists [192], the singular importance of marriage and motherhood to themedievalwoman circumscribed her role and limited her movement outside of private space, making her an easy target for deception. The price of her ignorance of the outside world wasunquestionably

    the cause of her disgrace. As any sexual dishonor, for obvious reasons oflineage and patrimony, complicated the woman's responsibilities within the male-dominated ethos of the Middle Ages, Celestina's return to prominence would only furthersubvert the patrimonial order of society.In her many professions, Celestina embodies the antithesis of themedieval society'svalues. Yet Elicia's lament for her mentor's death would seem to describe a saintlierwoman. As Elicia bemoans her situation, the portrait of an exemplar is repeated:

    Elicia. ?Ayque ravio, ay mezquina, que salgo de seso, ay que no hallo qui?n losienta como yo; no hay quien pierda lo que yo pierdo ?O qu?nto mejores y m?shonestas fueran mis l?grimas en passi?n ajena que en la propia m?a ?Adondeyr?, que pierdo madre, manto y abrigo; pierdo amigo y tal que nunca faltavade m? marido? ?O Celestina, sabia, honrrada y autorizada, qu?ntas faltas meencobr?as con tu buen saber T? trabajavas, yo holgaua; t? sal?as fuera, yoestova encerrada; t? rota, yo vestida; t? entravas contino como abeja por casa,yo destruya, que otra cosa no sab?a hazer. ?O bien y gozo mundano, que mientraeres posseydo eres menospreciado, y jam?s te consientes conoscer hasta que teperdemos ?O Calisto yMelibea, causadores de tantas muertes, mal fin ayanvuestros amores, en mal sabor se conviertan vuestros dulces plazeres, t?rneselloro vuestra gloria, trabajo vuestro descanso; las yeruas deleytosas, dondetom?ys los hurtados solazes se conviertan en culebras; los cantares se os tornenlloro; los sombrosos ?rboles del huerto se sequen con vuestra vista; sus floresolorosas se tornen de negra color. [298]

    [Elicia. O, I grow mad, wretch that I am, I grow mad, no one's grief is likemine,no one that has what I have lost O how much better and more honest would mytears be for another person's loss than mine own Where shall I go, now that Ihave lost a mother, protection? I have lost a friend, and such a one that I hadnever felt the lack of a husband. O wise Celestina, honored and of great authority; how often did you cover my faults by your singular wisdom You workedwhile Iplayed, you went out while I stayed at home; you were in tatters while Idressed well, you constantly maintained our home like a bee, while I did nothingbut destroy it, or I did not know what to do. O worldly happiness and joy, while

    you are possessed you are less esteemed You never let us know how much youwere until we lost you O Calisto and Melibea, occasioners of so many deaths,let some ill befall your love, may your sweet pleasures turn into bitterness, your

    joy turn into sorrow, your leisure turn into worry; may the pleasant grasseswhere you took your stolen solace turn into snakes; may your songs be turnedinto despair; may the shady trees of the garden wither with your looking onthem; may its sweet scented flowers turn black ]

    Celestina was Elicia's everything. And while Elicia seems to sincerely grieve over theloss of her mistress, her lament very pointedly includes a sense of thematerial loss that

    7. Shipley's Medieval Association of the Pacific conference paper on the ironic undermining ofbestiary references in La Celestina unfortunately has not been published in its entirety. A summarymay befound inLa Cor?nica 2 (1975): 22-23.

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    will accompany Celestina's death. Without her, Elicia suddenly realizes the desperationof her situation. While she had been alive, Celestina had been like a bee in its hive, culling the sexual favors of young women for the benefit of her brothel. Now thatCelestina isgone, her house is on the verge of collapse.8 Yet the construction of Celestina's organizedand productive honeycomb was founded on the destruction of the beehive of medievalsociety. In damaging the honor of young women, she destroyed the honeycombed fabricof her community. Celestina's activities, likened to the honey-producing bee, have produced the destructive delights of Calisto and Melibea's love (and shown them to be no

    worthier than those of false servants and their whores). As their affair has been conductedinMelibea's huerta, Celestina's apprentice plausibly extends the apian allusion throughher curse on their love and their garden. The "viciosas flores [sweetly scented flowers]"of their garden turn black in this curse and will no longer produce either honey ormoney.

