1605/1615 2026
This is an AI modernization of Don Quixote into contemporary English. The original is available from Project Gutenberg. Also available as an epub.
Miguel de Cervantes was fifty-seven when the first part of Don Quixote was published in Madrid in 1605, and he had spent most of his life doing other things. He was a soldier at the sea battle of Lepanto in 1571, where a shot ruined his left hand for good. Four years later, sailing home, he was taken by corsairs and held as a slave in Algiers for five years. He tried to escape four times and failed four times, and was finally ransomed in 1580. Back in Spain he worked as a government agent buying grain and oil for the fleet, and was jailed over the accounts. He wrote the book poor and old, and he died in 1616, the year after he finished it.
The story is simple enough to explain in a sentence. An elderly gentleman of La Mancha reads so many books about knights that he decides to become one, puts on his great-grandfather's rusty armour, renames his broken-down horse Rocinante, and rides out with a farm labourer named Sancho Panza, whom he has promised the governorship of an island. The windmills come in chapter eight of a hundred and twenty-six. They are two pages of a very long book, and almost nothing else in it is what the reputation suggests.
Part One sold everywhere and was pirated everywhere, and in 1614 someone else published a sequel to it under the name Alonso Fernández de Avellaneda. Cervantes' own Part Two came out in 1615 and answered it inside the story. His characters have read Part One. They know they are in print and famous, and so does everyone they meet, so that people set traps for them based on what they have read. Later in the book they run into a man who has read the fake sequel, and Don Quixote changes his route to Barcelona purely to prove that other book a liar. Nobody had written anything like this before.
It is much funnier than its reputation and much sadder. The comedy is physical and relentless in Part One; Part Two is quieter, and the world stops laughing at the two of them by accident and starts arranging cruelties for them on purpose.
This is a translation from the Spanish, complete: both parts, all one hundred and twenty-six chapters, and every one of the interpolated tales that abridged editions cut out. Sancho's proverbs and his manglings of long words are rebuilt on English words rather than carried across, because they are jokes, and a literal rendering of a joke is a dead one. Where a proverb of his does not fit the situation, it still does not fit. That is the point of it.
Verses for the Book of Don Quixote of La Mancha
Part One (1605)
Dedication: To the Count of Lemos
Part Two (1615)
Marquis of Gibraleón, Count of Benalcázar and Bañares, Viscount of La Puebla de Alcocer, Lord of the towns of Capilla, Curiel and Burguillos
Trusting in the generous welcome and the honour that Your Excellency shows to books of every kind, as a prince so inclined to favour the fine arts — and above all those which, being noble, do not stoop to serve the common crowd or to make money out of it — I have determined to bring The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha into the light under the shelter of Your Excellency's most illustrious name. And with the respect I owe to greatness of that order, I beg you to receive him kindly into your protection, so that in your shadow he may dare to appear safely before the judgement of certain persons who, keeping strictly within the bounds of their own ignorance, are in the habit of condemning other men's work with more severity than justice. For he goes out stripped of that precious ornament of elegance and learning which usually clothes works composed in the houses of men who know things; and I trust that when Your Excellency's good sense considers how well I meant it, you will not despise the smallness of so humble a service.
Idle reader: you can take my word for it, without my having to swear to it, that I wish this book, being the child of my brain, were the handsomest, the liveliest and the cleverest that anyone could imagine. But I have not been able to break the law of nature, by which every thing brings forth its own likeness. And so what could my barren and ill-cultivated wit bring forth but the history of a son who is dry and shrivelled and wilful and full of odd notions that never occurred to anybody else — a son, in short, conceived in a prison, where every discomfort has its lodging and every mournful noise makes its home? Peace and quiet, a pleasant place, cheerful fields, clear skies, the murmur of streams, a mind at rest — these do a great deal to make even the most barren muses fertile, and to bring into the world offspring that fill it with wonder and delight. It happens sometimes that a man has an ugly son with no charm at all, and the love he bears him ties a blindfold over his eyes so that he cannot see his faults; on the contrary, he takes them for talents and beauties, and repeats them to his friends as wit and elegance.
But I — who only seem to be Don Quixote's father, and am really his stepfather — have no wish to swim with the current of custom, or to beg you, dearest reader, very nearly in tears, as others do, to forgive or overlook the faults you may see in this son of mine. You are neither his relation nor his friend; you have your own soul in your own body and as free a will as the best of them; you are in your own house, where you are lord of everything, as the king is of his taxes; and you know the saying — under my own cloak, I can kill the king. All of which lets you off every kind of deference and obligation, so that you may say whatever you like about this history without fear of being run in for the bad you say of it or rewarded for the good.
I should have liked to give it to you plain and naked, without the ornament of a prologue, or the endless catalogue of the customary sonnets, epigrams and tributes that are usually stuck at the front of books. Because I can tell you that, although the book cost me some labour, nothing cost me more than making this preface you are now reading. Many a time I took up the pen to write it, and many a time I put it down again, because I did not know what to say. And once, when I was sitting stuck — the paper in front of me, the pen behind my ear, my elbow on the desk and my cheek on my hand, wondering what on earth to write — a friend of mine came in unexpectedly, a witty man and a shrewd one, who saw me sunk so deep in thought and asked me what was the matter. I made no secret of it. I told him I was thinking about the prologue I had to write for the history of Don Quixote, and that it had got me into such a state that I no longer wanted to write it, still less to bring the deeds of so noble a knight out into the light at all.
"Because how do you expect me not to be worried," I said, "about what that ancient lawgiver they call the public will say when it sees that, after all these years asleep in the silence of oblivion, I come out now, with all my years on my back, carrying a legend as dry as a rush mat, barren of invention, poor in style, thin in ideas and destitute of every kind of learning and doctrine — with no notes in the margins and no annotations at the end, the way I see other books have, however made-up and worldly they may be, so crammed with sayings from Aristotle and Plato and the whole herd of philosophers that they fill the reader with admiration and get their authors a reputation as well-read, learned, eloquent men? And then when they quote Holy Scripture! People will say they are so many St Thomases and Doctors of the Church, keeping up a decorum so ingenious that in one line they paint a distracted lover and in the next preach a nice little Christian sermon, which is a joy and a treat to hear or to read. My book will have none of this. I have nothing to note in the margin and nothing to annotate at the end, and I have no idea which authors I have followed, so as to put them at the front as everybody else does, in alphabetical order, beginning with Aristotle and ending with Xenophon and Zoilus or Zeuxis — even though one of them was a slanderer and the other a painter. My book will also have to do without sonnets at the front, or at least without sonnets by dukes, marquises, counts, bishops, great ladies or celebrated poets — though if I asked two or three tradesman friends of mine, I know they would give me some, and such that the ones by our most famous names in Spain could not touch them.
"In short, my dear sir and friend," I went on, "I have decided that Señor Don Quixote shall stay buried in his archives in La Mancha until heaven provides someone to furnish him with all the things he lacks. I find myself incapable of supplying them, out of my own inadequacy and want of learning, and because I am naturally idle and too lazy to go hunting for authors to say what I can perfectly well say without them. This is the cause of the suspense and abstraction you found me in — reason enough, I should think, given what you have just heard."
My friend, hearing this, struck himself on the forehead, let off a great volley of laughter, and said:
"Good God, brother, you have just cured me of an error I have been living in the whole time I have known you, all of which I have taken you for a sensible and prudent man in everything you did. But now I see you are as far from it as heaven is from earth. How is it possible that things of so little consequence, and so easily put right, have the power to stop and stupefy a mind as ripe as yours, and one so used to breaking through and trampling over much greater difficulties than these? On my faith, this does not come from any lack of ability, but from a surplus of laziness and a famine of common sense. Would you like to see whether what I say is true? Then pay attention, and you shall watch me demolish every one of your difficulties in the time it takes to open and shut your eyes, and put right all the defects that you say hold you up and make you afraid to bring out into the light of the world the history of your famous Don Quixote, the light and mirror of all knight-errantry."
"Tell me, then," I answered, "how do you propose to fill up the emptiness of my fear and bring the chaos of my confusion into daylight?"
To which he replied:
"The first thing that troubles you — the sonnets, epigrams and tributes you lack for the opening, and the fact that they ought to be by weighty people with titles — can be cured by your taking a little trouble and writing them yourself. Then you can christen them and put whatever name you please to them, fathering them on Prester John of the Indies or the Emperor of Trebizond, both of whom, I have it on good authority, were famous poets. And if they were not, and there should be some pedants and university men who snap at you behind your back and mutter about the truth of it, don't give twopence for them; because even if they prove the lie on you, they can't cut off the hand you wrote it with.
"As for citing in the margins the books and authors you took the sayings and maxims in your history from, all you have to do is work in, wherever it fits, some maxims or bits of Latin that you happen to know by heart — or that at least cost you very little trouble to look up. For example, when you are dealing with liberty and captivity, put:
Non bene pro toto libertas venditur auro.
[Liberty is not well sold for all the gold in the world.]
And then in the margin cite Horace, or whoever said it. If you are dealing with the power of death, come straight in with:
Pallida mors aequo pulsat pede pauperum tabernas, Regumque turres.
[Pale death knocks with the same foot at the cottages of the poor and the towers of kings.]
If it is the friendship and love that God commands us to feel towards our enemy, get yourself into Holy Scripture at once, which you can do with the smallest amount of curiosity, and quote the words of God himself, at least: Ego autem dico vobis: diligite inimicos vestros. [But I say unto you: love your enemies.] If it is evil thoughts, come in with the Gospel: De corde exeunt cogitationes malae. [Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts.] If it is the unreliability of friends, there is Cato ready with his couplet:
Donec eris felix, multos numerabis amicos, tempora si fuerint nubila, solus eris.
[While you are prosperous you will count many friends; if the weather turns cloudy, you will be alone.]
And with these scraps of Latin and others like them they will at least take you for a scholar, and being one is no small honour and profit these days.
"As for putting annotations at the end of the book, you can safely manage it like this. If you name some giant in your book, make him the giant Goliath, and with that alone, which will cost you next to nothing, you have a fine long note, since you can put: The giant Golias, or Goliath, was a Philistine whom the shepherd David killed with a great stone in the valley of Terebinth, as is told in the Book of Kings, in whatever chapter you find it written. After that, to show yourself a man learned in humane letters and a cosmographer, arrange for the river Tagus to be mentioned somewhere in your history, and you will find yourself with another famous note, thus: The river Tagus was so called after a king of the Spains; it rises in such and such a place and dies in the ocean, kissing the walls of the famous city of Lisbon; and it is thought to have golden sands, etc. If you are dealing with thieves, I will give you the story of Cacus, which I know by heart. If with loose women, there is the Bishop of Mondoñedo, who will lend you Lamia, Laida and Flora, and a note on them will do your credit no harm. If with cruel women, Ovid will hand over Medea. If with enchantresses and witches, Homer has Calypso and Virgil has Circe. If with valiant captains, Julius Caesar will lend you himself in his own Commentaries, and Plutarch will give you a thousand Alexanders. If you are dealing with love, with two ounces of Italian you will run straight into Leone Ebreo, who will fill your measure to the brim. And if you would rather not go abroad for it, you have Fonseca's On the Love of God at home, in which everything is summed up that you, or the most ingenious man alive, could want on the subject. In short, all you have to do is see that these names get mentioned, or these stories touched on, in your own; and leave the business of the notes and marginal citations to me, for I promise you I will fill your margins and use up four sheets of paper at the end of the book.
"Now let us come to the list of authors that other books have and yours lacks. The cure for that is very easy, because you have nothing to do but look for a book that cites them all, from A to Z, as you say. Then you put that same alphabet into your own book; and although the lie is perfectly obvious, since you had so little need to make use of them, it doesn't matter in the least. Perhaps there will even be somebody simple enough to believe that you have drawn on all of them in that plain, straightforward history of yours; and if it serves no other purpose, at least that long catalogue of authors will do to give the book a sudden air of authority. Besides, nobody is going to set about checking whether you followed them or not, since there is nothing in it for him.
"What is more — now that I come to think of it properly — this book of yours has no need whatever of any of the things you say it lacks, since the whole of it is an attack on books of chivalry, which Aristotle never thought about, and St Basil said nothing about, and Cicero never came across. Its fabulous absurdities have nothing to do with exactness of truth or with the observations of astrology; geometrical measurements are of no importance to it, nor is the refutation of arguments used in rhetoric; and it has no reason to preach at anybody, mixing the human with the divine, which is a kind of mixture no Christian understanding should ever be dressed in. It has only to make use of imitation in what it writes; and the more perfect that imitation is, the better the writing will be. And since this piece of writing of yours aims at nothing more than destroying the authority and standing that books of chivalry have in the world and among the common people, there is no reason for you to go begging maxims from philosophers, counsels from Holy Scripture, fables from poets, speeches from rhetoricians or miracles from saints. Just see to it that your sentences come out plainly, in meaningful, decent, well-placed words, and that your prose runs full and cheerful; paint what you mean as far as you can and as well as you possibly can, and make your ideas understood without tangling them up and darkening them. See to it, too, that reading your history makes the melancholy man laugh, and the cheerful man laugh harder; that the simple man is not bored, the clever man admires the invention, the serious man does not despise it and the prudent man cannot help praising it. In a word, keep your eye fixed on pulling down that ill-founded machine of chivalric books, hated by so many and praised by a great many more. If you managed that, you would not have managed a small thing."
I listened in complete silence to what my friend said, and his arguments stamped themselves on me so firmly that I approved them without any argument at all and decided to make my prologue out of them. In it, gentle reader, you will see the good sense of my friend, my own good fortune in finding such an adviser at a moment of such need, and your own relief at finding the history of the famous Don Quixote of La Mancha so honest and so free of complications — a man of whom the whole population of the district of the plain of Montiel holds the opinion that he was the chastest lover and the bravest knight seen in those parts for many years. I do not want to make too much of the service I am doing you in introducing you to so noble and honourable a knight; but I do want you to thank me for making you acquainted with the famous Sancho Panza, his squire, in whom, to my mind, I have concentrated for you every squirely grace that lies scattered through the whole pack of worthless books of chivalry.
And with that, God give you health, and may he not forget me. Vale.
[Modern note: what follows is a set of commendatory poems supposedly written by Amadís of Gaul, Orlando, the Lady Oriana and other characters out of the very romances the book is attacking — a parody of the puffs that real books of the day carried at the front. Two of them are in what the Spanish calls versos de cabo roto, "broken-tail verse": the last syllable of every line is lopped off. It makes the rhyme and mocks affected poets at the same time, and the English does the same thing, so read the half-words aloud and let your ear finish them.]
If you'd reach the good and wi-, book, and go with careful ste-, no smart aleck will be ab- to say you've put a foot wro-. But if the bread won't bake for yo- because you fall to idiot ha-, you'll watch them, quick as anythi-, miss the nail and hit the thu-, though they'll chew their knuckles ra- to prove how very deep they thi-.
And since experience teach- that the man who finds a good tre- gets good shade to sit benea-, in Béjar your lucky sta- offers you a royal tre- that bears princes for its fru-, and among its branches flowere- a duke, a new Alexan-: get into that shade, for fortu- has a soft spot for the bo-.
You'll tell the adventures of a ge- from La Mancha, a gentlema- whose brains were turned clean rou- by too much idle readi-: ladies, arms and cavalie- provoked him till he went the wa- of Orlando in his fu-, but tuned to a lover's ke-, and won by strength of ar- Dulcinea of El Tobo-.
Don't go stamping clever emble- on the shield you carry ro-, for when a man is all devi- he throws the game away for nothi-. If you're modest in your dedicati-, nobody will sneer and sa-: "What a Don Álvaro de Lu-, what a Hannibal of Carthag-, what a King Francis in Spai- complaining of his fortu-!"
Since heaven was not pleas- to make you very learn- like black Juan Latin-, don't try your hand at Lat-. Don't come the wit at me, don't quote philosoph-, or the man who knows the sco- will twist his mouth and mutt-, not an inch behind your e-: "What are you showing off at me fo-?"
Don't get into fancy scrollwo- or other people's private live-; for where a thing is none of your busine-, walking straight past is wisdo-. They rap the knuckles of the man who plays the fool in compa-; so burn your eyebrows out inste- on earning a good na-; for the man who prints a stupid thi- lends it out at interest for ev-.
Bear in mind it's downright madne-, when your own roof is made of gla-, to pick up stones in either ha- and start in on the neighbou-. Let the man of sense go slo-, with feet of lead, in what he wri-; for the fellow who brings out pa- to entertain young ladi- writes any old nonsense that come-.
You who copied out the weeping life that I led, absent and disdained, up there on the great bare crag of the Poor Rock, turned from cheerfulness to penitence;
you whose eyes gave you your only drink, abundant liquor, though it tasted salt, and who, with silver, tin and copper taken from you, were fed by earth on earth itself:
live certain of this, that eternally — as long, at least, as in the fourth sphere the golden Apollo spurs his horses on —
you will keep a clear name for courage; your country will stand first among them all; and your wise author, unique in the world, alone.
I broke, I hacked, I dented, said and did more than any knight errant in the world; I was skilful, I was brave, I was arrogant; I avenged a thousand wrongs, undid a hundred thousand.
I gave Fame such deeds as make a man eternal; I was a courteous and an attentive lover; every giant was a dwarf to me, and I gave satisfaction in every duel.
I had Fortune prostrate at my feet, and my good sense dragged bald Occasion about by the forelock as it pleased.
But although my luck was always seen perched above the very horn of the moon, I envy your exploits, great Quixote!
Oh, that I had, lovely Dulcinea, for greater comfort and for greater peace, set Miraflores down in El Toboso, and traded my London for your village!
Oh, that I could have dressed both soul and body in your desires and in your livery, and watched some unequal battle fought by the famous knight you made so fortunate!
Oh, that I had got away as chastely from the lord Amadís as you did from the well-behaved gentleman Don Quixote!
Then I should have been envied and not envious, and the time that was sad would have been merry, and I should have had the pleasures without the bill.
Hail, famous man, to whom Fortune, when she put you into the squiring trade, arranged things so gently and so sensibly that you got through it without a single mishap.
The spade and the sickle no longer quarrel with knight-errantry; plain squiring is the fashion now, and by it I accuse the proud man who tries to trample on the moon.
I envy you your donkey and your name, and I envy your saddlebags just as much, which showed what a shrewd provider you were.
Hail again, Sancho! So good a man that to you alone our Spanish Ovid makes his bow — and a smack on the back of the neck with it.
I am Sancho Panza, squi- to the Manchegan Don Quixo-. I took to my heels and r- so as to live sensib-; for silent Villadieg- summed up his whole philosop- of statecraft in a retre-, according to Celesti-, a book, in my opinion, divi- if it had hidden the human part a bit be-.
I am Rocinante, the famo-, great-grandson of the great Babie-. For the sin of being thi- I fell into the hands of a Don Quixo-. I ran my races like a slug-; but by a horse's hoof-tri- I never missed out on my bar-; which I picked up from Lazari- when, to steal the wine from the blind ma-, I taught him the trick with the stra-.
If you are not a peer, you have had none: you could have been a peer among a thousand peers; nor can there be one where you are to be found, unconquered conqueror, never yet conquered.
Orlando I am, Quixote, who, lost for Angelica, saw far-off seas, offering up on Fame's own altars that courage which oblivion respected.
I cannot be your equal; that honour is owed to your exploits and to your fame, although, like me, you lost your wits.
But mine you shall be, if you tame the proud Moor and the fierce Scythian, who between them call us equals in love, and equal in bad luck.
My sword was never the equal of yours, Spanish Phoebus, courtier full of curiosity; nor was my hand, that was a lightning-bolt where day is born and where day dies, the equal of your glory.
I despised empires; the monarchy the red East offered me I left behind, all for the sake of seeing the sovereign face of Claridiana, my beautiful dawn.
I loved her as a rare and single miracle; and, banished in her disgrace, hell itself feared this arm of mine, which tamed its fury.
But you, illustrious Gothic Quixote, are eternal in the world for Dulcinea's sake, and she, for yours, is famous, chaste and wise.
Albeit, Sir Quixote, that such foolishness hath tumbled all thy brainpan out of joint, yet shall no man reproach thee ever as one of vile and filthy deeds.
Thy feats shall be the judges of it, sith thou hast gone about undoing wrongs, being a thousand times well cudgelled by rogues and knaves and low-born varlets.
And if thy fair Dulcinea should commit some discourtesy against thee, and show no kindly face towards thy griefs,
in such mischance let this be thy comfort: that Sancho Panza was a poor go-between, he a fool, she hard, and thou no lover at all.
B. How is it, Rocinante, you're so thin? R. Because one never eats, and always works. B. But what about the barley and the straw? R. My master doesn't leave me a mouthful. B. Go on with you, sir, you're very badly bred, using that ass's tongue of yours on your master. R. He's an ass from the cradle to the grave. Do you want to see it? Look at him in love. B. Is it stupid to love? R. It isn't very clever. B. You're getting metaphysical. R. It's because I don't eat. B. Then complain of the squire. R. That's not enough. How am I to complain of what ails me, if the master and the squire, or the steward, are every bit as much hacks as Rocinante?
In a village of La Mancha, whose name I have no wish to remember, there lived not long ago one of those gentlemen who keep a lance in the rack, an ancient leather shield, a bony old nag and a greyhound for coursing. A stew with rather more beef than mutton in it, cold meat salad most evenings, "griefs and groans" — bacon and eggs — on Saturdays, lentils on Fridays and the odd pigeon by way of a treat on Sundays: this ate up three quarters of his income. The rest of it went on a coat of fine black cloth, velvet breeches for holidays with the slippers to match, and on weekdays he did himself proud in the best homespun he could get. He kept in the house a housekeeper the wrong side of forty, a niece not yet twenty, and a lad for the field and the market who could saddle the nag and handle the pruning-hook. Our gentleman was getting on for fifty. He was strongly built but lean, thin in the face, a great early riser and a keen huntsman. They say his surname was Quixada, or Quesada — the authorities who write about this differ on the point — though the likeliest guess is that it was Quexana. But that hardly matters to our story; it is enough that the telling of it does not stray a hair's breadth from the truth.
You must know, then, that in his idle hours — which were most of the year — this gentleman gave himself up to reading books of chivalry, with such passion and such pleasure that he all but forgot his hunting and even the running of his property. His curiosity and his folly went so far that he sold acres of good arable land in order to buy books of chivalry to read, and carried home every one of them he could get hold of. Of all of them, none pleased him so well as those written by the famous Feliciano de Silva, because the clarity of his prose and those tangled arguments of his struck him as pearls beyond price — above all when he came to the wooings and the challenges, where he would often find written: The reason of the unreason with which my reason is afflicted so weakens my reason that with reason I complain of your beauty. Or again: The high heavens that with their stars divinely fortify you in your divinity make you deserving of the deserts that your greatness deserves.
Over sentences like these the poor gentleman lost his wits. He would lie awake trying to understand them and dig the sense out of them, which Aristotle himself could not have done if he had come back to life for that single purpose. He was not altogether happy about the wounds Don Belianís gave and took, since he reckoned that however great the surgeons who had treated him, his face and his whole body must be covered in scars and seams. Still, he praised the author for ending his book with the promise of that never-ending adventure, and many a time he felt the itch to take up a pen and finish it off exactly as promised there. He would have done it too, and made a success of it, if greater and more constant preoccupations had not got in his way.
He often argued with the curate of his village — a learned man, a graduate of Sigüenza — about which had been the better knight, Palmerín of England or Amadís of Gaul. But Master Nicholas, the barber of that same town, said that neither of them came near the Knight of Phoebus, and that if anyone could be compared to him it was Don Galaor, brother of Amadís of Gaul, because he had a temper suited to anything; he was not a squeamish knight, nor such a weeper as his brother, and in the matter of courage he was not a step behind him.
In short, he buried himself so deep in his reading that his nights went by from dusk to dawn and his days from dawn to dusk; and so, from too little sleep and too much reading, his brain dried up on him and he went out of his mind. His imagination filled with everything he had read in the books — enchantments and quarrels, battles and challenges, wounds, wooings, love affairs, tempests and impossible nonsense; and it planted itself so firmly in his head that the whole machinery of those dreamed-up, drummed-up inventions was true, that for him there was no more certain history in the world.
He used to say that the Cid Ruy Díaz had been a very good knight, but that he was nothing beside the Knight of the Burning Sword, who with a single backhand had split two huge and monstrous giants down the middle. He thought better of Bernardo del Carpio, because at Roncesvalles he had killed the enchanted Roland by using the trick of Hercules, who throttled Antaeus, the son of Earth, in his arms. He spoke very well of the giant Morgante, because although he came of that giant brood, who are all overbearing and ill-mannered, he alone was civil and well brought up. But above all of them he approved of Reinaldos of Montalbán, and most of all when he saw him ride out of his castle and rob everyone he met, and when overseas he stole that idol of Mahomet which was solid gold, according to his history. As for the traitor Ganelon, he would have given his housekeeper for the chance of a good kicking at him — and thrown in his niece as well.
In the end, his wits now completely gone, he fell into the strangest notion that any madman in the world ever fell into: it seemed to him right and necessary, both for the increase of his own honour and for the service of his country, that he should turn knight errant and go off through the world with his armour and his horse to look for adventures, and to practise everything he had read that knights errant practised — righting every kind of wrong, and putting himself in the way of dangers and difficulties from which, once he had come through them, he would win eternal name and fame. The poor man already saw himself crowned by the strength of his own arm as at the very least Emperor of Trebizond; and so, in the grip of these delightful thoughts and carried away by the extraordinary pleasure he took in them, he set about putting his wishes into practice.
The first thing he did was to clean up a suit of armour that had belonged to his great-grandfathers and had lain rusting and mildewed in a corner, forgotten, for centuries. He cleaned and repaired it as best he could, but then he saw that it had one great defect: it had no closed helmet, only a plain headpiece. Here his ingenuity came to the rescue. He made a kind of half-helmet out of cardboard which, fitted to the headpiece, gave the appearance of a whole one. It is true that in order to test whether it was strong and could stand up to a sword-cut, he drew his sword and gave it two blows; and with the first he undid in an instant what he had taken a week to make. It did not please him at all, the ease with which he had knocked it to pieces, and to guard against that danger he made it over again, putting bars of iron inside it, in such a way that he was satisfied with its strength; and without caring to test it a second time, he pronounced it and held it to be a helmet of the very finest make.
Next he went to look at his nag; and although the beast had more cracked quarters in its hooves than there are quarter-pieces in a coin, and more blemishes than Gonella's horse, which tantum pellis et ossa fuit — was nothing but skin and bone — it seemed to him that neither Alexander's Bucephalus nor the Cid's Babieca was a match for it. Four days went by while he thought what name to give it; because, as he said to himself, it was not right that the horse of so famous a knight, and so good a beast in itself, should go without a name of its own. He tried to fit it with one that would declare what it had been before it belonged to a knight errant, and what it was now; for it stood to reason that when its master changed his condition it should change its name too, and take one that was famous and resounding, as suited the new order and the new profession it had now entered. And so, after a great many names that he made up and rubbed out and struck off, added to, pulled apart and put together again in his memory and his imagination, he ended by calling it Rocinante — a name which struck him as lofty, resounding, and expressive both of what the animal had been when it was a common hack, and of what it was now: the first and foremost hack in the world.
Having found a name for his horse, and one so much to his liking, he wanted to find one for himself, and he spent another eight days on that thought, and at the end of it decided to call himself Don Quixote. Which is why — as has been said — the authors of this most truthful history concluded that his name must certainly have been Quixada, and not Quesada, as others have tried to make out. But remembering that the valiant Amadís had not been content to call himself Amadís and nothing more, but had added the name of his kingdom and country in order to make it famous, and called himself Amadís of Gaul, he too, like a good knight, resolved to add the name of his own country to his own and call himself Don Quixote of La Mancha — by which, to his mind, he declared his lineage and his birthplace to the life, and honoured his country by taking his surname from it.
So, with his armour cleaned, his headpiece turned into a helmet, a name found for his nag and his own name settled, he decided that the only thing still wanting was a lady to fall in love with; for a knight errant without a love is a tree without leaves or fruit, a body without a soul. He said to himself:
"If, for my sins, or by my good luck, I should run into some giant hereabouts, as commonly happens to knights errant, and knock him down at the first charge, or split him through the middle, or in short defeat him and force him to surrender — will it not be as well to have someone to send him to as a present, so that he may go in and fall on his knees before my sweet lady and say, in a humble, submissive voice: 'Madam, I am the giant Caraculiambro, lord of the isle of Malindrania, who was defeated in single combat by the never-sufficiently-to-be-praised knight Don Quixote of La Mancha, who commanded me to present myself before your grace, that your highness might dispose of me as she pleases'?"
Oh, how our good gentleman enjoyed himself when he had made that speech — and still more when he had found someone to call his lady! It happened, so it is believed, that in a village near his own there was a good-looking farm girl he had been in love with for a time, though as far as anyone knows she never learned of it or gave it a thought. Her name was Aldonza Lorenzo, and it seemed to him a good idea to give her the title of mistress of his thoughts. Looking for a name for her that should not clash too much with her own, and that should lean and point towards a princess and a great lady, he ended by calling her Dulcinea of El Toboso, because she came from El Toboso — a name which struck him as musical and out of the ordinary and full of meaning, like all the others he had settled on for himself and for everything belonging to him.
These preparations made, he would wait no longer to put his plan into effect, urged on by the thought of how much the world was losing by his delay — such was the number of wrongs he meant to right, injuries to redress, injustices to mend, abuses to reform and debts to settle. And so, without telling a soul what he intended, and without anybody seeing him, one morning before daybreak — it was one of the hot days of July — he put on the whole of his armour, mounted Rocinante, fitted on his badly made helmet, slipped his shield onto his arm, took up his lance, and by the back gate of a yard rode out into the open country, hugely pleased and delighted to see how easily he had made a beginning on his heart's desire.
But no sooner was he in the open than a terrible thought struck him, one that very nearly made him abandon the whole enterprise before it started: it came into his head that he had not been dubbed a knight, and that by the laws of chivalry he neither could nor should take up arms against any knight; and that even if he had been dubbed, as a new knight he was bound to wear plain white armour with no device on his shield until he had earned one by his own efforts. These thoughts made him waver in his purpose; but his madness being stronger than any argument, he resolved to have himself dubbed a knight by the first man he met, in imitation of a great many others who had done the same, as he had read in the books that had brought him to this pass. As for the white armour, he meant to scour his own, when he got the chance, until it was whiter than ermine. With that he settled his mind and rode on, taking whatever road his horse chose, in the belief that this was where the whole force of adventure lay.
As he rode along, our brand-new adventurer talked to himself, saying:
"Who can doubt that in ages to come, when the true history of my famous deeds is brought to light, the sage who writes them down will begin his account of this my first sally, so early in the morning, in this manner? — 'Scarcely had ruddy Apollo spread over the face of the wide and spacious earth the golden threads of his beautiful hair, and scarcely had the little painted birds with their forked tongues greeted in sweet and honeyed harmony the coming of the rosy dawn, who, leaving the soft bed of her jealous husband, was showing herself to mortals through the doors and balconies of the Manchegan horizon, when the famous knight Don Quixote of La Mancha, leaving the idle feathers of his bed, mounted his famous horse Rocinante and began to ride across the ancient and well-known plain of Montiel.'"
And it was the truth that he was riding across it. He went on:
"Happy the age and happy the century in which my famous exploits shall come to light — exploits worthy to be carved in bronze, cut in marble and painted on panels as a memorial for the future! And you, wise enchanter, whoever you may be, whose business it will be to chronicle this extraordinary history, I beg you not to forget my good Rocinante, my eternal companion on all my roads and journeys!"
Then he would begin again, as though he really were in love:
"O Princess Dulcinea, mistress of this captive heart! Great wrong have ye done me in dismissing me and reproaching me with the harsh command that I appear no more before your beauty. May it please you, lady, to be mindful of this heart of yours in bondage, that suffers so many sorrows for love of you."
He went on stringing together other absurdities of the same kind, all in the manner his books had taught him, imitating their language as closely as he could; and all the while he rode so slowly, and the sun climbed so fast and beat down so hot, that it would have been enough to melt his brains if he had had any.
He rode almost the whole of that day without anything happening worth telling, which drove him to despair, because he wanted to run into somebody at once, immediately, on whom he could test the strength of his mighty arm. There are authors who say his first adventure was the one at Puerto Lápice; others say it was the windmills. But what I have been able to establish in the matter, and what I have found written in the Annals of La Mancha, is that he rode all that day, and that at nightfall his nag and he were worn out and dying of hunger; and that, looking about him in every direction to see whether he could make out some castle or some shepherds' hut where he might take shelter and do something about his great hunger and want, he saw an inn not far from the road he was on — which was as though he had seen a star guiding him, not to the porch, but to the very palace of his redemption. He pushed on, and reached it just as night was falling.
There happened to be standing at the door two young women of the sort they call women of the town, who were on their way to Seville with some carriers who had chanced to break their journey at that inn for the night. And since to our adventurer everything he thought or saw or imagined seemed to be made and to happen after the fashion of what he had read, the moment he saw the inn it presented itself to him as a castle with its four towers and its spires of shining silver, complete with drawbridge and deep moat and all the trimmings that such castles are painted with. He came up towards the inn — which to him was a castle — and a little way off he reined Rocinante in, waiting for some dwarf to show himself between the battlements and blow a trumpet to signal that a knight was arriving at the castle. But seeing that they were slow about it, and that Rocinante was in a hurry to get to the stable, he went up to the door of the inn and saw the two loose women standing there, who seemed to him two beautiful maidens or two graceful ladies taking their ease in front of the castle gate.
Just then it happened that a swineherd who was rounding up a drove of pigs from some stubble-fields — pigs, begging your pardon, but that is what they are called — blew his horn, at which signal they gather; and instantly Don Quixote had what he wanted, which was a dwarf giving notice of his arrival. So with extraordinary satisfaction he came up to the inn and to the ladies, who, seeing a man of that sort coming, armed and carrying lance and shield, were frightened and were going indoors. But Don Quixote, gathering from their flight that they were afraid, raised his pasteboard visor, uncovered his dry and dusty face, and said to them with a courteous air and in a calm voice:
"Flee not, your graces, nor fear any discourtesy; for the order of chivalry which I profess neither touches nor concerns the doing of any to anyone, and least of all to maidens as highborn as your presences declare you to be."
The girls stared at him, hunting with their eyes for the face that the wretched visor hid; but when they heard themselves called maidens, a thing so far outside their line of business, they could not keep from laughing, and they laughed so hard that Don Quixote took offence and said:
"Modesty becomes the fair, and moreover it is great foolishness to laugh at a slight cause; but I say this not to vex you or to make you show ill temper, for mine is nothing but to serve you."
The language, which the ladies did not understand, and the sorry figure our knight cut, only increased their laughter and his annoyance; and it would have gone a good deal further if at that moment the innkeeper had not come out — a man who, being very fat, was very peaceable. Seeing that misshapen figure armed with such ill-matched equipment as the bridle, lance, shield and corselet, he came within an inch of joining the maidens in their expressions of delight. But in the end, in some awe of that whole apparatus of hardware, he decided to speak civilly, and said:
"If your worship, sir knight, is looking for lodging, then apart from a bed — for there is not one in this inn — everything else will be found here in great abundance."
Don Quixote, seeing the humility of the governor of the fortress (for that is what the innkeeper and the inn seemed to him), replied:
"For me, sir castellan, anything will serve, for my trappings are my arms, my resting is to fight,
and so on."
The landlord thought he had been called a Castilian because he had been taken for one of the honest men of Castile, though in fact he was an Andalusian from the beach at Sanlúcar, no less a thief than Cacus and no less a rogue than a student page. So he answered:
"In that case, your worship's bed must be the naked rock and your sleep a perpetual watch; and if that is so, you may safely dismount, in the certainty of finding in this hovel occasion, and occasions, for not sleeping at all for a whole year, let alone for one night."
And saying this he went to hold the stirrup for Don Quixote, who dismounted with great difficulty and effort, like a man who had not broken his fast all that day.
He then told his host to take particular care of his horse, because it was the finest piece of horseflesh that ever ate bread in this world. The innkeeper looked it over and did not think it half as good as Don Quixote said; but he settled it in the stable and came back to see what his guest wanted. The maidens, who had by now made it up with him, were taking his armour off; and although they had got the breastplate and backpiece off him, they never could work out how to unfasten the gorget or get off the makeshift helmet, which he wore tied on with green ribbons. The knots could not be undone and the ribbons would have had to be cut, and to this he would not agree on any terms; so he spent the whole of that night with his helmet on, and made the drollest and strangest figure imaginable. And while they were disarming him — since he supposed that these battered and much-travelled creatures were great ladies of that castle — he said to them very gracefully:
"Never was a knight so well waited on by ladies as Don Quixote was when he came from his village: damsels tended him; princesses, his hack —
or Rocinante, for that, my ladies, is my horse's name, and Don Quixote of La Mancha is mine. And although I had no wish to reveal myself until the deeds done in your service and for your good should have revealed me, the necessity of fitting this old ballad of Lancelot to the present occasion has caused you to learn my name before its proper season. But the time will come when your ladyships shall command and I obey, and the strength of my arm shall show how much I desire to serve you."
The girls, who were not used to hearing rhetoric of that kind, said not a word; they only asked whether he would like anything to eat.
"I would eat anything at all," answered Don Quixote, "because, as I understand it, it would do me a great deal of good."
It happened, as luck would have it, to be a Friday, and there was nothing in the whole inn but a few helpings of a fish that in Castile they call pollack, in Andalusia salt cod, in some places dried cod and in others little trout. They asked him whether his worship would perhaps eat some little trout, since there was no other fish to give him.
"So long as there are plenty of little trout," answered Don Quixote, "they can do duty for one trout; because it is all one to me whether I am given eight reals in small change or in a single piece of eight. What is more, these little trout may well be like veal, which is better than beef, or kid, which is better than goat. But whatever it is, let it come at once, for the labour and the weight of arms cannot be borne without the government of the guts."
They set his table for him at the inn door, for the cool of it, and the landlord brought him a portion of the badly soaked and worse cooked salt cod, and a loaf as black and grimy as his armour. But it was a thing to make you shout with laughter to watch him eat; because, with his helmet on and the visor up, he could get nothing into his mouth with his own hands unless somebody put it there for him, so one of the ladies had to do him this service. As for giving him a drink, that was impossible, and would have stayed impossible if the innkeeper had not bored out a reed and put one end in his mouth and poured the wine in at the other; and all this he took patiently rather than break the ribbons of his helmet.
While this was going on, a pig-gelder happened to arrive at the inn, and as he came up he blew his cane whistle four or five times — which finally settled it for Don Quixote that he was in some famous castle, and that they were serving him with music, and that the pollack was trout, the bread white, the whores ladies and the innkeeper the castellan of the castle; and so he counted his decision and his setting out well repaid. But what worried him most was that he had not yet been dubbed a knight, since it seemed to him that he could not lawfully enter on any adventure without first receiving the order of chivalry.
And so, tormented by this thought, he cut short his scanty inn supper; and when it was over he called the innkeeper, shut himself up with him in the stable, fell on his knees before him and said:
"Never will I rise from where I am, valiant knight, until your courtesy grants me a boon that I wish to ask of you, one that will redound to your praise and to the good of the human race."
The innkeeper, seeing his guest at his feet and hearing this sort of language, stood staring at him in confusion, not knowing what to do or say, and kept insisting that he get up; but Don Quixote would not, until he had to tell him that he granted the boon he was asking.
"I expected no less of your great magnificence, my lord," answered Don Quixote. "And so I tell you that the boon I have asked of you, and that your generosity has granted me, is that tomorrow morning you shall dub me a knight; and that tonight I shall keep watch over my arms in the chapel of this castle of yours; and tomorrow, as I have said, what I so much desire shall be accomplished, so that I may go, as is proper, through all four quarters of the world in search of adventures on behalf of the needy — which is the business of chivalry and of knights errant such as I am, whose desire is bent upon deeds of that kind."
The innkeeper, who, as has been said, was something of a sly rogue and already had some suspicions of his guest's want of wits, was quite convinced of it when he heard this speech; and, in order to have something to laugh at that night, he decided to humour him. So he told him he was entirely right in what he wanted and asked for, and that such a resolution was proper and natural in knights as distinguished as he appeared to be and as his gallant bearing showed him; and that he himself, in the years of his youth, had followed that honourable profession, going about the world in various parts in search of adventures — not omitting the Percheles of Málaga, the Isles of Riarán, the Compass of Seville, the Little Market of Segovia, the Olive Grove of Valencia, the Rondilla of Granada, the beach at Sanlúcar, the Colt of Córdoba, the Taverns of Toledo and various other places, where he had exercised the nimbleness of his feet and the deftness of his hands, doing a great many wrongs, courting a great many widows, undoing a few maidens and swindling a few minors; and, in short, making himself known in nearly every court and tribunal in the whole of Spain. And that at last he had retired to this castle of his, where he lived on his own property and other people's, taking in all knights errant of whatever rank and condition, purely out of the great affection he had for them and so that they should share their goods with him in payment of his good will.
He told him also that in this castle of his there was no chapel where he might keep watch over his arms, because it had been pulled down to be built again; but that in case of necessity he knew that the watch could be kept anywhere, and that tonight he might keep it in a courtyard of the castle; and that in the morning, God willing, the proper ceremonies would be performed, so that he should be dubbed a knight, and so much a knight that there could be no more of one in the world.
He asked whether he had any money with him. Don Quixote answered that he had not a farthing, because he had never read in the histories of knights errant that any of them had carried any. To this the innkeeper said that he was mistaken; that although it was not written down in the histories — because it had seemed to their authors that there was no need to write down a thing so obvious and so necessary to carry as money and clean shirts — that was no reason to believe they had not carried them. He might take it as certain and established that all the knights errant that so many books are stuffed and crammed with carried well-lined purses against whatever might befall them; and that they likewise carried shirts and a little box full of ointments to treat the wounds they took, because it was not every time that in the fields and deserts where they fought and came off wounded there was somebody to treat them — unless indeed they had some wise enchanter for a friend, who would come to their aid at once, carrying through the air on a cloud some damsel or dwarf with a flask of water of such virtue that on tasting a single drop of it they were instantly healed of their cuts and wounds as though they had never had anything the matter with them. But in the absence of that, knights in past ages had thought it right that their squires should be provided with money and other necessaries, such as lint and ointments for dressing wounds; and when it happened that such knights had no squires, which was seldom and rarely, they carried everything themselves in a pair of very slim saddlebags that hardly showed at all, slung behind the saddle as though it were something of greater importance — because, except on some such occasion, this business of carrying saddlebags was not much approved of among knights errant. And for this reason he advised him — since he might still command him as his godson, which he was so soon to become — not to travel from now on without money and without the provisions mentioned, and he would find how well off he was with them when he least expected it.
Don Quixote promised to do what he was advised with the greatest exactness; and so orders were given for him to keep watch over his arms in a large yard at one side of the inn. Gathering them all up, Don Quixote laid them on a trough that stood beside a well, and, slipping his shield onto his arm, took up his lance and began to pace up and down in front of the trough with a noble bearing; and as he began his pacing, night began to fall.
The innkeeper told everybody in the inn about his guest's madness, the watch over the arms and the dubbing he was expecting. They marvelled at so strange a kind of madness and went to watch him from a distance, and saw that with a calm air he sometimes paced up and down, and sometimes, leaning on his lance, fixed his eyes on the armour and did not take them off it for a long while. Night had closed in completely, but the moon was so bright that it could compete with the body that lent it its light, so that everything the new knight did was plainly seen by everybody.
Just then it occurred to one of the carriers in the inn to go and water his string of mules, and for that it was necessary to move Don Quixote's armour off the trough. Seeing him come, Don Quixote said to him in a loud voice:
"O thou, whoever thou art, presumptuous knight, that comest to lay hands on the arms of the most valiant errant that ever girded sword! Look to what thou doest, and touch them not, unless thou wouldst leave thy life in payment for thy presumption."
The carrier took no notice of these words — and it would have been better for him if he had, since he would have been taking care of his health. On the contrary, he took hold of the straps and flung the armour a good way from him. Seeing which, Don Quixote raised his eyes to heaven and, fixing his thoughts — so it appeared — on his lady Dulcinea, said:
"Help me, my lady, in this first insult offered to this breast of yours that is your vassal; let not your favour and protection fail me in this first trial."
And saying this and more to the same effect, he let go his shield, raised his lance in both hands and brought it down on the carrier's head with such a blow that he knocked him to the ground so badly hurt that if he had followed it with a second there would have been no need of a surgeon to treat him. That done, he gathered up his armour and went back to pacing with the same composure as before.
A little later, without anyone knowing what had happened — for the carrier was still stunned — a second one came up with the same intention of watering his mules; and as he went to move the armour and clear the trough, without a word and without asking anyone's help, Don Quixote let go his shield again, raised his lance again, and without breaking it to pieces made more than three of the second carrier's head, for he split it in four. At the noise all the people in the inn came running, the innkeeper among them. Seeing this, Don Quixote got his shield on his arm, laid his hand on his sword and said:
"O lady of beauty, strength and vigour of this feeble heart of mine! Now is the time to turn the eyes of your greatness upon this captive knight of yours, who awaits so great an adventure."
With this he recovered, as it seemed to him, such courage that if all the carriers in the world had attacked him he would not have taken a step back. The comrades of the wounded men, seeing the state they were in, began at a distance to rain stones down on Don Quixote, who sheltered himself as best he could behind his shield and dared not leave the trough for fear of abandoning his armour. The innkeeper shouted to them to leave him alone, because he had already told them the man was mad, and being mad he would get off even if he killed the lot of them. Don Quixote was shouting too, and louder, calling them treacherous cowards, and saying that the lord of the castle was a base-born scoundrel of a knight to allow knights errant to be treated in such a way, and that if he had received the order of chivalry he would have made him understand his treachery:
"But as for you, foul and low rabble, I take no account of you at all. Throw, come on, come here and do me what harm you can, and you shall see what payment you get for your folly and your insolence."
He said this with such spirit and such fearlessness that he put a terrible fright into his attackers; and for that reason, and because of the innkeeper's arguments, they stopped throwing, and he let the wounded be carried off and went back to his watch with the same quiet composure as before.
The innkeeper did not much care for his guest's jokes, and decided to cut it short and give him the confounded order of chivalry at once, before any further misfortune occurred. So, going up to him, he apologised for the insolence that low sort of people had shown him without his knowing anything about it, though they had been well punished for their presumption. He told him, as he had told him already, that there was no chapel in the castle, and that for what remained to be done none was needed; that the whole point of being dubbed a knight lay in the blow on the neck and the stroke on the shoulder, according to what he knew of the ceremonial of the order, and that this could be done in the middle of a field; and that he had already fulfilled the requirement about watching over the arms, since two hours' watch was enough, and he had stood more than four.
Don Quixote believed the whole of it, and said that he was there ready to obey him, and to finish it off as quickly as he could; because if he were attacked again once he was dubbed a knight, he did not intend to leave a soul alive in the castle, except those his host might tell him to spare, whom he would spare out of respect for him.
Warned and thoroughly alarmed by this, the castellan promptly brought out a ledger in which he entered the straw and barley he issued to the carriers, and with a candle-end that a boy fetched him, and with the two damsels already mentioned, he came to where Don Quixote was and told him to kneel. Then, reading out of his account-book as though he were saying some devout prayer, in the middle of the reading he raised his hand and gave him a good blow on the neck, and after it, with the man's own sword, a handsome stroke across the shoulder, muttering all the while under his breath as though he were praying. That done, he ordered one of the ladies to gird on his sword, which she did with great composure and discretion — and no little was needed to keep from bursting with laughter at every point of the ceremony; but the feats they had already seen from the new knight kept their laughter within bounds. As she girded on the sword, the good lady said:
"God make your worship a very fortunate knight and give you good luck in your fights."
Don Quixote asked her what she was called, so that he might know from then on to whom he was indebted for the favour received; because he meant to give her some share of the honour he would win by the strength of his arm. She answered very humbly that she was called La Tolosa, and that she was the daughter of a cobbler from Toledo who lived by the little stalls of Sancho Bienaya, and that wherever she might be she would serve him and hold him for her lord. Don Quixote begged her, for love of him, to do him the favour of taking a title from then on and calling herself Doña Tolosa. She promised she would; and the other buckled on his spur, and with her he had almost the same conversation as with the lady of the sword. He asked her name, and she said she was called La Molinera, and that she was the daughter of an honest miller of Antequera; and Don Quixote begged her too to take a title and call herself Doña Molinera, offering her fresh services and favours.
These ceremonies, never before seen in this world, having been rushed through at the gallop, Don Quixote could not wait to be in the saddle and out looking for adventures. Saddling Rocinante at once, he mounted, embraced his host, and thanked him for the favour of dubbing him a knight in such extraordinary terms that there is no possibility of setting them down. The innkeeper, to see him out of the inn, answered him with no less rhetoric, though in rather fewer words, and without asking him for the price of his lodging let him go, and good riddance.
It must have been daybreak when Don Quixote rode out of the inn, so pleased with himself, so gallant, so overjoyed at finding himself dubbed a knight that the delight of it burst the girths of his horse. But remembering his host's advice about the very necessary provisions he ought to carry with him, and particularly the money and the shirts, he decided to go home and fit himself out with everything, and with a squire as well, reckoning on taking on a labourer who was a neighbour of his, a poor man with children, but very well suited to the squirely office of chivalry. With this in mind he turned Rocinante towards his village, and the horse, all but recognising his old haunts, set off so willingly that he seemed not to be putting his feet on the ground at all.
He had not gone far when it seemed to him that from a thicket on his right hand came faint cries, like somebody in distress; and he had hardly heard them before he said:
"I give thanks to heaven for the favour it does me, in putting occasions so promptly before me in which I can do what I owe to my profession and gather the fruit of my good intentions. These cries are certainly from some man or woman in need, who requires my favour and assistance."
And turning the reins, he headed Rocinante towards where the cries seemed to be coming from. A few steps into the wood he saw a mare tied to an oak, and tied to another a boy stripped to the waist, about fifteen years old, who was the one crying out — and not without cause, for a strapping farmer was laying into him with a belt, and every stroke came with a reproof and a piece of advice. He was saying:
"Hold your tongue and keep your eyes open."
And the boy was answering:
"I won't do it again, sir; by Christ's Passion, I won't do it again; I promise to look after the flock more carefully from now on."
Seeing what was going on, Don Quixote said in an angry voice:
"Discourteous knight, it ill becomes you to set upon one who cannot defend himself. Get on your horse and take your lance" — for there was a lance too, leaning against the oak the mare was tethered to — "and I will make you understand that what you are doing is the work of cowards."
The farmer, seeing that figure covered in armour standing over him and brandishing a lance in his face, gave himself up for dead, and answered civilly:
"Sir knight, this boy I am punishing is a servant of mine, employed to look after a flock of sheep I have hereabouts, and he is so careless that I lose one every day. And when I punish him for his carelessness — or his roguery — he says I do it out of meanness, so as not to pay him the wages I owe him; and before God and on my soul he lies."
"'Lies', in my presence, you vile peasant?" said Don Quixote. "By the sun that shines on us, I have half a mind to run you through with this lance. Pay him at once, without another word; if not, by the God who rules us I will finish and annihilate you on this spot. Untie him this minute."
The farmer hung his head and, without a word in reply, untied his servant. Don Quixote asked the boy how much his master owed him. He said nine months at seven reals a month. Don Quixote did the sum and found it came to sixty-three reals, and told the farmer to pay it out on the spot unless he wanted to die for it. The frightened peasant answered that, in the pass he was in and by the oath he had sworn — and he had not sworn anything yet — it was not so much, because there had to be deducted and taken into account three pairs of shoes he had given him and a real for two bleedings when he had been ill.
"That is all very well," replied Don Quixote, "but let the shoes and the bleedings stand against the lashes you have given him without any fault of his; for if he wore out the leather of the shoes you paid for, you have worn out the leather of his body; and if the barber let his blood when he was ill, you have let it when he was well. So on that score he owes you nothing."
"The trouble is, sir knight, that I have no money here. Let Andrés come home with me and I will pay him real by real."
"Me go with him?" said the boy. "Not on your life! No, sir, not for a moment; because the minute he gets me alone he'll flay me like a St Bartholomew."
"He will do nothing of the kind," replied Don Quixote. "It is enough that I command him, and he will respect me; and provided he swears it to me by the order of chivalry he has received, I will let him go free and guarantee the payment."
"Just listen to what your worship is saying, sir," said the boy, "for this master of mine is no knight and has never received any order of chivalry at all; he is Juan Haldudo the rich man, from over at Quintanar."
"That matters little," answered Don Quixote, "for there may well be knights among the Haldudos; besides which, every man is the son of his own deeds."
"That's true enough," said Andrés, "but this master of mine — what deeds is he the son of, when he denies me my wages and my sweat and labour?"
"I do not deny them, brother Andrés," answered the farmer; "and do me the kindness of coming with me, and I swear by all the orders of chivalry there are in the world to pay you, as I have said, real by real, and perfumed into the bargain."
