Leonela

Role: handmaid of Camilla · First appears: Part 1, Ch. 33.6

Leonela was Camilla’s handmaid and childhood companion, brought up with her in Camilla’s father’s house. She was closely attached to her mistress, had directions to dine earlier than Camilla and never leave her side, and knew when Camilla and Lothario became lovers: “Leonela alone knew of her mistress’s weakness.”

In Part 1, Chapter 34, Leonela told Camilla that she knew love from experience and confessed that she had a lover of her own. She began secretly bringing him into Anselmo’s house, while Camilla and Leonela staged an accusation against Lothario before Anselmo, treated Camilla’s slight wound, and helped maintain the deception that Camilla’s purity had been proved.

When Anselmo discovered a man escaping from Leonela’s room, she claimed he was her husband and promised that the next day she would reveal information that would astonish him. Anselmo confined her in her room and threatened her with a dagger when she would not tell the truth, but the next morning he found that Leonela had escaped through the window using knotted sheets.