    Oddly enough, it is perhaps through Elicia's curse that the social ills Celestina carried outare punished. The demise of the lovers (regardless of the instrumentality of the curse) aswell as the deaths of false servants and the bawd carry out the moral lesson and allow forthe return of social order.

    But what kind of social order may be restored after somany deaths? Maravall's description of the Celestina's Zeitgeist demonstrates "la profunda ra?z de la crisis social delXV [... de] individuos en tan grave estado de desconcierto psicol?gico y moral no puedeseguirse m?s que una sociedad no menos desacorde [the profound root of the social crisisof the fifteenth century . . . from individuals with grave psychological and moral confusion, cannot but yield a society of equal or greater disorder]" [151-52]. The lust and greedexhibited by so many of the work's characters show the torn social fabric of a fictive,fifteenth-century society. While its actual counterpart showed a fondness for chivalricfictions, which displayed a social order that had never truly existed, Celestina's worldof fictive nobles and servants exposed the falseness of courtly and chivalric gallantry.9The love thought to ennoble man reveals amere fa?ade for the lust felt for the sublimebeloved, who ever was less thanwhat she appears. There is no distinction between refinedsentiment and base passion in the Celestina; themeans to that pleasure may be found onlyat the hands of a greedy old bawd. Thus the enamored youths of Rojas's introductionsare exposed as fools at themercy of deceiving servants and bawds. In this sense, Rojas'swork resembles the Carajicomedia, whose protagonist, theGuadalajaran Diego Fajardo,enlists various alcahuetas and prostitutes to cure his impotence. The military service thatrewarded his father so thoroughly becomes an ironic metaphor for the son's sexual prowess (or lack thereof) in the brothels of Castile and Valencia.10 Diego Fajardo's impotence

    8. Following the interpretation made available by the Caput Rainuntius, one could see inCelestina's death the complete dispersal of her "hive." Already gone are the many girls she onceemployed. Only Elicia remains, though her self-professed hate for the work leads one to doubt itssurvival.

    9. The rebirth of courtly culture inSpain's lateMiddle Ages produced an image of nobility thathad little to do with everyday life.Nobility not only entailed knowing how tofight well. Garneredfrom the images in epic poetry and chivalric fictions, noble life encompassed a particular percep

    tion of society, and a chivalric ethic and aesthetic [Ruiz 83].10. Die jo Fajardo was a nobleman and heir to the prizes garnered from his father's military

    service to the Catholic Kings. As recompense for the knight's military victories, he held a monopolyover all the manceb?as in the conquered kingdom of Granada [Alonso 16; Moreno Mengibar 19].

    Alcahuetas accompany the adventurous son and show him a world where sex is bought and sold.The sordid world of the prostitute encompasses the whole of life. Diego's life and prick hang in thebalance during the forays through the lands, and the brothel becomes a battlefield upon which hisarmy of flaccid pixas must assail an enemy of overwhelming conos. The Carajicomedia cuts evendeeper than the critique of the Celestina, since Diego Fajardo's sexual exploits debase the militaryconquests of his father's Granadan campaign.

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    is but away to see Calisto, a pitiful present example of past noble ancestry. Calisto doesnot deal with his father's judges but with alcahuetas. (One need only remember Celestina's threats prior to her death, as well as Areusa's reproaches to Centurio to underscorethe importance of the latter.) The power of themagistrate gives way to the power of theprostitute, and all are laid low by money. In the Celestina, the alcahuetaos upside-downworld seemingly has encompassed the entire town. Procuring the sweet Melibea for lovesick Calisto, Celestina has culled her last flower. All who are associated with the dishonorof Calisto and Pleberio's houses tragically end. The queen bee has died, and those of herhive have dispersed.

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