"I let you off the perfume," said Don Quixote. "Give them to him in reals and I shall be satisfied. And mind you keep your oath; if not, by that same oath I swear to come back and look for you and punish you, and I shall find you even if you hide better than a lizard. And if you want to know who lays this on you, so as to feel more truly bound to carry it out, know that I am the valiant Don Quixote of La Mancha, the undoer of wrongs and injustices. And so God be with you, and do not let what you have promised and sworn slip out of your mind, on pain of the penalty pronounced."
And so saying he spurred Rocinante and was soon well away from them. The farmer followed him with his eyes, and when he saw that he had passed out of the wood and was no longer in sight he turned to his servant Andrés and said:
"Come here, my son, I want to pay you what I owe you, as that undoer of wrongs commanded me."
"I'll swear you do," said Andrés. "And how right your worship will be to carry out the orders of that good knight — may he live a thousand years! Seeing how valiant he is and what a good judge, by St Roch, if you don't pay me he'll come back and do exactly what he said."
"I'll swear to that too," said the farmer; "but out of the great affection I bear you, I want to increase the debt so as to increase the payment."
And taking him by the arm he tied him to the oak again, where he gave him so many lashes that he left him for dead.
"Now call, Señor Andrés," said the farmer, "for the undoer of wrongs, and you'll see how he doesn't undo this one. Though I don't think it's finished being done yet, because I have a mind to flay you alive, as you were afraid of."
But in the end he untied him and gave him leave to go and look for his judge, so that he might execute the sentence pronounced. Andrés went off rather glum, swearing to go and find the valiant Don Quixote of La Mancha and tell him point by point what had happened, and that he would have to pay for it sevenfold. For all that, he went off crying and his master stayed behind laughing.
And that was how the valiant Don Quixote undid the wrong; and he, delighted with what had happened and thinking he had made a most fortunate and lofty beginning to his knighthood, rode on towards his village in great satisfaction with himself, saying under his breath:
"Well may you call yourself the most fortunate of all the women alive on earth today, O beauty above all beauties, Dulcinea of El Toboso — since it has fallen to your lot to have subject and surrendered to your every wish and pleasure so valiant and so renowned a knight as Don Quixote of La Mancha is and shall be; who, as all the world knows, received the order of chivalry yesterday and today has undone the greatest wrong and injury that injustice ever framed or cruelty ever committed. Today he struck the whip from the hand of that pitiless enemy who was flogging that delicate child for no reason at all."
At this point he came to a place where the road divided into four, and at once there came into his mind those crossroads where knights errant used to stop and consider which of the roads to take; and to imitate them he sat still a while, and after thinking it over very thoroughly he dropped the rein and left his own choice to the horse's, and the horse followed his original intention, which was to make for his own stable.
After going about two miles, Don Quixote made out a great crowd of people, who, as it turned out afterwards, were some merchants of Toledo on their way to buy silk in Murcia. There were six of them, riding under sunshades, with four servants on horseback and three muleteers on foot. Don Quixote had hardly caught sight of them before he imagined this must be some fresh adventure; and, so as to copy in every way he could the passages he had read in his books, it seemed to him that here was one made to measure that he had been meaning to attempt. So with a noble bearing and great resolution he settled himself firmly in the stirrups, gripped his lance, brought his shield up to his chest, and, planting himself in the middle of the road, waited for those knights errant to come up — for that is what he took them for and judged them to be. And when they had got near enough to see and hear him, Don Quixote raised his voice and said, with an arrogant gesture:
"Let all the world stand still, unless all the world confesses that there is not in all the world a maiden more beautiful than the Empress of La Mancha, the peerless Dulcinea of El Toboso."
The merchants stopped at the sound of this speech, and to look at the strange figure of the man who made it; and from the figure and the speech they saw at once that its owner was mad. But they wanted to see at their leisure where this confession they were being asked for would end, and one of them, who was something of a joker and very shrewd indeed, said to him:
"Sir knight, we do not know who this good lady you speak of may be. Show her to us; and if she is as beautiful as you make out, we will willingly and without any compulsion confess the truth that you require of us."
"If I showed her to you," replied Don Quixote, "what merit would there be in your confessing so obvious a truth? The whole point is that without seeing her you must believe it, confess it, affirm it, swear it and defend it; and if not, you are at war with me, you monstrous and arrogant people. Whether you come at me one by one, as the order of chivalry requires, or all together, as is the custom and the bad practice of your breed, here I stand and wait for you, trusting in the right that is on my side."
"Sir knight," said the merchant, "I beg your worship, in the name of all these princes here present, that — so as not to burden our consciences by confessing a thing we have never seen or heard of, and one so much to the prejudice of the empresses and queens of the Alcarria and Extremadura — your worship will be so good as to show us some portrait of this lady, even if it is no bigger than a grain of wheat; for you can tell the whole skein by a single thread, and we shall be satisfied and easy in our minds, and your worship will be content and paid off. In fact I think we are so far on your side already that even if her portrait shows us she is blind in one eye and that the other runs vermilion and brimstone, we would still, to oblige your worship, say everything you like in her favour."
"It runs nothing of the kind, you infamous rabble," answered Don Quixote, blazing with rage. "It runs nothing of the kind, I tell you, but amber and civet packed in cotton wool; and she is neither one-eyed nor hunchbacked, but straighter than a spindle out of the Guadarrama. But you shall pay for the enormous blasphemy you have uttered against beauty as great as my lady's."
And saying this he charged with his lance levelled at the man who had spoken, with such fury and rage that if good luck had not arranged for Rocinante to stumble and fall halfway there, it would have gone badly for the bold merchant. Rocinante went down, and his master rolled a good distance across the field; and, trying to get up, he never could — such an encumbrance were the lance, shield, spurs and helmet, together with the weight of that ancient armour. And while he was struggling to get up and failing, he kept saying:
"Fly not, cowardly people! Stay, base creatures! It is not by my own fault that I lie here, but by my horse's."
One of the muleteers, who cannot have been very well disposed, hearing the poor fallen man come out with all this arrogance, could not put up with it without answering him across the ribs. Going up to him, he took the lance, and after breaking it in pieces he began with one of them to give our Don Quixote such a beating that, in spite of all his armour, he ground him like grain. His masters shouted at him not to lay it on so hard and to leave the man alone, but the lad's blood was up and he would not leave the game until he had staked the whole rest of his rage; and fetching the other pieces of the lance he finished breaking them up on the wretched fallen man, who through that whole tempest of blows never shut his mouth, but went on threatening heaven and earth and the brigands, which was what they seemed to him.
The lad wore himself out, and the merchants went on their way with something to talk about for the rest of it — the poor cudgelled knight. And he, when he saw himself alone, tried once more whether he could get up; but if he could not do it when he was sound and well, how was he to do it now, pounded and half destroyed? And still he counted himself fortunate, since it seemed to him this was a misfortune proper to knights errant, and he put the whole of it down to his horse's fault; and it was not possible to get up, so bruised was he in every part of his body.
Finding, then, that he really could not stir, he decided to fall back on his usual remedy, which was to think of some passage out of his books; and his madness brought to his mind the one about Valdovinos and the Marquis of Mantua, when Carloto left him wounded in the mountains — a story known to children, not unfamiliar to young men, celebrated and even believed by old ones, and for all that no truer than the miracles of Mahomet. This struck him as made to measure for the situation he was in; and so, with every appearance of great suffering, he began to roll about on the ground and to say in a failing voice the very words they say the wounded knight of the wood said:
Where art thou, lady mine, that thou grievest not at my pain? Either thou knowest it not, lady, or thou art false and disloyal.
And in this manner he went on with the ballad as far as those lines that say:
O noble Marquis of Mantua, mine uncle and lord by blood!
And as luck would have it, when he got to this line a labourer from his own village and a neighbour of his happened to be passing, on his way back from taking a load of wheat to the mill. Seeing a man lying there, he came up and asked him who he was and what was wrong with him that he was complaining so mournfully. Don Quixote had no doubt at all that this was the Marquis of Mantua, his uncle; and so he answered nothing but went on with his ballad, in which he gave an account of his misfortune and of the love affair between the Emperor's son and his own wife — all exactly as the ballad sings it.
The labourer stood amazed, listening to this nonsense; and taking off the visor, which was already in pieces from the beating, he wiped his face, which was covered in dust; and he had hardly wiped it before he recognised him and said:
"Señor Quixana" — for that must have been his name when he was in his right mind and had not yet gone from a quiet gentleman to a knight errant — "who has put your worship in this state?"
But he only went on with his ballad in answer to everything he was asked. Seeing this, the good man got off his breastplate and backpiece as best he could, to see whether he had any wound; but he saw no blood and no mark of any kind. He tried to get him up off the ground, and with no little trouble hoisted him onto his own donkey, which seemed to him the steadier mount. He gathered up the armour, down to the splinters of the lance, and tied it all on Rocinante; and taking the horse by the rein and the ass by the halter, he set off towards his village, deep in thought at the nonsense Don Quixote was talking. And Don Quixote was no less deep in it, for being so pounded and broken that he could hardly keep his seat on the little donkey, and letting out sighs from time to time that carried up to heaven — so that once again he obliged the labourer to ask him to say what was wrong with him. And it seems as though the devil himself was bringing into his memory the tales that fitted his circumstances, because at that moment, forgetting all about Valdovinos, he remembered the Moor Abindarráez, and how the governor of Antequera, Rodrigo de Narváez, took him prisoner and carried him captive to his stronghold. So that when the labourer asked him again how he was and what he felt, he answered with the same words and speeches that the captive Abencerraje made to Rodrigo de Narváez, exactly as he had read the story in Jorge de Montemayor's Diana, where it is written down — making such apt use of it that the labourer was consigning himself to the devil at having to listen to such a machine of foolishness. By which he understood that his neighbour was mad, and he hurried on to reach the village so as to escape the tedium Don Quixote's long harangue was causing him. At the end of it Don Quixote said:
"Let your worship know, Señor Don Rodrigo de Narváez, that this beautiful Jarifa I have mentioned is now the lovely Dulcinea of El Toboso, for whom I have done, do and shall do the most famous deeds of chivalry that have been, are being or ever will be seen in this world."
To which the labourer answered:
"Look here, sir, sinner that I am — I am not Don Rodrigo de Narváez, nor the Marquis of Mantua, but Pedro Alonso, your neighbour; and your worship is not Valdovinos nor Abindarráez, but the honourable gentleman Señor Quixana."
"I know who I am," answered Don Quixote, "and I know that I can be not only the men I have named, but all the Twelve Peers of France as well, and all the Nine Worthies too; for my exploits will outdo everything they all did together and every one of them did singly."
With this talk and more like it they reached the village about nightfall; but the labourer waited until it was a little darker, so that the battered gentleman should not be seen making such a poor horseman. When it seemed to him the right time, he went into the town and up to Don Quixote's house, which he found in an uproar. The curate and the barber of the village were there, both of them great friends of Don Quixote, and the housekeeper was shouting at them:
"What does your worship think, Señor Licentiate Pero Pérez" — for that was the curate's name — "of my master's misfortune? Three days now and no sign of him, nor of the nag, nor of the shield, nor the lance, nor the armour. Miserable woman that I am! I am convinced — and it is as true as that I was born to die — that those cursed books of chivalry he has, and reads so constantly, have turned his brain. Now I remember hearing him say many a time, talking to himself, that he wanted to turn knight errant and go off through the world looking for adventures. Let those books be commended to Satan and Barabbas, for having ruined the finest understanding in the whole of La Mancha."
The niece said the same, and more besides:
"You should know, Master Nicholas" — that was the barber's name — "that many a time it happened that my uncle would be reading these heartless books of misfortunes for two days and nights together, at the end of which he would throw the book out of his hands, lay hold of his sword and go slashing at the walls; and when he was thoroughly worn out he would say he had killed four giants as big as four towers, and the sweat that ran off him from tiredness he said was blood from the wounds he had taken in the battle. Then he would drink off a great jug of cold water and be well and calm again, saying that the water was a most precious potion brought him by the sage Esquife, a great enchanter and a friend of his. But I am to blame for the whole thing, for not telling your worships about my uncle's ravings so that you could have done something about it before it came to this, and burnt all these excommunicated books — for he has plenty of them, and they thoroughly deserve to be burned, as if they belonged to heretics."
"That is what I say too," said the curate, "and upon my word tomorrow shall not pass without a public trial being held on them and their being condemned to the fire, so that they may not give anyone else who reads them the chance of doing what my good friend must have done."
The labourer and Don Quixote were listening to all this, and it finally made the labourer understand what was the matter with his neighbour; so he began to call out:
"Open, your worships, to Sir Valdovinos and to my lord the Marquis of Mantua, who comes sorely wounded, and to the Moorish lord Abindarráez, brought captive by the valiant Rodrigo de Narváez, governor of Antequera."
At these shouts they all came out, and as the men recognised their friend and the women their master and uncle, who had still not got down from the donkey because he could not, they ran to embrace him. He said:
"Hold, all of you. I come sorely wounded through my horse's fault. Carry me to my bed and send, if it be possible, for the wise Urganda, to treat and examine my wounds."
"Just look at that, confound it!" said the housekeeper at this. "Didn't my heart tell me exactly which foot my master was limping on! Come up, your worship, and welcome; for without that Hurgada of yours coming we shall know how to cure you here. Cursed, I say again, and a hundred times over, be these books of chivalry, that have brought your worship to this!"
They carried him to bed at once, and searching him for wounds could find none; and he said it was all bruising, from having taken a great fall with Rocinante his horse while fighting ten giants, the most outrageous and audacious that were to be found in a great part of the earth.
"Aha!" said the curate. "So there are giants in the dance, are there? By the holy cross, I will burn them tomorrow before nightfall."
They asked Don Quixote a thousand questions, and to none of them would he answer anything except that they should give him something to eat and let him sleep, which was what mattered most to him. This was done, and the curate questioned the labourer at great length about how he had found Don Quixote. He told him the whole of it, with the nonsense he had talked when he found him and while he was bringing him home; which only made the licentiate keener to do what he did the next day, which was to call on his friend Master Nicholas the barber and go with him to Don Quixote's house.
He was still asleep. The curate asked the niece for the keys of the room where the books were — the authors of the mischief — and she gave them to him very willingly. They all went in, the housekeeper with them, and found more than a hundred large volumes, very handsomely bound, and a good many small ones. The moment the housekeeper saw them she hurried out of the room again and came back with a bowl of holy water and a sprinkler, and said:
"Take this, your worship, Señor Licentiate, and sprinkle the room, in case there should be here one of those enchanters the books are full of, and he should put a spell on us in return for the one we mean to put on them by driving them out of the world."
The licentiate laughed at the housekeeper's simplicity, and told the barber to hand him the books one at a time so that he could see what they were about, since there might be some that did not deserve punishment by fire.
"No," said the niece, "there is no reason to spare a single one, because they have all done the damage. It would be better to throw them out of the window into the yard, make a pile of them and set fire to it; or else take them out to the stable-yard, and there make the bonfire, and then the smoke will not be a nuisance."
The housekeeper said the same: such was the eagerness the two of them had for the death of those innocents. But the curate would not agree to it without at least reading the titles. And the first that Master Nicholas put into his hands was The Four Books of Amadís of Gaul, and the curate said:
"There seems to be something providential in this; because I have heard it said that this was the first book of chivalry printed in Spain, and that all the rest have taken their beginning and origin from it. And so it seems to me that, as the founder of so bad a sect, we ought to condemn it to the fire without any excuse."
"No, sir," said the barber, "for I have also heard it said that it is the best of all the books that have been written in that line; and so, as being unique in its art, it ought to be pardoned."
"That is true," said the curate, "and for that reason its life is spared for now. Let us see that other one next to it."
"It is," said the barber, "The Exploits of Esplandián, the lawful son of Amadís of Gaul."
"Then in truth," said the curate, "the goodness of the father shall not save the son. Here, mistress housekeeper: open that window and throw him into the yard, and let him make a beginning to the pile for the bonfire we are going to have."
The housekeeper did it with great satisfaction, and the good Esplandián went flying into the yard to wait with all patience for the fire that threatened him.
"On we go," said the curate.
"This next one," said the barber, "is Amadís of Greece; and I believe all the ones on this side are of the same family as Amadís."
"Then let them all go into the yard," said the curate; "for rather than not burn Queen Pintiquiniestra, and the shepherd Darinel and his eclogues, and the devilish tangled speeches of the man who wrote them, I would burn my own father along with them, if he came about in the shape of a knight errant."
"I am of that opinion," said the barber.
"And so am I," added the niece.
"Well then," said the housekeeper, "hand them over, and out into the yard with them."
They gave her the books, which were many, and she saved herself the stairs by pitching them down out of the window.
"Who is that tub of a thing?" said the curate.
"That," answered the barber, "is Don Olivante de Laura."
"The author of that book," said the curate, "was the same man who wrote The Garden of Flowers; and to tell the truth I cannot make up my mind which of the two books is the more truthful — or, to put it better, the less lying. All I can say is that this one goes into the yard for being absurd and arrogant."
"This next is Florismarte of Hyrcania," said the barber.
"So Sir Florismarte is here, is he?" replied the curate. "Then upon my faith he shall come to a quick end in the yard, in spite of his strange birth and his celebrated adventures; the hardness and dryness of his style allow of nothing else. Into the yard with him and with that other one, mistress housekeeper."
"With pleasure, sir," she would answer; and she carried out her orders with great cheerfulness.
"This is The Knight Platir," said the barber.
"That is an old book," said the curate, "and I find nothing in it that deserves pardon. Let it join the others without argument."
And so it was done. They opened another book and saw that it was called The Knight of the Cross.
"For the sake of so holy a name as this book bears, its ignorance might be forgiven; but then there is the saying: behind the cross stands the devil. Into the fire with it."
Taking up another book, the barber said:
"This is The Mirror of Chivalry."
"I know his worship already," said the curate. "In there go Sir Reinaldos of Montalbán with his friends and companions, greater thieves than Cacus, and the Twelve Peers, with that truthful historian Turpin. And to tell the truth I am inclined to sentence them to no more than perpetual banishment, if only because they have a share in the invention of the famous Matteo Boiardo, out of which the Christian poet Ludovico Ariosto also wove his cloth. And if I find Ariosto here, and speaking any language but his own, I shall show him no respect whatever; but if he speaks in his own tongue, I shall put him on my head."
"Well, I have him in Italian," said the barber, "but I don't understand him."
"Nor would it be a good thing if you did," answered the curate; "and here we would gladly excuse that captain for not having brought him to Spain and made a Castilian of him, for he stripped him of a great deal of his native worth. And the same will be done by everyone who tries to turn books of verse into another language: however much care they take and however much skill they show, they will never reach the pitch those books had at their first birth. In short, I say that this book, and all that are found dealing with these matters of France, should be thrown and deposited in a dry well until we can decide with more deliberation what is to be done with them — always excepting a certain Bernardo del Carpio that is going about, and another called Roncesvalles; for these, the moment they come into my hands, shall pass into the housekeeper's and out of hers into the fire, without any reprieve."
The barber confirmed the whole of it and thought it well and very rightly said, believing the curate to be so good a Christian and so great a friend of the truth that he would not say otherwise for anything in the world. And opening another book, he saw it was Palmerin of the Olive, and next to it another called Palmerin of England; seeing which, the licentiate said:
"Let that olive be split into kindling at once and burned until not even its ashes are left; and let that palm of England be kept and preserved as something unique, and let a case be made for it like the one Alexander found among the spoils of Darius, which he set aside for keeping the works of the poet Homer in. This book, my friend, has authority on two counts: first because it is very good in itself, and secondly because it is said that a wise king of Portugal wrote it. All the adventures at the castle of Miraguarda are excellent and very skilfully done; the speeches are courtly and clear, and observe and respect the character of the speaker with great propriety and understanding. So I say, saving your better judgement, Master Nicholas, that this one and Amadís of Gaul go free of the fire, and all the rest perish without any further sifting and searching."
"No, my friend," replied the barber. "This one I have here is the celebrated Don Belianís."
"Then that one," replied the curate, "along with its second, third and fourth parts, needs a little rhubarb to purge its excess of bile; and everything about the Castle of Fame will have to come out, and other impertinences of more consequence. For that they are given the longest term the law allows, and according as they mend, so shall they be treated with mercy or with justice. In the meantime keep them at your house, friend, but do not let anybody read them."
"With pleasure," answered the barber.
And without wishing to tire himself out reading any more books of chivalry, he told the housekeeper to take all the big ones and pitch them into the yard. This was not said to a fool or a deaf woman, but to one who was keener on burning them than on weaving a length of cloth, however large and fine. Grabbing nearly eight at once, she flung them out of the window; and taking so many together, one fell at the barber's feet, and he had a fancy to see whose it was, and saw it said: The History of the Famous Knight Tirant lo Blanc.
"Bless me!" said the curate, with a great shout. "So Tirant lo Blanc is here! Give him to me, friend; I reckon I have found in him a treasure of enjoyment and a mine of amusement. Here is Don Quirieleison of Montalbán, that valiant knight, and his brother Tomás of Montalbán, and the knight Fonseca, and the battle the brave Tirant fought with the mastiff, and the witticisms of the damsel Pleasure-of-my-life, and the loves and the wiles of the widow Repose, and the lady Empress in love with Hippolyte her squire. I tell you truly, friend, that for its style this is the best book in the world: here the knights eat, and sleep, and die in their beds, and make their wills before they die, with all sorts of things that every other book of the kind goes without. For all that, I tell you that the man who wrote it deserved, for not having done so many foolish things on purpose, to be sent to the galleys for the rest of his days. Take it home and read it, and you will see that everything I have told you about it is true."
"I shall," answered the barber. "But what are we to do with these small books that are left?"
"These," said the curate, "cannot be books of chivalry, but of poetry."
And opening one, he saw it was the Diana of Jorge de Montemayor, and said, thinking all the rest were of the same kind:
"These do not deserve to be burned like the others, because they do not do, and will not do, the harm the books of chivalry have done. They are books of the understanding, and nobody is the worse for them."
"Oh, sir!" said the niece. "Your worship may perfectly well order these to be burned like the rest; because it would be no great wonder if, my uncle having been cured of his chivalry sickness, he should read these and take it into his head to turn shepherd and go wandering about the woods and meadows singing and playing — and, what would be worse, turn poet, which they say is an incurable and catching disease."
"The young lady speaks the truth," said the curate, "and it will be as well to take this stumbling-block and occasion of sin out of our friend's way. And since we are beginning with Montemayor's Diana, I am of the opinion that it should not be burned, but that everything about the wise Felicia and the enchanted water should be cut out of it, and nearly all the longer verses; and let it keep, and welcome, its prose and the honour of being first in that line of books."
"This next," said the barber, "is the Diana called the second, by the man from Salamanca; and this is another with the same name, whose author is Gil Polo."
"Then let the one from Salamanca," answered the curate, "go and swell the number of the condemned in the yard; and let Gil Polo's be kept as if it were by Apollo himself. And get on, friend, and let us hurry, for it is growing late."
"This book," said the barber, opening another, "is The Ten Books of the Fortune of Love, composed by Antonio de Lofraso, a Sardinian poet."
"By the holy orders I received," said the curate, "since Apollo was Apollo and the muses muses and poets poets, so amusing and so preposterous a book as this has never been written; and in its own way it is the best and the most singular of all that have come out in that line into the light of the world; and the man who has not read it may reckon he has never read anything enjoyable in his life. Give it to me, friend, for I value having found it more than if somebody had given me a cassock of Florentine cloth."
He put it aside with the greatest satisfaction, and the barber went on:
"These next are The Shepherd of Iberia, The Nymphs of Henares and Disenchantments of Jealousy."
"Then there is nothing to be done," said the curate, "but hand them over to the secular arm of the housekeeper; and let nobody ask me why, or we should never be finished."
"This next is The Shepherd of Fílida."
"That is no shepherd," said the curate, "but a very polished courtier. Let it be kept like a precious jewel."
"This big one here," said the barber, "is called Treasury of Various Poems."
"If there were not so many of them," said the curate, "they would be more esteemed. This book needs weeding and cleaning of certain low things it has among its fine ones. Let it be kept, because its author is a friend of mine, and out of respect for other more heroic and lofty works he has written."
"This one," the barber went on, "is the Songbook of López Maldonado."
"The author of that book," replied the curate, "is also a great friend of mine, and his verses in his own mouth astonish anyone who hears them; and such is the sweetness of the voice he sings them in that it enchants you. He is a little long in the eclogues, but there was never too much of a good thing. Let it be kept with the chosen ones. But what book is that beside it?"
"The Galatea, by Miguel de Cervantes," said the barber.
"That Cervantes has been a great friend of mine for many years, and I know he is better versed in misfortunes than in verses. His book has something of good invention about it; it proposes something and concludes nothing. We must wait for the second part he promises; perhaps with amendment it will win the whole of the mercy that is now refused it. In the meantime, until we see, keep him shut up at your house, friend."
"With pleasure," answered the barber. "And here come three all together: The Araucana, by Don Alonso de Ercilla; The Austríada, by Juan Rufo, magistrate of Córdoba; and The Monserrat, by Cristóbal de Virués, a Valencian poet."
"All three of those books," said the curate, "are the best that have been written in heroic verse in the Castilian tongue, and can compete with the most famous of Italy. Let them be kept as the richest treasures of poetry that Spain possesses."
The curate grew tired of looking at any more books, and so, without further examination, he wanted all the rest burned wholesale. But the barber had already opened one that was called The Tears of Angelica.
"I should have wept them myself," said the curate on hearing the name, "if I had ordered such a book to be burned; because its author was one of the famous poets of the world, not only of Spain, and he was outstandingly happy in his translation of some of Ovid's fables."
At this point Don Quixote began to shout:
"Here, here, valiant knights! Here is where you must show the strength of your mighty arms, for the courtiers are getting the best of the tournament!"
Running to see what all this noise and commotion was about, they got no further with the inquisition into the books that were left; and so it is believed that The Carolea and The Lion of Spain went into the fire unseen and unheard, along with The Deeds of the Emperor, written by Don Luis de Ávila, which must undoubtedly have been among those still to come; and perhaps, if the curate had seen them, they would not have suffered so severe a sentence.
When they reached Don Quixote he was already out of bed and still shouting and raving, laying about him on all sides with cuts and backstrokes, as wide awake as if he had never slept at all. They got hold of him and forced him back into bed; and after he had quietened down a little he turned to the curate and said:
"Certainly, my lord Archbishop Turpin, it is a great disgrace to those of us who call ourselves the Twelve Peers to let the courtier knights carry off the victory in this tournament so tamely, when we adventurers have won the prize on the three preceding days."
"Be quiet, my friend," said the curate. "God will be pleased to let the luck change, and what is lost today may be won tomorrow. Look to your health for the present, for it seems to me your worship must be excessively tired, if you are not sorely wounded."
"Wounded, no," said Don Quixote, "but pounded and broken, there is no doubt of that; because that bastard Don Roland has beaten me to a pulp with the trunk of an oak, and all out of envy, because he sees that I alone stand against his exploits. But my name is not Reinaldos of Montalbán if, when I get out of this bed, I do not make him pay for it, for all his enchantments. And for now, let them bring me something to eat, for I know that is what I need most, and leave the revenging to me."
They did so: they gave him something to eat and he fell asleep again, and they were left astonished at his madness.
That night the housekeeper burned and consumed every book there was in the yard and in the whole house; and some must have gone up in the flames that deserved to be kept in perpetual archives. But their luck, and the laziness of the inquisitor, did not allow it; and so the proverb was fulfilled in them, that sometimes the just pay for sinners.
One of the remedies the curate and the barber hit on for their friend's complaint was to have the room where the books had been walled and plastered up, so that when he got up he should not find it — perhaps if the cause were removed the effect would cease — and to say that an enchanter had carried them off, room and all. This was done with great speed. Two days later Don Quixote got up, and the first thing he did was go and look at his books; and, not finding the room where he had left it, he went about from one place to another looking for it. He would come to where the door used to be and feel for it with his hands, and turn his eyes this way and that over everything without saying a word; but after a good long while he asked his housekeeper which way the room with his books was. The housekeeper, who had been thoroughly briefed on what she was to answer, said:
"What room, or what nothing, is your worship looking for? There is no room and no books in this house any more, because the devil himself carried the whole lot away."
"It was not the devil," put in the niece, "but an enchanter who came on a cloud one night, the day after your worship left here; and getting down off a serpent he was riding, he went into the room, and I don't know what he did in there, but after a little while he flew out through the roof and left the house full of smoke. And when we thought to look at what he had done, we could see neither book nor room. Only my mistress and I remember very well that as the wicked old man was leaving he called out in a loud voice that, because of a secret enmity he bore the owner of those books and that room, he had done damage in this house that would be seen afterwards. He said too that he was called the sage Muñatón."
"He would have said Frestón," said Don Quixote.
"I don't know," answered the housekeeper, "whether he was called Frestón or Fritón; all I know is that his name ended in -tón."
"So it does," said Don Quixote. "He is a wise enchanter, a great enemy of mine, who has a grudge against me, because he knows by his arts and his learning that in the course of time I am to fight in single combat with a knight he favours, and that I am to defeat him without his being able to prevent it; and for that reason he does me every ill turn he can. And I tell him that he will have a hard time contradicting or avoiding what heaven has ordained."
"Who doubts it?" said the niece. "But who is asking your worship to get mixed up in these quarrels, uncle? Wouldn't it be better to stay peacefully at home and not go wandering about the world looking for bread better than wheaten, without stopping to think that many go for wool and come back shorn?"
"Oh, niece of mine," answered Don Quixote, "how badly you have reckoned it up! Before anybody shears me I shall have plucked out and pulled off the beard of every man who so much as thinks of touching the tip of a single hair of mine."
Neither of them cared to answer him back any further, because they saw that his temper was rising.
The fact of the matter is that he stayed at home for a fortnight very quietly, giving no sign of wanting to repeat his first ravings; during which days he had the most delightful conversations with his two friends the curate and the barber, in which he maintained that what the world stood in most need of was knights errant, and that in him knight-errantry should be brought back to life. The curate sometimes contradicted him and sometimes agreed, because without keeping up that device there was no getting on with him at all.
During this time Don Quixote worked on a labourer who was a neighbour of his, an honest man — if that title can be given to a man who is poor — but with very little salt in his headpiece. In short, he said so much to him, and persuaded and promised him so much, that the poor peasant made up his mind to go off with him and serve him as squire. Among other things Don Quixote told him that he should be ready to come willingly, because some adventure might befall in which, in the twinkling of an eye, he might win an isle and leave him governor of it. On the strength of these promises and others like them, Sancho Panza — for that was the labourer's name — left his wife and children and took service as his neighbour's squire.
Don Quixote then set about getting money; and by selling one thing and pawning another, and coming off badly on all of them, he raised a reasonable sum. He also fitted himself out with a round shield, which he borrowed from a friend, and, patching up his broken helmet as best he could, he warned his squire Sancho of the day and hour he meant to set out, so that he could provide himself with whatever he thought he most needed. Above all he charged him to bring saddlebags. Sancho said he would, and that he was thinking of bringing an ass he had, a very good one, because he was not used to going far on foot. Over the ass Don Quixote hesitated a little, casting about in his memory to see whether any knight errant had ever had a squire mounted asswise; but none came to mind. All the same, he decided that he should bring it, meaning to fit him out with a more honourable mount as soon as there was occasion, by taking the horse off the first discourteous knight he met. He provided himself with shirts and everything else he could, following the advice the innkeeper had given him. And all this being done and settled, without Panza taking leave of his children and wife, or Don Quixote of his housekeeper and niece, they left the village one night without a soul seeing them; and they rode so far that by daybreak they reckoned themselves safe from being found even if they were searched for.
Sancho Panza rode along on his donkey like a patriarch, with his saddlebags and his wineskin, and with a great longing to see himself governor of the isle his master had promised him. Don Quixote happened to take the same route and road he had taken on his first journey, across the plain of Montiel, which he crossed with less discomfort than the time before, because it was early morning and the sun's rays struck them slantwise and did not tire them. Then Sancho Panza said to his master:
"Mind your worship doesn't forget, sir knight errant, what you promised me about the isle; for I shall know how to govern it, however big it may be."
To which Don Quixote answered:
"You must know, Sancho Panza my friend, that it was a very common practice among the knights errant of old to make their squires governors of the isles or kingdoms they won; and I am determined that so gracious a custom shall not fail through me. On the contrary, I mean to improve on it: because they sometimes, and perhaps most times, waited until their squires were old; and then, when the men had had their fill of service and endured bad days and worse nights, they gave them some title of count, or at most marquis, of some valley or province of no great size. But if you live and I live, it may very well be that before six days are out I shall win a kingdom with others attached to it, exactly suited for crowning you king of one of them. And do not think it much, for things and events come to such knights in ways so unheard-of and unimagined that I might easily give you even more than I promise."
"In that case," answered Sancho Panza, "if I were to be a king by one of these miracles your worship talks about, then at the very least Juana Gutiérrez, my old woman, would come to be a queen and my children princes."
"Well, who doubts it?" answered Don Quixote.
"I doubt it," replied Sancho Panza; "because I reckon that if God rained kingdoms down on the earth, not one of them would sit well on the head of Mari Gutiérrez. I tell you, sir, she isn't worth twopence as a queen. Countess would suit her better, and even that with God's help."
"Leave it to God, Sancho," answered Don Quixote, "and He will give what suits you best. But do not lower your spirits so far as to be content with anything less than being a governor."
"I won't, sir," answered Sancho, "especially having so distinguished a master as your worship, who will know how to give me whatever is good for me and whatever I can carry."
At this point they caught sight of thirty or forty windmills that stand on that plain; and as soon as Don Quixote saw them he said to his squire:
"Fortune is guiding our affairs better than we could have wished. Look over there, Sancho Panza my friend, where thirty or more monstrous giants are showing themselves, with whom I mean to do battle and take all their lives; and with their spoils we shall begin to grow rich. For this is a righteous war, and it is a great service to God to sweep so evil a breed off the face of the earth."
"What giants?" said Sancho Panza.
"Those you see over there," answered his master, "with the long arms; some of them have arms very nearly two leagues long."
"Look, your worship," answered Sancho, "those things over there aren't giants, they're windmills, and what look like arms on them are the sails, which the wind turns and makes the millstone go round."
"It is quite clear," answered Don Quixote, "that you are not versed in this business of adventures. They are giants; and if you are frightened, get out of the way and set yourself to praying while I go into fierce and unequal battle with them."
And saying this he put spurs to his horse Rocinante, paying no attention to the shouts his squire Sancho was giving him, warning him that beyond any doubt they were windmills and not giants that he was going to attack. But he was so set on their being giants that he neither heard his squire Sancho's shouts nor made out what they were, though he was already quite close; on the contrary, he went on calling at the top of his voice:
"Fly not, cowards and vile creatures, for it is one knight alone who attacks you!"
Just then a little wind got up and the great sails began to move, seeing which Don Quixote said:
"Though you wave more arms than the giant Briareus, you shall answer to me for it."
And saying this, and commending himself with all his heart to his lady Dulcinea, begging her to help him in this pass, well covered by his shield and with his lance in the rest, he charged at Rocinante's full gallop and rammed the first mill in front of him. He drove his lance into the sail, and the wind turned it with such fury that it smashed the lance to pieces, carrying horse and knight along with it, and Don Quixote went rolling across the field very badly knocked about. Sancho Panza came to the rescue at his donkey's full run, and when he got there he found his master could not stir, such a fall had Rocinante given him.
"God help us!" said Sancho. "Didn't I tell your worship to look carefully at what you were doing — that they were only windmills, and nobody could take them for anything else unless he had windmills of the same sort in his own head?"
"Be quiet, Sancho my friend," answered Don Quixote. "Matters of war, more than any others, are subject to continual change. What is more, I believe — and it is the truth — that the sage Frestón who stole my room and my books has turned these giants into windmills, to rob me of the glory of defeating them: such is the enmity he bears me. But in the end, in the very end, his wicked arts will avail him little against the goodness of my sword."
"God grant it, as He can," answered Sancho Panza.
And helping him to his feet, he got him back up onto Rocinante, whose shoulder was half out of joint. Talking over the adventure just past, they took the road for Puerto Lápice, because Don Quixote said it was impossible not to find many and various adventures there, it being a much-travelled place. But he rode along very downcast at having lost his lance; and saying so to his squire, he added:
"I remember reading that a Spanish knight called Diego Pérez de Vargas, having broken his sword in a battle, tore a heavy branch or bough from an oak, and with it did such things that day, and pounded so many Moors, that he was given the surname Machuca — the Pounder — and he and his descendants from that day on were called Vargas y Machuca. I tell you this because from the first oak or elm that offers itself I mean to tear off a bough as good and as heavy as that one; and I intend to do such deeds with it that you will count yourself fortunate to have deserved to come and see them, and to be a witness of things that will hardly be believed."
"In God's hands," said Sancho. "I believe every word your worship says. But straighten up a bit, because you seem to be riding all on one side — it must be the bruising from the fall."
"That is the truth," answered Don Quixote; "and if I do not complain of the pain, it is because knights errant are not allowed to complain of any wound, even if their guts are coming out through it."
"If that's so, I have nothing to say," answered Sancho. "But God knows I'd be glad enough if your worship did complain when something hurt. For myself, I can tell you I shall complain of the very smallest pain I get — unless that rule about not complaining applies to the squires of knights errant as well."
Don Quixote could not help laughing at his squire's simplicity, and told him he might very well complain, how and when he liked, whether he felt like it or not; for so far he had read nothing to the contrary in the order of chivalry. Sancho pointed out that it was dinner time. His master answered that for the present he had no need of it, and that Sancho might eat whenever he pleased. With this permission Sancho settled himself as comfortably as he could on his donkey, and taking out of the saddlebags what he had put into them, he rode along behind his master eating very deliberately, and from time to time tilting up the wineskin with such relish that the most pampered tavern-keeper in Málaga might have envied him. And while he went along in this fashion, taking pull after pull, he had no memory of any promise his master had made him, and thought it no hardship at all, but a great rest, to go about looking for adventures, however dangerous they might be.
In the end they spent that night among some trees, and from one of them Don Quixote tore off a dry branch that could very nearly serve him as a lance, and fitted to it the iron head he took off the one that had broken. All that night Don Quixote did not sleep, thinking about his lady Dulcinea, so as to conform to what he had read in his books, where knights would go many nights without sleeping in the forests and the wilderness, occupied with the memory of their ladies. Sancho Panza did not spend it in that way; having his stomach full, and not with chicory water, he carried the whole night off in a single sleep, and neither the sun's rays striking him in the face nor the singing of the birds, who greeted the coming of the new day in great numbers and very merrily, would have been enough to wake him if his master had not called him. As he got up he gave the wineskin a squeeze and found it rather thinner than the night before, and his heart sank, for it seemed to him they were not on a road that would soon make good the shortage. Don Quixote would not breakfast, because, as has been said, he had taken to living on delicious memories. They went back to the road they had started on for Puerto Lápice, and about three in the afternoon they came in sight of it.
"Here," said Don Quixote when he saw it, "we can dip our hands up to the elbows, brother Sancho Panza, in what they call adventures. But note that however great the dangers you may see me in, you are not to lay hand on your sword to defend me, unless you see that those attacking me are riff-raff and low people, in which case you may certainly help me. But if they are knights, it is in no way lawful or permitted you by the laws of chivalry to help me, until you are dubbed a knight yourself."
"Certainly, sir," answered Sancho, "your worship shall be very well obeyed in this; and all the more since I am naturally peaceable and no friend to getting into brawls and quarrels. Though it's true enough that where defending my own person is concerned I shan't take much account of those laws, since both divine and human law allow every man to defend himself against anyone who tries to wrong him."
"I say no less," answered Don Quixote; "but in this matter of helping me against knights you must keep your natural impulses in check."
"I say I'll do it," answered Sancho, "and I'll keep that commandment as well as I keep Sunday."
While they were talking, two friars of the order of St Benedict appeared on the road, mounted on two dromedaries — for the two mules they were riding were no smaller than that. They were wearing travelling goggles and carrying sunshades. Behind them came a coach, with four or five horsemen escorting it and two muleteers on foot. In the coach, as it turned out afterwards, was a Basque lady on her way to Seville, where her husband was, on his way out to the Indies with a very honourable appointment. The friars were not travelling with her, though they were on the same road; but Don Quixote had hardly caught sight of them before he said to his squire:
"Either I am much mistaken, or this is going to be the most famous adventure ever seen; because those black shapes over there must be, and beyond any doubt are, enchanters carrying off some princess they have stolen in that coach, and it is my business to undo this wrong with all my might."
"This is going to be worse than the windmills," said Sancho. "Look, sir, those are friars of St Benedict, and the coach must belong to some travellers. Look, I tell you to look very carefully at what you are doing, in case it's the devil deceiving you."
"I have told you already, Sancho," answered Don Quixote, "that you know very little about the business of adventures. What I say is true, and you shall see it now."
And saying this he rode forward and placed himself in the middle of the road the friars were coming along; and when they had got close enough for him to think they could hear what he said, he called out in a loud voice:
"Devilish and monstrous crew, release this instant the noble princesses you are carrying off by force in that coach; or else make ready to receive a swift death, as the just punishment of your evil deeds."
The friars reined in and stood amazed, both at Don Quixote's figure and at his words, to which they answered:
"Sir knight, we are neither devilish nor monstrous, but two religious of St Benedict going along our road; and we do not know whether or not there are any princesses being carried off by force in that coach."
"Soft words are wasted on me, for I know you already, you perfidious rabble," said Don Quixote.
And without waiting for any further answer he spurred Rocinante and, with his lance levelled, charged the first friar with such fury and determination that if the friar had not let himself drop off the mule he would have brought him to the ground against his will, and badly wounded too, if he had not fallen dead. The second religious, seeing how his companion was being treated, dug his heels into the castle of his good mule and began to gallop across that plain, lighter than the wind itself.
Sancho Panza, seeing the friar on the ground, got nimbly down off his donkey, went at him and began to strip off his habit. Then two of the friars' servants came up and asked him why he was undressing him. Sancho answered that it belonged to him by right, as the spoils of the battle his master Don Quixote had won. The servants, who were not up to jokes and knew nothing about spoils or battles, seeing that Don Quixote had ridden off some way and was talking to the people in the coach, set on Sancho and knocked him down; and without leaving a hair in his beard they kicked him to a pulp and left him stretched on the ground without breath or sense. And without stopping a moment the friar got back on his mule, thoroughly frightened and cowed and with no colour in his face; and as soon as he was in the saddle he spurred after his companion, who was waiting for him a good way off to see how this alarm would turn out; and without waiting for the end of the whole business they went on their way, crossing themselves more often than if they had had the devil at their backs.
Don Quixote, as has been said, was talking to the lady in the coach, saying:
"Your beauty, my lady, may now dispose of your person as best pleases you, for the arrogance of your abductors lies in the dust, brought down by this strong arm of mine. And so that you may not be in pain to know the name of your deliverer, know that I am called Don Quixote of La Mancha, knight errant and adventurer, and captive of the peerless and beautiful Doña Dulcinea of El Toboso. And in payment of the benefit you have received from me, I want nothing but that you return to El Toboso and present yourself on my behalf before that lady, and tell her what I have done for your liberty."
Everything Don Quixote was saying was overheard by one of the squires escorting the coach, a Basque; who, seeing that he would not let the coach go forward but insisted that it must turn straight back to El Toboso, went up to Don Quixote and, taking hold of his lance, said to him in bad Castilian and worse Basque:
"Go, knight, and badly go thou; by the God that made me, if not leave coach, so kill thee as art here Biscayan."
Don Quixote understood him perfectly well, and answered with great composure:
"If thou wert a knight, which thou art not, I would already have punished thy folly and thy presumption, thou wretched creature."
To which the Basque replied:
"I no gentleman? I swear to God thou liest as Christian. If lance throwest and sword drawest, the water how soon shalt see thou carriest the cat! Biscayan on land, gentleman on sea, gentleman by the devil; and thou liest, and look to it if other thing sayest."
"Now shalt thou see, said Agrajes!" answered Don Quixote.
And throwing his lance on the ground, he drew his sword, got his shield on his arm and went at the Basque, determined to take his life. The Basque, seeing him come like that, would have liked to get down off the mule — which, being one of the bad hired sort, was not to be trusted — but could do nothing except draw his sword. It was lucky for him that he was next to the coach, from which he was able to snatch a cushion that served him as a shield; and then they went at each other as though they were two mortal enemies. The rest of the party wanted to make peace between them, but could not, because the Basque kept saying in his tangled speech that if they would not let him finish his battle he would kill his own mistress and everybody else who got in his way. The lady in the coach, astonished and terrified at what she was seeing, told the coachman to draw off a little way, and from a distance watched the fierce contest; in the course of which the Basque dealt Don Quixote a great slash on the shoulder, over the top of his shield, which, if it had landed undefended, would have opened him down to the waist.
Don Quixote, feeling the weight of that outrageous blow, gave a great shout, saying:
"O lady of my soul, Dulcinea, flower of beauty, come to the help of this knight of yours, who to satisfy your great goodness finds himself in this hard pass!"
The saying of this, and the gripping of the sword, and the covering himself well with his shield, and the charging at the Basque, were all one movement, for he had made up his mind to stake everything on the hazard of a single stroke.
The Basque, seeing him come at him like that, understood his courage well enough from his boldness, and resolved to do the same as Don Quixote; and so he waited for him well covered by his cushion, without being able to turn the mule one way or the other, for by now, out of sheer weariness and being unused to such childishness, it could not take a step.
So on came Don Quixote, as has been said, against the wary Basque, with his sword raised and his mind made up to split him down the middle; and the Basque was waiting for him with his sword up too and padded with his cushion; and all the bystanders were terrified and hanging on what would come of those enormous blows they were threatening each other with. And the lady in the coach and the rest of her maids were making a thousand vows and offerings to all the images and houses of devotion in Spain, that God might deliver their squire and themselves from the great danger they were in.
But here is the trouble with all this: that at this exact point the author of this history leaves the battle hanging, pleading that he found nothing more written about these exploits of Don Quixote than what he has already set down. It is true that the second author of this work refused to believe that so remarkable a history could have been abandoned to the laws of oblivion, or that the wits of La Mancha could have been so incurious as not to have among their archives or in their desks some papers dealing with this famous knight. And so, with that idea, he did not despair of finding the end of this delightful history, which, heaven being favourable to him, he did find in the manner that shall be told in the second part.
We left, in the first part of this history, the valiant Basque and the famous Don Quixote with their swords raised and bare, on the point of dealing two such furious downstrokes that, if they had landed squarely, they would at the very least have split and cleft the pair of them from top to bottom and opened them up like a pomegranate; and at that most uncertain moment the delicious history stopped and was cut off short, without its author giving us any notion where what was missing might be found.
This caused me great distress, because the pleasure of having read so little turned into annoyance at the thought of how poor a road there was to finding the great deal that, to my mind, was missing from so appetising a tale. It seemed to me impossible and against all good custom that so good a knight should have lacked some sage to take on the writing of his unheard-of exploits — a thing that never failed any of the knights errant,
of those that people say go out upon their adventures,
because every one of them had one or two sages ready made, who not only wrote down their deeds but painted their smallest thoughts and trifles, however hidden. And so good a knight could not have been so unfortunate as to lack what Platir and others like him had in abundance. So I could not bring myself to believe that so gallant a history had been left maimed and crippled, and I laid the blame on the malice of time, the devourer and consumer of all things, which had either hidden it away or consumed it.
On the other hand, it seemed to me that since among his books there had been found such modern ones as Disenchantments of Jealousy and The Nymphs and Shepherds of Henares, his history must be modern too; and that even if it was not written down, it would be in the memory of the people of his village and of the villages round about. This notion left me confused and eager to know, really and truly, the whole life and miracles of our famous Spaniard Don Quixote of La Mancha, the light and mirror of Manchegan chivalry, and the first in our age and in these calamitous times to take up the labour and exercise of errant arms, and the righting of wrongs, the succouring of widows and the protection of those maidens who used to go about with their whips and their palfreys and the whole of their virginity on their backs, from hill to hill and from valley to valley; for unless some scoundrel, or some peasant with an axe and a steel cap, or some monstrous giant, forced them, there were maidens in past ages who at the end of eighty years, in the whole of which they had never once slept under a roof, went to their graves as intact as the mothers who bore them.
I say, then, that for these and many other reasons our gallant Quixote deserves continual and memorable praise; and some is not to be denied me either, for the labour and diligence I put into looking for the end of this agreeable history — although I know very well that if heaven, chance and fortune had not helped me, the world would have gone short of the pastime and the pleasure that anyone reading it attentively may have from it for very nearly two hours. Now, the finding of it happened in this way.
I was one day in the Alcaná of Toledo when a boy came up to sell some old notebooks and papers to a silk merchant; and since I am fond of reading, even torn papers in the street, moved by this natural inclination of mine I took up one of the notebooks the boy was selling, and saw that it was in characters I recognised as Arabic. And although I recognised them I could not read them, so I looked about to see whether there was any Spanish-speaking Moor about who could read them for me; and it was not very hard to find an interpreter of that kind — indeed, if I had been looking for one of a better and older language, I should have found him. In the end luck provided me with one; and telling him what I wanted and putting the book into his hands, he opened it in the middle, read a little of it, and began to laugh.
I asked him what he was laughing at, and he answered that it was at something written in the margin of that book by way of a note. I asked him to tell me what it was; and he, still laughing, said:
"Written here in the margin, as I said, is this: 'This Dulcinea of El Toboso, so often mentioned in this history, is said to have had the best hand for salting pork of any woman in the whole of La Mancha.'"
When I heard "Dulcinea of El Toboso" I was thunderstruck and left hanging, because it came to me at once that these notebooks contained the history of Don Quixote. With that idea I pressed him to read the beginning; and doing so, turning the Arabic straight into Castilian, he said it read: History of Don Quixote of La Mancha, written by Cide Hamete Benengeli, an Arab historian. It took a great deal of discretion to hide the delight I felt when the title of the book reached my ears; and snatching them from under the silk merchant's nose, I bought all the papers and notebooks from the boy for half a real — though if he had had any sense and had known how much I wanted them, he might safely have promised himself and carried off more than six reals from the sale.
I then went off with the Moor into the cloister of the cathedral, and begged him to turn all the notebooks that dealt with Don Quixote into Castilian, taking nothing away and adding nothing, offering him whatever payment he liked. He was satisfied with two arrobas of raisins and two bushels of wheat, and promised to translate them well and faithfully and very quickly. But I, to make the business easier and not to let go of so fine a find, took him home with me, where in a little over a month and a half he translated the whole of it, exactly as it is set down here.
In the first notebook there was a very lifelike picture of Don Quixote's battle with the Basque, both of them in the very posture the history describes, with their swords raised, the one covered by his shield and the other by his cushion, and the Basque's mule so true to life that you could tell it was a hired one a bowshot off. At the Basque's feet was written a label saying Don Sancho de Azpeitia, which must undoubtedly have been his name; and at Rocinante's feet was another that said Don Quixote. Rocinante was marvellously painted, so long and lanky, so wasted and thin, with such a backbone and so confirmed a consumptive, that he showed quite plainly with what care and propriety the name Rocinante had been given him. Next to him was Sancho Panza, holding his donkey by the halter, at whose feet was another label saying Sancho Shanks; and it must have been because, as the picture showed, he had a big belly, a short body and long shanks, and for that he must have been given the names Panza and Zancas — Paunch and Shanks — by which the history sometimes calls him. There were some other small details worth noticing, but they are all of little importance and do not bear on the true relation of the history; and no relation is a bad one so long as it is true.
If any objection can be raised against the truth of this one, it can only be that its author was an Arab, since it is very much in the nature of that nation to be liars; though as they are such enemies of ours, one may sooner suppose that he fell short in it than went too far. And so it seems to me; because where he could and should have let his pen run out in praise of so good a knight, he seems deliberately to pass over it in silence — a thing badly done and worse thought of, since historians ought to be exact, truthful and in no way partial, and neither interest nor fear, rancour nor affection should make them swerve from the road of truth, whose mother is history, rival of time, storehouse of deeds, witness of the past, example and counsel to the present, warning to what is to come. In this one I know there will be found everything anyone could wish for in the most agreeable history; and if anything good is missing from it, it is my belief that the fault lay with that dog of an author rather than with the subject. In short, its second part, following the translation, began in this way:
With the cutting swords of the two valiant and angry combatants raised on high, it looked as though they were threatening heaven and earth and the abyss, such was the boldness and bearing they had. And the first to bring down his blow was the choleric Basque, who struck with such force and such fury that, if his sword had not turned in mid-course, that single stroke would have been enough to put an end to the fierce contest and to all our knight's adventures. But his good fortune, which was keeping him for greater things, twisted his opponent's sword, so that although it caught him on the left shoulder it did him no other damage than to strip that whole side of its armour, carrying away with it a good part of the helmet along with half an ear; all of which came down with a dreadful crash, leaving him in a very bad way.
God help me — who is there that could properly tell now the rage that entered our Manchegan's heart when he saw himself served in that fashion? Let no more be said than this: that it was such that he rose again in his stirrups, and gripping his sword harder in both hands, he brought it down on the Basque with such fury, catching him squarely on the cushion and on the head, that, so good a defence being of no use, it was as if a mountain had fallen on him; and he began to pour blood from his nose and his mouth and his ears, and to look like falling off the mule, as he certainly would have done if he had not thrown his arms round its neck. But for all that his feet came out of the stirrups and then his arms let go; and the mule, terrified by that fearful blow, went galloping across the field, and after a few bucks brought its master to the ground.
Don Quixote sat watching him with great composure, and when he saw him fall he leapt off his horse and went up to him very nimbly, and putting the point of his sword between his eyes told him to surrender, or he would cut off his head. The Basque was so dazed that he could not answer a word, and it would have gone badly with him, blind with rage as Don Quixote was, if the ladies of the coach, who until then had watched the fight in a swoon of terror, had not come to where he was and begged him most earnestly to do them the great kindness and favour of sparing this squire of theirs his life. To which Don Quixote answered, with great haughtiness and gravity:
"Certainly, fair ladies, I am very content to do what you ask; but it must be on one condition and agreement, which is that this knight shall promise me to go to the town of El Toboso and present himself on my behalf before the peerless Doña Dulcinea, that she may do with him whatever she pleases."
The frightened and disconsolate lady, without stopping to consider what Don Quixote was asking, and without asking who Dulcinea might be, promised him that the squire would do everything he was ordered to do on his behalf.
"Then on the faith of that word I shall do him no further harm, though he had well deserved it of me."
By this time Sancho Panza had got up, rather knocked about by the friars' servants, and had been watching his master Don Quixote's battle, praying to God in his heart that He might be pleased to give him the victory, and that in it he might win some isle to make him governor of, as he had promised. Seeing the quarrel over at last, and his master getting back up on Rocinante, he came to hold the stirrup; and before he mounted, Sancho went down on his knees in front of him and, taking his hand, kissed it and said:
"May it please your worship, my lord Don Quixote, to give me the government of the isle that has been won in this fierce quarrel; for however big it may be, I feel I have the strength to govern it as well as anybody who ever governed an isle in this world."
To which Don Quixote answered:
"Take note, brother Sancho, that this adventure and others like it are not adventures of isles, but of crossroads, in which nothing is won but a broken head or an ear the less. Have patience, for adventures will come along in which I can make you not only a governor but something better still."
Sancho thanked him warmly, and kissing his hand again and the skirt of his mail-coat, helped him up onto Rocinante; and he got on his own donkey and set off after his master, who, at a smart pace and without taking leave of the people in the coach or saying anything more to them, rode into a wood that was close by. Sancho followed at his ass's full trot, but Rocinante went so fast that, finding himself left behind, he had to shout to his master to wait for him. Don Quixote did so, reining Rocinante in until his tired squire came up, and when he arrived Sancho said:
"It seems to me, sir, that it would be a good idea for us to take sanctuary in some church; because, considering the state that man you fought with was left in, it wouldn't be at all surprising if they reported the business to the Holy Brotherhood and had us arrested. And upon my word, if they do, we shall sweat for it before we get out of gaol."
"Be quiet," said Don Quixote. "And where have you ever seen, or read, that a knight errant has been brought before a judge, however many homicides he may have committed?"
"I know nothing about homicides," answered Sancho, "and I never tasted one in my life. All I know is that the Holy Brotherhood has a say about people who fight out in the country, and I don't meddle in the other business."
"Then don't worry, my friend," answered Don Quixote, "for I would get you out of the hands of the Chaldeans, let alone the Brotherhood. But tell me, on your life: have you seen a more valiant knight than I am in all the known world? Have you read in any history of another who has, or ever had, more spirit in attacking, more staying power in persevering, more skill in wounding or more knack in bringing men down?"
"The truth is," answered Sancho, "that I have never read any history at all, because I can neither read nor write. But what I'll dare to bet is that I have never in all the days of my life served a bolder master than your worship, and please God these bold doings may not be paid for where I said. What I do beg of your worship is to see to yourself, for a great deal of blood is coming out of that ear; and I have lint here and a little white ointment in the saddlebags."
"All that could very well have been spared," answered Don Quixote, "if I had only remembered to make a flask of the balm of Fierabrás, for with a single drop of it we should save both time and medicines."
"What flask and what balm is that?" said Sancho Panza.
"It is a balm," answered Don Quixote, "the recipe for which I have by heart, and with it there is no need to fear death or to think of dying of any wound. And so, when I have made it and given it to you, all you have to do is this: when you see that in some battle they have cut me in half through the middle — as very often happens — neatly take the part of my body that has fallen to the ground, and with great delicacy, before the blood congeals, put it back on the other half that is left in the saddle, taking care to fit it on evenly and exactly. Then you will give me just two swallows of the balm I have mentioned, and you will see me come out sounder than an apple."
"If that's so," said Panza, "here and now I give up the government of the promised isle, and I want nothing else in payment of my many good services but that your worship should give me the recipe for that surpassing liquor. For I reckon that an ounce of it would be worth more than two reals anywhere, and I need nothing more than that to get through this life in comfort and respectability. But the thing to know now is whether it costs much to make."
"Three gallons of it can be made for less than three reals," answered Don Quixote.
"Sinner that I am!" said Sancho. "Then what is your worship waiting for, to make it and to teach it to me?"
"Quiet, my friend," answered Don Quixote. "I mean to teach you greater secrets than that and to do you greater favours. And for the present let us see to ourselves, for my ear hurts more than I could wish."
Sancho took the lint and the ointment out of the saddlebags. But when Don Quixote came to see his helmet broken he thought he would go out of his mind, and putting his hand on his sword and raising his eyes to heaven he said:
"I make a vow to the Creator of all things, and to the four holy Gospels where they are most fully written, to lead the life the great Marquis of Mantua led when he swore to avenge the death of his nephew Valdovinos — which was to eat no bread off a tablecloth, nor take his pleasure with his wife, and other things which, though I do not remember them, I here declare expressed — until I have taken full vengeance on the man who did me such an outrage."
Hearing this, Sancho said:
"Consider, your worship, my lord Don Quixote, that if the knight has carried out what he was ordered, and gone to present himself before my lady Dulcinea of El Toboso, then he will have done his duty and deserves no further punishment unless he commits some fresh offence."
"You have spoken and hit the point very well," answered Don Quixote; "and so I annul the vow as far as taking fresh vengeance on him is concerned. But I make it and confirm it afresh, to lead the life I have described, until I take by force another helmet as good as this one from some knight. And do not think, Sancho, that I do this idly, for I have a good model to follow in it: this very same thing happened, word for word, over the helmet of Mambrino, which cost Sacripante so dear."
"Your worship can send such vows to the devil, sir," replied Sancho; "they are very bad for the health and very hard on the conscience. Just tell me now: if by any chance we don't meet a man in a helmet for many days, what are we to do? Is the vow to be kept, in spite of all the inconveniences and discomforts — sleeping in your clothes, and not sleeping in any town, and a thousand other penances that were in the vow of that mad old Marquis of Mantua that your worship wants to renew now? Look properly, your worship: no armed men go along these roads, only carriers and carters, who not only don't wear helmets but very likely have never heard one mentioned in the whole of their lives."
"You are wrong there," said Don Quixote, "because we shall not have been two hours at these crossroads before we see more men in armour than went against Albraca for the conquest of Angelica the Fair."
"All right, then, so be it," said Sancho, "and please God it may go well with us, and the time may come at last for winning this isle that is costing me so dear, and then let me die."
"I have told you already, Sancho, not to let that trouble you at all; for if an isle is not to be had, there is the kingdom of Denmark or of Sobradisa, which will fit you like a ring on your finger. And what is more, being on the mainland, you ought to be all the better pleased. But let us leave that for its own time, and see whether you have anything in those saddlebags for us to eat, because afterwards we must go and look for some castle to lodge in tonight and make the balm I told you of; for I swear to God this ear of mine is hurting a great deal."
"I have an onion here, and a bit of cheese and I don't know how many crusts of bread," said Sancho; "but they aren't dishes fit for so valiant a knight as your worship."
"How little you understand it!" answered Don Quixote. "I would have you know, Sancho, that it is an honour to knights errant not to eat for a month; and when they do eat, to eat whatever comes first to hand. And this would be plain to you if you had read as many histories as I have; for although there have been a great many, in none of them have I found any account of knights errant eating, except by chance and at some sumptuous banquets given for them, and the rest of the days they spent on flowers. And although it is to be understood that they could not get on without eating and without doing all the other natural offices — because, after all, they were men like ourselves — it is also to be understood that, spending most of their lives in forests and wildernesses and without a cook, their most usual food would be rustic fare of the sort you are offering me now. So, Sancho my friend, do not distress yourself over what pleases me. And do not go trying to make a new world, or knocking knight-errantry off its hinges."
"Forgive me, your worship," said Sancho; "for as I can neither read nor write, as I have said before, I don't know and haven't grasped the rules of the knightly profession. And from now on I'll stock the saddlebags with every kind of dried fruit for your worship, since you are a knight; and for myself, since I am not, I'll stock them with other things that fly and have more substance to them."
"I do not say, Sancho," replied Don Quixote, "that knights errant are obliged to eat nothing but those fruits you speak of, only that their most ordinary sustenance must have been those, and certain herbs they found in the fields, which they knew and which I know too."
"It's a virtue," answered Sancho, "to know those herbs; for the way I imagine things going, one of these days we shall need to make use of that knowledge."
And bringing out what he had said he was carrying, the two of them ate in good peace and fellowship. But being anxious to find somewhere to lodge that night, they made very short work of their poor dry meal. They mounted at once and hurried to reach some inhabited place before dark; but the sun failed them, and with it the hope of getting what they wanted, when they were near some goatherds' huts, and so they decided to spend the night there. And as much as it grieved Sancho not to reach a town, so much did it please his master to sleep under the open sky, since it seemed to him that every time this happened to him he was performing an act of possession that made the proof of his knighthood easier.
He was made welcome by the goatherds with a good will; and Sancho, having settled Rocinante and his donkey as best he could, made straight for the smell given off by certain pieces of salted goat that were bubbling over the fire in a pot. And although he would have liked at that very moment to see whether they were ready to be transferred from the pot to his stomach, he did not, because the goatherds took them off the fire; and spreading some sheepskins on the ground they laid their rustic table in great haste and invited the two of them, with every sign of goodwill, to share what they had.
Six of them sat down round the skins — all there were at the fold — having first, with clumsy ceremony, begged Don Quixote to sit on a trough they turned upside down for him. Don Quixote sat down, and Sancho remained standing to serve him the cup, which was made of horn. Seeing him on his feet, his master said:
"So that you may see, Sancho, the good that knight-errantry has in it, and how near those who follow any office in it are to coming quickly to be honoured and esteemed by the world, I want you to sit here at my side and in the company of these good people, and to be one and the same thing with me, who am your master and natural lord: eat off my plate and drink where I drink. For the same may be said of knight-errantry as is said of love: that it makes all things equal."
"Many thanks!" said Sancho. "But I can tell your worship that so long as I have plenty to eat, I would eat it as well or better standing up and by myself as sitting beside an emperor. And in fact, if the truth is to be told, what I eat in my own corner without airs and graces, even if it is bread and an onion, tastes far better to me than the turkeys at other tables where I have to chew slowly, drink little, wipe my mouth often, and not sneeze or cough if I want to, or do other things that being alone and free bring with them. So, sir, these honours that your worship wants to do me for being a servant and hanger-on of knight-errantry, as I am, being your worship's squire — turn them into something else of more comfort and profit to me; for these, though I take them as received in full, I renounce from now until the end of the world."
"For all that, you shall sit down; because God exalts him who humbles himself."
And taking him by the arm, he forced him to sit beside him.
The goatherds understood nothing of this jargon about squires and knights errant, and did nothing but eat and hold their tongues and stare at their guests, who with great relish and appetite were stowing away pieces of salt goat the size of your fist. When the meat course was over they spread a great quantity of dried acorns on the sheepskins, and along with them set out half a cheese harder than if it had been made of mortar. The drinking-horn was not idle all this while, for it went round so often — now full, now empty, like the bucket of a waterwheel — that it easily emptied one of the two wineskins that were on show.
When Don Quixote had thoroughly satisfied his stomach, he took up a handful of acorns and, looking at them attentively, let his voice run out into words like these:
"Happy the age and happy the centuries that the ancients called golden — and not because gold, which in this iron age of ours is so highly valued, was got in that fortunate one without any labour, but because those who lived then did not know these two words, thine and mine. In that holy age all things were held in common. To get his ordinary food no man had to take any trouble but to reach up his hand and take it from the sturdy oaks, which stood generously inviting him with their sweet ripe fruit. The clear springs and running rivers offered him, in magnificent abundance, delicious and transparent water. In the clefts of the rocks and the hollows of the trees the diligent and prudent bees set up their republic, offering to any hand, without asking anything in return, the fertile harvest of their sweetest labour. The noble cork trees shed of themselves, with no other artifice than their own courtesy, their broad light bark, with which men began to roof their houses, propped on rough stakes, only as a defence against the weather.
"All was peace then, all friendship, all concord. The heavy blade of the crooked plough had not yet dared to open or violate the merciful bowels of our first mother, for she of her own accord, without being forced, offered from every part of her fertile and spacious breast whatever could satisfy and sustain and delight the children who then possessed her. Then indeed the simple and lovely shepherdesses went from valley to valley and hillock to hillock, with their hair in a plait or loose, in no more clothing than was needed to cover decently what decency requires, and always has required, to be covered; and their ornaments were not those in use now, on which the purple of Tyre and silk tortured in so many ways are lavished, but a few green leaves of burdock and ivy woven together — with which they went about, perhaps, as grand and as well turned out as our court ladies go now with the rare and outlandish inventions that idle curiosity has taught them.
"In those days the loving thoughts of the soul were dressed simply and plainly, in the very way and manner the soul conceived them, without hunting for an artificial roundabout of words to set them off. Fraud, deceit and malice had not yet mixed themselves with truth and plain dealing. Justice kept within her own bounds, and neither favour nor self-interest dared disturb or offend her, as they so much diminish and disturb and persecute her now. The law of a judge's whim had not yet planted itself in his understanding, because then there was nothing to judge and nobody to be judged. Maidens and modesty went about, as I have said, wherever they pleased, alone and their own mistresses, without fear that another's licence or lustful intent would harm them; and if they came to ruin it was of their own liking and their own free will.
"And now, in these detestable ages of ours, no woman is safe, even if another labyrinth like the one in Crete hides her and shuts her in; because there, through the chinks or on the air, with the zeal of accursed importunity, the pestilence of love gets in and wrecks her whole seclusion. For the protection of these, as time went on and wickedness increased, the order of knights errant was instituted: to defend maidens, protect widows and succour orphans and the needy. Of this order am I, brother goatherds; and I thank you for the entertainment and the good welcome you give me and my squire. For although by natural law all living men are obliged to favour knights errant, still, knowing that without knowing this obligation you took me in and made much of me, it is only right that with all the goodwill I have I should thank you for yours."
Our knight made this whole long harangue — which might very well have been spared — because the acorns they gave him brought the Golden Age to his mind, and he took it into his head to deliver that useless discourse to the goatherds, who listened without answering him a word, thoroughly bemused and open-mouthed. Sancho too kept quiet, and ate acorns, and paid very frequent visits to the second wineskin, which they had hung from a cork tree to keep the wine cool.
Don Quixote was longer talking than they were finishing supper; at the end of which one of the goatherds said:
"So that your worship may say with more truth, sir knight errant, that we entertained you with a prompt and hearty goodwill, we should like to give you some pleasure and diversion by getting a mate of ours to sing, who will not be long in getting here. He is a very sharp lad and very much in love, and, above all, he can read and write and is such a player on the rebec that there is nothing left to wish for."
Hardly had the goatherd finished saying this when the sound of the rebec reached them, and shortly afterwards the player arrived: a young man of about twenty-two, very good-looking. His mates asked him whether he had eaten, and when he said yes the one who had made the offer said:
"In that case, Antonio, you can do us the pleasure of singing a little, so that this gentleman our guest may see that there are people in the hills and woods too who know something about music. We have told him about your accomplishments and we want you to show them and prove us right. So on your life, sit down and sing the ballad of your love that your uncle the prebendary wrote for you, which they thought so well of in the village."
"With pleasure," answered the young man.
And without waiting to be asked twice he sat down on the stump of a lopped oak, and tuning his rebec he presently began to sing, very gracefully, in this manner:
I know you love me, Olalla, although you have never said so, not even with your eyes, those silent tongues of love. Because I know you have your wits, I hold it that you want me; for love was never wretched that was once acknowledged. It is true enough that sometimes, Olalla, you have given me signs that you have a soul of bronze and a white breast of flint. But there, among your scoldings and your most virtuous refusals, hope will sometimes show me the hem of her skirt. My faith throws itself at the lure — faith that has never been able to shrink for not being called or swell for being chosen. If love is a courtesy, then from the courtesy you have I gather that the end of my hopes must be the one I imagine. And if attentions count for anything towards making a heart kind, some of those I have paid you strengthen my case. For if you have taken note of it, you must have seen more than once that I have worn on a Monday the clothes that did me honour on Sunday. Since love and fine clothes travel the same road, I have wanted at all times to look well in your eyes. I leave out the dancing I gave up for you, and I say nothing of the music you have heard at unlikely hours and at the first cock-crow. I do not count the praises I have spoken of your beauty; which, though they were true, have made me disliked by some. Teresa of the Berrocal, when I was praising you, said to me: "There is a man who thinks he adores an angel and comes to adore an ape; thanks to a lot of trinkets and to false hair, and to hypocritical beauties that would deceive Love himself." I gave her the lie and she was angry; her cousin took her part; he challenged me, and you know what I did and what he did. I do not want you by the bushel, nor court you and serve you for the sake of keeping you; my design is a better one. The Church has yokes that are bows of silk; put your neck in the collar and you will see me put in mine. And if not, I swear from this moment, by the most blessed saint there is, never to come out of these mountains except to be a friar.
With that the goatherd made an end of his song; and although Don Quixote begged him to sing some more, Sancho Panza would not have it, being more disposed for sleep than for listening to songs. And so he said to his master:
"Your worship might do well to settle now where you are to spend the night, for the work these good men do all day does not allow them to spend their nights singing."
"I understand you, Sancho," Don Quixote answered him; "for it is quite clear to me that those visits to the wineskin call for repayment in sleep rather than in music."
"It tastes good to all of us, God be praised," answered Sancho.
"I do not deny it," replied Don Quixote; "but settle yourself where you like. Men of my profession look better watching than sleeping. But all the same, Sancho, it would be as well if you dressed this ear of mine again, for it is hurting more than it need."
Sancho did as he was told; and one of the goatherds, seeing the wound, told him not to worry, for he would put something on it that would heal it easily. Taking some leaves of rosemary, of which there was plenty about, he chewed them and mixed them with a little salt, and applying them to the ear he bandaged it up very well, assuring him that no other medicine was needed; and so it proved.
While this was going on, another of the lads who brought them their supplies from the village arrived, and said:
"Do you know what's happening down in the village, mates?"
"How could we know?" answered one of them.
"Then you must know," the lad went on, "that this morning that famous shepherd-scholar called Grisóstomo died, and it is whispered that he died of love for that bedevilled girl Marcela, rich Guillermo's daughter, the one who goes about these wilds dressed as a shepherdess."
"For Marcela, you mean," said one.
"That's who I mean," answered the goatherd. "And the best of it is that he ordered in his will that they were to bury him out in the country, as though he were a Moor, and at the foot of the crag where the cork-tree spring is; because, so they say, and they say he said it himself, that is the place where he first saw her. And he ordered other things too, of such a kind that the priests of the village say they must not be carried out, and it is not right that they should be, because they look like heathen practices. To all of which that great friend of his, Ambrosio the scholar, who also dressed himself as a shepherd along with him, answers that everything must be carried out without a single thing missing, exactly as Grisóstomo left orders; and the whole village is in an uproar over it. But from what they say, in the end it will be done as Ambrosio and all the shepherds who are his friends want; and tomorrow they are coming to bury him with great pomp where I have said. And I reckon it will be very well worth seeing; at any rate I shan't miss going to see it, even if I knew I couldn't get back to the village tomorrow."
"We'll all do the same," answered the goatherds, "and we'll draw lots for who is to stay behind and look after everybody's goats."
"You're right, Pedro," said one; "though there'll be no need to take that trouble, for I'll stay for the lot of you. And don't put it down to virtue or to any want of curiosity in me, but to the fact that I can't walk for that stake that went through my foot the other day."
"For all that, we thank you," answered Pedro.
And Don Quixote begged Pedro to tell him who the dead man was and who the shepherdess; to which Pedro answered that all he knew was that the dead man was a rich gentleman, from a village up in those mountains, who had been a student for many years at Salamanca, at the end of which he had come home with the reputation of being very learned and very well read.
"They said in particular that he knew the science of the stars, and of what the sun and the moon get up to away in the sky; because he could tell us the exact cripse of the sun and the moon."
"It is called an eclipse, my friend, not a cripse, when those two great luminaries go dark," said Don Quixote.
But Pedro, not stopping over trifles, went on with his tale:
"He could tell too whether the year was going to be plentiful or sterrile."
"Sterile is what you mean, my friend," said Don Quixote.
"Sterile or sterrile," answered Pedro, "it all comes out the same in the end. And I tell you that with what he said his father and his friends, who believed him, grew very rich, because they did what he advised them, when he told them: 'Sow barley this year, not wheat; this year you can sow chickpeas and not barley; next year will be a good one for oil; the three after it you won't get a drop.'"
"That science is called astrology," said Don Quixote.
"I don't know what it's called," replied Pedro, "but I know he knew all that, and more besides. Anyhow, not many months went by after he came home from Salamanca before he turned up one day dressed as a shepherd, with his crook and his sheepskin, having taken off the long gown he wore as a scholar; and along with him another great friend of his called Ambrosio, who had been his fellow-student, dressed as a shepherd too. I was forgetting to say that Grisóstomo, the dead man, was a great hand at writing verses; so much so that he wrote the carols for Christmas Eve and the plays for Corpus Christi that the lads of our village used to act, and everyone said they were first-rate.
"When the villagers saw the two scholars turned shepherds so suddenly, they were amazed, and could not guess what had moved them to make so strange a change. By this time Grisóstomo's father was dead, and he was left the heir to a great deal of property, both goods and land, and no small quantity of stock, large and small, and a great deal of money — of all of which the young man was left absolute master; and to tell the truth he deserved it all, for he was a very good companion, and charitable, and a friend to good men, and he had a face like a blessing. Afterwards it came to be understood that he had changed his clothes for no other reason than to go about these wild places after that shepherdess Marcela our lad mentioned just now, with whom the poor dead Grisóstomo had fallen in love.
"And now I want to tell you, because it is right you should know it, who this girl is. Perhaps — and there is no perhaps about it — you will never have heard the like of it in all the days of your life, even if you live more years than sorrow."
"Say Sarah," put in Don Quixote, unable to bear the goatherd's swapping of words.
"Sorrow lives long enough," answered Pedro; "and if you are going to keep picking me up on my words at every step, sir, we shall not be finished in a year."
"Forgive me, my friend," said Don Quixote; "I only said it because there is such a difference between sorrow and Sarah. But you answered very well, because sorrow does live longer than Sarah. Go on with your story, and I will not interrupt you again in anything."
"Well then, my dear good sir," said the goatherd, "in our village there was a farmer even richer than Grisóstomo's father, whose name was Guillermo, and to whom God gave, besides his many and great riches, a daughter, at whose birth her mother died — the most respected woman there was in all these parts. I seem to see her now, with that face of hers that had the sun on one side of it and the moon on the other; and above all a good manager and a friend to the poor, for which I believe her soul must be enjoying God in the next world at this very hour. Of grief at the death of so good a wife her husband Guillermo died, leaving his daughter Marcela, a young girl and rich, in the charge of an uncle of hers who is a priest and holds a benefice in our village.
"The girl grew up so beautiful that she made us remember her mother's beauty, which was very great; and even so it was reckoned that the daughter's would go beyond it. And so it did, for when she got to be fourteen or fifteen nobody looked at her without blessing God for having made her so lovely, and most of them fell in love and were lost for her. Her uncle kept her very carefully and very much shut up; but for all that the fame of her great beauty spread so far that, as much for it as for her great riches, her uncle was begged and solicited and pestered to give her in marriage, not only by the men of our own village but by men from many leagues round, and the best of them at that. But he — who is an upright good Christian — although he would have liked to marry her off as soon as he saw she was of age, would not do it without her consent, and never had an eye to the profit and advantage that holding the girl's property while he put off her marriage offered him. And upon my word this was said in more than one gossiping circle in the village, to the good priest's credit."
For I want you to know, sir knight errant, that in these little places everything is talked about and everything is gossiped over; and take it from me, as I take it from myself, that a clergyman must be uncommonly good to make his parishioners speak well of him, particularly in the villages.
"That is the truth," said Don Quixote, "and go on, for the tale is a very good one, and you, good Pedro, tell it with a very good grace."
"May the Lord's grace not fail me, for that is the one that matters. And for the rest, you must know that although her uncle put the suitors before his niece and told her the qualities of each one in particular, of the many who asked for her, and begged her to marry and to choose to her own liking, she never answered anything but that for the present she did not want to marry, and that being so young she did not feel fit to bear the burden of matrimony. With these excuses, which seemed reasonable enough, her uncle left off pestering her and waited for her to get on a little in years and know how to choose a companion to her own taste. For he used to say, and said very rightly, that parents ought not to settle their children against their will.
"But lo and behold, when nobody was expecting it, one day the fastidious Marcela turns up as a shepherdess; and with her uncle and the whole village powerless against it, all advising her not to, she took to going out into the fields with the other village girls and to minding her own flock. And once she came out in public and her beauty was seen openly, I could not properly tell you how many rich young men, gentlemen and farmers, have taken to Grisóstomo's costume and go courting her about these fields. One of them, as has been said already, was our dead friend, of whom they said that he had stopped loving her and had begun to worship her.
"And nobody should think that because Marcela put herself into that free way of living, so unconstrained and with so little or no seclusion in it, she has therefore given any sign, or the shadow of one, that could damage her modesty and her good name. On the contrary, such and so great is the vigilance with which she looks after her honour that of all who court and solicit her not one has boasted, or could truthfully boast, that she has given him the smallest hope of getting what he wants. For although she does not run away or shun the company and conversation of the shepherds, and treats them courteously and in a friendly way, the moment any one of them comes to declare his intentions to her — even if they are as proper and holy as marriage — she flings him off as though from a catapult.
"And with this turn of temper she does more damage in this country than if the plague had come into it; because her friendliness and her beauty draw the hearts of those who deal with her into serving her and loving her, but her disdain and her plain speaking drive them to the point of despair. And so they do not know what to call her, but shout after her that she is cruel and ungrateful, with other titles of the same kind, which show plainly enough what her disposition is like. If you were to be here some day, sir, you would hear these hills and valleys ringing with the laments of the disappointed men who follow her.
"Not far from here there is a place where there are almost two dozen tall beeches, and there is not one of them that has not the name of Marcela carved and written on its smooth bark; and over some of them a crown carved in the same tree, as though the lover were saying more plainly that Marcela wears it and deserves it out of all human beauty. Here one shepherd sighs, there another complains; over there you hear love songs, over here despairing dirges. There is one who spends all the hours of the night sitting at the foot of some oak or rock, and there, without once closing his weeping eyes, sunk and carried away in his own thoughts, the sun finds him in the morning; and there is another who, without giving his sighs a moment's rest or truce, in the middle of the burning heat of the most oppressive summer afternoon, stretched out on the scorching sand, sends his complaints up to merciful heaven. And over this one and that one, and over those and these, the beautiful Marcela triumphs, free and unconcerned; and all of us who know her are waiting to see what her pride will come to, and who is to be the lucky man who will come and tame so terrible a nature and enjoy so extraordinary a beauty.
"Since everything I have told you is such well-established truth, I am inclined to believe that what our lad said about the cause of Grisóstomo's death is true too. And so I advise you, sir, not to fail to be at his burial tomorrow, which will be well worth seeing, for Grisóstomo has many friends, and it is not half a league from this place to the one where he has ordered himself to be buried."
"I shall bear it in mind," said Don Quixote, "and I thank you for the pleasure you have given me with the telling of so delicious a tale."
"Oh!" replied the goatherd, "I don't know the half of what has happened to Marcela's lovers; but it may be that tomorrow we shall run into some shepherd on the road who will tell us. And for now it will be as well if you go and sleep under a roof, because the night air might do your wound harm — though the medicine you have had put on it is such that there is nothing to fear from any accident."
Sancho Panza, who by now was consigning the goatherd's endless talking to the devil, urged for his part that his master should go inside and sleep in Pedro's hut. He did so, and spent most of the rest of the night in memories of his lady Dulcinea, in imitation of Marcela's lovers. Sancho Panza settled himself between Rocinante and his donkey and slept, not like a rejected lover, but like a man who had been kicked to a pulp.
Hardly had day begun to show itself on the balconies of the east when five of the six goatherds got up and went to wake Don Quixote, and to ask him whether he was still minded to go and see Grisóstomo's famous funeral, and to say that they would keep him company. Don Quixote, who wanted nothing better, got up and told Sancho to saddle and pack at once, which he did with great dispatch, and with the same dispatch they all took the road.
They had not gone a quarter of a league when, at a crossing of paths, they saw coming towards them some six shepherds dressed in black sheepskins and with their heads crowned with garlands of cypress and bitter oleander. Each of them carried a stout holly staff in his hand. With them came two gentlemen on horseback, very well fitted out for travelling, with three servants on foot accompanying them. When they met they greeted each other courteously, and asking one another where they were going they learned that they were all bound for the place of the burial; and so they all began to travel together.
One of the horsemen, speaking to his companion, said:
"It seems to me, Señor Vivaldo, that we shall count the delay we make in seeing this famous funeral well spent; and famous it cannot fail to be, judging by the extraordinary things these shepherds have told us, both about the dead shepherd and about the murderous shepherdess."
"So it seems to me too," answered Vivaldo; "and I would delay not one day but four for the sake of seeing it."
Don Quixote asked them what they had heard about Marcela and Grisóstomo. The traveller said that early that morning they had met these shepherds, and that seeing them in such mournful dress they had asked them the reason for it; that one of them had told the story, describing the strangeness and the beauty of a shepherdess called Marcela, and the love of the many who courted her, and the death of that Grisóstomo whose funeral they were going to. In short, he told everything that Pedro had told Don Quixote.
This talk ended and another began, the man called Vivaldo asking Don Quixote what it was that moved him to go armed in that fashion through so peaceful a country. To which Don Quixote answered:
"The profession I follow neither allows nor permits me to go about in any other way. Easy living, luxury and repose were invented for soft courtiers; but toil, unrest and arms were invented and made only for those whom the world calls knights errant, of whom I, though unworthy, am the least of all."
The moment they heard this they all took him for a madman; and to make sure of it and see what sort of madness his was, Vivaldo asked him again what he meant by "knights errant".
"Have your worships not read," answered Don Quixote, "the annals and histories of England, which deal with the famous exploits of King Arthur, whom in our Castilian speech we constantly call King Artús — of whom there is an ancient and common tradition throughout that kingdom of Great Britain that this king did not die, but that by the art of enchantment he was turned into a crow, and that in the course of time he is to come back and reign and recover his kingdom and his sceptre? For which reason it cannot be proved that from that time to this any Englishman has ever killed a crow. Well, in the time of that good king that famous order of chivalry of the Knights of the Round Table was instituted, and there took place, exactly as they are told, the loves of Sir Lancelot of the Lake and Queen Guinevere, with that most honourable lady Quintañona as their go-between and confidante — from which came that ballad so well known and so much sung in our Spain:
Never was a knight so well waited on by ladies as Lancelot was when he came from Britain —
with that sweet and gentle progress of his amorous and valiant deeds. From then on, passing from hand to hand, that order of chivalry went spreading and extending through many and various parts of the world; and famous in it and known for their deeds were the valiant Amadís of Gaul, with all his sons and grandsons down to the fifth generation, and the valorous Felixmarte of Hyrcania, and the never-sufficiently-praised Tirant lo Blanc; and almost in our own days we saw and conversed with and heard the invincible and valiant knight Don Belianís of Greece. This, then, gentlemen, is what it is to be a knight errant, and what I have described is the order of his chivalry; in which, as I have said before, I, sinner though I am, have made my profession, and I profess the very thing those knights professed. And so I go through these solitudes and wildernesses looking for adventures, with my mind made up to offer my arm and my person to the most dangerous that fortune may send me, in aid of the weak and the needy."
By these words the travellers were finally satisfied that Don Quixote was out of his wits, and what kind of madness had the mastery of him; at which they felt the same astonishment that everyone felt on first coming to know of it. And Vivaldo, who was a very shrewd man of a cheerful disposition, so as to get through the little of the road they said was left without tedium, and to bring them to the mountain where the burial was, wanted to give him occasion to go further with his absurdities. And so he said:
"It seems to me, sir knight errant, that your worship has professed one of the strictest professions on earth, and I reckon that even that of the Carthusian friars is not so strict."
"As strict it may very well be," answered our Don Quixote, "but that it is as necessary to the world I am within two fingers of doubting. Because, if the truth is to be told, the soldier who carries out what his captain orders does no less than the captain who gives the order. What I mean is that religious men, in all peace and quiet, ask heaven for the good of the earth; but we soldiers and knights put into execution what they ask for, defending it with the valour of our arms and the edges of our swords — not under a roof, but under the open sky, set up as a target for the unbearable rays of the sun in summer and the bristling frosts of winter. So we are God's ministers on earth, and the arms by which His justice is carried out on it. And since matters of war and everything touching and concerning them cannot be put into execution without sweating and struggling and labouring, it follows that those who profess it undoubtedly have greater labour than those who in quiet peace and repose are praying God to favour those who can do little for themselves.
"I do not mean to say, and it does not even cross my mind, that the state of a knight errant is as good as that of a cloistered religious; I only want to infer, from what I suffer, that it is undoubtedly more laborious and more belaboured, and hungrier and thirstier, more wretched, more ragged and more louse-ridden. Because there is no doubt that the knights errant of the past went through a great deal of misfortune in the course of their lives. And if some of them rose to be emperors by the valour of their arms, upon my word it cost them a good deal of their blood and their sweat; and if those who rose to that rank had gone without enchanters and sages to help them, they would have been thoroughly cheated of their desires and thoroughly deceived in their hopes."
"I am of that opinion," replied the traveller; "but one thing among many others strikes me very badly in knights errant, and it is that when they find themselves on the point of undertaking some great and dangerous adventure, in which there is plain danger of losing their lives, they never at that instant of attacking remember to commend themselves to God, as every Christian is obliged to do in such dangers; on the contrary, they commend themselves to their ladies with as much eagerness and devotion as if the ladies were their God — a thing that seems to me to smell somewhat of heathenism."
"Sir," answered Don Quixote, "that cannot possibly be otherwise, and the knight errant who did anything else would be in a bad way; for it is already the use and custom in knight-errantry that a knight errant who, on undertaking some great feat of arms, has his lady before him, should turn his eyes on her softly and lovingly, as though asking her with them to favour and protect him in the doubtful pass he is entering; and even if nobody hears him, he is obliged to say a few words under his breath commending himself to her with all his heart. And of this we have countless examples in the histories. Nor is it to be understood from this that they are to leave off commending themselves to God; there is time and place for that in the course of the business."
"For all that," replied the traveller, "I still have a scruple; which is that I have often read that words pass between two knights errant, and one thing leading to another their anger takes fire, and they wheel their horses and take a good stretch of ground, and then, without more ado, at full gallop they come at each other again; and in the middle of the charge they commend themselves to their ladies. And what usually comes of the encounter is that one of them goes over his horse's crupper, run through and through with his opponent's lance, and it goes so with the other too that if he did not hold on to his horse's mane he could not help coming to the ground. And I do not see how the dead man had any time to commend himself to God in the course of so headlong a business. It would have been better if the words he spent in the charge commending himself to his lady had been spent on what he owed and was bound to as a Christian. What is more, I reckon that not all knights errant have ladies to commend themselves to, because not all of them are in love."
"That cannot be," answered Don Quixote. "I say it cannot be that there should be a knight errant without a lady, because it is as proper and natural for such men to be in love as it is for the sky to have stars; and you may be quite sure that no history has ever been seen in which a knight errant is found without a love. And by the very fact of his being without one he would not be held a legitimate knight, but a bastard, and one who got into the fortress of the said chivalry not by the door but over the wall, like a robber and a thief."
"For all that," said the traveller, "it seems to me, if I remember rightly, that I have read that Don Galaor, brother of the valiant Amadís of Gaul, never had a particular lady to commend himself to; and for all that he was thought none the less of, and was a very valiant and famous knight."
To which our Don Quixote answered:
"Sir, one swallow does not make a summer. What is more, I know that in secret that knight was very much in love. Besides, his liking every woman who took his fancy was a natural failing that he could not keep a hand on. But in short, it is very well established that he had one alone whom he had made mistress of his will, and to her he commended himself very often and very secretly, because he prided himself on being a discreet knight."
"Then if it is of the essence that every knight errant must be in love," said the traveller, "your worship may well be believed to be so, being of the profession. And unless your worship prides yourself on being as discreet as Don Galaor, I beg you as earnestly as I can, in the name of the whole of this company and my own, to tell us the name, the country, the rank and the beauty of your lady; for she would count herself fortunate to have the whole world know that she is loved and served by such a knight as your worship appears to be."
At this Don Quixote gave a great sigh and said:
"I cannot say whether my sweet enemy is pleased or not that the world should know I serve her. I can only say, in answer to what is asked of me with such courtesy, that her name is Dulcinea; her country El Toboso, a village of La Mancha; her rank must be at the least that of a princess, since she is my queen and my lady; her beauty superhuman, since in her are made true all the impossible and chimerical attributes of beauty that the poets give their ladies — that her hair is gold, her forehead the Elysian fields, her eyebrows the rainbow, her eyes suns, her cheeks roses, her lips coral, her teeth pearls, her neck alabaster, her breast marble, her hands ivory, her whiteness snow; and the parts that modesty has hidden from human sight are such, as I think and believe, that discreet consideration can only prize them and not compare them."
"We should like to know her lineage, race and family," said Vivaldo.
To which Don Quixote answered:
"She is not of the ancient Roman Curtii, Caii and Scipios, nor of the modern Colonnas and Orsinis; nor of the Moncadas and Requesenes of Catalonia, still less of the Rebellas and Villanovas of Valencia; nor the Palafoxes, Nuzas, Rocabertis, Corellas, Lunas, Alagones, Urreas, Foces and Gurreas of Aragon; nor the Cerdas, Manriques, Mendozas and Guzmanes of Castile; nor the Alencastros, Pallas and Meneses of Portugal. But she is of the Tobosos of La Mancha — a line which, though modern, is such that it may give a noble beginning to the most illustrious families of the centuries to come. And let nobody argue with me about this, except on the conditions Cervino set at the foot of the trophy of Roland's arms, which said:
let no man move them who cannot prove himself against Roland."
"Although mine is of the Cachopines of Laredo," answered the traveller, "I shall not dare set it beside the Tobosos of La Mancha — though, to tell the truth, that surname has never reached my ears until now."
"As if it would not have reached them!" replied Don Quixote.
All the rest were listening with great attention to the conversation of the two, and even the goatherds and shepherds themselves recognised how utterly wanting in wits our Don Quixote was. Only Sancho Panza thought that everything his master said was true, knowing who he was and having known him since his birth; and what he had some doubts about was believing that business of the lovely Dulcinea of El Toboso, because no such name and no such princess had ever come to his notice, though he lived so near El Toboso.
They were going along in this talk when they saw, coming down through the gap between two high mountains, some twenty shepherds, all dressed in black woollen skins and crowned with garlands which, as it turned out afterwards, were of yew and of cypress. Six of them were carrying a bier, covered with a great variety of flowers and branches. Seeing which, one of the goatherds said:
"Those coming there are the men carrying Grisóstomo's body, and the foot of that mountain is the place where he ordered them to bury him."
So they hurried to get there, and arrived just as those coming had set the bier down on the ground; and four of them with sharp mattocks were digging the grave beside a hard rock.
The two parties greeted each other courteously; and then Don Quixote and those who had come with him fell to looking at the bier, and on it they saw, covered with flowers, a dead body dressed as a shepherd, of about thirty years old to look at; and although he was dead, he showed that in life he had had a handsome face and a gallant bearing. Round about him on the bier itself were some books and a great many papers, some open and some folded. And all who were looking at this, and those who were opening the grave, and everybody else who was there, kept a wonderful silence, until one of the men who had carried the dead man said to another:
"Look carefully, Ambrosio, whether this is the place Grisóstomo spoke of, since you want what he left ordered in his will to be carried out so exactly."
"This is it," answered Ambrosio; "for many a time in this place my unhappy friend told me the story of his misfortune. Here he told me he first saw that mortal enemy of the human race; here too it was that he first declared to her a passion as honourable as it was loving; and here it was, the last time, that Marcela finished undeceiving and disdaining him, so that she put an end to the tragedy of his miserable life. And here, in memory of so many misfortunes, he wanted to be laid in the bowels of eternal oblivion."
And turning to Don Quixote and the travellers, he went on:
"That body, gentlemen, which you are looking at with pitying eyes, was the storehouse of a soul in which heaven had placed an infinite share of its riches. That is the body of Grisóstomo, who was unique in wit, alone in courtesy, extreme in gentleness, a phoenix in friendship, generous without measure, grave without presumption, cheerful without vulgarity, and, in short, first in everything that goes to being good, and without a second in everything that went to being unfortunate. He loved well, and was hated; he adored, and was disdained; he pleaded with a wild beast, he importuned a piece of marble, he ran after the wind, he shouted into the wilderness, he served ingratitude — from which he got for his reward the spoils of death in the middle of the course of his life, which was ended by a shepherdess whom he was trying to make immortal, so that she might live in people's memory, as those papers you are looking at would very well show, if he had not ordered me to give them to the fire as soon as I had given his body to the earth."
"You would be using greater severity and cruelty with them," said Vivaldo, "than their owner himself; for it is neither just nor right that the will of a man should be carried out when what he orders goes outside all reasonable sense. Augustus Caesar would not have had a good name if he had allowed what the divine Mantuan left ordered in his will to be put into execution. So, Señor Ambrosio, now that you are giving your friend's body to the earth, do not go giving his writings to oblivion; for if he ordered it as an injured man, it is not right that you should carry it out as an unwise one. On the contrary, by giving these papers life, see that Marcela's cruelty has life for ever, so that it may serve as an example in the times to come to the living, to keep away and flee from falling down such precipices as this. For I already know, and so do all of us who come here, the story of this loving and desperate friend of yours; and we know of your friendship, and the occasion of his death, and what he left ordered at the end of his life. From which lamentable history one may gather how great was Marcela's cruelty, and Grisóstomo's love, and the faith of your friendship, and the end that waits for those who gallop with a loose rein down the path that raving love sets before their eyes. Last night we heard of Grisóstomo's death, and that he was to be buried in this place; and so, out of curiosity and pity, we left the direct road we were on and agreed to come and see with our eyes what had so grieved us in the hearing. And in payment for this pity, and for the wish that was born in us to remedy it if we could, we beg you, wise Ambrosio — at least I beg it of you for my own part — that instead of burning these papers you will let me carry off a few of them."
And without waiting for the shepherd to answer, he put out his hand and took some of those that were nearest; seeing which, Ambrosio said:
"Out of courtesy I shall let you keep the ones you have already taken, sir; but to imagine that I shall leave off burning the rest is an idle thought."
Vivaldo, who was anxious to see what the papers said, opened one of them at once and saw that it was headed: Song of Despair. Ambrosio heard him and said:
"That is the last paper the unhappy man wrote; and so that you may see, sir, the pass his misfortunes had brought him to, read it out so as to be heard; for the time they take to open the grave will give you room enough for it."
"I shall do it very willingly," said Vivaldo.
And as all the bystanders had the same wish, they gathered round him; and reading in a clear voice, he saw that it went like this:
Since you insist, cruel one, that the force of your harsh severity be published abroad from tongue to tongue and from one people to another, I shall make hell itself lend my sad breast a note of grief, to wrench the ordinary use of my voice out of its course. And matching my desire, which strains to tell my pain and your exploits, the terrible voice shall carry the sound, and mixed with it, for greater torment, pieces of my own wretched entrails. Listen, then, and lend an attentive ear not to any ordered music but to the noise that comes up out of the depths of my bitter heart, driven by a raving I cannot help, for my own relief and your annoyance.
The roaring of the lion, the terrifying howl of the fierce wolf, the horrible hiss of the scaly serpent, the appalling bellow of some monster, the ominous croaking of the crow, the uproar of the wind fought over an unquiet sea; the implacable bellow of the beaten bull, the pitiable cooing of the widowed dove, the mournful song of the envied owl, together with the weeping of all the black infernal crew — let them all come out with my grieving soul, mixed into one sound, in such a way that all the senses are confounded; for the cruel pain that is in me demands new methods to be told.
The sands of father Tagus shall not hear the sad echoes of so much confusion, nor the olives of the famous Betis: for my hard sorrows shall be scattered on high crags and in deep hollows, with a dead tongue and with living words; or in dark valleys, or on lonely beaches stripped of human dealing, or where the sun has never shown its light, or among the venomous multitude of beasts that the Libyan plain feeds. For although in the desert wastes the hoarse and uncertain echoes of my hurt may sound with your unmatched severity, by the privilege of my short destiny they shall be carried through the wide world.
Disdain kills; patience is brought down by a suspicion, true or false; jealousy kills with a harsher rigour; long absence throws a life out of order; against a fear of being forgotten firm hope of good fortune is no use. In all of them there is certain, unavoidable death; but I — a miracle never seen! — live on, jealous, absent, disdained and certain of the suspicions that have killed me; and in the forgetting that feeds my fire, and among so many torments, my sight never manages to see hope even as a shadow, nor do I, in my despair, look for her; rather, to go to the extreme in my complaint, I swear to be without her for ever.
Can a man, by any chance, in one instant hope and fear, or is it right to do it, when the grounds for fear are the more certain? Ought I, with harsh jealousy standing before me, to shut these eyes, when I must see it through a thousand wounds opened in my soul? Who would not throw the doors wide open to mistrust, when he sees disdain uncovered, and his suspicions — oh, bitter conversion! — turned into truths, and clean truth turned into a lie? Oh, in the kingdom of love you fierce tyrants, jealousies, put a blade into these hands! Give me, disdain, a twisted rope. But, alas for me, with a cruel victory your memory smothers even my suffering.
I die, then; and so as never to hope for good fortune in death or in life, I shall be obstinate in my fancy. I shall say that the man who loves well is right, and that the freest soul is the one most surrendered to love's ancient tyranny. I shall say that my perpetual enemy has a soul as beautiful as her body, and that her forgetfulness is born of my own fault, and that, by the harms he does us, love keeps his empire in a just peace. And with this opinion and a hard noose, hastening the wretched hour that her disdain has brought me to, I shall offer body and soul to the winds, with no laurel or palm of good to come.
You, who by so many wrongs show me the reason that forces me to do this wrong to the weary life I loathe — since you see already the plain proof that this deep wound in my heart gives you of how gladly I offer myself to your severity — if by any chance you think I deserve that the clear sky of your beautiful eyes should cloud over at my death, do not let it: for I want no reparation from you for making you a present of my soul's spoils. Rather, laughing at the funeral, show that my end was your holiday; though it is great simplicity to advise you of it, since I know your glory stands in my life reaching its end so soon.
Let them come, for it is time, out of the deep abyss — Tantalus with his thirst; let Sisyphus come with the terrible weight of his stone; let Tityus bring his vulture, and likewise let Ixion not hold back with his wheel, nor the sisters who labour so hard; and let them all together transfer their mortal anguish into my breast, and in low voices — if such things are owed to a man in despair — sing sad, sorrowing obsequies over a body that is denied even a shroud. And let the three-faced porter of hell, with a thousand other chimeras and monsters, carry the mournful counterpoint; for no better pomp seems to me to be deserved by a lover who is dead.
Song of despair, do not complain when you leave my sad company; rather, since the cause that gave you birth increases her good fortune by my misery, be not sad even in the grave.
Those who had listened thought well of Grisóstomo's song, although the man who read it said it did not seem to him to square with the account he had heard of Marcela's modesty and goodness, because in it Grisóstomo complained of jealousy and suspicion and absence, all to the prejudice of Marcela's good name and reputation. To which Ambrosio, as one who knew his friend's most hidden thoughts, answered:
"So that you may satisfy yourself on that doubt, sir, you should know that when the unhappy man wrote this song he was away from Marcela, having gone away from her of his own accord, to see whether absence would use its ordinary powers on him. And as there is nothing that does not torment an absent lover, and no fear that does not overtake him, so Grisóstomo was tormented by imagined jealousies and dreaded suspicions as though they had been real. And with that, the truth that fame proclaims of Marcela's goodness stands where it did; for apart from being cruel, and a little arrogant, and a great deal disdainful, envy itself neither ought nor is able to find any fault in her."
"That is the truth," answered Vivaldo.
And as he was about to read another of the papers he had saved from the fire, he was stopped by a marvellous vision — for that is what it seemed — which suddenly presented itself to their eyes. For on top of the rock where they were digging the grave there appeared the shepherdess Marcela, so beautiful that her beauty went beyond her reputation. Those who had never seen her before looked at her in wonder and silence, and those who were used to seeing her were left no less astonished than those who never had. But hardly had Ambrosio seen her when, with every sign of an indignant spirit, he said:
"Have you come, by any chance, fierce basilisk of these mountains, to see whether the wounds of this poor wretch whose life your cruelty took will bleed at your presence? Or have you come to gloat over the cruel exploits of your nature, or to watch from that height, like another pitiless Nero, the burning of his Rome in flames, or to trample arrogantly on this unhappy corpse, as Tarquin's ungrateful daughter trampled on her father's? Tell us quickly what you have come for, or what it is that pleases you most; for since I know that Grisóstomo's thoughts never failed to obey you in life, I shall see to it that, now he is dead, the thoughts of all those who called themselves his friends obey you too."
"I come, Ambrosio, for none of the things you have said," answered Marcela, "but to speak up for myself and to make plain how unreasonable are all those who blame me for their sufferings and for Grisóstomo's death. And so I beg all of you who are here to listen to me, for it will not take much time or many words to persuade sensible people of a truth.
"Heaven made me beautiful, you say, and so beautiful that my beauty moves you to love me whether you will or no; and for the love you show me, you say — and even demand — that I am obliged to love you back. By the natural understanding that God has given me I know that everything beautiful is lovable; but I cannot see that, merely by being loved, a thing that is loved for being beautiful is obliged to love whoever loves it. What is more, it might happen that the lover of the beautiful thing was ugly; and since ugliness deserves to be shunned, it comes very badly to say, 'I love you because you are beautiful; you must love me although I am ugly.'
"But even supposing the beauty is equal on both sides, it does not follow that the desires must be equal too; for not all beauties fall in love. Some of them delight the eye without conquering the will. If every beauty made men fall in love and conquered them, our wills would go wandering about confused and lost, not knowing where they were to stop; for the beautiful objects being infinite, the desires would have to be infinite too. And from what I have heard, true love is not divided, and must be voluntary and not forced. This being so, as I believe it is, why do you want me to surrender my will by force, obliged by nothing but your saying that you love me?
"If not, tell me this: if heaven had made me ugly instead of beautiful, would it have been just for me to complain of you for not loving me? What is more, you must consider that I did not choose the beauty I have; such as it is, heaven gave it me freely, without my asking for it or choosing it. And just as the viper does not deserve to be blamed for the poison it carries, although it kills with it, since nature gave it, so neither do I deserve to be reproved for being beautiful. For beauty in a virtuous woman is like a distant fire or a sharp sword: the one does not burn, and the other does not cut, anybody who does not come near them. Honour and virtue are ornaments of the soul, without which the body, even if it is beautiful, ought not to look so. Then if modesty is one of the virtues that most adorn and beautify body and soul, why should a woman who is loved for being beautiful lose it, in order to fall in with the intention of a man who, for his own pleasure alone, uses all his strength and cunning to make her lose it?
"I was born free, and in order to be able to live free I chose the solitude of the fields. The trees of these mountains are my company, the clear waters of these streams my mirrors; with the trees and the waters I share my thoughts and my beauty. I am a distant fire and a sword laid far off. Those I have made fall in love by the sight of me I have undeceived with my words. And if desires are kept alive by hopes, then since I gave no hope to Grisóstomo or to anyone else, it may fairly be said of the end of any of them that he was killed by his own obstinacy rather than by my cruelty.
"And if I am charged with his intentions having been honourable, and that for that reason I was obliged to meet them, I say that when, in this very place where they are now digging his grave, he declared to me the goodness of his intention, I told him that mine was to live in perpetual solitude, and that the earth alone should enjoy the fruit of my seclusion and the spoils of my beauty. And if, with all that plain speaking, he chose to persist against hope and to sail against the wind, is it any wonder that he drowned in mid-ocean of his own folly? If I had led him on, I should have been false; if I had contented him, I should have gone against my own better intention and purpose. He persisted after being undeceived; he despaired without being hated. Consider now whether it is reasonable that I should be blamed for his pain.
"Let the man who is deceived complain; let the man who has been cheated of promised hopes despair; let the man I call to trust me, and the man I accept take pride in it. But let no man call me cruel or a murderer whom I do not promise, deceive, call or accept.
"Heaven has not so far willed that I should love by destiny, and to think that I am going to love by choice is a waste of time. Let this general undeceiving serve each of those who court me for his own particular profit; and let it be understood from now on that if anybody dies for me, he does not die of jealousy or of being scorned, since a woman who loves nobody can give nobody cause for jealousy; and plain speaking is not to be counted as disdain.
"Let the man who calls me a wild beast and a basilisk leave me alone as a harmful and evil thing; let the man who calls me ungrateful not serve me; the man who calls me unapproachable not approach me; the man who calls me cruel not follow me. For this wild beast, this basilisk, this ungrateful, cruel and unapproachable woman will not seek them out or serve them or approach them or follow them in any way whatever.
"If Grisóstomo was killed by his impatience and his headlong desire, why should my decent conduct and my reserve be blamed for it? If I keep my purity in the company of the trees, why should a man who wants me to keep it in the company of men want me to lose it? I have, as you know, property of my own, and I do not covet other people's; I have a free nature and I do not care to be subject to anyone. I neither love nor hate anybody. I do not deceive this man or solicit that one, I do not trifle with one or amuse myself with another. The decent conversation of the village girls hereabouts and the care of my goats are my amusement. My desires have these mountains for their boundary; and if they go beyond them, it is to contemplate the beauty of the sky — steps by which the soul travels towards its first dwelling."
And saying this, without waiting for any answer, she turned her back and went into the thickest part of a wood that was near, leaving everyone there astonished as much by her good sense as by her beauty. And some of them — those who had been wounded by the powerful arrow of the rays of her lovely eyes — showed signs of wanting to follow her, taking no advantage of the plain undeceiving they had just heard. Seeing which, and thinking that here was a good opportunity to make use of his chivalry in succouring maidens in distress, Don Quixote laid his hand on the hilt of his sword and said, in a loud and distinct voice:
"Let no person, of whatever state and condition, dare to follow the beautiful Marcela, on pain of falling under my furious indignation. She has shown, with clear and sufficient arguments, how little or no blame she has had in Grisóstomo's death, and how far she is from consenting to the desires of any of her lovers; for which reason it is only just that, instead of being followed and persecuted, she should be honoured and esteemed by all the good people of the world, since she shows that in it she is the only woman who lives with so honourable an intention."
Whether it was because of Don Quixote's threats, or because Ambrosio told them to finish what they owed their good friend, not one of the shepherds stirred or moved from there until, the grave being finished and Grisóstomo's papers burned, they laid his body in it, not without many tears from the bystanders. They closed the grave with a heavy stone until a slab should be finished which, Ambrosio said, he meant to have made, with an epitaph that was to read like this:
Here lies the wretched frozen body of a lover who was a shepherd of flocks, and lost for want of love. He died at the hands of the severity of a shy, beautiful, ungrateful girl, through whom the tyranny of love spreads out its empire.
Then they scattered a great many flowers and branches over the grave, and all offering their condolences to his friend Ambrosio, they took their leave of him. Vivaldo and his companion did the same, and Don Quixote took leave of his hosts and of the travellers, who begged him to come with them to Seville, it being so convenient a place for finding adventures that in every street and round every corner more of them offer themselves than anywhere else. Don Quixote thanked them for the information and for the goodwill they showed in wanting to do him a kindness, and said that for the present he neither wished nor ought to go to Seville until he had cleared all those mountains of the thieving scoundrels that they were said to be full of. Seeing his firm resolve, the travellers would not press him any further, but taking their leave again they left him and went on their road; on which they did not lack for things to talk about, both the story of Marcela and Grisóstomo and the madnesses of Don Quixote. And he made up his mind to go and look for the shepherdess Marcela and offer her everything he could in her service. But things did not turn out as he expected, as is told in the course of this true history, the second part ending here.
The wise Cide Hamete Benengeli relates that as soon as Don Quixote had taken leave of his hosts and of everyone who had been at the shepherd Grisóstomo's burial, he and his squire went into the same wood they had seen the shepherdess Marcela go into. And having spent more than two hours going about in it, looking for her everywhere without being able to find her, they came to a stop in a meadow full of fresh grass, beside which ran a quiet, cool stream — so inviting that it tempted, and indeed compelled, them to spend the hours of the afternoon heat there, which was by now beginning to come on in earnest.
Don Quixote and Sancho dismounted, and leaving the donkey and Rocinante at their liberty to crop the abundant grass, they ransacked the saddlebags; and without any ceremony, in good peace and fellowship, master and man ate what they found in them.
Sancho had not troubled to hobble Rocinante, being confident that he knew him for so meek an animal and so little given to lust that all the mares in the pastures of Córdoba would not have led him into mischief. But fate — and the devil, who does not sleep all the time — arranged matters so that a herd of Galician ponies belonging to some Yangüesan carriers happened to be grazing in that valley; for it is these men's custom to take their midday rest with their string of animals in places where there is grass and water, and the spot Don Quixote had chanced upon suited them exactly. Now it so happened that a desire came upon Rocinante to disport himself with the lady ponies. And the moment he caught their scent he abandoned his natural pace and habit and, without asking his master's leave, broke into a brisk little trot and went off to communicate his need to them. But they, who to all appearances were keener on grazing than on anything else, received him with their hoofs and their teeth in such a way that in no time at all his girths were broken and he was left saddleless and stripped. But what he must have felt still more was that the carriers, seeing the violence being done to their mares, came running with their staves and gave him so many blows that they brought him down in a bad way on the ground.
By this time Don Quixote and Sancho, who had watched Rocinante's beating, came up panting; and Don Quixote said to Sancho:
"From what I can see, friend Sancho, these are no knights, but low fellows of base breeding. I say it because you may perfectly well help me to take due vengeance for the injury that has been done to Rocinante before our very eyes."
"What the devil sort of vengeance are we to take," answered Sancho, "when there are more than twenty of them and no more than two of us — and perhaps not even two, but one and a half?"
"I count for a hundred," replied Don Quixote.
And without any more discussion he laid his hand on his sword and charged the Yangüesans; and Sancho Panza did the same, urged and moved by his master's example. And at the first stroke Don Quixote dealt one of them a slash that opened the leather jerkin he was wearing, along with a good part of the shoulder inside it. The Yangüesans, seeing themselves roughly handled by two men alone when there were so many of them, ran to their staves, and getting the pair of them in the middle they began to lay on with great energy and enthusiasm. The truth is that at the second stroke they had Sancho on the ground, and the same happened to Don Quixote, for all his skill and his good courage; and it was his luck to come down at the feet of Rocinante, who had not yet got up — from which one may judge the fury with which staves smash away when they are in rustic and angry hands.
The Yangüesans, seeing the mess they had made, loaded up their string of animals with all the speed they could and went on their way, leaving the two adventurers in a bad state and in a worse temper.
The first to come round was Sancho Panza; and finding himself next to his master, he said in a sick and pitiful voice:
"Señor Don Quixote! Oh, Señor Don Quixote!"
"What do you want, brother Sancho?" answered Don Quixote in the same feeble and doleful tone as Sancho.
"I should like, if it were possible," answered Sancho Panza, "for your worship to give me two swallows of that drink of Fiery Brass, if your worship happens to have it there to hand. Perhaps it will be as good for broken bones as it is for wounds."
"If I had it here, unlucky man that I am, what more should we need?" answered Don Quixote. "But I swear to you, Sancho Panza, on the word of a knight errant, that before two days are out — unless fortune orders otherwise — I shall have it in my possession, or my hands will have failed me badly."
"And in how many days does your worship reckon we shall be able to move our feet?" replied Sancho Panza.
"For my own part," said the battered knight, "I could not put a limit to those days. But I am to blame for the whole thing, because I had no business to lay my hand on my sword against men who were not knights like myself. And so I believe that the god of battles has allowed this punishment to be given me as a penalty for breaking the laws of chivalry. For which reason, Sancho Panza, it is as well that you should be warned of what I am now going to tell you, because it matters a great deal to the health of us both. And it is this: when you see rabble of that kind doing us some injury, do not wait for me to lay my hand on my sword against them, because I shall do no such thing; instead, put your own hand to your sword and punish them entirely to your taste. And if knights come to their aid and defence, I shall be able to defend you and set about them with all my might; for you must have seen by a thousand signs and proofs how far the valour of this strong arm of mine extends."
Such was the arrogance the poor gentleman was left in by his victory over the valiant Basque. But his master's advice did not strike Sancho Panza as good enough for him to let it pass without an answer, so he said:
"Sir, I am a peaceable man, a quiet one, an easy one, and I know how to swallow any injury, because I have a wife and children to keep and bring up. So let it be a piece of advice to your worship too — since it cannot be an order — that on no account will I lay a hand on my sword, either against a peasant or against a knight; and that from this moment, before God, I forgive every injury that has been done me and that ever will be done me, whether it was done, or is being done, or is to be done, by a person high or low, rich or poor, gentleman or commoner, without excepting any rank or condition whatever."
Hearing which, his master answered him:
"I wish I had breath enough to speak a little more comfortably, and that this pain I have in my rib would let up just enough for me to make you understand, Panza, the mistake you are in. Come here, sinner: if the wind of fortune, so contrary to us until now, should turn in our favour, filling the sails of our desire so that we come safely and without any check into port on one of the isles I have promised you — what would become of you, if, having won it, I made you lord of it? Are you going to make that impossible by not being a knight, and not wanting to be one, and having neither the courage nor the intention to avenge your injuries and defend your dominion? For you must know that in kingdoms and provinces newly conquered the tempers of the natives are never so settled, nor so much on the new lord's side, that there is not something to fear from their making some new move to upset things again and, as they say, try their luck once more. And so the new possessor needs understanding, to know how to govern, and courage, to attack and defend himself whatever happens."
"In this business that has just happened to us," answered Sancho, "I wish I had had that understanding and that courage your worship speaks of. But I swear to you, on the word of a poor man, that I am fitter for plasters than for parleys. See whether your worship can get up, and we will help Rocinante, though he doesn't deserve it, since he was the chief cause of all this pounding. I would never have believed such a thing of Rocinante; I took him for a chaste person and as peaceable as myself. Well, they are right when they say it takes a long time to get to know people, and that there is nothing certain in this life. Who would have said that after those tremendous sword-slashes your worship gave that unlucky knight errant, there would come, express and hot on their heels, this great tempest of sticks that has broken over our backs?"
"Yours, at least, Sancho," replied Don Quixote, "must be used to squalls of that sort. But mine, brought up between fine linen and Holland cloth, will obviously feel the pain of this misfortune more keenly. And if it were not that I imagine — imagine, do I say? I know for a certainty — that all these discomforts are inseparable from the exercise of arms, I would let myself die here of sheer vexation."
To this the squire replied:
"Sir, since these misfortunes are part of chivalry's own harvest, tell me, your worship: do they come round very often, or have they set seasons when they happen? Because it seems to me that after two such harvests we shall be no use for the third, unless God in his infinite mercy comes to our help."
"You must know, friend Sancho," answered Don Quixote, "that the life of knights errant is subject to a thousand dangers and misfortunes; and neither more nor less, it is in the immediate power of knights errant to become kings and emperors, as experience has shown in the case of many and various knights whose histories I know in full. And I could tell you now, if the pain would let me, of some who by the valour of their arm alone have risen to the high positions I have mentioned; and these same men were seen, before and after, in all sorts of calamities and miseries. For the valorous Amadis of Gaul found himself in the power of his mortal enemy Archelaus the enchanter, of whom it is taken as an established fact that, having him prisoner, he tied him to a pillar in a courtyard and gave him more than two hundred lashes with his horse's reins. And there is even a secret author, and one of no small credit, who says that the Knight of the Sun was caught in a certain castle by a trapdoor that gave way under his feet, and in falling found himself in a deep pit underground, bound hand and foot, and there they gave him one of those things they call a clyster, of snow-water and sand, which very nearly finished him; and if he had not been helped in that great trouble by a wise man who was a great friend of his, it would have gone very badly with the poor knight. So I may well pass among such good company, for the affronts those men suffered were greater than the one we are suffering now. Because I want you to be informed, Sancho, that wounds given with whatever instruments happen to be in a man's hand are no affront; and this stands in the law of duelling, written in express words: that if a shoemaker hits another man with the last he has in his hand, although it is genuinely made of wood, it will not therefore be said that the man he hit with it has been cudgelled. I say this so that you shall not think that, because we have come out of this brawl pounded, we have come out of it affronted; because the weapons those men carried, the ones they mashed us with, were nothing but their staves, and not one of them, so far as I recollect, had a rapier, a sword or a dagger."
"They gave me no chance," answered Sancho, "to look into it that far. Because I had hardly laid a hand on my trusty blade when they crossed my shoulders with their pine-staves in such a way that they took the sight out of my eyes and the strength out of my feet and laid me down where I am now lying; and where it gives me no trouble at all to wonder whether the business of the staves was an affront or not, but a great deal of trouble to feel the pain of the blows, which are going to stay printed on my memory as firmly as on my back."
"For all that, I would have you know, brother Panza," replied Don Quixote, "that there is no memory time does not put an end to, and no pain death does not carry off."
"And what greater misfortune can there be," replied Panza, "than one that has to wait for time to put an end to it and death to carry it off? If this trouble of ours were the kind that is cured with a couple of plasters, it wouldn't be so bad; but I can see that all the poultices in a hospital won't be enough to get us even into a decent state."
"Leave off that and draw strength out of weakness, Sancho," answered Don Quixote, "for that is what I mean to do. And let us see how Rocinante is, for it seems to me the poor beast has not had the smallest share in this misfortune."
"There is nothing to wonder at in that," answered Sancho, "he being so good a knight errant. What I wonder at is that my donkey should have got off free and without costs, where we have come out without ribs."
"Fortune always leaves one door open in misfortunes, to give a remedy for them," said Don Quixote. "I say it because that little beast can now make up for the lack of Rocinante and carry me from here to some castle where I may be cured of my wounds. What is more, I shall not count such a mount a dishonour, because I remember reading that the good old Silenus, tutor and schoolmaster to the merry god of laughter, entered the city of the hundred gates riding very comfortably on a very handsome ass."
"It may well be true that he rode, as your worship says," answered Sancho, "but there is a great difference between riding and going slung across like a sack of rubbish."
To which Don Quixote answered:
"Wounds received in battle give honour rather than take it away. So, friend Panza, do not argue with me any more; but as I have told you already, get up as best you can and put me on top of your donkey in whatever way pleases you most, and let us get away from here before night comes and catches us in this wilderness."
"But I have heard your worship say," said Panza, "that it is very much a knight errant's business to sleep out on moors and in deserts for most of the year, and that they count it a great piece of luck."
"That is," said Don Quixote, "when they cannot do otherwise, or when they are in love. And this is so true that there has been a knight who stayed on a rock, in sun and shade and in all the inclemencies of heaven, for two years without his lady knowing anything about it. And one of these was Amadis, when, calling himself Beltenebros, he lodged on the Poor Rock — for eight years or eight months, I am not sure which, because I am not very good on the reckoning. Enough that he was there doing penance for some vexation or other that the lady Oriana had caused him. But let us leave this now, Sancho, and get it over before some other misfortune happens to the donkey, as it did to Rocinante."
"Even that would be the devil's own work," said Sancho.
And letting off thirty groans, and sixty sighs, and a hundred and twenty curses and damnations on whoever had brought him there, he got up, sticking halfway like a Turkish bow, unable to finish straightening himself. And with all this labour he harnessed his ass, which had also gone somewhat astray with the excessive freedom of that day. Then he got Rocinante up; and if that animal had had a tongue to complain with, it is safe to say that neither Sancho nor his master would have outdone him.
In the end Sancho settled Don Quixote on the ass and tied Rocinante on behind; and leading the ass by the halter, he set off, more or less, towards where he thought the high road might be. And fortune, which was guiding his affairs from good to better, had not let him go a short league before it brought him to the road, on which he made out an inn that, to his annoyance and to Don Quixote's satisfaction, was bound to be a castle. Sancho insisted it was an inn and his master that it was not, but a castle; and the argument lasted so long that they had time to reach it without finishing it, and Sancho went straight in with his whole train, without any further inquiry.
The innkeeper, seeing Don Quixote slung across the ass, asked Sancho what was wrong with him. Sancho answered that it was nothing, only that he had had a fall down off a rock and his ribs were somewhat bruised. The innkeeper had for a wife a woman not of the sort usually found in that trade, because she was naturally kind-hearted and felt for the troubles of her neighbours; and so she came at once to see to Don Quixote, and made a daughter of hers — a girl, unmarried and very good-looking — help her to nurse their guest.
There was also a servant at the inn, a girl from Asturias, broad in the face, flat at the back of the head, snub-nosed, blind in one eye and not very sound in the other. It is true that the elegance of her figure made up for the rest of her shortcomings: she did not stand five foot from her feet to her head, and her shoulders, which weighed on her somewhat, made her look at the ground rather more than she would have liked. This graceful young woman, then, helped the daughter, and between them they made Don Quixote a very bad bed in a garret which gave clear signs of having served for many years, in earlier times, as a hayloft. A carrier was also lodged in it, whose bed was made up a little way beyond our Don Quixote's; and although it was put together out of the pack-saddles and blankets of his mules, it had a great advantage over Don Quixote's, which consisted only of four badly planed boards laid on two trestles of unequal height; a mattress so thin it might have been a quilt, full of lumps which, if they had not shown through some of the holes that they were made of wool, would to the touch have been taken for pebbles, given how hard they were; two sheets made of the leather they use for shields; and a blanket whose threads, if anyone had wanted to count them, could have been counted without losing one.
In this accursed bed Don Quixote lay down, and the innkeeper's wife and her daughter plastered him from top to toe, with Maritornes — for that was the Asturian's name — holding the light for them. And as she was putting on the poultices, the innkeeper's wife saw Don Quixote so bruised in places that she said it looked more like a beating than a fall.
"They were not blows," said Sancho; "it was just that the rock had a lot of points and knobs on it, and each one had made its own bruise."
And he added:
"Manage it, madam, so that there are a few pieces of tow left over, for there will be no lack of somebody who needs them; my own back aches a bit too."
"In that case," answered the innkeeper's wife, "you must have had a fall as well."
"I did not fall," said Sancho Panza; "but with the shock I got at seeing my master fall, my body aches in such a way that I feel as if I had been given a thousand strokes with a stick."
"That could very well be," said the daughter; "for it has often happened to me to dream I was falling from the top of a tower and never getting to the ground, and when I woke up out of the dream I found myself as bruised and battered as if I really had fallen."
"That's just the point, madam," answered Sancho Panza: "that I, without dreaming anything at all — being wider awake than I am now — find myself with hardly fewer bruises than my master Don Quixote."
"What is this knight called?" asked Maritornes the Asturian.
"Don Quixote of La Mancha," answered Sancho Panza; "and he is a knight adventurer, and one of the best and strongest that the world has seen this long while."
"And what is a knight adventurer?" asked the girl.
"Are you so new in the world that you don't know?" answered Sancho Panza. "Then let me tell you, sister, that a knight adventurer is a thing that in two shakes is thrashed and is an emperor. Today he is the most wretched creature in the world and the most in need, and tomorrow he will have two or three kingdoms' crowns to give away to his squire."
"Then how is it that you, being squire to so good a master," said the innkeeper's wife, "have not so much as an earldom, by the look of you?"
"It is still early days," answered Sancho; "we have only been out looking for adventures for a month, and so far we have not run into any that is one. And sometimes it happens that you look for one thing and find another. The truth is that if my master Don Quixote recovers from this wound, or fall, and I am not left crippled by it, I would not change my prospects for the best title in Spain."
Don Quixote had been listening to all this talk very attentively, and sitting up in bed as best he could and taking the innkeeper's wife by the hand, he said to her:
"Believe me, beauteous lady, you may call yourself fortunate for having lodged my person in this castle of yours — which person is such that, if I do not praise it, it is because of what they say, that self-praise debases. But my squire will tell you who I am. I say only that I shall keep the service you have rendered me eternally written in my memory, to be grateful to you for it as long as my life lasts. And would to high heaven that love did not hold me so surrendered and so subject to his laws, and to the eyes of that beautiful ingrate whose name I say between my teeth; for then the eyes of this fair maiden would be the masters of my liberty."
The innkeeper's wife and her daughter and good Maritornes were bewildered to hear the knight errant's speeches, which they understood about as well as if he had been talking Greek, although they gathered clearly enough that the whole of it was aimed at compliments and gallantry. Being unused to language of the sort, they looked at him and marvelled, and he seemed to them a different kind of man from the ones in ordinary use; and thanking him in innkeeperly phrases for his offers, they left him. And Maritornes the Asturian saw to Sancho, who needed it no less than his master.
Now the carrier had arranged with her that they should enjoy themselves together that night, and she had given him her word that once the guests were quiet and her employers asleep she would come and look for him and satisfy him in whatever he asked. And it is told of this good girl that she never gave a promise of that kind that she did not keep, even if she gave it on a mountainside and with no witness at all; because she prided herself greatly on being a gentlewoman, and did not consider it any disgrace to be in service at an inn, since it was misfortunes and bad luck, she said, that had brought her to that condition.
Don Quixote's hard, narrow, mean and treacherous bed stood first, in the middle of that star-lit stable; and next to it Sancho made up his own, which consisted only of a rush mat and a blanket that looked more like sheared canvas than wool. Beyond these two beds came the carrier's, put together, as has been said, out of the pack-saddles and the whole harness of the two best mules he had with him, although there were twelve of them, sleek, fat and famous; for he was one of the rich carriers of Arévalo, according to the author of this history, who makes particular mention of this carrier because he knew him very well, and some will even have it that he was some sort of relation of his. Besides which, Cide Mahamate Benengeli was a most inquisitive historian and most exact in everything; which can be plainly seen, since the details set down here, minute and trivial as they are, he was unwilling to pass over in silence. From which the solemn historians might take an example — the ones who tell us of great actions so briefly and so scantily that we barely get a taste of them, leaving in the inkwell, whether through carelessness or malice or ignorance, the most substantial part of the work. A thousand blessings on the author of Tablante de Ricamonte, and on the author of that other book which tells the deeds of Count Tomillas, and on the exactness with which they describe everything!
To go on, then: after the carrier had visited his string of mules and given them their second feed, he stretched himself out on his pack-saddles and settled down to wait for his most punctual Maritornes. Sancho was by now poulticed and lying down, and although he did his best to sleep, the pain in his ribs would not let him; and Don Quixote, with the pain in his own, lay with his eyes as wide open as a hare's. The whole inn was silent, and in the whole of it there was no other light than what came from a lamp that hung burning in the middle of the entry.
This marvellous stillness, and the thoughts our knight always carried about with him of the incidents that are related at every turn in the books that had caused his misfortune, brought to his imagination one of the strangest pieces of madness that can readily be imagined. Which was that he fancied he had arrived at a famous castle — for, as has been said, every inn he lodged in was a castle to his mind — and that the innkeeper's daughter was the daughter of the lord of the castle, and that she, conquered by his gallantry, had fallen in love with him and promised that she would come that night, unknown to her parents, to lie with him for a good while. And holding this whole chimera he had built himself for firm and valid, he began to be troubled and to think about the perilous pass in which his chastity was about to be put; and he resolved in his heart to commit no treachery against his lady Dulcinea of El Toboso, even if Queen Guinevere herself and her lady Quintañona were to present themselves in front of him.
While he was thinking about this nonsense, the time and the hour arrived — an unlucky one for him — of the Asturian's coming. In her shift and barefoot, with her hair caught up in a fustian net, she came into the room where the three of them were lodged with silent, careful steps, looking for the carrier. But she had hardly reached the door when Don Quixote heard her; and sitting up in bed, in spite of his poultices and the pain in his ribs, he stretched out his arms to receive his beauteous maiden. The Asturian, drawn in on herself and saying nothing, going along with her hands out in front of her feeling for her beloved, ran into Don Quixote's arms; and he seized her tightly by one wrist, and pulling her towards him — she not daring to say a word — made her sit down on the bed.
He felt her shift next, and although it was made of sacking, to him it seemed to be of the finest and thinnest silk. On her wrists she wore some glass beads, but to him they gave off the gleam of precious oriental pearls. Her hair, which was something in the nature of a horse's mane, he set down for threads of the most brilliant Arabian gold, whose brightness put out the light of the sun itself. And her breath, which without any doubt smelt of yesterday's salad left standing overnight, seemed to him to give off from her mouth a soft and aromatic fragrance. In short, he painted her in his imagination in exactly the shape and manner he had read about in his books of that other princess who came to see the sorely wounded knight, conquered by her love for him, with all the ornaments that are set down here. And so great was the poor gentleman's blindness that neither the touch of her, nor her breath, nor other things the good girl had about her undeceived him — things that would have made anybody vomit who was not a carrier. On the contrary, it seemed to him that he had the goddess of beauty in his arms. And holding her fast, he began to say to her in a low and loving voice:
"I could wish I were in a condition, beautiful and noble lady, to be able to repay so great a favour as the one you have done me with the sight of your great beauty. But fortune, which never tires of persecuting good men, has been pleased to put me in this bed, where I lie so pounded and broken that even if my will wanted to satisfy yours it would be impossible. And what is more, there is added to this impossibility another and a greater one, which is the pledged faith I have given to the peerless Dulcinea of El Toboso, sole lady of my most hidden thoughts. If it were not for that standing in the way, I should not be so witless a knight as to let slip the fortunate opportunity that your great goodness has put me in."
Maritornes was in an agony and sweating at finding herself gripped like this by Don Quixote, and without understanding or paying attention to a word he was saying, she was trying to get herself free without speaking. The good carrier, whom his bad desires were keeping awake, had heard his mistress from the moment she came in at the door. He had listened attentively to everything Don Quixote said, and, jealous that the Asturian should have broken her word to him for somebody else, he came closer to Don Quixote's bed and stood still, to see what all this talk he could not understand would come to. But when he saw that the girl was struggling to get loose and Don Quixote labouring to hold her, he did not think much of the joke; and raising his arm high he let fall so terrible a punch on the enamoured knight's narrow jaws that he bathed his whole mouth in blood. And not content with that, he climbed on top of his ribs and at more than a trot walked up and down the whole length of them.
The bed, which was a little frail and on no firm foundations, being unable to bear the addition of the carrier, came down on the floor; and at the great noise of it the innkeeper woke, and immediately imagined it must be some brawl of Maritornes', because when he shouted for her she did not answer. With this suspicion he got up, and lighting a lamp went towards where he had heard the scuffle. The girl, seeing her master coming, and knowing what a terrible temper he had, all frightened and flustered took refuge in Sancho Panza's bed, where he was still asleep, and there she huddled down and rolled herself into a ball. The innkeeper came in saying:
"Where are you, you whore? I'll be bound this is your doing."
At this Sancho woke up, and feeling that weight almost on top of him, thought he had the nightmare, and began throwing punches in every direction; and among others he landed I do not know how many on Maritornes, who, stung by the pain, threw modesty out of the window and gave Sancho back so many in return that in spite of himself she woke him thoroughly. And he, finding himself handled in that fashion and not knowing by whom, hauled himself up as best he could and closed with Maritornes, and between the two of them there began the hardest-fought and funniest skirmish in the world.
The carrier, then, seeing by the light of the innkeeper's lamp how his lady was faring, left Don Quixote and ran to give her the help she needed. The innkeeper did the same, but with a different intention, because he went to punish the girl, believing beyond a doubt that she alone was the cause of all that harmony. And so, as the saying goes — the cat to the rat, the rat to the rope, the rope to the stick — the carrier laid into Sancho, Sancho into the girl, the girl into him, the innkeeper into the girl, and all of them pounded away so busily that they never gave themselves a moment's rest. And the best of it was that the innkeeper's lamp went out; and as they were left in the dark, they all set about one another so pitilessly and so blindly that wherever they put a hand they left nothing sound.
It happened that there was lodging at the inn that night an officer of the sort they call the Old Holy Brotherhood of Toledo, who, hearing the extraordinary uproar of the fight, took hold of his staff of office and the tin box with his warrants in it and came into the room in the dark, calling out:
"Hold, in the name of the law! Hold, in the name of the Holy Brotherhood!"
And the first person he ran into was the battered Don Quixote, who was lying on his back on his collapsed bed, entirely senseless; and getting his hand by chance on his beard, he went on shouting:
"Help for the law!"
But seeing that the man he had hold of did not stir or move, he took it into his head that he was dead and that the people in the room were his murderers; and on this suspicion he raised his voice, calling out:
"Shut the inn door! Take care nobody gets out — there's a man been killed in here!"
This shout startled everybody, and each of them dropped the fight at the point the shout caught them. The innkeeper withdrew to his room, the carrier to his pack-saddles, the girl to her corner; only the unfortunate Don Quixote and Sancho could not move from where they were. At this the officer let go of Don Quixote's beard and went out to look for a light so as to find the criminals and arrest them; but he did not find one, because the innkeeper had deliberately put out the lamp when he retired to his room, and the officer was obliged to go to the fireplace, where with a great deal of trouble and time he lit another lamp.
By this time Don Quixote had come round out of his swoon; and in the same tone of voice with which he had called his squire the day before, when he was stretched out in the valley of the staves, he began calling him now:
"Friend Sancho, are you asleep? Are you asleep, friend Sancho?"
"How am I supposed to sleep, curse it," answered Sancho, full of misery and resentment, "when it looks for all the world as if every devil in hell had been at me tonight?"
"You may well believe it," answered Don Quixote, "because either I know very little, or this castle is enchanted. Because you must know — but what I am going to tell you now, you must swear to me you will keep secret until after my death."
"I swear it," answered Sancho.
"I say it," replied Don Quixote, "because I am an enemy to taking away anybody's good name."
"I say I swear it," Sancho said again, "and that I'll keep quiet about it until after your worship's days are over — and please God I may be able to let it out tomorrow."
"Do I treat you so badly, Sancho," answered Don Quixote, "that you would like to see me dead as soon as that?"
"It isn't for that," answered Sancho, "but because I'm an enemy to keeping things too long, and I shouldn't like them to go rotten on me from being kept."
"Let it be for whatever reason it likes," said Don Quixote. "I trust more to your affection and your courtesy. And so you must know that tonight there has happened to me one of the strangest adventures that I could ever find words for. To tell it you shortly: a little while ago there came to me the daughter of the lord of this castle, who is the neatest and fairest maiden to be found over a great part of the earth. What could I tell you about the ornament of her person? What about her gallant understanding? What about other hidden things which, to keep the faith I owe my lady Dulcinea of El Toboso, I shall let pass untouched and in silence? I will only tell you that heaven, envious of so great a good as fortune had put in my hands — or perhaps, and this is the more likely, because as I have said this castle is enchanted — while I was with her in the sweetest and most loving conversation, there came, without my seeing her or knowing where it came from, a hand fixed to the arm of some monstrous giant, and planted such a punch on my jaws that I have them all bathed in blood; and afterwards it pounded me in such a way that I am worse off than I was yesterday, when the Yangüesans, on account of Rocinante's excesses, did us the injury you know of. From which I gather that the treasure of this maiden's beauty must be guarded by some enchanted Moor, and cannot be meant for me."
"Nor for me either," answered Sancho, "because more than four hundred Moors have been thumping me, in such a way that the pounding with the staves was cakes and ale by comparison. But tell me, sir: how do you come to call this a good and rare adventure, when it has left us in the state it has? Your worship at least came off less badly, since you had that incomparable beauty you speak of in your hands; but what did I get except the greatest hammering I expect to get in the whole of my life? Unlucky me, and unlucky the mother that bore me, for I am no knight errant and never mean to be one, and the largest share of all the disasters falls to me!"
"So you were beaten too?" answered Don Quixote.
"Haven't I told you I was, curse my ancestry?" said Sancho.
"Don't distress yourself, my friend," said Don Quixote; "I shall make the precious balm now, and we shall be cured with it in the twinkling of an eye."
By this time the officer had finished lighting his lamp and came in to look at the man he thought was dead. And as soon as Sancho saw him come in — seeing him arrive in his shirt, with a cloth round his head and a lamp in his hand, and with a very ugly face on him — he asked his master:
"Sir, could this by any chance be the enchanted Moor, coming back to punish us in case he left anything in the inkwell?"
"It cannot be the Moor," answered Don Quixote, "because those under enchantment let themselves be seen by nobody."
"If they don't let themselves be seen, they let themselves be felt," said Sancho; "and if they don't, my back can speak to it."
"So could mine," answered Don Quixote, "but that is not evidence enough to believe that this man we can see is the enchanted Moor."
The officer came up; and finding them talking in such a peaceable conversation, he was taken aback. It is true that Don Quixote was still lying on his back, unable to move for being so thoroughly pounded and plastered. The officer went over to him and said:
"Well, how goes it, my good man?"
"I would speak with better breeding," answered Don Quixote, "if I were you. Is it the custom in this country to talk in that fashion to knights errant, you blockhead?"
The officer, finding himself so badly treated by a man of such a bad appearance, could not stand it; and lifting the lamp, oil and all, he brought it down on Don Quixote's head in such a way that he left him very well cracked indeed. And as everything was left in the dark, he went straight out; and Sancho Panza said:
"There's no doubt about it, sir, this is the enchanted Moor; and he must be keeping the treasure for other people, and for us he keeps nothing but the punches and the lamp-blows."
"That is how it is," answered Don Quixote, "and there is no need to take any notice of these matters of enchantment, or any reason to lose our temper or get angry over them; for since they are invisible and imaginary, we shall find nobody to take our revenge on, however hard we try. Get up, Sancho, if you can, and call the governor of this fortress, and try to get me a little oil, wine, salt and rosemary to make the health-giving balm; for indeed I think I have great need of it now, because a great deal of blood is running out of the wound this phantom has given me."
Sancho got up with a good deal of pain in his bones and went off in the dark to where the innkeeper was; and running into the officer, who was listening to hear how his enemy was getting on, he said:
"Sir, whoever you may be, do us the favour and the kindness of giving us a little rosemary, oil, salt and wine, which is needed to cure one of the best knights errant on earth, who is lying in that bed there, sorely wounded by the hands of the enchanted Moor who is in this inn."
When the officer heard that, he took him for a man out of his wits; and as it was already beginning to get light he opened the inn door and, calling the innkeeper, told him what this good fellow wanted. The innkeeper supplied him with everything he asked for, and Sancho carried it to Don Quixote, who was lying with his hands on his head, complaining of the pain of the blow with the lamp, which had done him no more harm than to raise two rather large lumps; and what he thought was blood was nothing but the sweat he was sweating in the anguish of the past storm.
To be brief, he took his simples, out of which he made a compound, mixing them all together and boiling them for a good while, until it seemed to him they were exactly right. He then asked for some flask to pour it into, and as there was none in the inn, he settled on putting it into a tin oil-can that the innkeeper made him a free gift of. Next he said over the can more than eighty Our Fathers, and as many Hail Marys, Salves and Creeds, accompanying every word with a cross by way of a blessing; at all of which Sancho, the innkeeper and the officer were present, the carrier by now being quietly about the business of looking after his mules.
This done, he decided to make trial at once, on himself, of the virtue of that precious balm as he imagined it; and so he drank down what would not go into the can and was left over in the pot it had been boiled in — very nearly a quart. And he had hardly finished drinking it when he began to vomit in such a way that there was nothing left in his stomach; and with the retching and heaving of the vomit an enormous sweat broke out on him, so he gave orders that they should wrap him up and leave him alone. They did so, and he stayed asleep for more than three hours; at the end of which he woke up and felt his body enormously relieved, and so much better of his battering that he considered himself cured. And he genuinely believed he had hit on the balm of Fierabrás, and that with that remedy he could from then on take on any wreck, battle or brawl whatever, however dangerous, without any fear at all.
Sancho Panza, who also took his master's recovery for a miracle, begged him to give him what was left in the pot, which was no small quantity. Don Quixote granted it, and taking it in both hands, in good faith and better spirits, Sancho tipped it down his throat and got very little less inside him than his master had. Now the fact is that poor Sancho's stomach cannot have been as delicate as his master's, and so, before he could vomit, he was seized with such gripings and heavings, with such sweats and faintings, that he thought good and truly that his last hour had come; and finding himself so afflicted and distressed, he cursed the balm and the thief who had given it to him. Seeing him in that state, Don Quixote said:
"I believe, Sancho, that all this trouble comes on you from not being a dubbed knight; because it is my opinion that this liquor cannot be any good to those who are not."
"If your worship knew that," replied Sancho, "bad luck to me and all my kin! — then why did you let me taste it?"
At this the brew did its work, and the poor squire began to empty himself at both ends with such urgency that neither the rush mat he had lain down on again nor the canvas blanket he was covering himself with were of any further use. He sweated and sweated again with such spasms and seizures that not only he but everybody thought his life was ending. This squall and bad passage lasted him nearly two hours, at the end of which he was not left as his master had been, but so pounded and broken that he could not hold himself up.
But Don Quixote, who, as has been said, felt relieved and well, wanted to set off at once in search of adventures, since it seemed to him that all the time he was delaying there was being taken away from the world and from those in it who needed his favour and protection — the more so given the confidence and assurance his balm gave him. And so, forced on by this desire, he saddled Rocinante himself and put the pack-saddle on his squire's donkey, and helped him to dress too and to get up on the ass. Then he mounted; and going over to a corner of the inn, he took hold of a pike that was standing there, to serve him as a lance.
Everybody in the inn was watching him — there were more than twenty people. The innkeeper's daughter was watching him too, and he for his part never took his eyes off her, and every now and then let out a sigh that seemed to be torn from the depths of his entrails; and they all supposed it must be from the pain he felt in his ribs — at any rate, that is what those supposed who had seen him being poulticed the night before.
When the two of them were mounted, standing at the inn door, he called the innkeeper and said to him in a very calm and solemn voice:
"Many and very great, sir governor, are the favours I have received in this castle of yours, and I remain under the deepest obligation to be grateful to you for them all the days of my life. If I can repay you for them by making you avenged on some arrogant person who has done you an injury, know that my office is nothing else but to help those who can do little for themselves, to avenge those who receive wrongs, and to punish treachery. Search your memory, and if you find anything of that sort to commend to me, you have only to say so; for I promise you, by the order of knighthood I have received, to have you satisfied and paid to the full extent of your wishes."
The innkeeper answered him with the same composure:
"Sir knight, I have no need for your worship to avenge me for any injury, because I know how to take whatever revenge I think fit when they are done me. All I need is for your worship to pay me the bill you have run up in the inn tonight — for the straw and barley for your two beasts as well as for the supper and the beds."
"So this is an inn?" replied Don Quixote.
"And a very respectable one," answered the innkeeper.
"I have lived in error until now," answered Don Quixote, "for I truly thought it was a castle, and not a bad one. But since it turns out that it is not a castle but an inn, what can be done for the moment is that you should excuse me the payment; for I cannot go against the order of knights errant, of whom I know for certain — never having read anything to the contrary until now — that they never paid for lodging or anything else at any inn they stayed at, because whatever good welcome is given them is owed to them by custom and by right, in payment for the unbearable hardship they suffer looking for adventures night and day, in winter and in summer, on foot and on horseback, in thirst and in hunger, in heat and in cold, exposed to all the inclemencies of heaven and to all the discomforts of earth."
"That has very little to do with me," answered the innkeeper. "Pay me what is owing to me, and let us have no more tales or chivalries; the only account I keep is the one for collecting what belongs to me."
"You are a fool and a bad innkeeper," answered Don Quixote.
And putting his legs to Rocinante and levelling his pike, he rode out of the inn without anybody stopping him; and without looking to see whether his squire was following, he got a good distance off.
The innkeeper, who saw him go without paying, went to collect from Sancho Panza; who said that since his master had refused to pay, he would not pay either, because, being squire to a knight errant as he was, the same rule and reason held for him as for his master about not paying anything in inns and taverns. The innkeeper was very much annoyed at this, and threatened him that if he did not pay he would collect it in a way he would be sorry for. To which Sancho answered that, by the law of chivalry his master had received, he would not pay a single copper if it cost him his life; because he was not going to let the good old custom of knights errant be lost on his account, nor were the squires of such knights who were still to come into the world going to complain of him and reproach him with breaking so just a privilege.
It was poor Sancho's bad luck that among the people in the inn there happened to be four wool-carders from Segovia, three needle-makers from the Colt quarter of Córdoba, and two men from the Fair district of Seville — a merry crowd, well-meaning, mischievous and playful; who, almost as if they had been prompted and moved by one and the same spirit, came up to Sancho and pulled him off the ass. One of them went in for the blanket off the innkeeper's bed, and tipping Sancho into it they looked up and saw that the ceiling was rather lower than they needed for their work, and decided to go out into the yard, which had the sky for its ceiling. And there, with Sancho in the middle of the blanket, they began to toss him up in the air and to amuse themselves with him as people do with a dog at carnival time.
The shouts the wretched blanketed man let out were so many that they reached his master's ears; who, deciding to stop and listen carefully, believed some new adventure was coming his way — until he plainly recognised that the man shouting was his squire. And turning his reins, he came up to the inn at a laboured gallop; and finding it shut, he rode round it to see whether he could find any way in. But he had not got as far as the walls of the yard, which were not very high, when he saw the bad game they were playing with his squire. He saw him go up and down through the air with such grace and quickness that, if his anger had let him, I am inclined to think he would have laughed. He tried to climb from the horse onto the top of the wall, but he was so pounded and broken that he could not even dismount; and so, from on top of the horse, he began to hurl so many insults and abuses at the men who were tossing Sancho that it is not possible to write them down. But for all that they did not stop laughing or stop their work, nor did the flying Sancho leave off his complaints, mixed now with threats and now with entreaties; but it was all of very little use, and no use at all, until out of sheer weariness they let him be.
They brought his ass over to him and helped him up on it, and wrapped him in his coat. And Maritornes, who was a compassionate soul, seeing him so exhausted, thought it right to help him out with a jug of water, and so she fetched him one from the well, it being colder there. Sancho took it and was raising it to his mouth when he stopped at the shouts his master was giving him:
"Sancho, my son, don't drink water! My son, don't drink it, it will kill you! Look — I have the most holy balm here" — and he showed him the can of the brew — "and with two drops of that you will be cured beyond a doubt."
At these shouts Sancho turned his eyes sideways at him and said, in louder ones still:
"Has your worship forgotten, by any chance, that I am not a knight? Or do you want me to finish bringing up what is left of my insides from last night? Keep your liquor and all the devils along with it, and leave me alone."
And to finish saying this and to begin drinking were all one; but as at the first swallow he saw that it was water, he did not want to go any further with it, and begged Maritornes to bring him some wine, which she did with a very good will, and paid for it out of her own money. For it is said of her that, although she was in that line of work, she had certain shades and distant hints of a Christian about her.
As soon as Sancho had drunk, he dug his heels into his ass; and the inn door being thrown wide open for him, he rode out of it very well pleased at not having paid anything and at having got his own way, even though it had been at the expense of his usual sureties, which were his shoulders. It is true that the innkeeper kept his saddlebags in payment of what was owing; but Sancho never missed them, he came out in such a state. The innkeeper wanted to bar the door properly as soon as he saw him outside, but the blanket-men would not have it — a crowd who, even if Don Quixote had genuinely been one of the knights errant of the Round Table, would not have valued him at two farthings.
Sancho reached his master so wilted and faint that he could not urge his donkey along. When Don Quixote saw him in that state he said:
"Now, my good Sancho, I am finally convinced that that castle, or inn, is enchanted beyond a doubt; because those men who amused themselves with you so outrageously — what could they be but phantoms and people from the other world? And I confirm it by the fact that when I was at the wall of the yard watching the acts of your sad tragedy, it was not possible for me to climb it, nor could I even get down off Rocinante, because they must have had me under an enchantment. For I swear to you, on the faith of what I am, that if I could have climbed up or got down I would have avenged you in such a way that those villains and scoundrels would have remembered the joke for ever — even if in doing it I had knowingly gone against the laws of chivalry, which, as I have often told you already, do not allow a knight to lay a hand on a man who is not one, except in defence of his own life and person in a case of urgent and great necessity."
"I would have avenged myself too if I could, knight or no knight; but I couldn't. Though it's my belief that those men who had their fun with me were not phantoms or enchanted men, as your worship says, but men of flesh and bone like ourselves. And every one of them, from what I heard them called while they were tossing me, had his own name: one of them was called Pedro Martínez and another Tenorio Hernández, and I heard that the innkeeper was called Juan Palomeque the Left-handed. So, sir, your not being able to get over the yard wall or down off your horse was something other than enchantments. And what I get clear out of all this is that these adventures we go about looking for are going to bring us, in the end, to so many misadventures that we shan't know which is our right foot. And what would be better and more sensible, according to my poor understanding, would be for us to go back to our village, now it's harvest time and there's the farm to see to, and give up gadding about from pillar to post and from ditch to bucket, as they say."
"How little you know, Sancho," answered Don Quixote, "about the business of chivalry! Be quiet and have patience, for the day will come when you will see with your own eyes what an honourable thing it is to follow this calling. If not, tell me: what greater satisfaction can there be in the world, or what pleasure can equal that of winning a battle and triumphing over one's enemy? None, beyond any doubt."
"That must be so," answered Sancho, "although I know nothing about it. All I know is that since we became knights errant — or your worship did, for there's no reason to count me in so honourable a number — we have never won a single battle except the one with the Basque, and even out of that your worship came with half an ear and half a helmet the less. From then till now it has been all sticks and more sticks, punches and more punches, with me getting the blanket-tossing on top of it, and having it done to me by enchanted persons I can't take revenge on — so that I might find out how far the pleasure of beating your enemy goes, as your worship says."
"That is the grief I have, and the one you ought to have, Sancho," answered Don Quixote. "But from now on I shall try to get hold of a sword made with such mastery that no kind of enchantment can be worked on the man who carries it. And it might even be that fortune would bring me the one belonging to Amadis when he called himself the Knight of the Burning Sword, which was one of the best swords any knight in the world ever had; because, besides having the virtue I have mentioned, it cut like a razor, and there was no armour, however strong or however enchanted, that could stand in its way."
"I am so lucky," said Sancho, "that when that happened and your worship did come to find a sword like that, it would turn out to serve and benefit dubbed knights only, like the balm; and the squires can go hang."
"Don't be afraid of that, Sancho," said Don Quixote; "heaven will do better than that by you."
Don Quixote and his squire were going along in this conversation when Don Quixote saw a great thick cloud of dust coming towards them along the road they were on; and seeing it, he turned to Sancho and said:
"This is the day, Sancho, on which the good fortune my luck has in store for me is to be seen. This is the day, I say, on which the valour of my arm is to be shown as much as on any other, and on which I am to do deeds that will stay written in the book of Fame for all the centuries to come. Do you see that cloud of dust rising over there, Sancho? Well, the whole of it is thick with an enormous army made up of various and innumerable peoples, marching along that way."
"By that reckoning there must be two," said Sancho, "because over here on the opposite side there's another cloud of dust just like it going up."
Don Quixote turned to look at it and saw that it was true; and being extraordinarily pleased, he concluded without a shadow of doubt that they were two armies coming to attack and meet each other in the middle of that broad plain. For at every hour and every moment his fancy was full of those battles, enchantments, incidents, absurdities, loves and challenges that are told of in the books of chivalry, and everything he said or thought or did was directed towards things of that kind. And the cloud of dust he had seen was being raised by two great flocks of sheep and rams coming along that same road from two different directions, which, because of the dust, could not be made out until they came close. And Don Quixote insisted so vehemently that they were armies that Sancho came to believe it and to say to him:
"Sir, what are we to do, then?"
"Do?" said Don Quixote. "Favour and help the needy and the defenceless. And you must know, Sancho, that the one coming towards our front is led and commanded by the great emperor Alifanfarón, lord of the great island of Taprobana; this other one marching at my back belongs to his enemy, the king of the Garamantes, Pentapolin of the Rolled-up Sleeve, because he always goes into battle with his right arm bare."
"But why do these two lords dislike each other so much?" asked Sancho.
"They dislike each other," answered Don Quixote, "because this Alifanfarón is a raging pagan and is in love with Pentapolin's daughter, who is a very beautiful and moreover very charming lady, and a Christian; and her father will not hand her over to the pagan king unless he first gives up the law of his false prophet Mohammed and comes over to hers."
"By my beard," said Sancho, "if Pentapolin isn't doing exactly right, and I mean to help him all I can!"
"In that you will be doing what you ought, Sancho," said Don Quixote; "because to go into battles of this kind it is not required that a man be a dubbed knight."
"I understand that well enough," answered Sancho; "but where are we to put this ass so that we can be sure of finding him again when the scuffle is over? Because I don't believe going into one mounted on that sort of steed has been the custom up to now."
"That is true," said Don Quixote. "What you can do with him is leave him to his own adventures, whether he gets lost or not; because we shall have so many horses after we come out victorious that even Rocinante is in danger of my exchanging him for another. But listen to me carefully and look, for I want to give you an account of the chief knights coming in these two armies. And so that you may see them and note them better, let us withdraw to that little rise over there, from which the two armies must be visible."
They did so, and stationed themselves on a hillock from which the two flocks that Don Quixote had made into armies would have been perfectly visible if the clouds of dust they were raising had not blurred and blinded the view. But for all that, seeing in his imagination what he neither saw nor was there, he began to say in a raised voice:
"That knight you see over there in the yellow armour, who carries on his shield a crowned lion lying at a maiden's feet, is the valorous Laurcalco, lord of the Silver Bridge. The other one in the armour with gold flowers, who carries on his shield three silver crowns on a blue field, is the dreaded Micocolembo, grand duke of Quirocia. The other one with the giant limbs on his right hand is the never-frightened Brandabarbarán of Boliche, lord of the three Arabias, who comes armed in that serpent's skin and has for a shield a door which, by all report, is one of those of the temple Samson pulled down when with his own death he took vengeance on his enemies.
"But turn your eyes this other way and you will see, in front of and at the head of this other army, the always victorious and never vanquished Timonel of Carcajona, prince of New Biscay, who comes armed in armour quartered blue, green, white and yellow, and carries on his shield a gold cat on a tawny field, with a motto that says Miau, which is the beginning of the name of his lady, who is said to be the peerless Miulina, daughter of the duke Alfeñiquén of the Algarve. The other one, who loads and weighs down the loins of that powerful mare and comes in armour as white as snow with a white shield and no device at all, is a new knight, French by nation, called Pierres Papin, lord of the baronies of Utrique. The other one, who is beating the flanks of that dappled, nimble zebra with his iron heels and carries the arms of the blue vairs, is the mighty duke of Nerbia, Espartafilardo of the Wood, who has for a device on his shield an asparagus plant, with a motto in Castilian that says: My fortune creeps."
And in this way he went on naming a great many knights of the one squadron and the other that he was imagining, and gave every one of them his arms, colours, devices and mottoes off the top of his head, carried away by the imagination of that madness of his such as was never seen before. And without stopping he went on:
"This squadron in front of us is formed and made up of people of various nations. Here are those who drank the sweet waters of the famous Xanthus; the mountain men who tread the Massylian fields; those who sift the finest and smallest gold in happy Arabia; those who enjoy the famous cool banks of the clear Thermodon; those who bleed golden Pactolus by many and various channels; the Numidians, unreliable in their promises; the Persians, famous for bows and arrows; the Parthians and the Medes, who fight as they run away; the Arabs, whose houses move; the Scythians, as cruel as they are fair-skinned; the Ethiopians with their pierced lips; and infinite other nations whose faces I know and see, although I cannot recall their names.
"In this other squadron come those who drink the crystal streams of the olive-bearing Betis; those who smooth and polish their faces with the liquor of the ever rich and golden Tagus; those who enjoy the profitable waters of the divine Genil; those who tread the fields of Tartessos, abundant in pasture; those who take their pleasure in the Elysian meadows of Jerez; the men of La Mancha, rich and crowned with golden ears of corn; those clothed in iron, ancient relics of the Gothic blood; those who bathe in the Pisuerga, famous for the gentleness of its current; those who pasture their flocks in the wide meadows of the winding Guadiana, celebrated for its hidden course; those who shiver with the cold of the wooded Pyrenees and with the white flakes of the lofty Apennine; in short, all that Europe holds and encloses within itself."
Good God, how many provinces he named, how many nations he called over, giving each one, with marvellous quickness, the attributes that belonged to it — wholly absorbed and steeped in what he had read in his lying books! Sancho Panza hung on his words without saying any of his own, and every now and then turned his head to see whether he could catch sight of the knights and giants his master was naming; and as he could make out none of them, he said:
"Sir, I commend to the devil any man, or giant, or knight of all the ones your worship is talking about that shows up anywhere in all this — at least, I can't see them. Perhaps it's all enchantment, like the phantoms last night."
"How can you say that?" answered Don Quixote. "Can't you hear the neighing of the horses, the sounding of the trumpets, the noise of the drums?"
"I hear nothing," answered Sancho, "except a great deal of bleating of sheep and rams."
And that was the truth, because the two flocks were coming close by now.
"The fear you are in," said Don Quixote, "is making you neither see nor hear straight, Sancho; because one of the effects of fear is to confuse the senses and make things seem other than they are. And if you are so much afraid, get away to one side and leave me alone; alone I am enough to give the victory to whichever side I give my help to."
And saying this he put spurs to Rocinante, and with his lance in the rest went down the slope like a thunderbolt. Sancho shouted after him:
"Come back, your worship, Señor Don Quixote! I swear to God they're rams and sheep you're going to charge! Come back — cursed be the father that begot me! What madness is this? Look, there isn't a giant or a knight, or cats, or armour, or shields quartered or whole, or blue vairs or devilish ones. What are you doing? Sinner that I am before God!"
Not even for that did Don Quixote turn back; instead he went on shouting at the top of his voice:
"Now then, knights, all of you who follow and serve under the banners of the valorous emperor Pentapolin of the Rolled-up Sleeve — follow me, all of you! You shall see how easily I give him his revenge on his enemy Alifanfarón of Taprobana!"
Saying this, he charged into the middle of the squadron of sheep and began to spear them with as much courage and daring as if he were really spearing his mortal enemies. The shepherds and drovers who were with the flock shouted at him to stop; but seeing that it was no use, they unfastened their slings and began to salute his ears with stones the size of your fist. Don Quixote paid no attention to the stones; instead, riding about in all directions, he was saying:
"Where are you, arrogant Alifanfarón? Come out to me. I am a single knight, and I want to try your strength man to man and take your life from you, in payment for the life you are taking from the valorous Pentapolin of the Garamantes."
At this moment a pebble came along from the brook — one of the smooth white ones they call sugared almonds — and hitting him in the side, buried two of his ribs in his body. Finding himself so badly handled, he was sure he was dead or mortally wounded; and remembering his liquor, he pulled out his can and put it to his mouth and began to pour the liquor into his stomach. But before he had finished getting down what seemed to him enough, along came another almond and hit him so squarely on the hand and on the can that it smashed the can to pieces, taking three or four teeth and molars out of his mouth on its way and badly crushing two fingers of his hand.
Such was the first blow, and such the second, that the poor knight had no choice but to come down off the horse. The shepherds came up to him and believed they had killed him; and so, in great haste, they rounded up their flock and loaded up the dead beasts, of which there were more than seven, and without looking into anything further they went off.
All this time Sancho was up on the slope watching the mad things his master was doing, tearing at his beard and cursing the hour and the moment fortune had introduced him to the man. Seeing him, then, fallen on the ground and the shepherds gone by now, he came down off the slope and went over to him, and found him in a very bad way, though he had not lost consciousness, and said to him:
"Didn't I tell you, Señor Don Quixote, to come back, and that what you were going to attack were not armies but flocks of rams?"
"That is how that thieving enchanter, my enemy, can make things disappear and counterfeit them. You must know, Sancho, that it is a very easy matter for such people to make us see whatever they like; and this malignant creature who persecutes me, envious of the glory he saw I was going to win from this battle, has turned the squadrons of enemies into flocks of sheep. If you don't believe it, do one thing for me, Sancho, on my life, so that you may be undeceived and see that what I tell you is true. Get up on your ass and follow them quietly, and you will see how, when they have gone a little way from here, they turn back into what they were at first, and stop being rams and become men, whole and upright, exactly as I described them to you before. But don't go now, because I need your help and support. Come here to me and look how many teeth and molars I am missing, for it seems to me I haven't one left in my mouth."
Sancho came so close that he almost put his eyes into his mouth — and it was just at the moment when the balm had done its work in Don Quixote's stomach. And at the very instant Sancho got there to look into his mouth, he shot out everything he had inside him, harder than out of a musket, and landed the whole of it in the compassionate squire's beard.
"Holy Mary!" said Sancho. "And what is this that's happened to me? There's no doubt the poor sinner is wounded to death, since he's vomiting blood out of his mouth."
But looking into it a little more closely, he made out by the colour, taste and smell that it was not blood but the balm out of the can that he had seen him drink; and he was so disgusted that his stomach turned over and he vomited his insides up all over his own master, and the pair of them were left as fine as pearls. Sancho went to his ass to get something out of the saddlebags to clean himself with and to see to his master; and when he could not find them he came near to losing his wits. He cursed himself all over again, and resolved in his heart to leave his master and go home, even if he lost the wages for what he had served and his hopes of the government of the promised isle.
At this Don Quixote got up, and putting his left hand over his mouth so that the rest of his teeth should not fall out, he took hold with the other of Rocinante's reins — for the horse had never stirred from his master's side, so loyal and well-conditioned was he — and went over to where his squire was, leaning on his ass with his hand against his cheek, looking like a man deep in thought. And seeing him in that condition, with every sign of such sadness, Don Quixote said to him:
"You must know, Sancho, that one man is no more than another unless he does more than another. All these squalls that come on us are signs that the weather will soon clear and things will go well for us; because it is not possible for either the bad or the good to last, and it follows from this that, the bad having lasted a long time, the good must be close. So you ought not to distress yourself over the misfortunes that happen to me, since you get no share of them."
"How do I not?" answered Sancho. "Was the man they tossed in a blanket yesterday, by any chance, anybody but my father's son? And the saddlebags I'm missing today, with all my valuables in them — do they belong to anybody but the same man?"
"You are missing the saddlebags, Sancho?" said Don Quixote.
"That I am," answered Sancho.
"In that case we have nothing to eat today," replied Don Quixote.
"That would be so," answered Sancho, "if there were none of those herbs to be found in these meadows that your worship says he knows, the ones that knights errant as unlucky as your worship generally make up such shortages with."
"For all that," answered Don Quixote, "I would rather have at this moment a quarter-loaf of bread, or a whole loaf and two heads of salt herring, than all the herbs Dioscorides describes, even in the edition illustrated by Doctor Laguna. But in spite of everything, get up on your donkey, my good Sancho, and come along after me; for God, who provides for all things, will not fail us, the more so as we are so much about his service as we are — since he does not fail the gnats in the air, or the little worms in the earth, or the tadpoles in the water; and he is so merciful that he makes his sun rise on the good and on the wicked, and sends his rain on the unjust and the just."
"Your worship," said Sancho, "would have made a better preacher than a knight errant."
"Knights errant knew about everything and have to know about everything, Sancho," said Don Quixote; "because in past ages there was a knight errant who would stop and deliver a sermon or a discourse in the middle of an army camp as though he had taken his degree at the University of Paris; from which it may be inferred that the lance never blunted the pen, nor the pen the lance."
"Very well then, let it be as your worship says," answered Sancho. "Let us get away from here now and try to find somewhere to lodge tonight; and please God it may be in a place where there are no blankets, nor blanket-men, nor phantoms, nor enchanted Moors — because if there are, I'll give the whole business to the devil, bag and baggage."
"Ask God for it yourself, my son," said Don Quixote, "and lead on wherever you like, for this time I want to leave our lodging to your choice. But give me your hand here and feel with your finger, and look carefully at how many teeth and molars I am missing on this right side of the upper jaw, which is where I feel the pain."
Sancho put his fingers in, and while he was feeling about he said:
"How many molars did your worship use to have on this side?"
"Four," answered Don Quixote, "not counting the wisdom tooth, all of them whole and very sound."
"Your worship should think carefully about what you're saying, sir," answered Sancho.
"I say four, if it was not five," answered Don Quixote; "because in the whole of my life I have never had a tooth or a molar pulled out of my mouth, nor has one fallen out or been eaten away by decay or by any rheum."
"Well, on this lower part," said Sancho, "your worship has no more than two molars and a half; and on the upper, not half a one nor any at all — it's as smooth up there as the palm of my hand."
"Unlucky man that I am!" said Don Quixote, hearing the sad news his squire gave him. "I would rather they had cut off an arm, as long as it was not my sword arm; because I would have you know, Sancho, that a mouth without molars is like a mill without a millstone, and a tooth is to be prized far above a diamond. But we who profess the strict order of chivalry are subject to all this. Mount up, my friend, and lead on, and I will follow you at whatever pace you like."
Sancho did so, and set off towards where he thought he might find shelter, without leaving the high road, which ran very straight along there. Going along little by little, then — because the pain in Don Quixote's jaws would not let him settle or attend to making any speed — Sancho decided to entertain him and take his mind off it by telling him something; and among the other things he said was what will be told in the following chapter.
"It seems to me, sir, that all these misfortunes that have been happening to us these last few days have without any doubt been a punishment for the sin your worship committed against the order of your chivalry, in not keeping the oath you swore not to eat bread off a tablecloth or take your pleasure with the queen, and all the rest of it that goes with that and that your worship swore to keep, until you took that helmet of Malandrino's, or whatever the Moor's name is — I don't remember it properly."
"You are quite right, Sancho," said Don Quixote; "but to tell you the truth, it had gone clean out of my memory. And you may also take it as certain that the business of the blanket happened to you through your own fault in not reminding me of it in time. But I shall make amends, for there are ways of composition in the order of chivalry for everything."
"But did I swear anything, by any chance?" answered Sancho.
"It does not matter that you have not sworn," said Don Quixote. "It is enough that I understand you are not very safe from being an accessory; and one way or the other, it will do no harm to provide ourselves with a remedy."
"Well, if that's how it is," said Sancho, "mind your worship doesn't go and forget this too, the way you forgot about the oath. Perhaps the phantoms will get the urge to amuse themselves with me all over again — and with your worship too, if they see you so stubborn."
They were in this and other talk when night caught them in the middle of the road, without their having or being able to find anywhere to take shelter that night. And what was worse about it was that they were dying of hunger; for with the loss of the saddlebags they had lost the whole of their larder and provisions. And to complete this misfortune, an adventure happened to them which, without any contrivance at all, genuinely looked like one.
It came about like this. Night closed in with some darkness; but for all that they kept going, Sancho believing that since this was the high road he would in all reason find some inn on it within a league or two. Going along, then, in this fashion — the night dark, the squire hungry and the master with an appetite for his dinner — they saw coming towards them along the very road they were on a great multitude of lights, which looked like nothing so much as moving stars. Sancho was thunderstruck at the sight of them, and Don Quixote was not entirely at his ease. The one pulled at his ass's halter and the other at his hack's reins, and they stood still, watching attentively to see what this might be; and they saw that the lights kept getting nearer, and the nearer they came the bigger they looked. At which sight Sancho began to shake like a man with quicksilver in him, and Don Quixote's hair stood on end; and Don Quixote, plucking up a little courage, said:
"This, Sancho, must without any doubt be a very great and very dangerous adventure, in which it will be necessary for me to show all my valour and my strength."
"Unlucky me!" answered Sancho. "If this adventure should happen to be one of phantoms, as it is beginning to look to me, where are the ribs to be found that can put up with it?"
"However much they may be phantoms," said Don Quixote, "I shall not let them touch a thread of your clothing. If they made a joke of you the other time, it was because I could not get over the walls of the yard; but now we are out in open country, where I can wield my sword exactly as I please."
"And if they enchant you and stiffen you up as they did the other time," said Sancho, "what good will it do to be in open country or not?"
"For all that," replied Don Quixote, "I beg you, Sancho, to keep your courage up; experience will show you the courage I have."
"I will keep it up, if it please God," answered Sancho.
And the two of them drew off to one side of the road and went back to watching attentively to see what all this business of the travelling lights could be. And very shortly afterwards they made out a great many men in white robes, whose fearful appearance finished off Sancho Panza's courage altogether: he began to knock his teeth together like a man shivering with the ague, and the knocking and chattering got worse when they saw clearly what it was. For they made out as many as twenty of the white-robed men, all on horseback, with lighted torches in their hands; behind whom came a litter draped in mourning, followed by another six riders in mourning down to the feet of their mules — which they could tell were not horses by the quiet way they went. The white-robed men were murmuring among themselves in a low, pitying voice.
This strange vision, at such an hour and in such a lonely place, was quite enough to put fear into Sancho's heart, and even into his master's; and so it would have been in Don Quixote's case — for Sancho's courage had already gone to pieces. The opposite happened to his master: at that moment it presented itself vividly to his imagination that this was one of the adventures out of his books. He fancied that the litter was a bier carrying some sorely wounded or dead knight whose vengeance was reserved for him alone; and without any further reasoning he levelled his pike, settled himself firmly in the saddle, and with a fine spirit and bearing placed himself in the middle of the road along which the white-robed men had to pass. And when he saw them close by, he raised his voice and said:
"Halt, knights, or whoever you may be, and give me an account of who you are, where you come from, where you are going, and what it is you are carrying on that bier. For by all appearances either you have done, or somebody has done to you, some outrage; and it is fitting and necessary that I should know of it, either to punish you for the wrong you have done, or to avenge you for the injury that has been done to you."
"We are in a hurry," answered one of the white-robed men, "and the inn is a long way off, and we cannot stop to give as long an account as you ask for."
And spurring his mule, he went on past. Don Quixote took this answer very much amiss, and grabbing the bridle he said:
"Halt, and be better bred, and give me an account of what I have asked you; if not, you are all in battle with me."
The mule was a nervous one, and on being seized by the bridle it took such fright that it reared up and threw its master to the ground over its hindquarters. A servant who was going along on foot, seeing the white-robed man come down, began to abuse Don Quixote; who, thoroughly angry by now, levelled his pike without waiting for any more and charged one of the mourners, and brought him down badly wounded on the ground. And wheeling round on the rest of them, it was a thing worth seeing, the speed with which he attacked and scattered them; it looked for all the world as if wings had sprouted on Rocinante at that instant, so lightly and so proudly did he go.
The white-robed men were all timid people and unarmed, and so they easily left the fight in a moment and set off running across that field with their lighted torches, looking exactly like masqueraders running about on a night of merrymaking and festival. The mourners, for their part, were so tangled and wrapped up in their long skirts and gowns that they could not move; and so, in complete safety, Don Quixote cudgelled the lot of them and made them quit the place very much against their will — because they all thought this was no man but a devil out of hell, come out to take from them the dead body they were carrying in the litter. Sancho watched the whole thing, marvelling at his master's fire, and said to himself:
"There is no doubt about it, this master of mine is as brave and as strong as he says he is."
There was a torch burning on the ground next to the first man the mule had thrown, by whose light Don Quixote was able to see him; and coming up to him, he put the point of his pike in his face, telling him to surrender or he would kill him. To which the fallen man answered:
"I am surrendered enough already, since I cannot move — I have a broken leg. I beg your worship, if you are a Christian knight, not to kill me; you would be committing a great sacrilege, for I am a licentiate and I have taken minor orders."
"Then who the devil brought you here," said Don Quixote, "since you are a churchman?"
"Who, sir?" replied the fallen man. "My bad luck."
"Then a worse one is threatening you," said Don Quixote, "unless you satisfy me on everything I asked you before."
"Your worship shall be satisfied easily," answered the licentiate. "And so your worship must know that although I said just now that I was a licentiate, I am only a bachelor of arts, and my name is Alonso López. I come from the city of Baeza with eleven other priests, the ones who ran off with the torches. We are going to the city of Segovia, accompanying a dead body which is in that litter — that of a gentleman who died in Baeza, where he was left for the time being; and now, as I say, we were taking his bones to his tomb, which is in Segovia, where he was born."
"And who killed him?" asked Don Quixote.
"God, by means of a pestilential fever he caught," answered the bachelor.
"In that case," said Don Quixote, "Our Lord has taken from me the trouble I should have had in avenging his death, if anybody else had killed him. But since the one who killed him did kill him, there is nothing for it but to keep quiet and shrug my shoulders, because I should do the same if he killed me myself. And I should like your reverence to know that I am a knight of La Mancha, called Don Quixote, and that my office and calling is to travel the world putting the crooked straight and undoing injuries."
"I don't know how that can be about putting the crooked straight," said the bachelor, "since you have turned me from straight to crooked, leaving me with a broken leg that will never be seen straight again as long as it lives. And the injury you have undone in me has been to leave me injured in such a way that I shall stay injured for ever. And it has been misfortune enough to run into you, who go about looking for adventures."
"Not all things," answered Don Quixote, "happen in the same way. The damage lay, Señor Bachelor Alonso López, in your coming as you did, by night, dressed in those surplices, with lighted torches, praying, covered in mourning — so that you looked exactly like something evil out of the other world. And so I could not fail to do my duty by attacking you, and I would have attacked you even if I had known for certain that you were the actual satans of hell, which is what I judged and always took you for."
"Since my luck has willed it so," said the bachelor, "I beg your worship, sir knight errant — who have given me such a bad turn — to help me get out from under this mule, which has my leg caught between the stirrup and the saddle."
"I might have gone on talking till tomorrow!" said Don Quixote. "And how long were you going to wait before telling me your trouble?"
He at once shouted to Sancho Panza to come; but Sancho did not trouble to come, because he was busy stripping a pack-mule those good gentlemen had brought along with them, very well stocked with things to eat. Sancho made a sack out of his coat, and gathering up everything he could get and everything that would fit into the bag, he loaded his donkey; and then he answered his master's shouts and helped to get the bachelor out from the weight of the mule. And putting him up on it, they gave him his torch; and Don Quixote told him to follow the track of his companions and to beg their pardon on his behalf for the injury, which it had not been in his power to avoid doing them. And Sancho said to him too:
"If those gentlemen should happen to want to know who the valiant man was who put them in that state, your worship may tell them it was the famous Don Quixote of La Mancha, who by another name is called the Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance."
With that the bachelor went off; and Don Quixote asked Sancho what had moved him to call him the Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance just then rather than at any other time.
"I'll tell you," answered Sancho. "It's because I have been looking at you for a while by the light of that torch that poor unfortunate is carrying, and your worship really does have the worst-looking face I have ever seen in my life — the worst lately, at any rate. And it must have been caused either by the exhaustion of this fight or by the lack of the teeth and molars."
"It is not that," answered Don Quixote, "but that the wise man whose business it is to write the history of my deeds must have thought it well that I should take some sort of by-name, as all the knights of the past used to do. One called himself the Knight of the Burning Sword; another, the Knight of the Unicorn; that one, the Knight of the Maidens; this one, the Knight of the Phoenix; another, the Knight of the Griffin; another again, the Knight of Death — and by these names and emblems they were known all over the round world. And so I say that the wise man I have mentioned must have put it on your tongue and into your thoughts just now to call me the Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance, which is what I intend to call myself from today on. And so that the name may suit me better, I mean to have a very sorrowful figure painted on my shield when I get the chance."
"There's no need to spend time and money on having that figure painted," said Sancho. "What ought to be done is for your worship to uncover your own and show your face to the people who look at you; and without anything more and without any other picture or shield they'll call you the Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance. And believe me, I'm telling you the truth, because I promise your worship — and let this be said in fun — that hunger and the missing molars give you such a bad face that, as I've said already, the sorrowful painting can very well be spared."
Don Quixote laughed at Sancho's wit, but for all that he resolved to call himself by that name as soon as he could have his shield, or buckler, painted as he had imagined it.
At this the bachelor came back and said to Don Quixote:
"I was forgetting to tell you: your worship should be aware that you are excommunicated for having laid violent hands on a holy thing — juxta illud: Si quis suadente diabolo, and so on."
"I do not understand that Latin," answered Don Quixote, "but I know very well that I did not lay hands on you, only this pike. What is more, I did not think I was assaulting priests or things belonging to the Church, which I respect and adore as the Catholic and faithful Christian I am, but phantoms and monsters from the other world. And even if that were how it was, I have in my memory what happened to the Cid Ruy Díaz when he smashed the chair of that king's ambassador in front of His Holiness the Pope, for which the Pope excommunicated him — and that day the good Rodrigo de Vivar went about as a very honourable and valiant knight."
On hearing this the bachelor went off, as has been said, without answering him a word. Don Quixote wanted to look and see whether the body in the litter was bones or not, but Sancho would not have it, saying:
"Sir, your worship has finished this dangerous adventure more safely than any of the ones I have seen. These people, although they were beaten and scattered, might just possibly realise that it was one man alone who beat them, and, ashamed and embarrassed about it, get themselves together again and come looking for us and give us something to think about. The donkey is as he ought to be, the hills are close, hunger is pressing, and there is nothing to do but retire in good order; and, as they say, let the dead go to the grave and the living to the loaf."
And driving his ass in front of him, he asked his master to follow; who, thinking Sancho was right, followed him without arguing any further. And after they had gone a little way between two small hills they found themselves in a wide, hidden valley, where they dismounted. Sancho unloaded the donkey, and stretched out on the green grass, with hunger for their sauce, they breakfasted, lunched, had their tea and had their supper all at the same time, satisfying their stomachs with more than one cold pie that the dead man's reverend gentlemen — who rarely let themselves go short — had been carrying on their pack-mule of supplies.
But another misfortune befell them, which Sancho considered the worst of the lot: they had no wine to drink, nor even any water to put to their lips. And, harried by thirst, Sancho — seeing that the meadow they were in was thick with fine green grass — said what will be told in the following chapter.
"It isn't possible, my dear sir, but that this grass is evidence that there must be some spring or stream close by that keeps it damp. So it would be a good idea for us to go a little further on, and we shall come across somewhere to relieve this terrible thirst that is wearing us out — which without any doubt causes more suffering than hunger does."
Don Quixote thought the advice good; and taking Rocinante by the rein, and Sancho his ass by the halter after loading onto him the leavings of the supper, they began to make their way up the meadow by touch, because the darkness of the night let them see nothing at all. But they had not gone two hundred paces when there came to their ears a great noise of water, as though it were falling from some great high crags. The noise delighted them enormously; and stopping to listen and make out which direction it was coming from, they heard all at once another din that watered down their pleasure at the water — Sancho's especially, since he was naturally timid and of small courage.
What they heard, I say, was blows being struck in a steady rhythm, with a certain creaking of iron and chains, which, accompanied by the furious din of the water, would have put terror into any heart other than Don Quixote's. The night, as has been said, was dark, and they happened to have got in among some tall trees whose leaves, moved by the soft wind, made a low and frightening sound. So that the loneliness, the place, the darkness, the noise of the water and the whispering of the leaves — all of it caused horror and dread, especially when they found that the blows did not stop, and the wind did not sleep, and the morning did not come; with the addition to all this of not knowing where they were. But Don Quixote, with his intrepid heart for company, leapt onto Rocinante, and bracing his buckler on his arm and levelling his pike, he said:
"Friend Sancho, you must know that I was born, by heaven's will, in this iron age of ours in order to bring back to life in it the age of gold, or the golden age as it is usually called. I am the man for whom are reserved the dangers, the great exploits, the valorous deeds. I am, I say again, the man who is to bring back the Knights of the Round Table, the Twelve Peers of France and the Nine Worthies, and who is to consign to oblivion the Platirs, the Tablantes, the Olivantes and Tirantes, the Phoebuses and Belianises, along with the whole crowd of the famous knights errant of the past, doing in this age I find myself in such great things, such strange things and such feats of arms as shall darken the brightest of theirs.
"You mark well, faithful and loyal squire, the darkness of this night, its strange silence, the muffled and confused noise of these trees, the fearful sound of that water we came looking for, which seems to be falling and hurling itself down from the high mountains of the moon, and that ceaseless hammering that wounds and hurts our ears. All of which things, together and each one on its own, are enough to instil fear, dread and terror in the breast of Mars himself, let alone in a man not used to incidents and adventures of the kind. Well, all this that I am painting for you is fuel and a spur to my courage, which is already making my heart burst in my breast with the desire it has to take on this adventure, however difficult it shows itself to be.
"So tighten Rocinante's girths a little, and God be with you, and wait for me here three days and no more; and if I have not come back within them, you may go back to our village, and from there, as a favour and a good turn to me, you will go to El Toboso, where you will tell my incomparable lady Dulcinea that her captive knight died attempting things that might make him worthy of being able to call himself hers."
When Sancho heard his master's words he began to weep with the greatest tenderness in the world and to say to him:
"Sir, I don't know why your worship wants to take on this terrifying adventure. It's night now, nobody can see us here, we can very well turn aside and get out of the danger even if we don't drink for three days; and since there's nobody to see us, there'll be nobody to mark us down as cowards. What's more, I've heard the priest of our village preach — the one your worship knows well — that whoever looks for danger dies in it. So it isn't right to tempt God by taking on such a monstrous business, where a man can't get out except by a miracle. And it's enough of them that heaven has worked for your worship already, in saving you from being tossed in a blanket as I was, and in bringing you out the winner, free and safe, from among all those enemies who were with the dead man.
"And if none of this moves or softens that hard heart, let it be moved by thinking and believing that your worship will hardly have got away from here before I, out of pure fright, give up my soul to whoever wants to carry it off. I left my own country and left children and wife to come and serve your worship, thinking I'd be worth more and not less; but as greed bursts the sack, so it has torn my hopes apart. Just when I had them liveliest, of getting that wretched, ill-starred isle your worship has promised me so many times, I find that in payment and exchange for it you now want to leave me in a place as far from human company as this. For the love of the one God, sir, let no such wrong be done me. And if your worship will not give up attempting this business altogether, at least put it off till the morning. For by what the science I learnt when I was a shepherd shows me, it can't be three hours from now to daybreak, because the mouth of the Horn is over our heads and midnight is on the line of the left arm."
"How can you tell, Sancho," said Don Quixote, "where that line falls, or where that mouth or that nape of the neck you speak of is, when the night is so dark that not a single star appears in the whole sky?"
"That's so," said Sancho; "but fear has a great many eyes and sees things underneath the ground, let alone up above in the sky. Besides which, by good reasoning it can easily be worked out that it isn't long from here to daylight."
"Let it be as long or as short as it likes," answered Don Quixote. "It shall not be said of me, now or at any time, that tears and entreaties turned me aside from doing what I owed to my knightly style. And so I beg you, Sancho, to be quiet; for God, who has put it into my heart to attempt this unheard-of and terrifying adventure now, will take care to look after my safety and to comfort your sorrow. What you have to do is tighten Rocinante's girths properly and stay here, for I shall be back soon, alive or dead."
Sancho, then, seeing his master's final resolve and how little his tears, advice and entreaties were worth with him, decided to make use of his own ingenuity and get him to wait for daylight if he could. And so, while he was tightening the horse's girths, quietly and without being noticed he tied Rocinante's two feet together with his ass's halter, so that when Don Quixote tried to set off he could not, because the horse could only move by jumping. Seeing the success of his trick, Sancho Panza said:
"There you are, sir: heaven, moved by my tears and my prayers, has ordained that Rocinante can't stir. And if you insist and spur him and beat him, it will be putting fortune out of temper and kicking, as they say, against the pricks."
Don Quixote was in despair at this; and the more he put his legs to the horse, the less he could move him. And without seeing through to the tying, he thought it best to calm down and wait either for daybreak or for Rocinante to move, believing beyond a doubt that this came from somewhere other than Sancho's ingenuity; and so he said to him:
"Since this is how it is, Sancho, and Rocinante cannot move, I am content to wait for the dawn to smile, even though I weep at how long she takes to come."
"There's no need to weep," answered Sancho, "for I'll keep your worship entertained by telling stories from now till daybreak — unless you want to get down and sleep a little on the green grass, the way knights errant do, so as to be more rested when the day comes and the moment for taking on this altogether extraordinary adventure that's waiting for you."
"What do you mean, get down? What do you mean, sleep?" said Don Quixote. "Am I by any chance one of those knights who take their rest in the middle of dangers? Sleep yourself, since you were born to sleep, or do whatever you like; I shall do what I see best fits my purpose."
"Don't be angry, my dear sir," answered Sancho, "I didn't mean anything by it."
And going up to him, he put one hand on the front of the saddle and the other on the back, so that he was left hugging his master's left thigh, not daring to move a finger's breadth away from him: such was the fear he had of the blows, which were still sounding away at their intervals. Don Quixote told him to tell some story to entertain him, as he had promised; to which Sancho said he would if the terror of what he was hearing would let him.
"But for all that, I'll make an effort to tell a story which, if I manage to tell it and nobody stops me, is the best of all stories. And let your worship pay attention, because I'm starting now.
"Once upon a time there was what there was, and may the good that comes be for everybody and the harm for whoever goes looking for it. And your worship should note, sir, that the beginning the ancients gave their tales was not just anything, but a saying of Cato the Senseless, the Roman, which goes: 'and the harm for whoever goes looking for it' — which fits here like a ring on a finger, so that your worship will keep still and not go looking for harm anywhere, and we'll go back by another road, since nobody is forcing us to follow this one where so many frights come over us."
"Get on with your story, Sancho," said Don Quixote, "and leave the road we are to follow to me."
"I say, then," Sancho went on, "that in a village in Extremadura there was a shepherd who kept goats — I mean he was a goatherd — and this shepherd or goatherd, as I say, of my story was called Lope Ruiz; and this Lope Ruiz was in love with a shepherdess called Torralba, and this shepherdess called Torralba was the daughter of a rich stockman, and this rich stockman —"
"If you tell your story like that, Sancho," said Don Quixote, "saying everything twice over, you will not be finished in two days. Tell it straight through and tell it like a man of sense; and if not, don't tell it at all."
"The way I'm telling it," answered Sancho, "is the way all tales are told where I come from, and I don't know how to tell it any other way, and it isn't right for your worship to ask me to take up new customs."
"Tell it however you like," answered Don Quixote; "since fate wills that I cannot help listening to you, go on."
"So then, dear sir of my soul," Sancho went on, "as I've said already, this shepherd was in love with Torralba the shepherdess, who was a strapping girl, hard to handle and rather on the mannish side, because she had a bit of a moustache — I can see her now."
"So you knew her, then?" said Don Quixote.
"I didn't know her," answered Sancho, "but the man who told me this story told me it was so certain and true that when I told it to somebody else I could safely swear I'd seen the whole thing myself. So then, as the days came and the days went, the devil, who never sleeps and who tangles everything up, arranged it so that the love the shepherd had for the shepherdess turned into hatred and ill will. And the cause of it, according to spiteful tongues, was a certain quantity of little jealousies she gave him, of the kind that go past the line and get into forbidden country. And from then on the shepherd loathed her so much that, to avoid seeing her, he decided to get out of that part of the country and go where his eyes would never see her again. Torralba, finding herself scorned by Lope, straight away loved him better than she ever had before."
"That is women's nature," said Don Quixote: "to scorn the man who loves them and love the man who loathes them. Go on, Sancho."
"It so happened," said Sancho, "that the shepherd carried out what he'd decided; and driving his goats in front of him, he set off across the fields of Extremadura to cross over into the kingdom of Portugal. Torralba, who got to hear of it, went after him, and followed him on foot and barefoot a long way behind, with a staff in her hand and saddlebags round her neck, in which she carried — so it's said — a piece of a mirror and a bit of a comb and some little pot or other of face paint. But whatever she was carrying, which I don't mean to go into now, all I'll say is that they say the shepherd came with his flock to cross the river Guadiana, and at that season it was swollen and almost over its banks; and at the place where he arrived there was no boat or barge, and nobody to take him or his flock over to the other side. Which distressed him a great deal, because he could see Torralba coming up very close now and she'd give him a lot of grief with her pleading and her tears.
"But he went on looking about until he saw a fisherman who had a boat beside him — such a small one that only one person and one goat could fit in it. Even so, he spoke to him and settled with him to carry him and the three hundred goats he had with him across. The fisherman got into the boat and took one goat over; he came back and took another; he came back again and took another over."
And Sancho added: "Let your worship keep count of the goats the fisherman is taking over; because if you lose track of one of them, the story is finished and it won't be possible to tell another word of it.
"To go on, then, and I say that the landing place on the other side was full of mud and slippery, and the fisherman took a long time going and coming. For all that, he came back for another goat, and another, and another —"
"Take it that he has taken them all over," said Don Quixote. "Don't go coming and going like that, or you will not have got them across in a year."
"How many have gone over so far?" said Sancho.
"How the devil should I know?" answered Don Quixote.
"There you are, that's just what I said: that you should keep a good count. Well, by God, the story's finished, because there's no going on with it."
"How can that be?" answered Don Quixote. "Is knowing the exact number of goats that have gone over so essential to the story that if one of them is got wrong you cannot go on with it?"
"No, sir, not at all," answered Sancho. "But at the very instant I asked your worship to tell me how many goats had gone over and you answered that you didn't know, everything I had left to tell went clean out of my memory. And upon my word, there was a lot of virtue and enjoyment in it."
"So the story," said Don Quixote, "is finished already?"
"As finished as my own mother," said Sancho.
"I tell you truly," answered Don Quixote, "that you have told one of the newest tales, stories or histories that anybody in the world could have thought of; and that such a way of telling it and of leaving off will never be seen and can never have been seen in anyone's whole life — though I expected nothing else from your good sense. But I am not surprised, since perhaps these blows, which do not stop, must have got your understanding into a muddle."
"That may well be," answered Sancho, "but I know that where my story's concerned there's no more to say: it ends right where the mistake in counting the goats' crossing begins."
"Let it end where it likes, and welcome," said Don Quixote, "and let us see whether Rocinante can move."
He put his legs to him again, and again the horse gave a jump and stood still: he was tied that thoroughly.
At this point it appears that either the cold of the morning, which was coming on, or something loosening that Sancho had eaten at supper, or that it was simply nature — which is what one ought most to believe — brought upon him the will and the desire to do what nobody else could do for him. But so much fear had got into his heart that he did not dare move the black of a fingernail away from his master. And to think of not doing what he needed to do was not possible either. So what he did, for the sake of peace, was to let go with his right hand, which he had hold of the back of the saddle with; and with it, quietly and without any noise at all, he undid the running knot his breeches were held up by, without help from any other; and once it was off, they came down at once and stayed round him like fetters. After this he lifted his shirt as best he could and put both his buttocks out into the air, which were not very small ones.
This done — and he thought it was the most he had to do to get out of that terrible strait and distress — another and a greater one came over him, which was that it seemed to him he could not relieve himself without making a racket and a noise. And he began to clench his teeth and hunch his shoulders, gathering in his breath as much as he possibly could. But with all these efforts he was so unlucky that in the end he came to make a little noise, quite different from the one that was frightening him so much. Don Quixote heard it and said:
"What sound is that, Sancho?"
"I don't know, sir," he answered. "It must be something new; adventures and misadventures never begin small."
He tried his luck again, and it went so well for him that with no more noise or disturbance than the last, he found himself free of the load that had given him so much trouble. But as Don Quixote had as lively a sense of smell as of hearing, and Sancho was so close and stitched to him that the vapours went up almost in a straight line, it could not be helped that some of them reached his nostrils. And they had hardly got there when he went to their rescue, pinching them between two fingers; and in a somewhat nasal tone he said:
"It seems to me, Sancho, that you are very much afraid."
"So I am," answered Sancho; "but how does your worship see it now more than at any other time?"
"In that now more than at any other time you smell, and not of amber," answered Don Quixote.
"That may well be," said Sancho, "but it isn't my fault, it's your worship's, for dragging me about at unearthly hours and along these unaccustomed ways."
"Move three or four of them off over there, my friend," said Don Quixote — all this without taking his fingers from his nose — "and from now on take more care of your own person and of what you owe to mine. It is the great deal of conversation I have with you that has bred this disrespect."
"I'll bet," replied Sancho, "that your worship thinks I've done something with my person that I shouldn't have."
"Stirring it only makes it worse, friend Sancho," answered Don Quixote.
In this conversation and others like it master and man passed the night. But seeing that morning was coming on fast, Sancho very carefully untied Rocinante and did up his breeches. As soon as Rocinante found himself free, although he was not in the least spirited by nature, it seems he felt it, and began to paw the ground — because as for curvetting, with all due respect to him, he did not know how.
Seeing, then, that Rocinante was moving at last, Don Quixote took it for a good sign, and believed it was a sign that he should attempt that terrifying adventure.
By this time the dawn had finished breaking and things could be made out distinctly, and Don Quixote saw that he was among some tall trees — chestnuts, which cast a very dark shade. He noticed too that the hammering had not stopped, but he could not see what might be causing it. And so, without delaying any longer, he made Rocinante feel his spurs; and taking leave of Sancho again, he ordered him to wait there for three days at the most, as he had told him once before, and that if he had not come back by the end of them he should take it for certain that God had been pleased to let his days come to an end in that dangerous adventure. He repeated the message and embassy he was to carry on his behalf to his lady Dulcinea; and told him that as far as the payment for his services went he need not worry, because he had left his will made before he came away from his village, in which he would find himself paid everything to do with his wages, pro rata, for the time he had served. But that if God brought him out of that danger safe and sound and without a scratch, he could count the promised isle as far more than certain.
Sancho began to weep all over again, hearing his good master's pitiful words all over again, and he made up his mind not to leave him until the very last passage and end of the business.
From these tears and this honourable resolution of Sancho Panza's the author of this history concludes that he must have been well born, and at the very least an Old Christian. His feeling softened his master somewhat, but not so much that he showed any weakness; instead, hiding it as best he could, he began to ride towards the direction from which it seemed to him the noise of the water and of the hammering came.
Sancho followed him on foot, leading his donkey by the halter as he usually did — that perpetual companion of his good fortunes and his bad. And having gone a good way among those chestnuts and shady trees, they came out into a little meadow that lay at the foot of some high rocks, down which an enormous head of water came hurling itself. At the foot of the rocks stood some badly made houses, more like the ruins of buildings than houses, out of which they made out that the noise and din of that hammering, which still had not stopped, was coming.
Rocinante was upset by the din of the water and of the blows; and Don Quixote, quieting him, went on getting closer to the houses little by little, commending himself with all his heart to his lady, begging her to favour him in that terrifying journey and enterprise, and on the way commending himself to God as well, that he would not forget him. Sancho never left his side, stretching his neck and his gaze out as far as he could between Rocinante's legs to see whether he could make out yet what was keeping him in such suspense and such dread.
Another hundred paces or so they went, when, on turning a corner, there appeared plain and open the very cause — it could be nothing else — of that horrible and, to them, terrifying noise that had kept them so suspended and so frightened all night long. And it was — take it, reader, without grief and annoyance — six fulling hammers, which with their alternating blows made all that din.
When Don Quixote saw what it was, he went dumb and stiffened from head to foot. Sancho looked at him and saw that he had his head bent down on his chest, with every sign of being mortified. Don Quixote looked at Sancho too, and saw that he had his cheeks blown out and his mouth full of laughter, with evident signs of being about to burst with it; and his melancholy could not do so much with him that at the sight of Sancho he could keep from laughing himself. And when Sancho saw that his master had begun, he let go of the dam in such a way that he had to hold his sides in with his fists to keep from bursting with laughter. Four times he quieted down, and four times he went back to his laughing with the same violence as the first; at which Don Quixote was already giving himself to the devil — and the more so when he heard him say, by way of mockery:
"You must know, friend Sancho, that I was born, by heaven's will, in this iron age of ours in order to bring back to life in it the golden age, or the age of gold. I am the man for whom are reserved the dangers, the great exploits, the valorous deeds..."
And in this fashion he went on repeating all or most of the speeches Don Quixote had made the first time they heard the terrifying blows.
Seeing, then, that Sancho was making fun of him, Don Quixote was so mortified and so angry that he lifted his pike and gave him two blows with it such that, if he had taken them on the head as he took them on the back, Don Quixote would have been free of paying him any wages, except to his heirs. Seeing that he was drawing such earnest out of his own joking, and afraid his master might carry it further, Sancho said to him very humbly:
"Calm down, your worship; before God, I'm only joking."
"Well, because you are joking, I am not," answered Don Quixote. "Come here, my merry gentleman: does it seem to you that if these had been not fulling hammers but some other dangerous adventure, I would not have shown the spirit needed to undertake it and finish it? Am I obliged, by any chance, being a knight as I am, to know and distinguish sounds and tell which are fulling hammers and which are not? Especially when it might be — as it is the truth — that I have never seen them in my life, whereas you will have seen them, low peasant that you are, bred and born among them. If not, make these six hammers turn into six giants and throw them at my beard one by one, or all together; and if I do not lay every one of them heels up, make whatever mockery of me you like."
"That's enough, my dear sir," replied Sancho. "I confess I've been a bit too free with my laughing. But tell me, your worship, now that we're at peace — and so may God bring you out of every adventure that happens to you as safe and sound as he has brought you out of this one — hasn't it been a thing to laugh at, and isn't it a thing to tell, the great fright we've had? At least the one I had; for as for your worship, I know already that you don't know it and don't know what fear or dread is."
"I do not deny," answered Don Quixote, "that what has happened to us is a thing worth laughing at; but it is not a thing worth telling, because not everybody is discerning enough to put things in their proper place."
"At least," answered Sancho, "your worship knew how to put the pike in its proper place, aiming at my head and hitting me on the back — thanks be to God and to the trouble I took to dodge sideways. But there, it'll all come out in the wash; and I've heard it said, 'He loves you well who makes you cry.' Besides which, great lords generally give a servant a pair of breeches straight after a bad word; though I don't know what they generally give him after giving him a beating, unless it's that knights errant give isles after beatings, or kingdoms on the mainland."
"The dice might well fall in such a way," said Don Quixote, "that everything you say would come true. And forgive what is past, since you are a man of sense and know that a man's first impulses are not in his own hands. And be warned from now on about one thing, so that you may hold back and restrain yourself from talking too much with me: in all the books of chivalry I have read — and they are infinite — I have never found any squire who talked as much with his lord as you do with yours. And truly I count it a great fault, in you and in me: in you, in that you esteem me too little; in me, in that I do not let myself be esteemed more. Why, Gandalín, squire to Amadis of Gaul, was count of the Firm Isle, and one reads of him that he always spoke to his lord with his cap in his hand, his head bent and his body doubled over more turquesco. And what shall we say of Gasabal, squire to Don Galaor, who was so silent that, to make the excellence of his marvellous silence clear to us, his name is mentioned only once in the whole of that history, great as it is and true as it is? From all I have said you are to infer, Sancho, that it is necessary to make a difference between master and man, between lord and servant, and between knight and squire. So from today onwards we must treat one another with more respect and without teasing each other; because however I may come to be angry with you, it will be the worse for the pitcher. The favours and benefits I have promised you will arrive in their own time; and if they do not arrive, at least the wages are not to be lost, as I have told you already."
"Everything your worship says is all very well," said Sancho; "but I'd like to know, in case the time for the favours doesn't come and it's necessary to fall back on the time for the wages, how much a knight errant's squire earned in those days, and whether they were hired by the month or by the day, like bricklayers' labourers."
"I do not believe," answered Don Quixote, "that such squires were ever on wages, but on favour. And if I have now assigned you one in the sealed will I left at home, it was for what might happen; because I still do not know how chivalry will turn out in these calamitous times of ours, and I would not have my soul suffer in the next world for small matters. Because I want you to know, Sancho, that in this world there is no more dangerous condition than that of the adventurers."
"That's true enough," said Sancho, "since the mere noise of the hammers of a fulling mill could disturb and unsettle the heart of so valorous a wandering adventurer as your worship. But you may be quite sure that from now on I won't open my lips to make fun of your worship's affairs, but only to honour you, as my master and natural lord."
"In that way," replied Don Quixote, "you will live long on the face of the earth; because after our parents, our masters are to be respected as if they were."
At this it began to rain a little, and Sancho would have liked them to go inside the fulling mill; but Don Quixote had taken such a loathing to it, on account of the heavy joke, that he would on no account go in. And so, turning off the road to the right hand, they came out on another like the one they had travelled the day before.
A little further on, Don Quixote made out a man on horseback with something on his head that shone as though it were gold; and he had hardly caught sight of him when he turned to Sancho and said:
"It seems to me, Sancho, that there is no proverb that is not true, because they are all maxims drawn from experience itself, the mother of all the sciences — and especially the one that says, 'Where one door shuts, another opens.' I say it because if last night fortune shut on us the door of the thing we were looking for, deceiving us with the fulling hammers, now she throws another wide open for us, on a better and more certain adventure; and if I fail to get in through it, the fault will be mine, without my being able to lay it on knowing little about fulling mills or on the darkness of the night. I say this because, if I am not mistaken, there is a man coming towards us with Mambrino's helmet on his head — the one I swore that oath about, as you know."
"Your worship should be careful what you say, and more careful what you do," said Sancho; "I shouldn't like it to be another lot of fulling mills that finished off the fulling and pounding of our wits."
"The devil take you for a man!" replied Don Quixote. "What has a helmet to do with fulling mills?"
"I know nothing about it," answered Sancho; "but upon my word, if I were allowed to talk as much as I used to, perhaps I'd give such reasons that your worship would see he was mistaken in what he says."
"How can I be mistaken in what I say, you scrupulous traitor?" said Don Quixote. "Tell me, don't you see that knight coming towards us on a dappled grey horse, with a golden helmet on his head?"
"What I see and make out," answered Sancho, "is nothing but a man on a grey ass like mine, with something on his head that shines."
"Well, that is Mambrino's helmet," said Don Quixote. "Get off to one side and leave me alone with him. You shall see how, without saying a word, to save time, I finish this adventure, and the helmet I have wanted so long is left mine."
"I'll take care to get off to one side," replied Sancho; "but please God, I say again, it may be marjoram and not fulling mills."
"I have told you already, brother, not to mention that business of the fulling mills to me again, not even in thought," said Don Quixote; "for I vow — and I say no more — to full your soul for you."
Sancho shut up, afraid his master might carry out the oath he had hurled at him, round as a cannonball.
Now the fact of the matter about the helmet and the horse and the knight Don Quixote could see is this. In that district there were two villages, one so small that it had neither an apothecary nor a barber, and the other, which was next to it, had both. And so the barber of the larger one served the smaller, where a sick man had need of being bled and another of getting a shave; and it was for these that the barber was coming, and he had a brass basin with him. And luck would have it that just as he was coming along it began to rain; and so that his hat, which must have been new, should not be spoiled, he put the basin on his head — and as it was clean, it shone from half a league off. He was riding a grey ass, as Sancho said, and this was why Don Quixote took it for a dappled grey horse and a knight and a helmet of gold; because everything he saw he fitted very easily to his deranged chivalries and his ill-starred fancies.
And when he saw the poor knight getting close, without stopping to argue with him at all he lowered his pike and charged at full stretch of Rocinante's gallop, meaning to run him through from side to side; but as he reached him, without checking the fury of his charge, he shouted:
"Defend yourself, wretched creature, or hand over to me of your own free will what is so justly owed me!"
The barber, who without thinking of it or fearing it saw that phantom coming down on him, had no other way of saving himself from the blow of the lance than to let himself drop off the ass; and he had not touched the ground before he was up again, nimbler than a fallow deer, and running off across that plain so fast that the wind could not have caught him. He left the basin on the ground, and Don Quixote was satisfied with that, and said the pagan had shown good sense and had imitated the beaver, which, finding itself pressed by the hunters, bites and tears off with its own teeth the thing it knows by natural instinct it is being hunted for. He ordered Sancho to pick up the helmet; who, taking it in his hands, said:
"By God, it's a good basin, and it's worth a piece of eight as surely as a maravedi."
And handing it to his master, Don Quixote put it straight on his head, turning it this way and that, looking for the visor; and when he could not find it he said:
"There is no doubt that the pagan this famous helmet was originally forged to fit must have had an enormous head; and the worst of it is that half of it is missing."
When Sancho heard him call the basin a helmet he could not hold in his laughter; but his master's temper came into his mind and he stopped in the middle of it.
"What are you laughing at, Sancho?" said Don Quixote.
"I'm laughing," he answered, "at the thought of the great head the pagan owner of this headpiece had, because the thing is the spitting image of a barber's basin and nothing else."
"Do you know what I imagine, Sancho? That this famous piece, this enchanted helmet, must by some strange accident have come into the hands of somebody who did not know how to recognise or value it; and that, without knowing what he was doing, seeing it was of the purest gold, he must have melted down the other half to make use of the price, and out of this half he made this thing, which looks like a barber's basin, as you say. But be that as it may: to me, who know what it is, its transmutation makes no difference. I shall get it seen to in the first place where there is a blacksmith, and in such a way that the one the god of the smithies made and forged for the god of battles will not have the advantage of it, or even come near it. And in the meantime I shall wear it as best I can, for something is better than nothing — the more so as it will certainly be enough to protect me from a stone."
"That will be so," said Sancho, "if it isn't thrown with a sling, as they threw them in that fight between the two armies, when they blessed your worship's molars for you and broke the can with that most blessed brew in it that made me vomit up my insides."
"I am not much grieved at having lost it," said Don Quixote, "because as you know, Sancho, I have the recipe by heart."
"So do I," answered Sancho, "but if I ever make it or taste it again in my life, may my hour come here and now. What's more, I don't mean to put myself in the way of needing it, because I mean to guard myself with all five of my senses against being wounded or wounding anybody. As for being tossed in a blanket again, I say nothing, because misfortunes of that kind can hardly be prevented; and if they come, there's nothing to do but hunch your shoulders, hold your breath, shut your eyes and let yourself go wherever luck and the blanket take you."
"You are a bad Christian, Sancho," said Don Quixote, hearing this, "because you never forget an injury once it has been done you. Let me tell you that it is the mark of noble and generous breasts to take no notice of childish things. What foot did you come away lame on, what rib broken, what head cracked, that you cannot forget that joke? For when the thing is properly weighed up, it was a joke and a piece of fun; and if I did not understand it so, I would have gone back there long ago and done more damage in your revenge than the Greeks did for the stolen Helen. Who, if she had been alive in this age, or my Dulcinea in that one, could be sure she would not have the reputation for beauty that she has."
And here he gave a sigh and sent it up to the clouds. And Sancho said:
"Let it pass for a joke, then, since the revenge can't pass for earnest. But I know what quality the earnest and the joking were of, and I know too that they'll never fall out of my memory, any more than they'll come off my back. But leaving that aside, tell me, your worship: what are we to do about this dappled grey horse that looks like a grey ass, which that Martino your worship knocked down has left abandoned here? Because by the way he took to his heels and made off like a shot, he doesn't look likely to come back for it ever. And by my beard, the grey is a good one!"
"It is not my custom," said Don Quixote, "to strip those I defeat, nor is it a practice of chivalry to take their horses and leave them on foot — unless it were that the victor had lost his own in the fight, in which case it is lawful to take the loser's, as won in lawful war. So, Sancho, leave that horse, or ass, or whatever you want it to be; because as soon as its owner sees us a good way off from here, he will come back for it."
"God knows I'd like to take it," replied Sancho, "or at least swap it for this one of mine, which doesn't seem to me as good. Truly the laws of chivalry are narrow ones, if they don't stretch as far as letting a man swap one ass for another; and I'd like to know whether I could at least swap the harness."
"On that I am not very certain," answered Don Quixote; "and in a case of doubt, until I am better informed, I say that you may swap them, if you are in extreme need of them."
"So extreme," answered Sancho, "that if they had been for my own person I couldn't have needed them more."
And then, empowered by that permission, he performed a mutatio caparum and turned his donkey out beyond all beauty, leaving him improved by a third and a fifth. This done, they breakfasted on the remains of the camp supplies they had stripped off the pack-mule and drank the water of the fulling-mill stream, without turning their faces to look at the mills: such was the loathing they had for them on account of the fright they had put them in.
Their hunger cut short, then, and their gloom along with it, they mounted; and without taking any set road — since it is very much the way of knights errant not to take a fixed one — they set off riding wherever Rocinante's will took them, which carried his master's along with it, and the donkey's too, since the donkey always followed wherever the horse led, in good love and fellowship. For all that, they came back to the high road and followed it at a venture, with no other plan at all.
Going along like this, Sancho said to his master:
"Sir, will your worship give me leave to talk with you a little? Since you laid that harsh commandment of silence on me, more than four things have gone rotten in my stomach, and there's one I have on the tip of my tongue now that I shouldn't like to see spoiled."
"Say it," said Don Quixote, "and be brief in your speeches, for none of them is enjoyable if it is long."
"I say, then, sir," answered Sancho, "that these last few days I've been thinking how little there is to be won or gained by going about looking for these adventures your worship looks for in these wildernesses and crossroads, where, even when the most dangerous ones are won and finished, there's nobody to see them or hear about them. And so they'll have to stay in everlasting silence, to the harm of your worship's purpose and of what they deserve. And so it seems to me it would be better — saving your worship's better judgement — if we went to serve some emperor, or some other great prince who has a war on, in whose service your worship could show the valour of his person, his great strength and his greater understanding. Which being seen by the lord we served, he'd be bound to reward us, each according to his deserts; and there'd be no lack of somebody there to put your worship's exploits into writing, for a lasting memorial. Of mine I say nothing, since they're not to go outside the limits proper to a squire; though I can tell you that if it's the custom in chivalry to write down squires' exploits, I don't think mine will be left out between the lines."
"You do not speak badly, Sancho," answered Don Quixote; "but before it comes to that, it is necessary to go about the world, as it were on probation, looking for adventures, so that by finishing some of them a man may acquire such a name and fame that when he comes to the court of some great monarch the knight is already known by his deeds. And so that hardly will the boys have seen him come in at the city gate before they will all follow and surround him, shouting and saying, 'This is the Knight of the Sun,' or of the Serpent, or of whatever other emblem it was under which he had performed great exploits. 'This,' they will say, 'is the man who defeated in single combat the huge giant Brocabruno of the Great Strength; the man who freed the Great Mameluke of Persia from the long enchantment he had been under for almost nine hundred years.'
"And so, from mouth to mouth, they will go proclaiming your deeds; and then, at the uproar of the boys and the rest of the people, the king of that kingdom will come to the windows of his royal palace, and as soon as he sees the knight and recognises him by his arms or by the device on his shield, he cannot help saying, 'Come now! Let all my knights who are in my court go out to receive the flower of chivalry, who is arriving!' At which command they will all go out, and the king will come as far as the middle of the staircase and embrace him very closely and give him the kiss of peace on the cheek; and then he will lead him by the hand to the lady queen's apartment, where the knight will find her with her daughter the princess, who is bound to be one of the loveliest and most perfect maidens that could be found, with a great deal of trouble, over a great part of the discovered earth.
"After this, immediately and directly, it will come about that she sets her eyes on the knight and he on hers, and each will seem to the other something more divine than human; and without knowing how or why, they will be left caught and tangled in the intricate net of love, and in great distress in their hearts at not knowing how they are to speak to one another and reveal their longings and their feelings.
"From there they will take him, no doubt, to some room of the palace, richly furnished, where, having taken his armour off him, they will bring him a rich scarlet cloak to cover himself with; and if he looked well in armour, he is bound to look as well and better in his doublet. Night coming on, he will have supper with the king, the queen and the princess, where he will never take his eyes off her, looking at her by stealth from the people around; and she will do the same with the same shrewdness, because, as I have said, she is a very discerning maiden.
"The tables will be cleared, and all at once there will come in at the door of the hall an ugly little dwarf with a beautiful lady, who comes behind the dwarf between two giants, with a certain adventure devised by a most ancient sage, and whoever finishes it will be held to be the best knight in the world. The king will then command that all those present should try it, and none of them will bring it to a finish and a conclusion but the guest knight, greatly to the profit of his fame — at which the princess will be perfectly delighted, and will count herself contented and repaid besides for having placed and settled her thoughts in so high a quarter.
"And the good of it is that this king, or prince, or whatever he is, has a very hard-fought war on with another as powerful as himself; and the guest knight asks him, after some days he has been at his court, for leave to go and serve him in that war. The king will give it him with a very good will, and the knight will kiss his hands courteously for the favour he does him.
"And that night he will take leave of his lady the princess through the grille of a garden that gives onto the room where she sleeps, through which he had already spoken to her many other times, with a lady-in-waiting the princess trusted a great deal as go-between and party to it all. He will sigh, she will faint, the lady will fetch water, she will be very distressed because morning is coming and she would not have them discovered, for her mistress's honour's sake. In the end the princess will come to herself and give her white hands through the grille to the knight, who will kiss them a thousand times over and bathe them in tears. It will be settled between the two of them how they are to let each other know their good or bad fortunes, and the princess will beg him to stay away as little as he can; he will promise it her with many oaths; he kisses her hands again and takes his leave with such feeling that he comes near to ending his life.
"He goes from there to his room, throws himself on his bed, cannot sleep for the pain of the parting, gets up very early in the morning, goes to take leave of the king and the queen and the princess. He is told, after taking leave of the two of them, that the lady princess is unwell and cannot receive a visit; the knight thinks it is from grief at his going, his heart is pierced through, and he comes near to giving an open sign of his pain. The go-between lady is standing there and has to notice it all, and goes off to tell her mistress, who receives her with tears and tells her that one of the greatest griefs she has is not knowing who her knight is, and whether or not he is of a line of kings. The lady assures her that so much courtesy, breeding and valour as her knight's could not be contained except in a royal and lofty subject; the poor girl comforts herself with this; she does her best to be comforted, so as not to give her parents a bad impression of her; and at the end of two days she comes out in public.
"The knight has gone by now. He fights in the war, defeats the king's enemy, wins many cities, triumphs in many battles, comes back to court, sees his lady in the usual place, and it is arranged that he shall ask her father for her as his wife in payment for his services. The king will not give her to him, because he does not know who he is; but for all that, either by carrying her off or by some other means whatever, the princess comes to be his wife and her father comes to count it a great piece of luck, because it turns out on inquiry that the knight is the son of a valorous king of some kingdom or other — I believe it cannot be on the map. The father dies, the princess inherits, the knight is king in two words. Here comes in at once the doing of favours to his squire and to all those who helped him rise to so high an estate: he marries his squire to a lady-in-waiting of the princess's, who will no doubt be the one who was the go-between in his love affair, and who is the daughter of a very great duke."
"That's what I ask, and fair play," said Sancho. "That's what I'm holding to, because the whole of it is bound to happen to your worship to the letter, now you're calling yourself the Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance."
"Do not doubt it, Sancho," replied Don Quixote; "because by the same road and the same steps I have described, knights errant rise and have risen to be kings and emperors. All that remains now is to look about and see which king of the Christians or of the pagans has a war on and has a beautiful daughter. But there will be time to think of this, since, as I have told you, one must first win fame elsewhere before going to court.
"There is another thing I lack, too. Supposing a king is found with a war and a beautiful daughter, and that I have won incredible fame throughout the universe, I do not see how it could be found that I am of a line of kings, or at least second cousin to an emperor; because the king will not give me his daughter to wife unless he is first thoroughly satisfied on this, however much my famous deeds may deserve it. So through this defect I am afraid of losing what my arm has well deserved. It is quite true that I am a gentleman of a known house, holding property in my own right and entitled to the five-hundred-sueldo indemnity; and it might be that the sage who writes my history would trace out my kindred and descent in such a way that he would find me the fifth or sixth in descent from a king.
"Because I would have you know, Sancho, that there are two kinds of lineage in the world. Some trace and bring down their descent from princes and monarchs, whom time has little by little undone, and they have finished in a point like a pyramid stood upside down. Others had their beginning in low people and go climbing step by step until they come to be great lords. So that the difference is that some were what they are no longer, and others are what they were not. And I might be one of these — that after inquiry my beginning would prove to have been great and famous, with which the king my father-in-law-to-be ought to be satisfied. And if not, the princess is bound to love me in such a way that in spite of her father, even if she knew clearly that I was the son of a water-carrier, she will take me for her lord and her husband. And if not, here comes in carrying her off and taking her wherever I like best; because time or death will put an end to her parents' anger."
"Here comes in nicely too," said Sancho, "what some unscrupulous people say: 'Don't ask as a favour what you can take by force.' Though it fits better to say: 'A leap over the hedge is worth more than good men's prayers.' I say it because if the lord king, your worship's father-in-law, won't be brought round to handing over my lady the princess, there's nothing for it, as your worship says, but to carry her off and spirit her away. But the trouble is that until peace is made and the kingdom is enjoyed in quiet, the poor squire may go hungry as far as the favours are concerned — unless the go-between lady, who's to be his wife, comes away with the princess and he shares his bad luck with her until heaven ordains otherwise; because I suppose his master could give her to him for his lawful wife straight away."
"There is nobody to prevent that," said Don Quixote.
"Well, if that's how it is," answered Sancho, "there's nothing for it but to commend ourselves to God and let luck run wherever it can best direct things."
"May God do it," answered Don Quixote, "as I desire and as you, Sancho, need. And let him be mean who thinks himself mean."
"Let it be so, in God's name," said Sancho, "for I'm an Old Christian, and that's enough for me to be a count with."
"It is more than enough," said Don Quixote; "and even if you were not, it would make no difference, because, since I shall be king, I can very well give you nobility without your buying it or serving me with anything for it. Because once I make you a count, there you are a gentleman, and let them say what they like — for upon my word they will have to call you 'your lordship', however much it annoys them."
"And I'll be bound I'd know how to carry off the tittle!" said Sancho.
"Title you should say, not tittle," said his master.
"So be it," answered Sancho Panza. "I say I'd know how to manage it well enough; because upon my life, I was beadle of a confraternity once, and the beadle's robes sat so well on me that everybody said I had the presence to be steward of the same confraternity. So what will it be when I put a duke's gown on my back, or dress myself in gold and pearls like a foreign count? It's my belief they'll come a hundred leagues to see me."
"You will look well," said Don Quixote, "but it will be necessary for you to shave your beard often; because, thick, tangled and untidy as you keep it, if you do not take a razor to it every two days at the least, they will see what you are from a musket shot away."
"What is there to it," said Sancho, "except to take a barber and keep him on wages in the house? And if it's necessary I'll even make him walk behind me like a grandee's master of horse."
"But how do you know," asked Don Quixote, "that grandees have their masters of horse walk behind them?"
"I'll tell you," answered Sancho. "Some years ago I spent a month at court, and there I saw a very small gentleman walking about, who they said was a very great one, with a man following him on horseback at every turn he took, so that he looked like nothing so much as his tail. I asked why that man didn't come alongside the other one instead of always walking behind him. They answered me that he was his master of horse, and that it was the custom of grandees to have such men behind them. I've known it so well ever since that I've never forgotten it."
"I say you are right," said Don Quixote, "and that in the same way you may have your barber behind you. Customs did not all come in together, nor were they invented all at once, and you may be the first count to have his barber behind him. And in fact shaving a man is a matter of greater trust than saddling a horse."
"Let the business of the barber be my responsibility," said Sancho, "and let your worship's be to try to come to be king and to make me a count."
"So it shall be," answered Don Quixote.
And raising his eyes, he saw what will be told in the following chapter.
Cide Hamete Benengeli, Arab author and Manchegan, relates in this most grave, high-sounding, minute, sweet and imagined history that after the words related at the end of chapter twenty-one had passed between the famous Don Quixote of La Mancha and Sancho Panza his squire, Don Quixote raised his eyes and saw coming along the road he was on some twelve men on foot, strung like beads by the neck on a great iron chain, and all of them with manacles on their hands. There were also two men on horseback and two on foot with them: those on horseback with wheel-lock muskets, and those on foot with javelins and swords. And as soon as Sancho Panza saw them he said:
"That's a chain of galley slaves, people forced by the king, on their way to the galleys."
"What do you mean, forced?" asked Don Quixote. "Is it possible that the king uses force on anybody?"
"I don't say that," answered Sancho, "but that they're people who for their crimes have been condemned to serve the king in the galleys by force."
"In short," replied Don Quixote, "however it may be, these people are being taken by force and not of their own will."
"That's so," said Sancho.
"Then in that case," said his master, "here comes in the exercise of my office: to undo violence and to help and succour the wretched."
"Your worship should note," said Sancho, "that justice, which is the king himself, is not using force or doing injury to people of this kind, but punishing them for their crimes."
At this the chain of galley slaves came up, and Don Quixote in very courteous terms asked those who were guarding them to be good enough to inform him and tell him the reason, or reasons, why they were taking these people along in that fashion. One of the mounted guards answered that they were galley slaves, people belonging to His Majesty on their way to the galleys, and that there was nothing more to say, nor did he have anything more to know.
"For all that," replied Don Quixote, "I should like to learn from each one of them in particular the cause of his misfortune."
He added to these such other and such polite terms, to move them to tell him what he wanted, that the other mounted guard said to him:
"Although we have the register and the certificate of each of these unfortunates' sentences here with us, this is no time to stop and get them out and read them. Your worship may go up and ask the men themselves, and they will tell you if they choose — and choose they will, because they are people who take pleasure in doing and telling knaveries."
With this permission, which Don Quixote would have taken even if it had not been given him, he went up to the chain and asked the first man for what sins he was going along in so bad a fashion. He answered that it was for being in love that he was going along in that way.
"For that and no more?" replied Don Quixote. "Why, if they send men to the galleys for being in love, I might have been rowing in them long ago."
"The love isn't the kind your worship thinks," said the galley slave. "Mine was that I was so fond of a washing basket crammed with white linen that I hugged it to me so tightly that if the law hadn't taken it off me by force, I wouldn't have let go of it of my own will even now. It was caught in the act, there was no room for torture, the case was concluded, they fitted out my shoulders with a hundred, and three straight in the gurapas by way of an extra, and the job was done."
"What are gurapas?" asked Don Quixote.
"Gurapas are galleys," answered the galley slave.
He was a young fellow of about twenty-four, and he said he was from Piedrahíta. Don Quixote asked the same of the second, who did not answer a word, so downcast and gloomy did he look; but the first answered for him, and said:
"This one, sir, is going as a canary — I mean, as a musician and a singer."
"How is that?" repeated Don Quixote. "Do musicians and singers go to the galleys too?"
"Yes, sir," answered the galley slave, "for there's nothing worse than singing under pressure."
"On the contrary," said Don Quixote, "I have heard it said that he who sings frightens away his troubles."
"Here it's the other way about," said the galley slave: "he who sings once weeps for the rest of his life."
"I do not understand it," said Don Quixote.
But one of the guards said to him:
"Sir knight, 'singing under pressure' means, among these unholy people, confessing under torture. They gave this sinner the torture and he confessed his crime, which was being a rustler, that is a thief of livestock; and because he confessed they sentenced him to six years in the galleys, besides the two hundred lashes he is already carrying on his back. And he goes along thoughtful and sad all the time, because the other thieves who stayed behind and the ones who are here abuse him and grind him down and make a mock of him and think nothing of him, because he confessed and hadn't the courage to say no. Because they say that a no has as many letters in it as a yes, and that a criminal is lucky enough when his life or his death lies on his own tongue and not on the witnesses and the evidence; and to my mind they are not very far off the road."
"And that is how I understand it too," answered Don Quixote.
Passing on to the third, he asked what he had asked the others; who answered at once and with a great deal of coolness, and said:
"I'm going for five years to the lady gurapas for being short of ten ducats."
"I would give twenty with a very good will," said Don Quixote, "to get you out of that trouble."
"That strikes me," answered the galley slave, "like a man who has money in the middle of the ocean and is dying of hunger with nowhere to buy what he needs. I say it because if I'd had at the right moment those twenty ducats your worship is offering me now, I'd have greased the clerk's quill with them and sharpened up the attorney's wits, in such a way that today I'd have found myself in the middle of the Zocodover square in Toledo and not on this road, leashed like a greyhound. But God is great: patience, and enough said."
Don Quixote passed on to the fourth, a man with a venerable face and a white beard that came down below his chest; who, on hearing himself asked the reason he was there, began to cry and did not answer a word. But the fifth condemned man served him as a tongue, and said:
"This honourable man is going for four years to the galleys, after having paraded the usual streets dressed up in state and on horseback."
"That is," said Sancho Panza, "as it seems to me, having been put to public shame."
"That's it," replied the galley slave; "and the offence they gave him this penalty for is having been a broker of ears — and of the whole body too. What I mean, in fact, is that this gentleman is going as a pimp, and for likewise having his touch and trimming of sorcery."
"If they had not added that touch and trimming," said Don Quixote, "then for pure pimping alone he would not deserve to go and row in the galleys, but to command them and be their admiral. For the office of pimp is not just anything: it is an office for people of discernment and absolutely necessary in a well-ordered state, and it ought to be practised only by people very well born. And indeed there ought to be an inspector and examiner of them, as there is of the other trades, with a fixed and known number of them, like the brokers on the exchange. And in this way a great many evils would be avoided that are caused by this office and occupation being in the hands of stupid people of little understanding — such as women of small account, pages and rascals of few years and little experience, who at the most necessary moment, when it is a question of laying a plan that matters, let the crumbs freeze between the mouth and the hand and do not know which is their right hand.
"I should like to go further and give the reasons why it is proper to make a careful choice of those who are to hold so necessary an office in the state, but this is not the right place for it; some day I shall tell it to somebody who can see to it and put it right. I only say now that the pain caused me by seeing these white hairs and this venerable face in such distress, for pimping, has been taken away by the addition of his being a sorcerer — although I know very well that there are no spells in the world that can move or force the will, as some simple people think. Our will is free, and there is no herb or enchantment that can force it. What certain simple women and certain knavish tricksters generally do is to make up some mixtures and poisons that drive men mad, giving people to understand that they have the power to make them love — which is, as I say, an impossibility, to force the will."
"That's the truth," said the good old man; "and in fact, sir, in the matter of sorcery I was not to blame; in the matter of pimping I couldn't deny it. But I never thought I was doing any harm by it: my whole intention was that everybody should enjoy themselves and live in peace and quiet, without quarrels or troubles. But this good intention has been no use at all to me in keeping me from going where I don't expect to come back from, considering the weight of my years and a trouble with my water that doesn't let me rest for a moment."
And here he went back to his weeping as before; and Sancho felt so much pity for him that he took a four-real piece out of his shirt and gave it to him as alms.
Don Quixote went on and asked another his offence, who answered with no less, but with a great deal more, style than the last one:
"I'm here because I carried my games too far with two first cousins of mine, and with two other sisters who weren't mine. In the end I carried the game so far with all of them that the result of it was the family growing so tangled that there's no devil can sort it out. Everything was proved against me, there was no favour to be had, I had no money, I was on the point of losing my gullet, they sentenced me to six years in the galleys, and I agreed to it: it's the punishment for my fault. I'm young, let life last, for with it everything can be got. If your worship, sir knight, has anything to relieve us poor wretches with, God will repay you in heaven, and we on earth will take care to pray to God in our prayers for your worship's life and health, and may it be as long and as good as your fine appearance deserves."
This one was in a student's dress, and one of the guards said he was a great talker and a very fine Latinist.
Behind all these came a man of very good appearance, about thirty years old, except that when he looked at you he squinted one eye a little into the other. He was tied differently from the rest, because he had a chain on his leg so long that it wound right round his body, and two rings at his throat, one on the chain and the other one of the kind they call a keep-friend or a foot-friend, from which two irons came down to his waist, and to these were fastened two manacles holding his hands, shut with a heavy padlock; so that he could not raise his hands to his mouth, nor lower his head to reach his hands.
Don Quixote asked why this man was going along with so many more irons than the others. The guard answered him that it was because this one man had more crimes on him than all the rest put together, and that he was so daring and such a great scoundrel that even taking him along in that fashion they were not safe from him, but were afraid he would escape from them.
"What crimes can he have," said Don Quixote, "if they have deserved no greater penalty than being sent to the galleys?"
"He is going for ten years," replied the guard, "which is the same as civil death. There is no need to know more than that this good man is the famous Ginés de Pasamonte, who by another name is called Ginesillo de Parapilla."
"Señor commissary," said the galley slave then, "go gently, and let us not start sorting out names and surnames now. Ginés is my name and not Ginesillo, and Pasamonte is my family and not Parapilla, as your worship says. And let everybody take a turn around himself, and he will not be doing badly."
"Speak with less swagger, my lord thief above the ordinary size," replied the commissary, "unless you want me to shut you up in a way you won't like."
"It is plain to see," answered the galley slave, "that a man goes along as God is pleased to have him; but one day somebody will find out whether my name is Ginesillo de Parapilla or not."
"Well, isn't that what they call you, you liar?" said the guard.
"They do," answered Ginés, "but I'll see to it that they don't call me it — or I'd tear them out somewhere I'm saying between my teeth. Sir knight, if you have anything to give us, give it us now and go with God; you're becoming a nuisance with all this wanting to know about other people's lives. And if you want to know mine, know that I am Ginés de Pasamonte, whose life is written by these thumbs."
"He speaks the truth," said the commissary: "he has written his own history himself, and there is nothing to touch it, and he leaves the book in pawn in the prison for two hundred reals."
"And I mean to redeem it," said Ginés, "even if it were pledged for two hundred ducats."
"Is it as good as that?" said Don Quixote.
"It is so good," answered Ginés, "that it's a bad year for Lazarillo de Tormes and for everything of that kind that has been written or ever will be. What I can tell your worship is that it deals in truths, and truths so fine and so entertaining that no lies can equal them."
"And what is the book called?" asked Don Quixote.
"The Life of Ginés de Pasamonte," answered the man himself.
"And is it finished?" asked Don Quixote.
"How can it be finished," he answered, "when my life isn't finished yet? What is written is from my birth up to the moment they sent me to the galleys this last time."
"So you have been in them before?" said Don Quixote.
"In the service of God and the king I was in them another four years, and I know already what the ship's biscuit and the whip taste like," answered Ginés. "And it doesn't grieve me much to be going to them, because there I'll have the chance to finish my book. I've a great many things left to say, and in the galleys of Spain there's more leisure than a man needs — though I don't need much more for what I have to write, since I know it by heart."
"You seem clever," said Don Quixote.
"And unlucky," answered Ginés, "because misfortunes always persecute good wits."
"They persecute scoundrels," said the commissary.
"I have told you already, Señor commissary," answered Pasamonte, "to go gently. Those gentlemen didn't give you that staff to ill-treat us poor wretches who are going along here, but to guide us and take us where His Majesty commands. If not — by the life of — enough! It might be that one day the stains that were made at the inn will come out in the wash. And let everybody hold his tongue, and live well and speak better, and let us get on our way, for this is a great deal too much amusement."
The commissary raised his staff high to strike Pasamonte in answer to his threats; but Don Quixote put himself in between and begged him not to ill-treat the man, since it was not much that a man whose hands were tied so tightly should have his tongue a little loose. And turning to all those on the chain, he said:
"From everything you have told me, dearest brothers, I have gathered clearly that although they have punished you for your faults, the penalties you are going to suffer give you very little pleasure, and that you are going to them very unwillingly and very much against your own will; and that it might be that the small courage that man had under torture, and this one's lack of money, and the other's lack of influence, and finally the judge's crooked judgement, may have been the cause of your ruin and of your not having got the justice that was on your side.
"All of which presents itself to my mind in such a way that it is telling me, persuading me and even forcing me to show in your case the purpose for which heaven threw me into the world and made me profess in it the order of chivalry that I profess, and the vow I made in it to favour the needy and those oppressed by the powerful. But because I know that one part of prudence is that what can be done by fair means should not be done by foul, I want to beg these gentlemen the guards and the commissary to be good enough to untie you and let you go in peace; there will be no lack of others to serve the king on better occasions. For it seems to me a hard case to make slaves of those whom God and nature made free.
"What is more, gentlemen guards," Don Quixote added, "these poor men have committed nothing against you. Let each of them settle it with his own sin. There is a God in heaven who does not neglect to punish the wicked or to reward the good, and it is not right that honourable men should be executioners of other men when nothing in it concerns them. I ask this with this gentleness and calm, so that I may have something to thank you for if you carry it out; and if you will not do it willingly, this lance and this sword, with the valour of my arm, will make you do it by force."
"A pretty piece of foolery!" answered the commissary. "That's a fine joke he has come out with after all this time! He wants us to let the king's convicts go, as though we had authority to release them or he had any to order us to! Your worship had better get on your way, sir, and good luck to you, and straighten that basin you have on your head, and don't go looking for three feet on a cat."
"You are the cat, and the rat, and the rascal!" answered Don Quixote.
And saying and doing, he charged him so suddenly that, without giving him time to put himself on his guard, he brought him down on the ground badly wounded by a thrust of the lance; and it turned out well for him, because this was the one with the musket. The other guards were astonished and taken aback by the unlooked-for event; but recovering themselves, those on horseback put their hands to their swords and those on foot to their javelins and charged Don Quixote, who waited for them with great calm.
And no doubt it would have gone badly for him if the galley slaves, seeing the chance that offered itself of getting their liberty, had not gone after it and set about breaking the chain they were strung on. The confusion was such that the guards — now running to the galley slaves, who were getting themselves loose, now attacking Don Quixote, who was attacking them — did nothing of any use.
Sancho for his part helped to free Ginés de Pasamonte, who was the first to leap out into the open free and unencumbered; and, charging at the fallen commissary, he took his sword and his musket from him, with which, aiming at one and marking down another without ever firing it, he left not a guard in the whole field, because they all fled — as much from Pasamonte's musket as from the many stones the loosed galley slaves were throwing at them.
Sancho was much saddened by this business, because it came into his mind that the men who were running away were bound to report the affair to the Holy Brotherhood, who would come out with the alarm bell ringing to look for the offenders. And he said so to his master, and begged him that they should get away from there at once and take cover in the mountains, which were near.
"That is all very well," said Don Quixote, "but I know what it is proper to do now."
And calling all the galley slaves, who were milling about in an uproar and had stripped the commissary down to the skin, they all gathered round him to hear what he would order them, and he said to them:
"It is the mark of well-born people to be grateful for the benefits they receive, and one of the sins that most offends God is ingratitude. I say it because you have already seen, gentlemen, by plain experience, the benefit you have received from me. In payment for it I should like — and it is my will — that, loaded with that chain I took off your necks, you should set out at once and go to the city of El Toboso, and there present yourselves before the lady Dulcinea of El Toboso and tell her that her knight, he of the Sorrowful Countenance, sends her his greetings, and give her a point-by-point account of everything that has taken place in this famous adventure, up to your being set at the liberty you wanted. And this done, you may go wherever you like and good luck go with you."
Ginés de Pasamonte answered for them all, and said:
"What your worship orders us, sir and our deliverer, is impossible with every kind of impossibility to carry out; because we can't go along the roads together, but only singly and separately, each one his own way, trying to get into the bowels of the earth so as not to be found by the Holy Brotherhood, who without any doubt are bound to come out looking for us. What your worship can do, and it's right that you should, is to change that service and toll to the lady Dulcinea of El Toboso into a certain quantity of Hail Marys and Creeds, which we'll say for your worship's intention; and that's a thing that can be done by night and by day, running away or resting, in peace or in war. But to think that we're going back now to the fleshpots of Egypt — I mean, to take up our chain and set out on the road to El Toboso — is to think that it's night now when it isn't yet ten in the morning, and it's asking us for that the way you'd ask an elm tree for pears."
"Then I swear by all that's holy," said Don Quixote, in a temper by now, "Don son of a whore, Don Ginesillo de Paropillo, or whatever you call yourself, that you shall go alone, tail between your legs, with the whole chain on your back!"
Pasamonte, who was not in the least long-suffering, and who by now had made out that Don Quixote was not very sane — since he had committed such an absurdity as wanting to give them their freedom — seeing himself treated in that fashion, winked at his companions; and drawing off to one side, they began to rain such a quantity of stones on Don Quixote that he could not get his hands going fast enough to cover himself with his buckler, and poor Rocinante took no more notice of the spur than if he had been made of bronze. Sancho got behind his ass and with him defended himself from the cloud and hailstorm that was raining down on the pair of them.
Don Quixote could not shield himself so well but that any number of pebbles hit him about the body, with such force that they brought him down on the ground; and he had hardly fallen when the student was on top of him and took the basin off his head and gave him three or four blows with it on the back and as many more on the ground, with which he smashed it to pieces. They took off him a jerkin he was wearing over his armour, and they would have taken his stockings if the greaves had not got in the way. They took Sancho's coat, and leaving him stripped to his shirt and sharing out among themselves the rest of the spoils of the battle, they each went their own way, with more care about escaping the Brotherhood they were afraid of than about loading themselves with the chain and going to present themselves before the lady Dulcinea of El Toboso.
The donkey and Rocinante, Sancho and Don Quixote were left alone: the donkey with his head down and thoughtful, shaking his ears every now and then, thinking the storm of stones that was still troubling his ears had not stopped; Rocinante stretched out beside his master, for he had come down to the ground too from another stone; Sancho in his shirt and afraid of the Holy Brotherhood; and Don Quixote in the deepest gloom at finding himself so badly used by the very men he had done so much good to.
Finding himself so badly used, Don Quixote said to his squire:
"I have always heard it said, Sancho, that doing good to low fellows is throwing water into the sea. If I had believed what you told me, I should have avoided this trouble; but it is done now: patience, and let it be a lesson from here on."
"Your worship will learn that lesson," answered Sancho, "about as much as I'm a Turk. But since you say that if you had believed me you'd have avoided this damage, believe me now and you'll avoid a greater one; because I can tell you that with the Holy Brotherhood there's no using chivalry — they don't give two maravedis for all the knights errant there are. And I tell you I fancy I can hear their arrows humming past my ears already."
"You are a coward by nature, Sancho," said Don Quixote; "but so that you shall not say I am obstinate and never do what you advise, this once I mean to take your advice and get away from the fury you are so afraid of. But it must be on one condition: that never, in life or in death, are you to tell anybody that I withdrew and got away from this danger out of fear, but only to satisfy your entreaties. And if you say anything else, you will be lying in it; and from now for then, and from then for now, I give you the lie, and say that you lie and will lie every time you think it or say it. And do not argue with me any more; because at the mere thought of my withdrawing and retiring from any danger — especially this one, which seems to carry some sort of a hint of a shadow of fear about it — I am ready to stay here and wait, alone, not only for the Holy Brotherhood you speak of and are afraid of, but for the brothers of the twelve tribes of Israel, and the seven Maccabees, and Castor and Pollux, and all the brothers and brotherhoods there are in the world."
"Sir," answered Sancho, "retreating isn't running away, and waiting isn't good sense when the danger is bigger than the hope; and it's for wise men to keep themselves today for tomorrow and not stake everything on one day. And let me tell you that although I'm a clumsy peasant, I still understand something about what they call good management. So don't be sorry for having taken my advice: get up on Rocinante if you can — and if you can't, I'll help you — and follow me, for my wits tell me we have more need of our feet now than of our hands."
Don Quixote mounted without answering him another word; and with Sancho leading the way on his ass, they went into one side of the Sierra Morena, which was close by. Sancho meant to cross the whole of it and come out at El Viso or Almodóvar del Campo, and hide for some days in those wild places so as not to be found if the Brotherhood came looking for them. What encouraged him in this was having seen that the store of provisions carried on his ass had come free out of the fight with the galley slaves — a thing he judged a miracle, considering what the galley slaves carried off and searched for.
As soon as Don Quixote got into those mountains his heart lifted, those places seeming to him well suited for the adventures he was looking for. There came back into his memory the marvellous things that had happened to knights errant in solitudes and wild places of that kind. He rode along thinking about all this, so absorbed and carried away by it that he thought of nothing else. Nor did Sancho have any other care — once it seemed to him that they were travelling somewhere safe — than to satisfy his stomach with what was left of the clerical spoils. And so he went along behind his master, sitting side-saddle on his donkey, taking things out of a sack and stowing them in his belly; and he would not have given a farthing to run across another adventure while he was going along like that.
At this he raised his eyes and saw that his master had stopped and was trying with the point of his pike to lift some bundle or other that was lying on the ground; so he hurried up to help him if it were needed. And when he arrived it was just as his master was raising on the point of his pike a saddle cushion with a portmanteau attached to it, half rotten, or altogether rotten and falling apart; but it weighed so much that it was necessary for Sancho to get down to pick them up, and his master told him to see what was in the portmanteau.
Sancho did it very smartly; and although the portmanteau was fastened with a chain and its padlock, through the torn and rotted parts of it he could see what was inside, which was four shirts of fine Holland linen and other linen things, no less remarkable than clean; and in a handkerchief he found a good little pile of gold crowns. And as soon as he saw them he said:
"Blessed be all heaven, that has thrown us an adventure with some profit in it!"
And searching further, he found a little pocket-book, richly bound. Don Quixote asked for this, and told him to keep the money and take it for himself. Sancho kissed his hands for the favour, and stripping the bag of its linen, he put it into the provisions sack. All of which Don Quixote saw, and said:
"It seems to me, Sancho — and it is not possible that it should be anything else — that some traveller who had lost his way must have passed through these mountains, and been set on by robbers and killed, and that they brought him to bury him in this out-of-the-way place."
"That can't be," answered Sancho, "because if they were robbers they wouldn't have left this money here."
"You are right," said Don Quixote; "and so I cannot guess or make out what this can be. But wait: we shall see whether there is anything written in this little pocket-book by which we can pick up the trail and come to know what we want."
He opened it, and the first thing he found written in it, as in a rough draft though in a very good hand, was a sonnet; which, reading it aloud so that Sancho should hear it too, he found went like this:
Either Love lacks understanding, or he has cruelty to spare, or my pain is not equal to the cause that condemns me to the harshest kind of torment.
But if Love is a god, it follows that he is ignorant of nothing; and it is very good reasoning that a god should not be cruel. Then who ordains the terrible grief that I adore and feel?
If I say it is you, Fili, I am wrong; so much evil does not fit inside so much good, nor does this ruin come to me from heaven.
I shall have to die soon, which is the surest thing; for when the cause of the trouble is not known, it is a miracle to hit on the medicine.
"There's nothing to be learnt from that ballad," said Sancho, "unless we can ride that filly there to the end of the road."
"What filly is here?" said Don Quixote.
"It seemed to me," said Sancho, "that your worship named a filly there."
"I said Fili, not filly," answered Don Quixote; "and this, without any doubt, is the name of the lady the author of this sonnet is complaining about. And upon my word he must be a reasonable poet, or I know little of the art."
"So your worship understands verses as well?" said Sancho.
"And more than you think," answered Don Quixote; "and you shall see it when you carry a letter, written in verse from top to bottom, to my lady Dulcinea of El Toboso. Because I want you to know, Sancho, that all, or most, of the knights errant of the past age were great versifiers and great musicians; for these two accomplishments, or graces rather, go with wandering lovers. It is true that the verses of the knights of the past have more spirit than polish in them."
"Read some more, your worship," said Sancho; "you'll find something to satisfy us."
Don Quixote turned the page and said:
"This is prose, and it looks like a letter."
"A letter to be sent, sir?" asked Sancho.
"By the beginning it looks like nothing but a love letter," answered Don Quixote.
"Then read it out loud, your worship," said Sancho, "for I greatly enjoy these matters of love."
"With pleasure," said Don Quixote.
And reading it aloud, as Sancho had asked him to, he found it went like this:
Your false promise and my certain misfortune are carrying me to a place from which the news of my death will come back to your ears sooner than the words of my complaints. You threw me over, ungrateful woman, for a man who has more, not for a man who is worth more, than I am; but if virtue were a wealth that people valued, I should not envy other men's good fortune or weep for my own bad. What your beauty raised up, your actions have pulled down: by the one I understood you were an angel, and by the others I know you are a woman. Stay in peace, you who caused my war, and may heaven grant that your husband's deceits stay hidden for ever, so that you may not be left repenting what you did and I may not take a revenge I do not want.
Having finished reading the letter, Don Quixote said:
"Less can be got out of this than out of the verses — except that whoever wrote it is some rejected lover."
And leafing through almost the whole of the little book, he found other verses and letters, some of which he could read and some not; but what all of them contained was complaints, laments, mistrust, pleasures and displeasures, favours and disdains, some of them celebrated and others wept over.
While Don Quixote was going through the book, Sancho was going through the portmanteau, not leaving a corner of the whole of it, nor of the cushion, that he did not search, examine and investigate; nor a seam that he did not unpick, nor a tuft of wool that he did not pull apart, so that nothing should be left for want of diligence or through carelessness — such an appetite had the crowns he had found awakened in him, and there were more than a hundred of them. And although he found nothing more than what he had found, he counted the flights in the blanket, the vomiting of the brew, the blessings of the staves, the carrier's punches, the loss of the saddlebags, the theft of his coat and all the hunger, thirst and weariness he had gone through in his good master's service as well spent, since it seemed to him he was more than very well paid by the favour he had received in being given what they had found.
The Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance was left with a great desire to know who the owner of the portmanteau might be, guessing from the sonnet and the letter, from the gold money and from the very good shirts, that he must be some person of standing who was in love, and whom his lady's disdain and bad treatment must have driven to some desperate extremity. But as no living person appeared anywhere in that uninhabitable and rugged place from whom he could get information, he thought of nothing but going on, taking no other road than the one Rocinante wanted, which was wherever he could get along, always with the notion that some strange adventure could not fail to turn up among those thickets.
Going along, then, with this thought, he saw a man leaping over the top of a little hill that came into view in front of him, going from crag to crag and from bush to bush with extraordinary agility. He seemed to be half naked, with a thick black beard, a great deal of tangled hair, bare feet and nothing at all on his legs; his thighs were covered by a pair of breeches, apparently of tawny velvet, but so torn to pieces that his flesh showed through in many places. He had nothing on his head; and although he went past with the quickness that has been described, the Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance saw and noted all these particulars. And although he tried, he could not follow him, because it was not given to Rocinante's weakness to go over that rough ground, especially as he was naturally short-stepped and phlegmatic.
Don Quixote immediately imagined that this was the owner of the cushion and the portmanteau, and he resolved in himself to look for him, even if he had to spend a year going about those mountains until he found him. And so he ordered Sancho to get down off the ass and cut across one side of the mountain, while he would go along the other, and it might be that with this effort they would come across the man who had got away from them in such a hurry.
"I can't do that," answered Sancho, "because the moment I get away from your worship, fear is on me at once and attacks me with a thousand kinds of frights and visions. And let what I say serve as notice that from now on I shall not move a finger's breadth from your presence."
"So be it," said the Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance; "and I am very glad you want to make use of my courage, which will not fail you even if the courage of your body fails. Come along after me now, little by little or however you can, and make lanterns of your eyes. We shall go round this little sierra; perhaps we shall come across the man we saw, who without any doubt is none other than the owner of our find."
To which Sancho answered:
"It would be a good deal better not to look for him; because if we find him and he happens to be the owner of the money, it's clear I'll have to give it back. So it would have been better, without going to this useless trouble, for me to keep it in good faith until its true owner turned up by some other way that was less inquisitive and less industrious — and perhaps it would have been at a time when I'd have spent it, and then the king would have let me off."
"You are mistaken there, Sancho," answered Don Quixote; "since we have already fallen into a suspicion of who the owner is, and have him almost in front of us, we are obliged to look for him and give it back to him. And even if we did not look for him, the strong suspicion we have that he is the man puts us as much in the wrong as if he were. So, friend Sancho, do not be distressed at looking for him, considering the distress it will take away from me if I find him."
And so he spurred Rocinante, and Sancho followed him with his usual donkey. And having gone round part of the mountain, they found in a stream, fallen and dead and half eaten by dogs and pecked at by crows, a mule with its saddle and bridle on — all of which confirmed them still further in the suspicion that the man who had run away was the owner of the mule and of the cushion.
While they were looking at it they heard a whistle like that of a shepherd looking after his flock, and all at once, on their left hand, there appeared a good number of goats, and behind them, on top of the mountain, appeared the goatherd who was looking after them, who was an old man. Don Quixote shouted to him and asked him to come down to where they were. He answered at the top of his voice, asking what had brought them to that place, which was seldom or never trodden except by the feet of goats or of wolves and other wild beasts that went about there. Sancho answered him that he should come down and they would give him a full account of everything. The goatherd came down, and on reaching where Don Quixote was, he said:
"I'll wager you're looking at the hired mule that's lying dead in that hollow. Well, upon my word, it's been in that spot six months now. Tell me: have you come across its owner anywhere about?"
"We have come across nobody," answered Don Quixote, "except a cushion and a little portmanteau that we found not far from this place."
"I found it too," answered the goatherd, "but I never wanted to pick it up or go near it, being afraid of some mishap and of their claiming it off me as stolen goods; for the devil is subtle, and things come up under a man's feet for him to trip and fall over without his knowing how or why."
"That's exactly what I say," answered Sancho: "I found it too, and I wouldn't go within a stone's throw of it. There I left it and there it stays as it was — I don't want a dog with a bell on it."
"Tell me, my good man," said Don Quixote, "do you know who the owner of these things may be?"
"What I can tell you," said the goatherd, "is that about six months ago, more or less, there arrived at a shepherds' hut some three leagues from this place a young man of fine build and bearing, riding that very mule that's lying dead there, and with the same cushion and portmanteau you say you found and didn't touch. He asked us which part of this sierra was the wildest and most hidden; we told him it was this one where we are now — and that's the truth of it, because if you go half a league further in, you may not manage to find your way out. And I'm amazed at how you've been able to get here, for there's no road or path that leads to this place.
"I say, then, that on hearing our answer the young man turned his reins and headed for the place we'd pointed out, leaving us all pleased with his fine appearance and astonished at his question and at the haste with which we saw him ride off and turn towards the sierra. And from then on we never saw him again, until some days later he came out on the road at one of our shepherds and, without saying anything to him, went up to him and gave him a great many punches and kicks, and then went to the flock's she-ass and took all the bread and cheese she was carrying; and this done, he went back into the sierra with extraordinary quickness.
"When some of us goatherds learnt of this, we went looking for him for nearly two days through the thickest part of this sierra, at the end of which we found him lodged in the hollow of a thick and mighty cork tree. He came out to us very meekly, his clothes torn by now and his face disfigured and burnt by the sun in such a way that we hardly knew him; except that his clothes, torn as they were, along with what we knew of them, gave us to understand he was the man we were looking for.
"He greeted us courteously, and in a few very well-chosen words he told us not to be surprised at seeing him going about in that way, because it was necessary for him so as to carry out a certain penance that had been laid on him for his many sins. We begged him to tell us who he was, but we could never get it out of him. We also asked him that when he needed food, which he could not do without, he'd tell us where we could find him, because we'd bring it to him with a great deal of love and care; and that if this too was not to his liking, he should at least come out and ask for it, and not take it from the shepherds. He thanked us for our offer, asked pardon for the past attacks, and promised to ask for it from then on for the love of God, without giving anybody any trouble. As for where he lived, he said he had no dwelling but whatever chance offered him wherever night caught him.
"And he ended his talk with such tender weeping that we who had listened to him would have been made of stone if we hadn't joined him in it, thinking how we'd seen him the first time and what we saw him now. Because, as I've said, he was a very fine, well-favoured young man, and in his courteous and well-ordered speech he showed himself to be well born and a very courtly person; for even though we who were listening to him were rustics, his breeding was such that it was enough to make itself known to rusticity itself.
"And in the middle of the best of his talk he stopped and went dumb; he fixed his eyes on the ground for a good while, during which we all stood still and in suspense, waiting to see what that trance would come to, with no small pity at seeing it. Because from the way he opened his eyes and stared fixedly at the ground for a long time without moving an eyelash, and other times shut them, pressing his lips together and arching his eyebrows, we easily saw that some fit of madness had come over him.
"But he soon gave us to understand that what we thought was true, because he leapt up in a great fury from the ground where he'd thrown himself and attacked the first man he found next to him with such spirit and rage that if we hadn't pulled him off him he'd have killed him with his fists and his teeth. And all the time he was doing it he was saying: 'Ah, treacherous Fernando! Here, here you shall pay me for the wrong you did me: these hands shall pull out your heart, where every wickedness together has its lodging and its lair, and above all fraud and deceit!' And to these he added other speeches, all aimed at speaking ill of this Fernando and branding him a traitor and a false man.
"We got him off, then, with no small trouble; and he, without saying another word, went away from us and dived into these thickets and brambles at a run, in such a way that he made it impossible for us to follow him. From this we conclude that his madness comes on him in fits, and that somebody called Fernando must have done him some bad turn, as heavy a one as the state it has brought him to shows. And all of this has been confirmed since then by the times — and there have been many of them — that he has come out on the road, sometimes to ask the shepherds to give him some of what they are carrying to eat, and other times to take it from them by force; because when he is in his fit of madness, even if the shepherds offer it him willingly, he won't accept it but takes it with his fists; and when he is in his senses he asks for it for the love of God, courteously and politely, and gives a great many thanks for it, and not without tears.
"And I tell you truly, gentlemen," the goatherd went on, "that yesterday I and four lads — two of them servants and two friends of mine — made up our minds to look for him until we find him; and once he is found, whether by force or willingly, we mean to take him to the town of Almodóvar, which is eight leagues from here, and there we'll cure him if his trouble has any cure, or we'll find out who he is when he's in his senses, and whether he has relations we can give news of his misfortune to.
"This, gentlemen, is what I can tell you about what you've asked me; and understand that the owner of the things you found is the same man you saw go past as fast as he was naked" — for Don Quixote had already told him how he had seen that man leaping across the sierra.
Don Quixote was astonished at what he had heard from the goatherd, and was left with an even greater desire to know who the unfortunate madman was; and he resolved in himself what he had already been thinking: to look for him over the whole mountain, without leaving a corner or a cave in it unexamined, until he found him. But luck did better than he thought or hoped, because at that very instant there appeared, out of a ravine in a mountainside that came out where they were, the young man he was looking for, who was talking to himself about things that could not be understood close to, let alone from a distance. His clothes were as they have been described, except that when he came near, Don Quixote saw that a jerkin torn to pieces that he was wearing was scented with amber; from which he finally understood that a person who wore clothes of that kind could not be of the lowest quality.
On reaching them, the young man greeted them in a harsh, unmusical voice, but with a great deal of courtesy. Don Quixote returned his greetings with no less politeness, and dismounting from Rocinante, with a fine bearing and grace he went to embrace him and held him a good while tightly in his arms, as though he had known him a long time. The other — whom we may call the Ragged One of the Sorry Countenance, as we call Don Quixote he of the Sorrowful — after letting himself be embraced, pushed him a little away from himself, and putting his hands on Don Quixote's shoulders, stood looking at him as though he wanted to see whether he knew him — no less astonished, perhaps, at seeing Don Quixote's figure, build and armour than Don Quixote was at seeing him. In short, the first to speak after the embracing was the Ragged One, and he said what will be told further on.
The history says that Don Quixote listened to the ragged Knight of the Sierra with the very closest attention; who, going on with his talk, said:
"Certainly, sir, whoever you may be — for I do not know you — I thank you for the signs of goodwill and the courtesy you have shown me. And I could wish I were in a condition to repay with more than the will the kindness you have shown me in the good welcome you have given me; but my luck will not give me anything else to answer the good turns that are done me with, except a good desire to repay them."
"Mine," answered Don Quixote, "are desires to serve you — so much so that I had made up my mind not to leave these mountains until I had found you and learnt from you whether some kind of remedy could be found for the grief that the strangeness of your life shows you to be suffering; and if it were necessary to look for it, to look for it with all possible diligence. And if your misfortune were of the kind that has its doors shut against every sort of consolation, I meant to help you weep and lament over it as best I could, since it is still a consolation in misfortunes to find somebody who is sorry for them.
"And if my good intention deserves to be repaid with any kind of courtesy, I beg you, sir, by the great courtesy I see is shut up in you — and at the same time I conjure you by the thing you have most loved or most love in this life — to tell me who you are and the cause that has brought you to live and die in these solitudes like a brute beast, since you dwell among them so far from your own self, as your dress and person show. And I swear," Don Quixote added, "by the order of chivalry I received, unworthy and sinner though I am, and by the profession of knight errant, that if in this you gratify me, sir, I will serve you with all the earnestness that being who I am obliges me to: either by remedying your misfortune, if it has a remedy, or by helping you to weep over it, as I have promised you."
The Knight of the Wood, hearing the Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance talk in this way, did nothing but look at him, and look at him again, and look him up and down once more; and after he had had a good look at him, he said:
"If you have anything to give me to eat, for the love of God give it me; and once I have eaten I will do everything I am told, in gratitude for the good wishes that have been shown me here."
Sancho at once got something out of his sack, and the goatherd out of his pouch, and with them the Ragged One satisfied his hunger, eating what they gave him like a man in a daze, so fast that he left no space between one mouthful and the next — for he bolted them rather than swallowed them. And while he was eating, neither he nor those who were watching him said a word. When he had finished eating he signed to them to follow him, which they did, and he took them to a little green meadow that lay round the turn of a rock not far from there. On reaching it he stretched himself out on the ground, on the grass, and the rest did the same; and all this without anybody speaking, until the Ragged One, having settled himself in his place, said:
"If it is your pleasure, gentlemen, that I should tell you in a few words the immensity of my misfortunes, you must promise me that you will not interrupt the thread of my sad history with any question or with anything else; because the moment you do, whatever I am telling will stop there."
These words of the Ragged One's brought to Don Quixote's memory the tale his squire had told him, when he got the number of goats that had crossed the river wrong and the story was left hanging. But to come back to the Ragged One, he went on to say:
"I make this stipulation because I would like to get quickly past the tale of my misfortunes; for bringing them back to mind serves no other purpose than to add fresh ones. And the less you ask me, the sooner I shall have finished telling them — though I shall not leave anything untold that is of any importance for satisfying your curiosity completely."
Don Quixote promised it in the name of the rest, and with this assurance the man began like this:
"My name is Cardenio; my birthplace, one of the best cities of this Andalusia; my family, noble; my parents, rich; my misfortune, so great that my parents must have wept over it and my family felt it, without being able to relieve it with their wealth — for the goods of fortune are generally worth little for putting right the sorrows heaven sends.
"There lived in this same country a heaven, in which love placed all the glory I could ever have wished for myself: such is the beauty of Luscinda, a young lady as noble and as rich as I am, but with more good fortune and less constancy than was owing to my honourable love for her. This Luscinda I loved, wanted and worshipped from my earliest and tenderest years, and she loved me with that simplicity and good will her few years allowed. Our parents knew what we intended and were not sorry about it, because they could see clearly that if it went further it could have no other end than our marrying, a thing which the equality of our families and wealth almost arranged of itself.
"Our ages grew, and with them the love of us both — so much so that Luscinda's father thought that for the sake of appearances he was obliged to refuse me the entry of his house, imitating in this almost exactly the parents of that Thisbe the poets have made so much of. And this refusal was adding flame to flame and desire to desire; because although they put silence on our tongues, they could not put it on our pens, which, with more freedom than tongues, generally give whoever they like to understand what is shut up in the soul — for very often the presence of the thing we love disturbs and strikes dumb the most determined intention and the boldest tongue.
"Oh heavens, how many notes I wrote her! How many charming and modest answers I had! How many songs I composed and how many love poems, in which the soul declared and set down its feelings, painted its burning desires, dwelt on its memories and gave itself pleasure!
"In the end, finding myself at my wits' end and my soul consuming itself with the desire to see her, I decided to put into practice and finish off in a moment the thing that seemed to me most likely to bring me the reward I wanted and deserved. And this was to ask her father for her as my lawful wife, which I did; to which he answered that he thanked me for the goodwill I showed in honouring him and in wanting to honour myself with something of his, but that since my father was alive it was for him by right to make that request; because if it were not done with his full goodwill and pleasure, Luscinda was not a woman to be taken or given by stealth.
"I thanked him for his good intention, thinking he was right in what he said, and that my father would come round to it as soon as I told him. And with this intention, at that very instant, I went to tell my father what I wanted. And just as I went into a room where he was, I found him with an open letter in his hand, which, before I could say a word to him, he gave me, saying: 'By that letter, Cardenio, you will see how ready Duke Ricardo is to do you a favour.'"
This Duke Ricardo, as you gentlemen must already know, is a grandee of Spain who has his estate in the best part of this Andalusia.
"I took the letter and read it, and it was couched in such pressing terms that even I thought it wrong of my father not to do what it asked, which was to send me at once to where the duke was; because he wanted me to be a companion, not a servant, to his eldest son, and he took it on himself to put me in a position that would match the esteem he had for me. I read the letter and went dumb as I read it, and more so when I heard my father saying to me: 'In two days from now, Cardenio, you will set off to do the duke's will; and give thanks to God that he is opening a road for you along which you may reach what I know you deserve.' To these he added other fatherly words of advice.
"The time for my departure came. I spoke to Luscinda one night and told her everything that was happening, and I did the same to her father, begging him to wait some days and put off giving her in marriage until I saw what Ricardo wanted of me. He promised me it, and she confirmed it with a thousand oaths and a thousand faintings.
"I came, in the end, to where Duke Ricardo was. I was so well received and treated by him that from the first envy began to do its work, the old servants feeling it towards me, since it seemed to them that the signs the duke gave of favouring me were bound to be to their disadvantage. But the one who was most delighted with my coming was a second son of the duke's called Fernando, a dashing young man, a gentleman, generous and amorous; who in a short time wanted me to be so much his friend that it gave everybody something to talk about. And although the eldest was fond of me and did me kindnesses, he did not go to the lengths that Don Fernando loved and treated me with.
"Now the fact is that, as among friends there is no secret that is not shared, and the favour I was in with Don Fernando had stopped being favour and become friendship, he told me all his thoughts — especially one love affair which was giving him a certain amount of unease. He was in love with a farmer's daughter, one of his father's vassals — and her parents were very rich — and she was so beautiful, modest, sensible and virtuous that nobody who knew her could decide which of these things she excelled in most.
"These very good qualities of the beautiful country girl brought Don Fernando's desires to such a pass that he decided, in order to get his way and conquer her integrity, to give her his word to be her husband — because any other way was attempting the impossible. I, obliged by his friendship, tried with the best arguments I knew and the most vivid examples I could to stop him and turn him away from such a purpose. But seeing it was no use, I decided to tell the business to Duke Ricardo his father. But Don Fernando, being shrewd and sharp, suspected and feared this, since it seemed to him that I was obliged, as a good servant, not to keep hidden a thing that was so much to the injury of my lord the duke's honour.
"And so, to distract and deceive me, he told me he could find no better remedy for driving out of his memory the beauty that had him so much in its power than going away for some months; and that he wanted the going away to be that the two of us should come to my father's house, with the excuse they would give the duke that he was coming to see and bargain for some very good horses in my city, which is the mother of the best in the world.
"I had hardly heard him say this when, moved by my own love, I would have approved his decision as one of the soundest imaginable even if it had not been so good a one, since I saw what a fine chance and opportunity it offered me of seeing my Luscinda again. With this thought and this desire I approved his idea and encouraged his purpose, telling him to put it into practice as quickly as possible, because in fact absence does its work in spite of the firmest attachments. By the time he came to tell me this, as was found out afterwards, he had already enjoyed the country girl on the strength of being her husband, and was waiting for a chance to declare himself in safety, afraid of what the duke his father would do when he found out about his folly.
"It happened, then, that as love in young men is for the most part not love but appetite — which, since it has pleasure for its final end, comes to an end on reaching it, and what looked like love has to go back the way it came, because it cannot go past the limit nature set it, a limit nature never set on what is true love — I mean that as soon as Don Fernando had enjoyed the country girl, his desires were quieted and his eagerness cooled. And if at first he had pretended to want to go away in order to cure them, now he genuinely tried to go so as not to have to carry them out.
"The duke gave him leave and ordered me to go with him. We came to my city; my father received him as the man he was; I saw Luscinda again straight away, and my desires came back to life, though they had never been dead or deadened. Of these I gave an account, to my cost, to Don Fernando, since it seemed to me that by the law of the great friendship he was showing I ought to hide nothing from him. I praised Luscinda's beauty, charm and good sense in such a way that my praises stirred up in him the desire to see a young lady adorned with so many good qualities. I satisfied him in it, by my short-sighted luck, showing her to him one night by the light of a candle, through a window where the two of us used to talk to each other. He saw her in a house-gown, and such that all the beauties he had seen up to then were put out of his mind. He was struck dumb, lost his senses, was left entranced and, in the end, as much in love as you will see in the course of the tale of my misfortune.
"And to inflame his desire further — which he hid from me and revealed only to heaven when he was alone — fortune willed that he should find one day a note of hers asking me to ask her father for her as my wife, so sensible, so modest and so loving that on reading it he told me that in Luscinda alone were shut up all the graces of beauty and understanding that were shared out among the rest of the women in the world.
"It is quite true, and I want to confess it now, that although I could see how justly Don Fernando was praising Luscinda, it grieved me to hear those praises out of his mouth; and I began to be afraid and suspicious of him, because no moment went past in which he did not want us to talk about Luscinda, and he would start the conversation even if he had to drag it in by the hair — a thing that woke a certain something of jealousy in me. Not that I feared any reverse in Luscinda's goodness and faith; but for all that, my luck made me afraid of the very thing she was assuring me of. Don Fernando always contrived to read the papers I sent Luscinda and the ones she answered me with, on the grounds that he greatly enjoyed the good sense of us both.
"It happened, then, that Luscinda having asked me for a book of chivalry to read, which she was very fond of, and it being the one about Amadis of Gaul —"
Don Quixote had hardly heard him name a book of chivalry when he said:
"If your worship had told me at the beginning of your history that her worship the lady Luscinda was fond of books of chivalry, no other exaggeration would have been needed to give me to understand the loftiness of her understanding; because she would not have had so good a one as you, sir, have painted her with, if she had lacked a taste for such delicious reading. So as far as I am concerned, there is no need to spend any more words in declaring her beauty, worth and understanding to me; simply from having understood her taste, I confirm her as the most beautiful and most intelligent woman in the world.
"And I could wish, sir, that your worship had sent her, along with Amadis of Gaul, the excellent Don Rugel of Greece; for I know the lady Luscinda would greatly enjoy Daraida and Geraya, and the wise sayings of the shepherd Darinel, and those admirable verses of his pastorals, sung and performed by him with all charm, discretion and ease. But a time may come when that omission can be made good, and the making good of it need take no longer than your worship's being pleased to come with me to my village; for there I can give you more than three hundred books, which are the delight of my soul and the entertainment of my life — although it is my belief that I have none left at all, thanks to the malice of wicked and envious enchanters.
"And your worship must forgive me for having gone against what we promised about not interrupting your talk; for on hearing of matters of chivalry and of knights errant, it is as much in my power to stop talking about them as it is in the power of the sun's rays to stop giving heat, or the moon's to stop bringing damp. So: your pardon, and go on, which is what most matters now."
While Don Quixote was saying what has just been set down, Cardenio's head had fallen on his chest, with every sign of his being deep in thought. And although Don Quixote told him twice to go on with his history, he neither raised his head nor answered a word; but at the end of a good while he raised it and said:
"There is no getting it out of my mind, nor will there be anybody in the world who can get it out, or make me understand anything else — and the man who understood or believed the contrary would be a blockhead — but that that great villain Master Elisabat was living in sin with Queen Madásima."
"That he was not, I swear it!" answered Don Quixote in a great temper — and he hurled his usual oath at him. "And that is a very great piece of malice, or knavery rather. Queen Madásima was a very great lady, and it is not to be supposed that so high a princess would live in sin with a quack surgeon; and whoever understands the contrary is lying like a very great scoundrel. And I shall give him to understand it, on foot or on horseback, armed or unarmed, by night or by day, or however it best pleases him."
Cardenio was looking at him very attentively — the fit of his madness having come on him by now, and he was in no state to go on with his history; nor would Don Quixote have listened to it, so much had what he had heard about Madásima disgusted him. A strange business: that he should take her part as though she had genuinely been his own true and natural lady — that is what his excommunicated books had brought him to.
I say, then, that as Cardenio was mad by now, and heard himself called a liar and a scoundrel with other insults of the same kind, he did not think much of the joke, and he picked up a stone he found next to him and struck Don Quixote such a blow on the chest with it that he knocked him over on his back. Sancho Panza, seeing his master brought to that pass, went for the madman with his fist clenched; and the Ragged One received him in such a way that with one punch he laid him at his feet, and then got on top of him and pounded his ribs entirely to his own satisfaction. The goatherd, who tried to defend him, ran the same risk. And after he had them all beaten and pounded, he left them and went off with perfect calm to hide himself in the mountain.
Sancho got up, and with the rage he was in at finding himself thrashed so undeservedly, he went to take his revenge on the goatherd, telling him that it was his fault for not having warned them that this man's madness took him in fits; because if they had known that, they would have been on their guard and able to look out for themselves. The goatherd answered that he had said so already, and that if Sancho had not heard it, it was not his fault. Sancho Panza answered back, and the goatherd answered back again, and the end of the answering back was that they caught each other by the beard and exchanged such punches that if Don Quixote had not made peace between them they would have torn each other to pieces. Sancho, grappling with the goatherd, was saying:
"Let me be, your worship, Sir Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance; with this man, who is a peasant like myself and hasn't been dubbed a knight, I can perfectly safely get satisfaction for the injury he's done me, fighting him hand to hand like an honourable man."
"That is so," said Don Quixote, "but I know that he is not at all to blame for what has happened."
With this he calmed them down; and Don Quixote went back to asking the goatherd whether it would be possible to find Cardenio, because he was left with an enormous desire to know the end of his history. The goatherd told him what he had told him at first, which was that he did not know his hiding place for certain; but that if he went about much in that district, he could not fail to find him, either sane or mad.
Don Quixote took his leave of the goatherd, and getting up on Rocinante again, he ordered Sancho to follow him, which Sancho did with his donkey, very much against his will. They went further and further, little by little, into the roughest part of the mountain; and Sancho was dying to talk with his master and wanted him to begin the conversation, so as not to go against what he had been ordered. But being unable to put up with so much silence, he said to him:
"Señor Don Quixote, will your worship give me your blessing and my leave? I want to go home from here, to my wife and children, with whom at any rate I shall talk and hold forth as much as I like. Because for your worship to want me to go about with him through these lonely places by day and by night and not talk to him when I feel like it is burying me alive. If only luck had it that the animals talked, as they used to talk in old Isop's day, it wouldn't be so bad, because then I'd discuss whatever came into my head with my donkey and get through my bad luck that way. It's a hard thing, and one a man can't bear patiently, to go about looking for adventures all your life and find nothing but kicks and blanket-tossings, brickbats and punches — and on top of all that we've got to sew up our mouths and not dare say what a man has in his heart, as though we were dumb."
"I understand you, Sancho," answered Don Quixote. "You are dying for me to lift the ban I have laid on your tongue. Take it as lifted, and say what you like, on condition that this lifting is to last no longer than while we are going about these mountains."
"So be it," said Sancho. "Let me talk now, for afterwards God knows what will happen. And starting to enjoy this safe-conduct, I say: what did it matter to your worship to stand up so hard for that Queen Magimasa, or whatever her name is? Or what did it signify whether that abbot was her friend or not? For if your worship had let it pass, since you weren't her judge, I really believe the madman would have gone on with his story, and we'd have saved the blow with the stone, and the kicks, and more than half a dozen cuffs besides."
"Upon my word, Sancho," answered Don Quixote, "if you knew as I know what an honourable and distinguished lady Queen Madásima was, I know you would say I showed a great deal of patience, since I did not break the mouth such blasphemies came out of. Because it is a very great blasphemy to say or think that a queen was living in sin with a surgeon. The truth of the story is that this Master Elisabat the madman spoke of was a very prudent man of very sound advice, and served the queen as tutor and physician; but to think she was his mistress is an absurdity that deserves very heavy punishment. And so that you may see that Cardenio did not know what he was saying, you must note that when he said it he was already out of his senses."
"That's what I say," said Sancho: "that there was no call to take any account of a madman's words. Because if good luck hadn't helped your worship and steered the stone at your chest instead of your head, we'd have been in a fine state for standing up for that lady of mine, God confound her. And I'll bet Cardenio wouldn't have got off on grounds of madness!"
"Against the sane and against the mad alike, every knight errant is obliged to stand up for the honour of women, whoever they may be — much more so for queens of such high rank and worth as Queen Madásima was, for whom I have a particular affection on account of her good qualities. Because besides having been beautiful, she was moreover very prudent and very patient in her calamities, and she had a great many; and Master Elisabat's advice and company were of a great deal of use and relief to her in being able to bear her troubles with prudence and patience. And from this the ignorant and ill-meaning common people took occasion to say and think that she was his mistress; and they lie, I say it again, and will lie another two hundred times, all who think or say such a thing."
"I neither say it nor think it," answered Sancho. "Let them settle it themselves; let them eat it with their own bread. Whether they were living in sin or not, they'll have given God the account. I come from my own vineyards, I know nothing; I'm no friend to knowing about other people's lives; a man who buys and lies feels it in his own purse. What's more, naked I was born and naked I find myself: I neither lose nor gain. And supposing they were — what's it to me? Plenty of people think there's bacon hanging when there isn't even a hook. But who can put gates on an open field? Besides which, they said things about God himself."
"God help me," said Don Quixote, "what a string of foolish things you are threading together, Sancho! What have the proverbs you are stringing on got to do with what we are discussing? On your life, Sancho, be quiet; and from now on busy yourself with spurring your ass and leave off busying yourself with what does not concern you. And understand with all five of your senses that everything I have done, am doing and shall do is very much founded on reason and very much in accordance with the rules of chivalry, which I know better than all the knights who ever professed them in the world."
"Sir," answered Sancho, "and is it a good rule of chivalry that we should go about lost in these mountains, with no path or road, looking for a madman who, once we've found him, may take it into his head to finish what he left half done — not of his story, but of your worship's head and my ribs, and break them completely?"
"Be quiet, I tell you again, Sancho," said Don Quixote; "for I would have you know that what brings me to these parts is not so much the desire to find the madman as the desire to perform here a deed by which I shall win everlasting name and fame throughout the whole of the discovered earth; and it will be such a deed that I shall set the seal with it on everything that can make a knight errant perfect and famous."
"And is it a very dangerous deed, this?" asked Sancho Panza.
"No," answered the Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance, "although the dice might fall in such a way that we threw a losing cast instead of a winning one. But the whole thing will depend on your diligence."
"On my diligence?" said Sancho.
"Yes," said Don Quixote, "because if you come back quickly from where I mean to send you, my suffering will quickly be over and my glory will quickly begin. And since it is not right that I should keep you in suspense any longer, waiting to see what my words are coming to, I want you to know, Sancho, that the famous Amadis of Gaul was one of the most perfect knights errant. I have not put it well when I say one of them: he was the only one, the first, the unique one, the lord of all who were in the world in his time. A bad year and a bad month to Don Belianis and to all those who say he equalled him in anything, because they are mistaken, I swear it.
"I say likewise that when a painter wants to come out famous in his art, he tries to imitate the originals of the most singular painters he knows; and this same rule holds for all the other trades and callings of any account that serve for the adornment of nations. And so it must be done, and is done, by the man who wants to win a name for prudence and endurance, imitating Ulysses, in whose person and labours Homer paints us a living portrait of prudence and endurance — as Virgil likewise showed us, in the person of Aeneas, the valour of a dutiful son and the shrewdness of a brave and understanding captain, not painting or revealing them as they were but as they ought to have been, so as to leave their virtues as an example to the men who came after.
"In this same way Amadis was the north star, the morning star, the sun of brave and loving knights, whom all of us who serve under the banner of love and chivalry ought to imitate. This being so, as it is, I find, friend Sancho, that the knight errant who imitates him most closely will be nearest to attaining the perfection of chivalry. And one of the things in which this knight most showed his prudence, worth, courage, endurance, constancy and love was when he withdrew, scorned by the lady Oriana, to do penance on the Poor Rock, changing his name to Beltenebros — a name, certainly, that was significant and proper to the life he had chosen of his own free will.
"So that it is easier for me to imitate him in this than in cleaving giants, beheading serpents, killing dragons, routing armies, wrecking fleets and undoing enchantments. And since these places are so well suited for effects of the kind, there is no reason to let the opportunity go by that now offers me its forelock so conveniently."
"In short," said Sancho, "what is it your worship means to do in this out-of-the-way place?"
"Have I not told you already," answered Don Quixote, "that I want to imitate Amadis, playing here the man in despair, the idiot and the madman — imitating at the same time the brave Don Roland, when he found in a spring the evidence that Angelica the Fair had done a base thing with Medoro, and out of grief at it went mad and tore up the trees, muddied the waters of the clear springs, killed shepherds, destroyed flocks, burnt huts, pulled down houses, dragged mares about and did a hundred thousand other outrages worthy of everlasting name and record?
"And although I do not intend to imitate Roland, or Orlando, or Rotolando — for he had all three of these names — point by point in all the mad things he did and said and thought, I shall make a sketch of them, as best I can, in those that seem to me the most essential. And it may be that I shall come to be satisfied with the imitation of Amadis alone, who without doing any mad things that caused damage, but only weeping and grieving, won as much fame as the best of them."
"It seems to me," said Sancho, "that the knights who did such things were provoked and had a cause for those follies and penances. But your worship — what cause have you for going mad? What lady has scorned you, or what evidence have you found to give you to understand that the lady Dulcinea of El Toboso has done anything childish with Moor or Christian?"
"That is just the point," answered Don Quixote, "and that is the fine thing about my business. For a knight errant to go mad with a cause deserves neither thanks nor gratitude: the touch of it is to go out of my wits without any occasion, and give my lady to understand that if I do this dry, what would I do wet? What is more, I have occasion enough in the long absence I have kept from my ever-lady Dulcinea of El Toboso; for as you heard that shepherd Ambrosio say the other day, whoever is absent has all the ills and fears them all.
"So, friend Sancho, do not waste time advising me to give up so rare, so happy and so unheard-of an imitation. Mad I am, and mad I must be until you come back with the answer to a letter I mean to send by you to my lady Dulcinea. And if it is such as my faithfulness deserves, my idiocy and my penance will be over; and if it is the opposite, I shall be mad in earnest, and being so, I shall feel nothing. So that whichever way she answers, I shall come out of the struggle and the labour you leave me in, either enjoying the good news you bring me, as a sane man, or not feeling the bad news you bring me, as a madman.
"But tell me, Sancho: have you got Mambrino's helmet safely put away? For I saw that you picked it up off the ground when that ungrateful fellow tried to smash it to pieces. But he could not — from which one may see the fineness of its temper."
To which Sancho answered:
"By the living God, Sir Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance, I can't stand or bear patiently some of the things your worship says. They make me start imagining that everything you tell me about chivalries and winning kingdoms and empires, about giving away isles and doing other favours and grand things the way knights errant do — that the whole of it must be so much wind and lies, and all humbug, or humbuggery, or whatever we call it. Because when a man hears your worship say that a barber's basin is Mambrino's helmet, and doesn't come out of that error in more than four days, what's he to think except that whoever says and maintains such a thing must be addled in his judgement? I've got the basin in the sack, all battered, and I'm taking it to have it seen to at home and shave myself in it, if God ever gives me the grace to see my wife and children again one day."
"Look, Sancho, by the same one you swore by just now I swear to you," said Don Quixote, "that you have the shortest understanding any squire in the world has or ever had. Is it possible that in all the time you have gone about with me you have not noticed that all the things belonging to knights errant look like fantasies, follies and absurdities, and that they are all done the wrong way round? And not because it is really so, but because there is always a crowd of enchanters going about among us who change and alter all our affairs and turn them about according to their taste, and according to whether they feel like favouring us or destroying us. And so what looks to you like a barber's basin looks to me like Mambrino's helmet, and will look like something else to somebody else.
"And it was rare foresight in the sage who is on my side to make what really and truly is Mambrino's helmet look like a basin to everybody; because it being of such value, the whole world would persecute me to take it from me. But since they see it is nothing more than a barber's basin, they do not trouble to go after it — as was well shown by the man who tried to break it and left it lying on the ground without taking it away. Upon my word, if he had recognised it he would never have left it. Keep it, my friend, for I do not need it at present; on the contrary, I am about to take off all this armour and be left as naked as when I was born, if I decide to follow Roland rather than Amadis in my penance."
Talking like this, they came to the foot of a high mountain that stood alone, almost like a sheer crag, among many others that surrounded it. A gentle little stream ran along its skirt, and all round it there was a meadow so green and so lush that it was a pleasure to the eyes that looked at it. There were a great many wild trees about, and some plants and flowers that made the place a peaceful one. This site the Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance chose for doing his penance; and so, on seeing it, he began to say in a loud voice, as though he were out of his senses:
"This is the place, O heavens, that I appoint and choose for weeping over the misfortune you yourselves have put me in! This is the spot where the moisture of my eyes shall swell the waters of this little stream, and my continual and deep sighs shall set the leaves of these mountain trees continually moving, in testimony and token of the pain my harried heart suffers!
"O you, whoever you may be, rustic gods who have your dwelling in this uninhabitable place, hear the complaints of this unhappy lover, whom a long absence and some imagined jealousies have brought to lament among these wild places and to complain of the hard nature of that beautiful and ungrateful woman, the limit and end of all human beauty!
"O you wood nymphs and dryads, who have the custom of living in the thickets of the mountains — so may the nimble and lustful satyrs, by whom you are loved, though in vain, never disturb your sweet peace — help me to lament my misfortune, or at least do not grow tired of hearing it!
"O Dulcinea of El Toboso, day of my night, glory of my pain, north star of my roads, star of my fortune — so may heaven give you good fortune in whatever you may see fit to ask of it — consider the place and the state to which your absence has brought me, and answer with the proper return what my faithfulness deserves!
"O solitary trees, who from today on are to keep my solitude company, give some sign, by the soft movement of your branches, that my presence does not displease you!
"O you, my squire, agreeable companion in my more prosperous and my more adverse fortunes, take careful note of what you shall see me do here, so that you may tell and recite it to the total cause of it all!"
And saying this, he got down off Rocinante, and in a moment took off his bridle and his saddle; and giving him a slap on the hindquarters, he said to him:
"Freedom is given you by one who is left without it, O horse as outstanding for your deeds as you are unlucky in your fortune. Go where you like, for you carry it written on your forehead that neither Astolfo's hippogriff nor the famous Frontino, who cost Bradamante so dear, could equal you in speed."
Seeing this, Sancho said:
"Bless the man who has spared us the trouble of unsaddling the grey; because upon my word there'd have been no lack of little pats to give him and things to say in his praise. Though if he were here I wouldn't let anybody unsaddle him, since there'd be no call for it — the general rules for the man in love or the man in despair had nothing to do with him, seeing that his master, who was me while God willed it, was neither. And truly, Sir Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance, if it's the case that my going and your worship's madness are meant in earnest, it'll be as well to saddle Rocinante again to make up for the lack of the grey, because it'll save time on my going and coming; for if I do it on foot, I don't know when I'll get there or when I'll be back, since when it comes down to it I'm a bad walker."
"I say, Sancho," answered Don Quixote, "let it be as you like, for your plan does not seem bad to me. And I say that you shall set off three days from now, because in that time I want you to see what I do and say for her, so that you can tell her about it."
"But what more have I got to see," said Sancho, "than what I've seen?"
"You are well up in the tale!" answered Don Quixote. "I have still to tear my clothes, scatter my armour about and knock my head against these rocks, along with other things of that sort that are bound to astonish you."
"For the love of God," said Sancho, "let your worship be careful how you give yourself those knocks on the head; because you might come to such a rock, and at such a point, that with the very first one the whole machinery of this penance would be finished. And I'd be of the opinion that since your worship thinks the knocks on the head are necessary here and that this business can't be done without them, you might be satisfied — seeing that the whole thing is pretended and a made-up affair and a joke — you might be satisfied, I say, with giving them to yourself in the water, or on something soft like cotton wool; and leave the rest to me, for I'll tell my lady that your worship was giving them to yourself on the point of a rock harder than a diamond."
"I am grateful for your good intention, friend Sancho," answered Don Quixote, "but I want you to be informed that all these things I am doing are not done in joke but very much in earnest; because otherwise it would be going against the orders of chivalry, which command us not to tell any lie, on pain of being treated as relapsed heretics — and doing one thing for another is the same as lying. So my knocks on the head must be genuine, solid and valid, without anything sophistical or fanciful about them. And it will be necessary for you to leave me some lint to dress myself with, since fortune willed that we should lose the balm we lost."
"It was worse losing the ass," answered Sancho, "since the lint and everything else was lost along with him. And I beg your worship not to remember that accursed brew again; just to hear it mentioned turns my soul over, let alone my stomach. And I beg you further: reckon that the three days you gave me as a term for watching the mad things you do are over already, because I take them as seen and as settled beyond appeal, and I'll tell my lady marvels. So write the letter and send me off at once, because I have a great desire to come back and get your worship out of this purgatory I'm leaving you in."
"Purgatory, do you call it, Sancho?" said Don Quixote. "You would have done better to call it hell, and worse than that, if there is anything worse."
"For him that hath hell," answered Sancho, "nulla is retentio, as I've heard it said."
"I do not understand what retentio means," said Don Quixote.
"Retentio," answered Sancho, "means that whoever's in hell never comes out of it and can't. Which will be the other way round for your worship, or my feet will be doing badly by me, so long as I've got spurs to liven up Rocinante with. Just put me once and for all in El Toboso and in front of my lady Dulcinea, and I'll tell her such things about the follies and mad tricks — which are all one — that your worship has done and is still doing, that I'll get her softer than a glove, even if I find her harder than a cork tree; and with her sweet, honeyed answer I'll come back through the air like a witch and get your worship out of this purgatory, which looks like hell and isn't, since there's hope of getting out of it — which, as I've said, the people who are in hell haven't got, and I don't think your worship will say otherwise."
"That is the truth," said the Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance; "but how shall we manage about writing the letter?"
"And the donkey-warrant as well," added Sancho.
"It shall all be included," said Don Quixote; "and it would be a good thing, since there is no paper, if we wrote it as the ancients did, on tree leaves or on little wax tablets — though that would be as hard to find now as paper. But it has just come into my memory where it will be well, and more than well, to write it: in the little pocket-book that was Cardenio's. And you will take care to have it copied onto paper, in a good hand, in the first place you come to where there is a schoolmaster; and if not, any parish clerk will copy it for you. And do not give it to any notary to copy, for they write a legal hand that Satan himself could not read."
"But what is to be done about the signature?" said Sancho.
"Amadis's letters are never signed," answered Don Quixote.
"That's all very well," answered Sancho, "but the warrant has to be signed of necessity; and if that's copied, they'll say the signature is a forgery and I'll be left without any donkeys."
"The warrant shall go in the same little book, signed; and when my niece sees it she will make no difficulty about carrying it out. And as far as the love letter goes, you will put as the signature: 'Yours until death, the Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance.' And it will make very little difference that it goes in another hand, because as far as I can recall, Dulcinea cannot write or read, and in the whole of her life she has never seen my handwriting or a letter of mine; for my love and hers have always been platonic, going no further than a modest look. And even that so seldom that I could truthfully swear that in the twelve years I have loved her more than the light of these eyes that the earth will one day eat, I have not seen her four times — and it might even be that of those four times she never once noticed I was looking at her: such is the seclusion and confinement her father, Lorenzo Corchuelo, and her mother, Aldonza Nogales, have brought her up in."
"Well, well!" said Sancho. "So Lorenzo Corchuelo's daughter is the lady Dulcinea of El Toboso, otherwise called Aldonza Lorenzo?"
"That is she," said Don Quixote, "and she is the one who deserves to be lady of the whole universe."
"I know her well," said Sancho, "and I can tell you she throws the bar as well as the strongest lad in the whole village. Praise the Giver, she's a girl with some go in her, straight up and down and hair on her chest, and she can pull the beard out of the mud for any knight errant, or knight to be, who has her for his lady. Oh, the son of a bitch, what a pair of lungs she's got, and what a voice! I can tell you that one day she got up on top of the village bell tower to call some lads of her father's who were out in a fallow field, and although they were more than half a league off, they heard her as clearly as if they'd been standing at the foot of the tower. And the best thing about her is that she's not a bit prim, because she's got a lot of the courtier in her: she jokes with everybody and makes a laugh and a game out of everything.
"Now I say, Sir Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance, that not only can and should your worship do mad things for her, but you can with perfect justice despair and hang yourself as well; and nobody who hears of it will fail to say you did extremely well, even if the devil carries you off for it. And I'd like to see myself on the road now, just to look at her, because it's a long time since I saw her and she must be changed by now, for it wears a woman's face out a great deal to be always out in the fields, in the sun and the wind.
"And I'll confess a truth to your worship, Señor Don Quixote: up till now I've been in a great ignorance, because I thought, in good faith and sincerity, that the lady Dulcinea must be some princess your worship was in love with, or some such person as would deserve the rich presents your worship has sent her — the Basque and the galley slaves and a good many others there must be, seeing how many victories your worship must have won and did win in the time when I wasn't yet your squire. But when you think about it properly, what is it to the lady Aldonza Lorenzo — I mean the lady Dulcinea of El Toboso — that the men your worship sends her and is going to send her should go and kneel down in front of her? Because it might be that at the moment they arrived she'd be scutching flax or threshing on the threshing floor, and they'd be embarrassed to see her, and she'd laugh and be annoyed at the present."
"I have told you many times before now, Sancho," said Don Quixote, "that you are a very great talker, and that although your wit is blunt, you often manage a sharp point. But so that you may see how foolish you are and how discerning I am, I want you to listen to a short story.
"You must know that a beautiful widow, young, free and rich, and above all easy-going, fell in love with a lay brother, a plump, well-set-up young fellow. His superior came to hear of it, and one day said to the good widow, by way of brotherly reproof: 'I am astonished, madam, and not without a great deal of cause, that a woman as distinguished, as beautiful and as rich as your worship should have fallen in love with a man as coarse, as low and as stupid as so-and-so, when there are in this house so many masters, so many licentiates and so many theologians among whom your worship might pick as though among pears, saying "I'll have this one, I won't have that one".' But she answered him with a great deal of grace and ease: 'Your worship, my dear sir, is very much mistaken, and thinks in a very old-fashioned way, if you think I have chosen badly in so-and-so, idiot as he seems to you; because for what I want him for, he knows as much philosophy as Aristotle, and more.'
"So, Sancho, for what I want Dulcinea of El Toboso for, she is worth as much as the highest princess on earth. Why, not all the poets who praise ladies under a name they give them at their own pleasure really have such ladies. Do you suppose that the Amaryllises, the Phyllises, the Silvias, the Dianas, the Galateas, the Alidas and the rest of them that the books, the ballads, the barbers' shops and the playhouses are full of were genuinely ladies of flesh and blood, and belonged to the men who celebrate them and celebrated them? Certainly not: most of them are invented, to give a subject for their verses and so that people should take them for men in love and for men with spirit enough to be so.
"And so it is enough for me to think and believe that the good Aldonza Lorenzo is beautiful and virtuous; and as far as family goes it matters little, since nobody is going to make inquiries into it in order to give her some order of knighthood, and I reckon to myself that she is the highest princess in the world. Because you must know, Sancho, if you do not know it, that two things alone stir a man to love more than any others, and they are great beauty and a good name; and these two things are found perfectly in Dulcinea, because in being beautiful no woman equals her, and in a good name few come near her.
"And to have done with the whole thing: I imagine that everything I say is exactly so, with nothing over and nothing lacking; and I paint her in my imagination as I want her, both in beauty and in rank. Helen does not come near her, nor does Lucretia reach her, nor any other of the famous women of ages past, Greek, barbarian or Latin. And let each man say what he likes; for if I am reproved for this by the ignorant, I shall not be punished by the strict."
"I say your worship is right in everything," answered Sancho, "and that I am an ass. Though I don't know why I put the word ass in my mouth, since you're not to mention rope in the house of a man who's been hanged. But let's have the letter, and goodbye — I'm off."
Don Quixote took out the pocket-book, and going off to one side, with great calm he began to write the letter; and on finishing it he called Sancho and told him he wanted to read it to him so that he could learn it by heart, in case he lost it on the road, because with his bad luck anything might be feared. To which Sancho answered:
"Let your worship write it two or three times there in the book and give it me, and I'll carry it safe; because to think that I'm going to learn it by heart is nonsense — my memory is so bad that I often forget my own name. But for all that, say it to me, your worship, for I'd very much like to hear it, since it must go like something out of a mould."
"Listen, this is how it goes," said Don Quixote:
Sovereign and lofty lady:
He that is wounded by the point of absence and pierced to the very tissues of the heart, sweetest Dulcinea of El Toboso, sendeth thee that health which he himself hath not. If thy beauty scorn me, if thy worth be not to my profit, if thy disdain be my undoing, then, howbeit I be a man of much sufferance, ill shall I be able to hold out in this affliction, which, besides being grievous, is very long-lasting. My good squire Sancho shall give thee full report, O fair ingrate, my beloved enemy, of the state in which I am left for thy sake. If it please thee to succour me, I am thine; and if not, do that which liketh thee, for by the ending of my life I shall have satisfied thy cruelty and my own desire.
Thine until death,
"By my father's life," said Sancho when he had heard the letter, "that's the loftiest thing I ever heard. Bless me, how your worship says everything you want to say in there, and how well the Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance fits into the signature! I tell you truly that your worship is the very devil, and there's nothing you don't know."
"Everything is needed," answered Don Quixote, "for the office I follow."
"Come on, then," said Sancho, "put the order for the three donkeys on the other side, and sign it very clearly so that they'll know it when they see it."
"With pleasure," said Don Quixote.
And having written it, he read it to him; and it went like this:
Your worship will please, by this first of donkeys, my dear niece, to deliver to Sancho Panza, my squire, three of the five I left at home and which are in your worship's charge. Which three donkeys I hereby order to be made over and paid for as against as many received here in cash, which is duly evidenced; and on his receipt they shall be well delivered. Done in the bowels of the Sierra Morena, the twenty-second of August of the present year.
"That's fine," said Sancho. "Let your worship sign it."
"There is no need to sign it," said Don Quixote, "only to put my flourish, which is the same thing as a signature; and for three asses, or even for three hundred, it would be enough."
"I trust your worship," answered Sancho. "Let me be — I'll go and saddle Rocinante, and your worship get ready to give me your blessing; because I mean to set off at once, without watching the idiocies your worship is going to perform. I'll say I saw you do so many that she won't want any more."
"At the very least I want you, Sancho — and because it is necessary that it should be so, I say I want you — to see me stripped, and to do a dozen or two mad things, which I shall do in less than half an hour; because having seen them with your own eyes, you may safely swear to any others you care to add. And I assure you that you will not tell as many as I mean to do."
"For the love of God, my dear sir, don't let me see your worship stripped; it will give me a great deal of grief and I shan't be able to help crying. And my head is in such a state from the weeping I did last night over the grey that I'm in no condition to get into fresh weeping. And if it's the case that your worship wants me to see some mad things, do them with your clothes on, briefly, and the ones that come handiest.
"What's more, none of it was needed as far as I'm concerned; and as I've said already, it would save the road for my coming back, which is to be with the news your worship wants and deserves. And if not, let the lady Dulcinea look out; because if she doesn't answer as she ought to, I make a solemn vow to whoever I can that I'll get the right answer out of her stomach with kicks and slaps. Because where is it to be borne that a knight errant as famous as your worship should go mad, without rhyme or reason, over a — ? Don't make me say it, madam, for by God I'll let fly and sell the whole lot at twelve, even if it never sells. I'm a fine one for that! She little knows me! Well, upon my word, if she knew me she'd keep my day as a fast!"
"Upon my word, Sancho," said Don Quixote, "by the look of it you are no saner than I am."
"I'm not so mad," answered Sancho, "but I'm more hot-tempered. But leaving that aside, what is your worship going to eat while I'm away? Are you going to go out on the road like Cardenio and take it off the shepherds?"
"Do not let that trouble you," answered Don Quixote, "because even if I had food I should eat nothing but the herbs and fruits this meadow and these trees may give me; for the fine point of my business lies in not eating and in performing other equivalent austerities."
"Goodbye, then. But do you know what I'm afraid of, your worship? That I shan't manage to find my way back to this place where I'm leaving you now, it's so hidden away."
"Take your bearings carefully; I shall try not to move away from this district," said Don Quixote, "and I shall even take care to climb up on these higher crags to see whether I can make you out when you come back. What is more, the surest thing, so that you do not miss me and get lost, will be for you to cut some of the broom that grows plentifully about here and go on putting it down at intervals until you come out on the open ground; and it will serve you as landmarks and signs for finding me when you come back, in imitation of the thread in Theseus's labyrinth."
"I'll do that," answered Sancho Panza.
And cutting some, he asked his master for his blessing; and not without a great many tears on both sides, he took his leave of him. And getting up on Rocinante, whom Don Quixote earnestly commended to him, telling him to look after the horse as he would his own person, he set off on the road down to the plain, scattering the broom branches at intervals as his master had advised him. And so he went off, although Don Quixote still kept pressing him to watch him do at least two mad things. But he had not gone a hundred paces when he came back and said:
"I say, sir, your worship spoke very well: so that I can swear without any burden on my conscience that I've seen you do mad things, it'll be as well if I see at least one — although I've seen a very big one in your worship's staying behind."
"Did I not tell you so?" said Don Quixote. "Wait, Sancho; I shall do them in the time it takes to say a creed."
And stripping off his breeches in all haste, he was left in his skin and his shirt-tails; and then, without any more ado, he cut two capers in the air and turned two somersaults, head down and heels up, revealing things which, so as not to see them a second time, made Sancho turn Rocinante's rein and hold himself content and satisfied that he could swear his master was left mad. And so we shall leave him to go on his way until he comes back, which was soon.
Coming back to tell what the Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance did once he found himself alone, the history says that as soon as Don Quixote had finished turning his somersaults, naked from the waist down and clothed from the waist up, and saw that Sancho had gone without choosing to wait and see any more idiocies, he climbed up onto the point of a high rock, and there went back to thinking about what he had thought about many times before without ever settling it. And this was which would be better and would suit his case more: to imitate Roland in the outrageous mad things he did, or Amadis in the melancholy ones. And talking to himself, he said:
"If Roland was as good a knight and as brave as they all say, what is there to wonder at? After all, he was enchanted and nobody could kill him except by sticking a farthing pin through the sole of his foot, and he always wore shoes with seven iron soles. Although the tricks did him no good against Bernardo del Carpio, who saw through them and choked him to death in his arms at Roncesvalles.
"But leaving the matter of his courage aside, let us come to his losing his wits — which he certainly did, because of the evidence he found at the spring and the news the shepherd gave him that Angelica had slept more than two siestas with Medoro, a curly-headed little Moor and page to Agramante. And if he understood this to be true and that his lady had done him a wrong, it was no great thing for him to go mad.
"But I — how can I imitate him in the mad things if I do not imitate him in the occasion for them? Because I would dare to swear that my Dulcinea of El Toboso has not seen a single Moor in the whole of her life, in his own dress and as he really is, and that she stands today as her mother bore her; and I should be doing her a plain injury if, imagining anything else about her, I went mad with that particular kind of madness of Roland the furious.
"On the other hand, I see that Amadis of Gaul, without losing his wits and without doing mad things, won as great a fame as a lover as the best of them; because what he did, according to his history, was no more than this: finding himself scorned by his lady Oriana, who had ordered him not to appear in her presence until it should be her will, he withdrew to the Poor Rock in the company of a hermit, and there he wept his fill and commended himself to God, until heaven came to his help in the middle of his greatest distress and need.
"And if this is true, as it is, why should I want to take the trouble now of stripping myself completely, or of upsetting these trees, which have done me no harm? Nor have I any reason to muddy the clear water of these streams, which are to give me drink when I am thirsty. Long live the memory of Amadis, and let him be imitated by Don Quixote of La Mancha in everything he can; of whom it shall be said what was said of the other, that if he did not achieve great things, he died attempting them. And if I am not cast off or scorned by Dulcinea of El Toboso, it is enough for me, as I have said already, to be absent from her.
"Come then, to work! Come into my memory, deeds of Amadis, and show me where I must begin to imitate you. But I know already that the most he did was to pray and commend himself to God. Yet what shall I do about a rosary, having none?"
At this it came into his mind how he would make one; and it was that he tore a great strip off the tail of his shirt, which was hanging loose, and put eleven knots in it, one of them fatter than the rest, and this served him as a rosary the whole time he was there, in which he said a million Hail Marys. And what wearied him a great deal was not finding another hermit thereabouts to hear his confession and be a comfort to him.
And so he entertained himself walking about the little meadow, writing and carving on the bark of the trees and in the fine sand a great many verses, all of them fitted to his sadness and some in praise of Dulcinea. But those that could be found entire and could still be read after they had found him there were no more than these that follow:
Trees and grasses and plants that grow about this place, so tall, so green and so many, if you take no pleasure in my hurt, hear my holy complaints.
Let my grief not upset you, however terrible it may be; for, to pay you his share of the reckoning, here Don Quixote wept for the absence of Dulcinea of El Toboso.
This is the place where the most loyal lover there is hides himself from his lady, and has come to such a bad pass without knowing how or by which road.
Love drags him about by the ears, being of a very bad breed; and so, till he has filled a cask, here Don Quixote wept for the absence of Dulcinea of El Toboso.
Looking for adventures among the hard rocks, cursing hard hearts, for it is among crags and thickets that the sad man finds misfortunes,
love struck him with his whip, not with his soft strap; and, catching him on the back of the neck, here Don Quixote wept for the absence of Dulcinea of El Toboso.
The addition of "of El Toboso" to Dulcinea's name caused no small amount of laughter in those who found the verses just given, because they supposed Don Quixote must have supposed that if, on naming Dulcinea, he did not also say "of El Toboso", the stanza could not be understood; and that was the truth of it, as he afterwards admitted. He wrote a great many others, but as has been said, no more than these three stanzas could be made out clearly or found entire.
With this, and with sighing and calling on the fauns and satyrs of those woods, on the nymphs of the rivers, on the sorrowful and moist Echo, to answer him and comfort him and hear him, he passed his time — and with looking for a few herbs to keep himself alive on until Sancho came back. And if Sancho had taken three weeks instead of the three days he did take, the Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance would have been left so disfigured that the mother who bore him would not have known him.
And it will be as well to leave him wrapped up in his sighs and his verses, and tell what happened to Sancho Panza on his errand. Which was that on coming out on the high road he set off in search of El Toboso; and the next day he reached the inn where the misfortune of the blanket had happened to him. And he had hardly caught sight of it when it seemed to him that he was going through the air again, and he did not want to go inside — although he arrived at an hour when he could and should have done so, it being dinner time and his having a longing to taste something hot, since for days on end everything had been cold.
This necessity forced him to go up close to the inn, still uncertain whether he would go in or not. And while he was in this state, two people came out of the inn who recognised him at once; and one of them said to the other:
"Tell me, Señor Licentiate, that man on the horse — isn't that Sancho Panza, the one our adventurer's housekeeper said had gone off with his master as his squire?"
"So it is," said the licentiate; "and that is our Don Quixote's horse."
And they recognised him as well as they did because they were the curate and the barber of his own village, the very ones who had held the scrutiny and general trial of the books. As soon as they had finished recognising Sancho Panza and Rocinante, being eager for news of Don Quixote, they went up to him; and the curate called him by his name, saying:
"Friend Sancho Panza, where is your master?"
Sancho Panza recognised them at once, and made up his mind to conceal the place and the state in which and how he had left his master; and so he answered them that his master was busy in a certain place on a certain matter of great importance to him, which he could not reveal for the eyes in his head.
"No, no," said the barber, "Sancho Panza. If you don't tell us where he is, we shall imagine — as we are already imagining — that you have killed and robbed him, since you are riding on his horse. Upon my word, you must produce the owner of the hack, or it will be the worse for you."
"There's no call for threats with me; I'm not a man who robs or kills anybody. Let every man be killed by his own luck, or by God who made him. My master is doing penance in the middle of that mountain, entirely to his own satisfaction."
And then, all in a rush and without stopping, he told them the state he had left him in, the adventures that had happened to them, and how he was carrying the letter to the lady Dulcinea of El Toboso, who was Lorenzo Corchuelo's daughter, and that his master was in love with her up to his liver.
The two of them were astonished at what Sancho Panza told them; and although they already knew about Don Quixote's madness and the kind it was, every time they heard about it they were astonished all over again. They asked Sancho Panza to show them the letter he was carrying to the lady Dulcinea of El Toboso. He said it was written in a pocket-book, and that his master's order was that he should have it copied onto paper at the first place he came to; to which the curate said he should show it him and he would copy it in a very good hand.
Sancho Panza put his hand into his shirt looking for the little book, but he did not find it, nor could he have found it if he had gone on looking until now, because Don Quixote had kept it and had not given it him, nor had Sancho remembered to ask him for it.
When Sancho saw he could not find the book, his face went the colour of death; and feeling all over his body again in a great hurry, he saw again that he could not find it. And without any more ado he put both fists to his beard and pulled half of it out, and then, quickly and without stopping, gave himself half a dozen punches on the face and on the nose, so that he bathed the whole of it in blood. Seeing which, the curate and the barber asked him what had happened to him, that he was in such a state.
"What should have happened to me," answered Sancho, "except that I have lost three donkeys from one hand to the other in a single moment, and every one of them was like a castle?"
"How is that?" asked the barber.
"I've lost the pocket-book," answered Sancho, "with the letter for Dulcinea in it and a warrant signed by my master, ordering his niece to give me three donkeys out of the four or five that were at home."
And with this he told them about the loss of the grey. The curate comforted him, and told him that when he found his master he would have him confirm the gift and make out the warrant again on paper, as was the use and custom, because warrants made out in pocket-books were never accepted or honoured.
Sancho was comforted at this, and said that if that was so, the loss of Dulcinea's letter did not trouble him much, because he knew it almost by heart, and it could be copied down from him wherever and whenever they liked.
"Say it, then, Sancho," said the barber, "and we'll copy it out afterwards."
Sancho Panza stopped and scratched his head to bring the letter back to mind, and stood now on one foot and now on the other; sometimes he looked at the ground, sometimes at the sky; and after he had gnawed away half the tip of one finger, keeping in suspense those who were waiting for him to say it at last, he said, after an enormously long while:
"By God, Señor Licentiate, the devil take the thing I can remember of the letter — although at the beginning it said: 'Lofty and sodden lady.'"
"It wouldn't have said sodden," said the barber, "but superhuman, or sovereign lady."
"That's it," said Sancho. "Then, if I don't remember it wrong, it went on — if I don't remember it wrong — 'the wounded by the pint of absence and the pierced in the tassels of the heart kisses your worship's hands, ungrateful and very unknown beauty'; and there was something I don't know about health and sickness that he was sending her; and then it went slipping along that way until it finished up with 'Yours until death, the Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance.'"
The two of them were not a little pleased to see how good Sancho Panza's memory was, and praised it highly, and asked him to say the letter another two times so that they too could learn it by heart and copy it out in due course. Sancho said it another three times, and another three times said another three thousand absurdities.
After this he likewise told them his master's affairs, but did not say a word about the blanket-tossing that had happened to him at that inn, which he refused to go into. He also said that as soon as he brought his master a good dispatch from the lady Dulcinea of El Toboso, he was to set off to see about becoming an emperor, or at the very least a monarch; for they had settled it so between the two of them, and it was a very easy thing to become one, considering the valour of his person and the strength of his arm. And that once he was one, he was to marry Sancho off, because by then he would be a widower — it could not be otherwise — and was to give him for a wife one of the empress's ladies, heiress to a rich, great estate on the mainland, with no isles or islets about it, for he did not want them any more.
Sancho said all this so composedly, wiping his nose every now and then, and with so little sense, that the two of them were astonished all over again, considering how violent Don Quixote's madness must have been, since it had carried this poor man's judgement away with it. They did not want to take the trouble of getting him out of the error he was in, since it seemed to them that as it did his conscience no harm it was better to leave him in it, and it would be more entertaining for them to listen to his foolishness. And so they told him to pray to God for his master's health, since it was a contingent and very achievable thing that in the course of time he should come to be an emperor as he said, or at the very least an archbishop, or hold some equivalent dignity. To which Sancho answered:
"Gentlemen, if fortune turned things about in such a way that my master took it into his head not to be an emperor but to be an archbishop, I'd like to know now what wandering archbishops generally give their squires."
"They generally give them," answered the curate, "some benefice, either a simple one or one with a cure of souls, or some post as sacristan, which brings them in a good settled income, besides the altar dues, which are generally reckoned at as much again."
"For that it will be necessary," replied Sancho, "for the squire not to be married and to know how to serve at Mass, at the very least. And if that's so, unlucky me, for I'm married and I don't know the first letter of the ABC! What will become of me if my master takes a fancy to being an archbishop and not an emperor, as is the use and custom of knights errant?"
"Don't distress yourself, friend Sancho," said the barber; "we'll beg your master here, and advise him, and even put it to him as a matter of conscience, that he should be an emperor and not an archbishop — because it will be easier for him, on the grounds that he's more of a fighter than a scholar."
"That's how it has seemed to me," answered Sancho, "although I can tell you he has the ability for everything. What I mean to do on my side is to pray to Our Lord to throw him into whichever line he can serve him best in and do me the most favours in."
"You say it like a man of sense," said the curate, "and you'll do it like a good Christian. But what has to be done now is to make arrangements for getting your master out of that useless penance you say he's doing. And to think of the way we're to go about it, and to have dinner, since it's time for it, we had better go into this inn."
Sancho told them to go in themselves, and that he would wait outside and afterwards tell them the reason why he was not going in and why it was not advisable for him to; but that he begged them to bring him something to eat out there that was hot, and likewise some barley for Rocinante. They went in and left him; and shortly afterwards the barber brought him something to eat.
Afterwards, having thought over carefully between them the way they were to go about getting what they wanted, the curate hit on an idea very well fitted to Don Quixote's taste and to their own purpose. And it was that he told the barber that what he had thought of was that he himself would dress up as a damsel errant, and that the barber should do his best to get himself up as a squire; and that they would go like that to where Don Quixote was, pretending that she was a distressed and needy damsel, and would ask him for a boon, which he could not refuse to grant her, being a valorous knight errant.
And the boon she meant to ask him for was that he should come with her wherever she took him, to undo a wrong that a wicked knight had done her; and that she likewise begged him not to order her to take off her veil, or ask her anything about her affairs, until he had got her justice against that wicked knight. And that he should be in no doubt that Don Quixote would agree to everything she asked him on those terms; and that in this way they would get him out of there and take him to his village, where they would see whether his strange madness had any remedy.
The curate's idea did not strike the barber as a bad one — so far from it that they put it into practice at once. They asked the innkeeper's wife for a skirt and a headdress, leaving her a new cassock of the curate's as a pledge. The barber made a great beard out of a grey or reddish oxtail that the innkeeper kept his comb hanging on. The innkeeper's wife asked them what they wanted these things for. The curate told her in a few words about Don Quixote's madness, and how this disguise was needed for getting him down out of the mountain, where he was at that moment.
The innkeeper and his wife immediately realised that the madman was their guest, the one with the balm and the master of the blanketed squire, and they told the curate everything that had happened to them with him, not keeping quiet about the thing Sancho kept so quiet about.
In short, the innkeeper's wife dressed the curate up in a way that was a sight to see. She put on him a cloth skirt with bands of black velvet a hand's breadth wide all over it, all slashed, and a bodice of green velvet trimmed with edging of white satin, which — bodice and skirt alike — must have been made in the time of King Wamba. The curate would not let them put a headdress on him, but put on his head a little quilted linen cap that he wore for sleeping at night, and bound a garter of black taffeta round his forehead, and with another garter made a mask with which he covered his beard and face very thoroughly. He rammed his hat down on top, which was so big that it could have served him as a sunshade; and wrapping himself in his cloak, he got up sideways on his mule, and the barber on his, with his beard that came down to his waist, half red and half white — being made, as has been said, out of the tail of a reddish ox.
They took their leave of everybody, and of good Maritornes, who promised to say a rosary, sinner though she was, so that God should give them good success in so arduous and so Christian a business as the one they had undertaken.
But he had hardly got out of the inn when a thought came to the curate: that he was doing wrong to have got himself up like that, it being an unbecoming thing for a priest to dress that way however much depended on it. And telling this to the barber, he begged him to change clothes with him, since it was more proper that the barber should be the distressed damsel and he would play the squire, and in that way his own dignity would be less profaned; and that if the barber would not do it, he had made up his mind not to go any further, even if the devil carried Don Quixote off.
At this Sancho arrived, and at the sight of the two of them in that dress he could not hold in his laughter. In the end the barber agreed to everything the curate wanted; and changing the plan round, the curate went on instructing him in the manner he was to adopt and the words he was to say to Don Quixote to move and force him to come away with him and leave off his fondness for the place he had chosen for his empty penance. The barber answered that without being given any lesson he would manage it perfectly. He did not want to dress up just then, until they were near where Don Quixote was; and so he folded up his clothes, and the curate stowed his beard, and they went on their way, with Sancho Panza guiding them. And Sancho told them as they went about what had happened to them with the madman they had found in the sierra — keeping quiet, however, about the finding of the portmanteau and everything in it; because, dolt though he was, the lad was a little on the greedy side.
The next day they came to the place where Sancho had left the branches as signs to find the spot where he had left his master; and on recognising it he told them this was the way in, and that they might as well dress up if that really had anything to do with his master's deliverance. For they had told him beforehand that going in that way and dressing in that fashion was the whole essential thing for getting his master out of that bad life he had chosen; and they charged him earnestly not to tell his master who they were or that he knew them; and that if his master asked him — as he was bound to ask him — whether he had given the letter to Dulcinea, he was to say yes, and that as she could not read she had answered him by word of mouth, saying that she ordered him, on pain of her displeasure, to come and see her that very moment, because it was a matter of great importance to her. For with this, and with what they meant to say to him, they took it as certain that they would bring him round to a better life, and get him to set out at once to go and be an emperor or a monarch — for as far as being an archbishop went, there was nothing to fear.
Sancho listened to it all and took it very well into his memory, and thanked them warmly for their intention of advising his master to be an emperor and not an archbishop, because it was his own opinion that for doing favours to their squires, emperors could do more than wandering archbishops. He also told them that it would be as well if he went ahead to find him and give him his lady's answer, since that would be enough on its own to get him out of that place without their putting themselves to so much trouble. What Sancho Panza said seemed good to them, and so they decided to wait for him until he came back with news of finding his master.
Sancho went in among those ravines of the sierra, leaving the two of them in one along which ran a small, quiet stream, agreeably and coolly shaded by other rocks and some trees that stood about there. The heat, and the day they arrived there, was one of those of the month of August, when in those parts the burning heat is usually very great; the hour, three in the afternoon: all of which made the place more agreeable and made it an invitation to wait there for Sancho's return, which is what they did.
The two of them being there, then, at their ease and in the shade, there came to their ears a voice which, without the accompaniment of any instrument, sounded sweetly and delightfully — at which they were not a little astonished, since it seemed to them that this was no place where there could be anybody who sang so well. Because although it is often said that shepherds with extraordinary voices are to be found in the woods and fields, this is more the exaggeration of poets than the truth; and the more so when they noticed that what they heard being sung were verses, not of rustic herdsmen but of well-bred courtiers. And this truth was confirmed by the verses they heard, which were these:
What is it wears my fortunes down? Disdain. And what is it swells my griefs? Jealousy. And what is it tries my patience? Absence. So in this sickness of mine no remedy is to be had, since my hope is killed outright by disdain, jealousy and absence.
Who is it causes me this pain? Love. And who is it grudges me my glory? Fortune. And who consents to my grieving? Heaven. So I am afraid I shall die of this strange complaint of mine, since they combine to do me harm — love, fortune and heaven.
Who will make my luck any better? Death. And the good of love, who reaches it? Change. And its ills, who cures them? Madness. So it is no sense at all to want to cure the passion when the remedies are death, change and madness.
The hour, the season, the loneliness, the voice and the skill of the singer caused astonishment and delight in the two who heard it, and they stayed still, waiting to hear whether anything more would come. But finding that the silence lasted some while, they decided to go out and look for the musician who sang with so good a voice. And just as they were about to do it, the same voice made them stay where they were, coming again to their ears singing this sonnet:
Holy friendship, who on light wings, leaving your outward likeness here on earth, went up in gladness among the blessed souls to the halls of heaven,
from up there, when you choose, you show us the just peace covered over with a veil, through which there sometimes shows the zeal for good works that are, in the end, bad.
Leave heaven, O friendship, or else do not allow deceit to put on your livery, which it uses to destroy sincere intention;
for if you do not take your appearance from it, the world will soon find itself in the struggle of that first discordant confusion.
The song ended with a deep sigh, and the two of them listened carefully and went back to waiting to hear whether any more would be sung. But finding that the music had turned into sobs and pitiful groans, they decided to find out who the sad man was, as remarkable in his voice as he was sorrowful in his groaning; and they had not gone far when, on turning the point of a rock, they saw a man of the same build and figure that Sancho Panza had described to them when he told them Cardenio's story. And this man, when he saw them, did not start, but stayed still with his head bent on his chest like a man deep in thought, without raising his eyes to look at them any more than the first time, when they came up unexpectedly.
The curate, who was a well-spoken man — being one who already knew about his misfortune, since he had recognised him by the description — went up to him, and in brief but very well-judged words begged and urged him to leave that wretched life, so that he should not lose it there, which would be the greatest misfortune of all misfortunes.
Cardenio was at that moment in his full senses, free of that furious fit that so often carried him out of himself; and so, seeing the two of them in a dress so unusual among people who went about those solitudes, he could not help being somewhat astonished — and the more so when he heard them speak about his business as about a thing already known, since the curate's words gave him to understand that. And so he answered in this way:
"I can see plainly, gentlemen, whoever you may be, that heaven, which takes care to help the good, and often the wicked too, is sending me, without my deserving it, in these remote places so far removed from the common dealings of men, certain people who, setting before my eyes with vivid and various arguments how unreasonable I am in living the life I live, have tried to get me out of it into a better condition. But since they do not know that I know that on coming out of this trouble I am bound to fall into a greater one, perhaps they must take me for a man of feeble reasoning — or, what would be worse, for a man of no judgement at all.
"And it would be no wonder if that were so, because I can see for myself that the force of my imagination of my misfortunes is so intense and has such power over my ruin that, without my being able to do anything to stop it, I end up like a stone, without any good sense or awareness. And I come to see the truth of this when some people tell me and show me evidence of the things I have done while that terrible fit has me in its power; and I can do no more than grieve to no purpose and curse my luck to no profit, and give as an excuse for my mad acts the telling of the cause of them to anybody who wants to hear it. Because when sane people see what the cause is, they will not be astonished at the effects; and if they cannot give me a remedy, at least they will not blame me, and their annoyance at my violence will turn into pity for my misfortunes.
"And if it is the case, gentlemen, that you come with the same intention that others have come with, before you go any further with your judicious persuasions I beg you to listen to the tale — which has no end — of my misfortunes; because perhaps, once you have understood it, you will save yourselves the trouble you would take in comforting a hurt that is incapable of any comfort."
The two of them, who wanted nothing else than to know the cause of his trouble from his own mouth, begged him to tell it, offering to do nothing but what he wanted himself, in the way of remedy or comfort. And with this the sad gentleman began his pitiful history, almost in the same words and following the same course as when he had told it to Don Quixote and the goatherd a few days before, when, on account of Master Elisabat and Don Quixote's exactness in keeping up the proprieties of chivalry, the tale had been left unfinished, as the history has related. But now good luck willed that the fit of madness held off and gave him room to tell it to the end.
And so, coming to the passage about the note Don Fernando had found in the copy of Amadis of Gaul, Cardenio said he had it well by heart, and that it went like this:
Every day I discover in you qualities that oblige and compel me to esteem you more highly; and so, if you wish to get me out of this debt without executing judgement on my honour, you may very well do it. I have a father who knows you and who is fond of me, and who, without forcing my will, will fall in with whatever it will be right for you to want, if you value me as you say and as I believe.
"It was this note that moved me to ask for Luscinda as my wife, as I have already told you; and it was on account of this that Luscinda was left in Don Fernando's opinion as one of the most sensible and quick-witted women of her time; and this note was what put into him the desire to destroy me before mine could be carried out.
"I told Don Fernando what Luscinda's father was insisting on, which was that my father should ask him for her, and that I did not dare tell my own father, being afraid he would not agree to it — not because he did not thoroughly know Luscinda's quality, goodness, virtue and beauty, and that she had qualities enough to ennoble any other line in Spain, but because I understood from him that he wanted me not to marry so soon, until he saw what Duke Ricardo would do for me. In short, I told him that I did not venture to say it to my father, both because of that obstacle and because of a great many others that made me afraid, without my knowing what they were, except that it seemed to me that what I wanted was never going to come about.
"To all this Don Fernando answered that he would undertake to speak to my father and get him to speak to Luscinda's. O ambitious Marius, O cruel Catiline, O criminal Sulla, O lying Ganelon, O treacherous Vellido, O vengeful Julian, O covetous Judas! Traitor, cruel, vengeful and lying — what disservice had this poor wretch done you, who with such openness revealed to you the secrets and the joys of his heart? What offence did I do you? What words did I say to you, or what advice did I give you, that was not all aimed at increasing your honour and your profit?
"But what am I complaining of, unlucky man that I am? Since it is a certain thing that when misfortunes are brought on by the current of the stars, coming as they do from high to low, hurling themselves down with fury and violence, there is no force on earth that can stop them and no human contrivance that can foresee them. Who could have imagined that Don Fernando — an illustrious, intelligent gentleman, under obligation to me for my services, and with power enough to get whatever his amorous desire asked for wherever it settled — should have grown so bitter, as they say, over taking from me one single ewe lamb that I did not even yet possess?
"But let these reflections be left aside as useless and unprofitable, and let us knot up the broken thread of my unhappy history.
"I say, then, that it seemed to Don Fernando that my presence was an obstacle to putting his false and wicked plan into effect, and so he decided to send me to his elder brother on the excuse of asking him for some money to pay for six horses which he had deliberately bought — and solely for this purpose of getting me out of the way, so that he could better succeed in his corrupt intention — on the very day he offered to speak to my father; and he wanted me to go for the money.
"Could I have foreseen this treachery? Could I, by any chance, have hit on imagining it? Certainly not; on the contrary, I offered with the greatest pleasure to set off at once, delighted with the good purchase that had been made. That night I spoke to Luscinda and told her what had been settled with Don Fernando, and that she should have firm hope that our good and just desires would come about. She, as unsuspecting as I was of Don Fernando's treachery, told me to try to come back soon, because she thought the fulfilment of our wishes would take no longer than my father took to speak to hers. I do not know what came over her, but on finishing saying this her eyes filled with tears and a knot came into her throat that would not let her say a word of the many others she seemed to me to be trying to say to me.
"I was astonished at this new turn, never before seen in her; because we always talked to each other, the times good fortune and my own diligence allowed it, with complete cheerfulness and pleasure, without mixing tears, sighs, jealousies, suspicions or fears into our conversation. It was all a matter of my magnifying my good luck at heaven's having given her to me as my lady: I exaggerated her beauty, I marvelled at her worth and understanding. She gave me back the exchange, praising in me whatever, being in love, seemed to her worth praising. With this we told each other a hundred thousand trifles and pieces of news about our neighbours and acquaintances, and the furthest my boldness ever went was to take, almost by force, one of her lovely white hands and raise it to my mouth, as far as the narrowness of a low grille that separated us allowed.
"But the night before the sad day of my departure, she wept and moaned and sighed, and went away and left me full of confusion and alarm, appalled at having seen such new and such sad signs of grief and feeling in Luscinda. But so as not to destroy my hopes, I put it all down to the strength of the love she had for me and to the pain that absence usually causes in those who love each other well.
"In the end I went away sad and thoughtful, my soul full of fancies and suspicions, without knowing what I suspected or fancied: clear signs showing me the sad event and the misfortune that was in store for me.
"I reached the place I was sent to. I gave the letters to Don Fernando's brother. I was well received, but not quickly dispatched, because he ordered me to wait — very much against my liking — for eight days, and in a place where the duke his father would not see me, because his brother wrote to him that he should send him a certain sum of money without his father's knowledge. And it was all the invention of that false Don Fernando, since his brother did not lack money to send me off at once. This was an order and a command that put me in a position to disobey it, since it seemed to me impossible to keep myself alive for so many days in Luscinda's absence — and the more so, having left her in the sadness I have told you of. But for all that I obeyed, like a good servant, although I could see that it was bound to be at the cost of my health.
"But four days after I got there, a man came looking for me with a letter, which he gave me and which I knew by the address to be from Luscinda, because the writing on it was hers. I opened it, afraid and alarmed, believing it must be something grave that had moved her to write to me while I was away, since even when I was there she seldom did it.
"Before reading it I asked the man who had given it him and how long he had taken on the road. He told me that as it happened, going along a street in the city at midday, a very beautiful lady had called him from a window with her eyes full of tears, and had said to him in a great hurry: 'Brother, if you are a Christian, as you look to be, for the love of God I beg you to get this letter at once, at once, to the place and the person named on the address, both of which are well known; and in doing it you will do a great service to our Lord. And so that you shall not lack the means to do it, take what is in this handkerchief.'
"'And saying this,' he said, 'she threw me a handkerchief out of the window, with a hundred reals tied up in it and this gold ring I have here, along with the letter I have given you. And then, without waiting for any answer from me, she left the window — though first she saw how I took the letter and the handkerchief, and I signed to her that I would do what she asked. And so, finding myself so well paid for the trouble I might take in bringing it to you, and knowing by the address that you were the man it was being sent to — because I know you very well, sir — and being moved besides by that beautiful lady's tears, I decided not to trust anybody else but to come myself and give it you; and in the sixteen hours since it was given me I have done the journey, which as you know is eighteen leagues.'
"While the grateful and newly-made courier was telling me this, I hung on his words, my legs trembling in such a way that I could hardly hold myself up. In the end I opened the letter and saw that it contained these words:
The word Don Fernando gave you, to speak to your father so that your father should speak to mine, he has kept more to his own pleasure than to your profit. Know, sir, that he has asked for me as his wife, and my father, carried away by the advantage he thinks Don Fernando has over you, has agreed to what he wants, and so much in earnest that the betrothal is to take place two days from now, so secretly and so privately that the only witnesses are to be the heavens and some of the household. Imagine the state I am in. Whether it is worth your coming, you must see; and whether I love you or not, the outcome of this business will give you to understand. Please God this may reach your hands before mine finds itself in a position to be joined with the hand of a man who knows so badly how to keep the faith he promises.
"These, in short, were the words the letter contained, and the ones that made me set off at once, without waiting for any other answer or any other money; for I saw plainly enough by then that it was not the buying of horses but the buying of his own pleasure that had moved Don Fernando to send me to his brother.
"The anger I conceived against Don Fernando, together with the fear of losing the treasure I had won with so many years of service and longing, put wings on me; for almost as though I flew, the next day I was in my own town, at exactly the point and hour that was right for going to speak to Luscinda. I went in secretly, and left the mule I had come on at the house of the good man who had brought me the letter; and luck willed that at that moment it should be so good to me that I found Luscinda standing at the grille, the witness of our love. Luscinda knew me at once, and I knew her; but not as she ought to have known me and I ought to have known her. But who is there in the world who can boast that he has penetrated and understood the confused thinking and changeable nature of a woman? Nobody, certainly.
"I say, then, that as soon as Luscinda saw me she said to me: 'Cardenio, I am dressed for a wedding. Don Fernando the traitor and my father the covetous man are already waiting for me in the hall with other witnesses, who will be witnesses of my death sooner than of my betrothal. Do not be alarmed, my friend, but try to be present at this sacrifice; and if it cannot be prevented by my words, I have a dagger hidden about me that can prevent more determined forces, putting an end to my life and a beginning to your knowing the love I have had for you and still have.'
"I answered her in alarm and haste, afraid I should have no time to answer her at all: 'Lady, may your deeds make your words come true; for if you are carrying a dagger to prove yourself with, here I am carrying a sword to defend you with, or to kill myself with if fortune goes against us.'
"I do not think she could hear all these words, because I heard that they were calling her in a hurry, because the bridegroom was waiting. With this the night of my sorrow closed in and the sun of my happiness went down: I was left without light in my eyes and without reasoning in my understanding. I could not manage to go into her house, nor could I move anywhere at all; but considering how much my presence mattered for whatever might happen in that case, I took as much courage as I could and went into the house. And as I already knew all its ways in and out very well, and the more so with the commotion that was secretly going on in it, nobody noticed me. So that, without being seen, I had a chance to place myself in the recess made by a window of that same hall, which was covered by the ends and fringes of two tapestries, between which I could see, without being seen, everything that was going on in the hall.
"Who could describe now the shocks that hit my heart while I was there, the thoughts that came to me, the reflections I made? They were so many and such that they cannot be told, and it is not even right that they should be. Enough that you should know that the bridegroom came into the hall with no other adornment than the same ordinary clothes he usually wore. He brought as his best man a first cousin of Luscinda's, and there was nobody from outside in the whole hall except the servants of the house.
"A little later Luscinda came out of a dressing room, accompanied by her mother and two of her maids, as well dressed and got up as her rank and beauty deserved, and as befitted one who was the perfection of courtly elegance and splendour. My suspense and rapture gave me no room to look at and note in detail what she had on; I could only take in the colours, which were flesh-pink and white, and the glints thrown out by the stones and jewels of her headdress and of the whole gown — all of which was surpassed by the singular beauty of her lovely fair hair, so that in competition with the precious stones and the light of four torches that were in the hall, hers offered more brilliance to the eye.
"O memory, mortal enemy of my rest! What is the use of representing to me now the incomparable beauty of that adored enemy of mine? Would it not be better, cruel memory, that you should remind me and represent to me what she did then, so that, moved by so plain a wrong, I might try — if not for revenge — at least to lose my life?"
"Do not grow tired, gentlemen, of hearing these digressions I make; for my suffering is not of the kind that can or should be told briefly and in passing, since every circumstance of it seems to me to deserve a long discourse."
To this the curate answered that not only were they not tired of hearing him, but that the small particulars he was telling gave them a great deal of pleasure, being such that they deserved not to be passed over in silence, and deserved the same attention as the main part of the tale.
"I say, then," Cardenio went on, "that everybody being in the hall, the parish priest came in; and taking the two of them by the hand to do what is required in such an act, at the words 'Do you, lady Luscinda, take the lord Don Fernando, here present, for your lawful husband, as Holy Mother Church commands?' I put my whole head and neck out from between the tapestries, and with the most attentive ears and a soul in turmoil I set myself to listen to what Luscinda would answer, expecting from her answer the sentence of my death or the confirmation of my life.
"Oh, if only I had dared to come out then, crying aloud: 'Ah, Luscinda, Luscinda, look what you are doing! Consider what you owe me! See that you are mine and cannot be another's! Be warned that your saying yes and the ending of my life must happen at one and the same instant. Ah, treacherous Don Fernando, robber of my glory, death of my life! What do you want? What are you after? Consider that you cannot as a Christian reach the end of your desires, because Luscinda is my wife and I am her husband.'
"Ah, madman that I am — now that I am absent and far from the danger, I say I ought to have done what I did not do! Now that I let my dear treasure be stolen, I curse the robber, on whom I could have taken revenge if I had had the heart for it as I have the heart for complaining! In short, since I was a coward and a fool then, it is no great matter that I should die now mortified, repentant and mad.
"The priest was waiting for Luscinda's answer, which she was a good while in giving; and when I thought she was pulling out the dagger to prove herself, or loosening her tongue to say some truth or undeceiving that would come out to my advantage, I hear her say in a faint, weak voice: 'I do.' And Don Fernando said the same; and giving her the ring, they were left bound in an indissoluble knot. The bridegroom came up to embrace his wife, and she, putting her hand over her heart, fell fainting into her mother's arms.
"It remains now to say the state I was left in, seeing in the yes I had heard my hopes mocked, Luscinda's words and promises false, and myself made incapable of ever recovering the good I had lost in that instant. I was left without counsel, abandoned — as it seemed to me — by all heaven, made an enemy of the earth that held me up, the air denying me breath for my sighs and the water moisture for my eyes; only fire increased, in such a way that I was all burning with rage and jealousy.
"Everybody was thrown into confusion by Luscinda's faint; and when her mother unfastened her bodice to let the air get to her, a folded paper was found in it, which Don Fernando took at once and set himself to read by the light of one of the torches. And on finishing reading it, he sat down in a chair and put his hand to his cheek, with every sign of a man deep in thought, without attending to the remedies that were being applied to his wife to bring her out of her faint.
"Seeing the whole household in an uproar, I ventured to come out, whether I was seen or not, with the resolve that if they did see me I would do such a wild thing that everybody would come to understand the just indignation of my breast in the punishment of the false Don Fernando, and even of the changeable heart of the fainting traitress. But my luck — which must be keeping me for greater evils, if it is possible that there are any — arranged that at that moment I should have more understanding than I have had ever since. And so, without wanting to take revenge on my greatest enemies, which would have been easy since they were so far from thinking about me, I chose to take it on myself and to carry out on myself the punishment they deserved — and perhaps with more severity than would have been used on them if I had killed them then, since a death that comes suddenly soon ends the pain, but one that is drawn out with torments is always killing without ever ending the life.
"In the end I left that house and came to the house of the man where I had left the mule. I had him saddle her, and without taking leave of him I mounted and rode out of the city, not daring, like another Lot, to turn my face and look at it. And when I found myself alone in the open country, and the darkness of the night hid me and its silence invited me to complain, without any respect or fear of being heard or recognised, I let out my voice and loosed my tongue in so many curses against Luscinda and Don Fernando, as though with them I were making good the wrong they had done me.
"I gave her the titles of cruel, of ungrateful, of false and thankless; but above all of covetous, since my enemy's wealth had closed the eyes of her affection, to take her from me and hand her to the man fortune had shown itself more generous and open-handed with. And in the middle of the flood of these curses and reproaches, I made excuses for her, saying that it was no great thing that a girl brought up quietly in her parents' house, made and used always to obey them, should have chosen to fall in with their wishes, since they were giving her for a husband a gentleman so distinguished, so rich and so well-bred that if she had refused to accept him it might be thought either that she had no sense or that her affections were somewhere else — a thing that would work so much to the harm of her good name and reputation.
"Then I would turn round and say that if she had said I was her husband, they would have seen that she had not made so bad a choice in choosing me that they could not have excused her; because before Don Fernando offered himself, they could not themselves have hit on wishing for a better husband for their daughter than me, if they had measured their wishes by reason. And that she could very well, before putting herself in the last and unavoidable pass of giving her hand, have said that I had already given her mine; for I would have come forward and agreed with everything she might have thought of inventing in the case.
"In the end I concluded that little love, little judgement, great ambition and a desire for grandeur had made her forget the words with which she had deceived me, kept me going and sustained me in my firm hopes and honourable desires.
"With these cries and this restlessness I travelled what was left of that night, and at dawn I came to one of the ways into these mountains, along which I travelled another three days, with no path or road, until I came to a stop at some meadows which lie I do not know which way from these mountains; and there I asked some herdsmen which way the wildest part of these sierras lay. They told me it was this way. I set off for it at once, with the intention of ending my life here; and on getting in among these wild places, my mule fell dead of weariness and hunger, or — what I am more inclined to believe — in order to shake off so useless a burden as she was carrying in me. I was left on foot, worn out by nature, pierced through with hunger, with nobody to help me and no thought of looking for anybody.
"In that state I lay stretched out on the ground for I do not know how long, at the end of which I got up without hunger, and found beside me some goatherds who must without doubt have been the ones who relieved my need, because they told me the state they had found me in, and how I was saying so many mad and absurd things that they were clear evidence of my having lost my wits. And I have felt in myself ever since that I do not have them whole all the time, but so damaged and feeble that I do a thousand mad things — tearing my clothes, shouting through these solitudes, cursing my luck and repeating in vain the beloved name of my enemy, with no other thought or purpose at those times than to try to end my life by shouting. And when I come to myself, I find myself so tired and pounded that I can hardly move.
"My most usual dwelling is in the hollow of a cork tree, big enough to cover this wretched body. The cowherds and goatherds who go about these mountains, moved by charity, keep me alive, putting food for me along the paths and on the rocks where they suppose I might chance to pass and find it. And so, even when my wits fail me at the time, natural need makes me recognise food and wakes in me the desire to want it and the will to take it. Other times they tell me, when they meet me in my senses, that I come out on the roads and take it by force, even when they give it me willingly, from the shepherds who are bringing it from the village to the sheepfolds.
"In this way I get through my wretched, extreme life, until heaven is pleased either to bring it to its final end or to put it into my memory to make me not remember Luscinda's beauty and treachery and Don Fernando's wrong; for if he does this without taking my life, I shall turn my thoughts to better reasoning. And if not, there is nothing for it but to beg him to have mercy on my soul outright, for I feel in myself neither courage nor strength to get my body out of the straits I have chosen to put it in of my own free will."
"This, gentlemen, is the bitter story of my misfortune. Tell me whether it is such that it can be attended with less feeling than what you have seen in me. And do not tire yourselves out persuading me or advising me what reason may tell you might be good for my remedy; because it will do as much good with me as a medicine prescribed by a famous doctor does for a sick man who will not take it. I do not want health without Luscinda; and since she chose to belong to another, being — or having been bound to be — mine, let me choose to belong to misfortune, when I might have belonged to good luck.
"She chose, by her change, to make my ruin permanent; I shall choose, by contriving to lose myself, to make her wish come true; and it will be an example to those to come that I alone lacked what all other unfortunate men have to spare. For to them the impossibility of comfort is usually a comfort, and in me it is the cause of greater sufferings and evils, because I believe that even death will not put an end to them."
Here Cardenio brought to an end his long speech and his history, as unhappy as it was full of love. And just as the curate was preparing to say a few words of comfort to him, he was stopped by a voice that came to his ears, saying in sorrowful tones what will be told in the fourth part of this narrative — for at this point the wise and cautious historian Cide Hamete Benengeli brought the third to an end.
Most happy and most fortunate were the times in which the boldest of knights, Don Quixote of La Mancha, was launched upon the world; for it is because he took so honourable a decision as wanting to bring back to life and restore to the world the already lost and almost dead order of knight-errantry that we now enjoy, in this age of ours which is so in want of cheerful entertainment, not only the sweetness of his true history but also the tales and episodes in it, which are in part no less agreeable, no less artfully made and no less true than the history itself.
Which history, going on with its carded, twisted and wound thread, relates that just as the curate was beginning to prepare himself to comfort Cardenio, he was prevented by a voice that came to his ears saying in sad tones:
"Oh God! Can it be possible that I have found at last a place that can serve as a hidden grave for the heavy burden of this body I keep going so much against my will? Yes, it can, if the solitude these mountains promise does not lie to me. Ah, wretched woman, and how much more agreeable company these crags and thickets will be to my purpose than any human being's — since they will give me room to communicate my misfortune to heaven in complaints! For there is nobody on earth from whom one can hope for counsel in doubts, relief in troubles or remedy in evils."
The curate and those with him heard and took in all these words; and as it seemed to them, as it was, that they were being said close by, they got up to look for the speaker. And they had not gone twenty paces when, behind a boulder, they saw sitting at the foot of an ash tree a young fellow dressed as a farm labourer, whose face they could not see for the moment because he had it bent down, being engaged in washing his feet in the stream that ran along there.
And they came up so silently that he did not notice them, nor was he attending to anything except washing his feet, which were such that they seemed nothing but two pieces of white crystal born among the other stones of the stream. The whiteness and beauty of the feet took them aback, since it seemed to them that they were not made for treading clods or for going about behind the plough and the oxen, as their owner's dress suggested. And so, seeing that they had not been noticed, the curate, who was in front, signed to the other two to crouch down or hide behind some pieces of rock that were there, and they all did so, watching attentively what the young man did.
He had on a short brown two-skirted jacket, belted close to the body with a white towel. He wore likewise breeches and gaiters of brown cloth, and on his head a brown cap. He had the gaiters pushed up to halfway up his leg, which without any doubt looked like white alabaster. He finished washing his beautiful feet, and then dried them with a head-cloth he pulled out from under the cap; and on going to take the cap off he raised his face, and those who were watching him had the chance to see an incomparable beauty — such that Cardenio said to the curate in a low voice:
"Since this is not Luscinda, this is no human being but a divine one."
The young man took off the cap, and shaking his head from side to side, there began to loosen and spread out a head of hair that the sun's rays might have envied. By this they knew that the one who seemed a labourer was a woman, and a delicate one, and even the most beautiful the eyes of the other two had seen up to then — and Cardenio's too, if he had not looked at and known Luscinda; for he afterwards declared that only Luscinda's beauty could compete with hers.
The long fair hair not only covered her shoulders but hid the whole of her under it all round; so that except for the feet, no other part of her body showed: so long and so much of it there was. And in this her hands served her as a comb; and if the feet in the water had looked like pieces of crystal, the hands in the hair seemed like pieces of packed snow — all of which put the three who were watching her into greater astonishment and a greater desire to know who she was.
For this reason they decided to show themselves; and at the movement they made in getting to their feet, the beautiful girl raised her head, and pushing the hair away from in front of her eyes with both hands, she looked at those who were making the noise. And she had hardly seen them when she got to her feet, and without waiting to put on her shoes or gather up her hair, she snatched up very quickly a bundle that looked like clothes which she had beside her, and tried to take to flight, full of alarm and fright. But she had not gone six steps when, her delicate feet being unable to bear the roughness of the stones, she came down on the ground.
Which the three of them seeing, they came out to her, and the curate was the first to say to her:
"Stop, madam, whoever you may be; the men you see here have no other intention than to serve you. There is no reason for you to put yourself to such unnecessary flight, because your feet will not be able to bear it and we will not allow it."
To all this she answered not a word, astonished and confused. So they came up to her, and the curate, taking her by the hand, went on to say:
"What your dress denies us, madam, your hair reveals to us: clear signs that the causes must be of no small moment which have disguised your beauty in dress as unworthy as this and brought you into a solitude as great as this — in which it has been good fortune to have found you, if not to give a remedy for your troubles, at least to give them counsel. For no trouble, so long as it does not end the life, can weary a person so much or come so near to the extreme of being one that the sufferer should refuse even to listen to advice that is given with good intentions. So, madam — or sir, or whatever you may choose to be — put off the alarm the sight of us has caused you and tell us your good or bad fortune; for in us together, or in each of us, you will find somebody to help you feel your misfortunes."
While the curate was saying all this, the disguised girl stood as though entranced, looking at them all without moving her lips or saying a single word, exactly like some country rustic who is suddenly shown rare things he has never seen before. But when the curate went back to saying other words directed to the same purpose, she gave a deep sigh and broke her silence and said:
"Since the solitude of these mountains has not been enough to hide me, and the loosening of my untidy hair has not allowed my tongue to be a liar, it would be useless for me to pretend all over again now what, if it were believed, would be believed more out of courtesy than for any other reason. This being granted, I say, gentlemen, that I thank you for the offer you have made me, which has put me under an obligation to satisfy you in everything you have asked — although I am afraid the account I give you of my misfortunes will cause you distress as much as pity, because you will find no remedy to remedy them and no comfort to lighten them.
"But for all that, so that my honour may not go on wavering in your minds, since you have already recognised me for a woman and see me young, alone and in this dress — all of them things together, and each one on its own, which can throw any honest reputation to the ground — I shall have to tell you what I would rather keep quiet if I could."
All this she said without stopping, this person who looked so beautiful a woman, with so ready a tongue and so soft a voice that her good sense astonished them no less than her beauty. And when they had made her new offers and new entreaties to keep her promise, she, without making them beg any further, put on her shoes with complete modesty and gathered up her hair, and settled herself on the seat of a stone; and with the three of them placed around her, forcing herself to hold back some tears that came into her eyes, she began the history of her life in a calm, clear voice, like this:
"In this Andalusia there is a place from which a duke takes his title, which makes him one of those they call grandees of Spain. This man has two sons: the elder, heir to his estate and, by the look of it, to his good habits; and the younger, I do not know what he is the heir of, unless it is of Vellido's treacheries and Ganelon's lies.
"My parents are this lord's vassals, humble in family but so rich that if the goods of their birth had matched the goods of their fortune, they would have had nothing more to wish for and I should not have had to fear finding myself in the misfortune I am in. Because perhaps my lack of good fortune comes from the lack of it they had in not being born distinguished. It is quite true that they are not so low that they need be ashamed of their condition, nor so high that they take away from me the notion I have that my misfortune comes from their humble station.
"They are, in short, farmers, plain people, with no admixture of any ill-sounding blood, and, as they say, Old Christians of the oldest vintage — but so rich that their wealth and handsome way of living is little by little winning them the name of gentlefolk, and even of gentry. Although the greatest wealth and nobility they prided themselves on was having me for their daughter; and so, both because they had no other daughter or son to inherit from them and because they were fond parents, I was one of the most indulged daughters that parents ever indulged.
"I was the mirror they looked at themselves in, the staff of their old age, and the object towards which — measuring them by heaven's will — they directed all their wishes; from which, they being so good, mine did not depart a hair's breadth. And in the same way that I was mistress of their hearts, so I was of their property. Through me the servants were taken on and dismissed; the reckoning and account of what was sown and gathered passed through my hands; the olive mills, the wine presses, the number of the large and small livestock, the number of the beehives — in short, of everything that so rich a farmer as my father can have and does have, I kept the account and was the steward and mistress, with so much care on my part and so much pleasure on theirs that I honestly cannot find words for it.
"The hours of the day I had left over, after giving out what was needed to the foremen, the overseers and the other day labourers, I spent on those occupations that are as proper as they are necessary for young women, such as the needle and the lace-cushion offer, and often the distaff. And if I sometimes left these occupations aside to refresh my spirits, I took refuge in the entertainment of reading some devotional book, or of playing a harp — because experience showed me that music settles unsettled minds and relieves the troubles that are born in the spirit.
"This, then, was the life I led in my parents' house; and if I have told it in such detail, it has not been out of ostentation or to make it understood that I am rich, but so that it may be noticed how blamelessly I have come from that good condition I have described to the unhappy one I now find myself in.
"The case, then, is this. Passing my life in so many occupations and in a seclusion that might have been compared to a convent's, being seen — as I thought — by no other person than the servants of the house, since on the days I went to Mass it was so early in the morning, and I was so much accompanied by my mother and other maidservants, and so veiled and so careful, that my eyes hardly saw more ground than the piece I set my feet on; and yet in spite of all this, the eyes of love — or of idleness rather, which the eyes of the lynx cannot match — saw me, in the shape of the attentions of Don Fernando, that being the name of the duke's younger son that I have told you about."
The woman who was telling the tale had hardly named Don Fernando when the colour changed in Cardenio's face and he began to sweat, with such a great disturbance that the curate and the barber, who noticed it, were afraid he was having that fit of madness they had heard came on him from time to time. But Cardenio did nothing except sweat and stay still, staring hard at the country girl, guessing who she was; and she, without noticing Cardenio's movements, went on with her history, saying:
"And they had hardly seen me when, according to what he said afterwards, he was as much taken captive by love of me as his behaviour gave everyone to understand. But to get quickly to the end of the tale of my misfortunes, which has none, I want to pass over in silence the efforts Don Fernando made to declare his intentions to me. He bribed the whole household; he gave and offered gifts and favours to my relatives. The days were all holidays and rejoicing in my street; at night the music let nobody sleep. The notes that came into my hands, I do not know how, were endless, full of loving words and offers, with fewer letters in them than promises and oaths.
"All of which not only did not soften me but hardened me, as though he had been my mortal enemy and everything he did to bring me round to his wishes had been done for the opposite effect. Not that Don Fernando's good looks displeased me, or that I thought his attentions excessive; because it gave me a certain something of pleasure to see myself so much loved and esteemed by so distinguished a gentleman, and it did not grieve me to see my own praises in his papers — for in this, however plain we women may be, it seems to me that we always take pleasure in being called beautiful.
"But against all this stood my sense of honour and the constant advice my parents gave me, who by now knew Don Fernando's intentions quite openly, because by then he did not care in the least that the whole world should know them. My parents told me that they left and deposited their honour and good name in my virtue and goodness alone, and that I should consider the inequality there was between me and Don Fernando, and that from this I should see that his thoughts, whatever he might say to the contrary, were aimed more at his own pleasure than at my good. And that if I wanted to put some kind of obstacle in the way so that he should give up his unjust pretensions, they would marry me at once to whoever I most liked, either from the most distinguished people of our own village or from all those round about — since everything could be hoped for from their great property and my good name.
"With these firm promises, and with the truth of what they told me, I fortified my integrity, and I never chose to answer Don Fernando with a word that could show him, even from a great way off, any hope of getting what he wanted.
"All this reserve of mine, which he must have taken for disdain, must have been what sharpened his lustful appetite further — for that is the name I want to give the affection he showed me; which, if it had been what it ought to have been, you would not be hearing about it now, because there would have been no occasion to tell you.
"In the end Don Fernando learnt that my parents were about to marry me off, in order to take away from him the hope of possessing me, or at least so that I should have more guards to guard me; and this news, or suspicion, was the cause of his doing what you shall now hear.
"And it was that one night, when I was in my room with only the company of a maid who served me, having the doors well shut for fear that through carelessness my honour should find itself in danger, without my knowing or imagining how, in the middle of all these precautions and preventions and in the loneliness of that silence and confinement, I found him in front of me. The sight of him confused me in such a way that it took away the sight of my eyes and struck my tongue dumb; and so I was not able to cry out, nor do I think he would have let me, because he came up to me at once, and taking me in his arms — for I, as I say, had no strength to defend myself, disturbed as I was — he began to say such things to me that I do not know how it is possible for a lie to have such skill that it can put them together in a way that makes them seem so true. The traitor made his tears give credit to his words and his sighs to his intentions. I, poor creature, alone among my own people and little practised in cases of the kind, began, I do not know how, to take so many falsehoods for truths — but not in such a way that his tears and sighs moved me to any more than a proper compassion.
"And so, that first shock passing off, I came somewhat to recover my lost spirits, and with more courage than I thought I could have, I said to him: 'If, sir, as I am in your arms, I were between the paws of a fierce lion, and freeing myself from them were assured me on condition that I did or said something to the harm of my honour, it would be as possible for me to do it or say it as it is possible for what has already happened not to have happened. So that if you have my body encircled with your arms, I have my soul bound with my good intentions, which are as different from yours as you will see if you try to go further with them by using force on me.
"'I am your vassal, but not your slave; nor has the nobility of your blood, nor ought it to have, any power to dishonour and think little of the humbleness of mine. And I value myself as much, peasant and countrywoman as I am, as you do yourself, lord and gentleman as you are. With me your force is to have no effect, nor are your riches to have any worth, nor are your words to be able to deceive me, nor your sighs and tears to soften me. If I saw any one of all these things I have mentioned in the man my parents gave me for a husband, my will would fall in with his and would not depart from his; so that, being left with my honour even if I were left without pleasure, I would give up willingly what you, sir, are now trying to get with so much force. I have said all this because there is no thinking that any man shall get anything at all from me who is not my lawful husband.'
"'If that is all you are troubled about, most beautiful Dorotea' — for that is this unfortunate woman's name — said the disloyal gentleman, 'see, here I give you my hand to be yours; and let the witnesses of this truth be the heavens, from whom nothing is hidden, and this image of Our Lady that you have here.'"
When Cardenio heard her say that her name was Dorotea, he went back to his agitation and finally confirmed his first opinion as true; but he did not want to interrupt the tale, so as to see how the thing he already almost knew would come out. He only said:
"So Dorotea is your name, madam? I have heard of another of the same name, who perhaps runs neck and neck with you in misfortunes. Go on, for a time will come when I can tell you things that will appal you to the same degree that they grieve you."
Dorotea took notice of Cardenio's words and of his strange, ruined dress, and begged him that if he knew anything about her affairs he would tell her at once; because if fortune had left her anything good, it was the courage she had to bear any disaster that might come on her, being certain that, as it seemed to her, none could come that would increase the one she had by a hair's breadth.
"I would not lose the chance, madam," answered Cardenio, "of telling you what I think, if what I imagine were true; and so far there is no opportunity lost, and it matters nothing to you to know it."
"Be it as it may," answered Dorotea. "What happened in my story was that Don Fernando took an image that was in that room and set it up as a witness to our betrothal. With the most forceful words and extraordinary oaths he gave me his word to be my husband — although before he had finished saying them I told him he should look carefully at what he was doing and consider the anger his father would feel at seeing him married to a peasant woman, one of his own vassals; that he should not be blinded by my beauty, such as it was, since it was not enough to find an excuse in it for his mistake; and that if he wanted to do me any good at all, for the love he bore me, it should be to let my luck run at the level my quality could reach, because marriages as unequal as that are never enjoyed and never last long in the pleasure they begin with.
"All these arguments I have set down here I said to him, and a great many others I do not remember; but they were not enough to make him give up his intention, exactly like a man who does not mean to pay and therefore, when the bargain is being struck, does not stick at difficulties.
"At this point I made a short argument with myself, and said to myself: 'Well, I shall not be the first who by way of marriage has risen from a humble to a great condition, nor will Don Fernando be the first whom beauty — or blind infatuation, which is more likely — has made take a partner unequal to his greatness. Since, then, I am not making a new world or a new custom, it is as well to accept this honour that luck is offering me, even if in this man the affection he shows me lasts no longer than the satisfaction of his desire; because in the end, in God's eyes, I shall be his wife. And if I try to send him away with disdain, I can see he is in such a state that, not using the means he ought to, he will use force, and I shall be left dishonoured and without any excuse for the blame that might be put on me by anyone who did not know how blamelessly I had come to this pass. Because what arguments would be enough to persuade my parents, and others, that this gentleman came into my room without my consent?'
"All these questions and answers I turned over in my imagination in an instant; and above all, what began to press on me and incline me to what was, without my thinking it, my ruin, were Don Fernando's oaths, the witnesses he called on, the tears he shed and, finally, his figure and good looks, which, accompanied by so many signs of true love, could have conquered any heart as free and as guarded as mine.
"I called my maid, so that she should join the witnesses of heaven on earth. Don Fernando went back to repeating and confirming his oaths; he added new saints as witnesses to the first ones; he called down on himself a thousand curses to come if he did not keep what he promised me; he moistened his eyes again and increased his sighs; he held me tighter in his arms, out of which he had never let me go. And with this, and with my maid going out of the room again, I ceased to be a maiden and he finished becoming a traitor and a false man.
"The day that followed the night of my ruin came, I think, not as quickly as Don Fernando wanted; because once the thing appetite asks for has been had, the greatest pleasure that can come is to get away from where it was got. I say this because Don Fernando was in a hurry to get away from me; and by the contrivance of my maid, who was the same one who had brought him there, he found himself in the street before daybreak.
"And on taking leave of me — although not with so much eagerness and vehemence as when he came — he told me to be assured of his faith and that his oaths were firm and true. And to confirm his word further, he took a rich ring off his finger and put it on mine.
"In short, he went and I was left, I do not know whether sad or glad. This I can say for certain: that I was left confused and thoughtful and almost out of myself with what had just happened, and I had not the spirit — or it did not occur to me — to scold my maid for the treachery she had committed in shutting Don Fernando into my own room, because I still could not decide whether what had happened to me was good or bad. On his going I told Don Fernando that by the same road as that night he could see me on other nights, since I was his already, until, whenever he chose, the thing should be made public.
"But he did not come on any other, except the next one; nor could I see him in the street or at church for more than a month. I wore myself out in vain trying to see him, although I knew he was in the town and that most days he went hunting, an exercise he was very fond of.
"Those days and those hours I know well were ill-starred and unlucky for me, and I know well that in them I began to doubt, and even to disbelieve, Don Fernando's good faith. And I know too that my maid heard then the words of reproof for her boldness that she had not heard before; and I know that I was obliged to keep an account of my tears and of the composure of my face, so as not to give my parents occasion to ask me what I was so unhappy about and force me to look for lies to tell them.
"But all this came to an end in a moment, when a moment came in which all considerations were trampled down and honourable reasoning was finished, and patience was lost and my secret thoughts came out into the open. And this was because, a few days later, it was said in the village that in a city near there Don Fernando had married a young lady altogether extremely beautiful and of very distinguished parents, although not so rich that on the strength of her dowry she could have aspired to so noble a marriage. It was said that she was called Luscinda, along with other things that had happened at the betrothal that were worth wondering at."
Cardenio heard the name Luscinda, and did nothing but hunch his shoulders, bite his lips, arch his eyebrows and, shortly afterwards, let two fountains of tears fall from his eyes. But Dorotea did not stop going on with her tale for that, and said:
"This sad news reached my ears; and instead of my heart freezing when I heard it, so much anger and rage caught fire in it that it was very little short of my going out into the streets shouting, publishing the treachery and betrayal that had been done to me. But this fury was calmed for the time being by the thought of putting into practice that same night what I did put into practice: which was to put on this dress that was given me by one of those they call farm-lads in a farmer's house, who was a servant of my father's, to whom I revealed my whole misfortune and begged him to go with me as far as the city where I understood my enemy was. He, after reproving my boldness and calling my decision an ugly one, seeing me settled in my opinion, offered to keep me company, as he put it, to the end of the world.
"Then, at once, I shut up in a linen pillowcase a woman's dress and some jewels and money, for whatever might happen. And in the silence of that night, without telling my treacherous maid, I left my house, accompanied by my servant and by a great many imaginings, and set out on the road to the city on foot, carried along in flight by the desire to arrive — if not to prevent what I took to be already done, at least to make Don Fernando tell me with what soul he had done it.
"I got where I wanted in two and a half days; and on going into the city I asked for the house of Luscinda's parents, and the first man I put the question to answered me with more than I would have wanted to hear. He told me the house and everything that had happened at his daughter's betrothal, a thing so public in the city that people gathered in knots all over it to tell it.
"He told me that on the night Don Fernando was betrothed to Luscinda, after she had given her yes to being his wife, she had been seized by a violent faint; and that when her husband came to unfasten her bodice to let the air get to her, he found in it a paper written in Luscinda's own hand, in which she said and declared that she could not be Don Fernando's wife, because she was Cardenio's — who, from what the man told me, was a very distinguished gentleman of that same city — and that if she had given her yes to Don Fernando, it was so as not to depart from obedience to her parents.
"In short, such things did he say the paper contained that it gave people to understand that she had meant to kill herself as soon as the betrothal was over, and gave there the reasons why she had taken her life. All of which they say was confirmed by a dagger they found on her in some part of her clothing.
"All of which Don Fernando seeing, and thinking that Luscinda had made a mock and a fool of him and thought little of him, he went for her before she came out of her faint, and with the same dagger they had found on her he tried to stab her; and he would have done it if her parents and those who were present had not stopped him.
"They said further that Don Fernando immediately went away, and that Luscinda did not come out of her fit until the next day, when she told her parents that she was the true wife of that Cardenio I have mentioned. I learnt more: that this Cardenio, so they said, had been present at the betrothal, and that on seeing her betrothed — a thing he had never expected — he left the city in despair, first writing her a letter in which he gave her to understand the wrong Luscinda had done him, and how he was going where people would not see him.
"All this was public and notorious in the whole city, and everybody was talking about it; and they talked more when they learnt that Luscinda had disappeared from her parents' house and from the city, since they could not find her anywhere in it — at which her parents were out of their wits and did not know what course to take to find her.
"What I learnt put my hopes back in play, and I thought it better not to have found Don Fernando than to find him married, since it seemed to me that the door to my remedy was not yet entirely shut. I gave myself to understand that it might be that heaven had put that obstacle in the way of the second marriage in order to bring him to recognise what he owed to the first, and to realise that he was a Christian and was more bound to his own soul than to human considerations. All these things I turned over in my fancy, and comforted myself without having any comfort, inventing long, faint hopes so as to keep going the life I now loathe.
"Being in the city, then, without knowing what to do with myself, since I could not find Don Fernando, there came to my ears a public proclamation offering a great reward to whoever should find me, giving a description of my age and of the very dress I was wearing. And I heard it said that people were saying that the young man who came with me had taken me from my parents' house — a thing that went to my very soul, seeing how far down my reputation had gone, since it was not enough to lose it by my coming away, but the question of who with had to be added, and he so low a person and so unworthy of my honourable intentions.
"The moment I heard the proclamation I left the city with my servant, who was by then beginning to show signs of wavering in the faithfulness he had promised me; and that night we went into the thick of this mountain, in fear of being found. But as they usually say that one evil calls up another, and that the end of one misfortune is generally the beginning of a greater, so it happened to me. Because my good servant, faithful and trustworthy until then, as soon as he saw me in this solitude, urged on by his own knavery rather than by my beauty, chose to take advantage of the opportunity that these wastes seemed to him to offer; and with little shame and less fear of God or respect for me, he made love to me. And seeing that I answered the shamelessness of his proposals with ugly and just words, he left aside the entreaties he had first meant to make use of and began to use force.
"But just heaven, which seldom or never fails to look at and favour just intentions, favoured mine in such a way that with my small strength and with little trouble I sent him over a precipice, where I left him, I do not know whether dead or alive. And then, with more speed than my fright and weariness called for, I went into these mountains, with no other thought or plan than to hide myself in them and to escape from my father and from those who were looking for me on his behalf.
"With this wish I came into them I do not know how many months ago, and there I found a stockman who took me as a servant to a place in the very bowels of this sierra, whom I have served as a shepherd boy all this time, trying always to be out in the fields so as to hide this hair which now, so unexpectedly, has revealed me.
"But all my industry and all my care was and has been of no use, since my master came to know that I was not a man, and the same wicked thought was born in him that had been born in my servant. And as fortune does not always give the remedy along with the trouble, I found no precipice or ravine to throw the master down and put him out of his pain, as I found for the servant; and so I thought it the lesser difficulty to leave him and hide myself all over again among these wild places, rather than try my strength or my arguments on him.
"I say, then, that I went back into hiding, and to looking for somewhere where without any hindrance I could beg heaven with sighs and tears to take pity on my misfortune and give me the means and the help to get out of it, or else to leave my life among these solitudes — with no memory left of this unhappy woman, who so blamelessly will have given people something to talk and gossip about in her own country and in other people's."
"This, gentlemen, is the true history of my tragedy. Look and judge now whether the sighs you heard, the words you listened to and the tears that came out of my eyes had cause enough to show themselves in greater abundance. And when you have considered the nature of my misfortune, you will see that comfort will be useless, since the remedy for it is impossible.
"I only beg you — a thing you can easily and ought to do — to advise me where I can spend my life without being finished off by the fear and alarm I have of being found by those who are looking for me. Because although I know that the great love my parents have for me assures me that I shall be well received by them, so much shame comes over me at the mere thought that I must appear before them not as they thought I would, that I count it better to exile myself for ever from being seen than to see their faces, thinking that they are looking at mine as one that has none of the modesty they must have promised themselves in me."
She fell silent on saying this, and her face was covered by a colour that showed very plainly the feeling and the shame in her soul. In their own souls those who had listened to her felt as much pity as astonishment at her misfortune; and although the curate wanted to comfort and advise her at once, Cardenio spoke first, saying:
"So, madam, you are the beautiful Dorotea, the only daughter of the rich Clenardo."
Dorotea was astonished when she heard her father's name, and at seeing how poor a creature it was who named him — for it has already been said what a bad state Cardenio's clothes were in. And so she said to him:
"And who are you, brother, that you know my father's name like this? Because up to now, if I do not remember wrong, in the whole course of the tale of my misfortune I have not named him."
"I am," answered Cardenio, "that luckless man who, as you have said, madam, Luscinda said was her husband. I am the unhappy Cardenio, whom the wicked conduct of the same man who has put you in the state you are in has brought to the state you see me in: ragged, half naked, without any human comfort and — what is worst of all — without my wits, since I only have them when heaven takes a fancy to give them me for some brief space.
"I, madam, am the man who was present at Don Fernando's outrages and who waited to hear the yes Luscinda pronounced to being his wife. I am the man who had not the courage to see what her faint came to, or what came of the paper that was found in her bosom, because my soul had not the endurance to see so many misfortunes at once. And so I left the house and my patience, and a letter which I left with a man I was staying with, whom I begged to put it into Luscinda's hands, and I came away to these solitudes with the intention of ending in them the life I have loathed from that moment as my mortal enemy.
"But fate has not chosen to take it from me, being content with taking my wits — perhaps to keep me for the good fortune I have had in finding you. For if what you have told here is true, as I believe it is, it might still be that heaven has kept a better outcome to our disasters in store for us both than we think. Because, granted that Luscinda cannot marry Don Fernando, being mine, nor Don Fernando marry her, being yours, and that she has declared it so plainly, we may well hope that heaven will give us back what is ours, since it still exists and has not been made over to anybody or destroyed.
"And since we have this comfort, born not of a very remote hope nor founded on wild imaginings, I beg you, madam, to take another resolution in your honourable thoughts, since I mean to take one in mine, adjusting yourself to expect better fortune. For I swear to you, on the faith of a gentleman and a Christian, not to abandon you until I see you in Don Fernando's power; and that when I cannot bring him by argument to recognise what he owes you, then to use the freedom that being a gentleman gives me, and to be able with just title to challenge him for the injustice he does you — without remembering my own wrongs, whose vengeance I shall leave to heaven so as to attend on earth to yours."
Dorotea was left utterly astonished by what Cardenio said; and not knowing what thanks to give for such great offers, she tried to take hold of his feet to kiss them. But Cardenio would not allow it, and the licentiate answered for them both, and approved Cardenio's good reasoning; and above all he begged, advised and urged them to go with him to his village, where they could make good the things they lacked, and that there they would arrange how to look for Don Fernando, or how to take Dorotea to her parents, or do whatever else should seem best to them.
Cardenio and Dorotea thanked him and accepted the kindness that was offered them. The barber, who had been all this time in suspense and silent, also made his own good speech, and offered himself with no less goodwill than the curate to everything that might be of service to them. He likewise told them briefly the reason that had brought them there, along with the strangeness of Don Quixote's madness, and how they were waiting for his squire, who had gone to look for him. There came into Cardenio's memory, as though in a dream, the quarrel he had had with Don Quixote, and he told the others about it — but he could not say what the reason for their argument had been.
At this they heard shouts, and knew that the man shouting was Sancho Panza, who, not having found them in the place where he had left them, was calling for them at the top of his voice. They went out to meet him; and asking him about Don Quixote, he told them how he had found him half naked in his shirt, thin, yellow and dying of hunger, and sighing for his lady Dulcinea; and that although he had told him she ordered him to leave that place and go to El Toboso, where she was waiting for him, he had answered that he was determined not to appear before her beauty until he had performed deeds that made him worthy of her favour. And that if this went on, he was in danger of not coming to be an emperor, as he was bound to be, or even an archbishop, which was the least he could be. And so they should consider what was to be done to get him out of there.
The licentiate answered that he should not distress himself, for they would get him out of there whether he liked it or not. He then told Cardenio and Dorotea what they had thought of as a remedy for Don Quixote, or at least for taking him home. To which Dorotea said that she would make a better distressed damsel than the barber, and what was more, that she had clothes there to do it to the life; and that they should leave it in her hands to know how to act out everything that was needed for carrying out their plan, because she had read a great many books of chivalry and knew well the style that distressed damsels used when they asked their boons of knights errant.
"Then nothing more is needed," said the curate, "except that it should be put into practice at once. Without any doubt good luck is showing itself in our favour, since so unexpectedly a door has begun to open for you, my friends, towards your remedy, and the one we needed has been made easy for us."
Dorotea then took out of her pillowcase a whole skirt of a certain rich stuff and a short cloak of another showy green material, and out of a little box a necklace and other jewels, with which in an instant she adorned herself in such a way that she looked like a rich, great lady. All this, and more, she said she had brought from home for whatever might come up, and that until then she had had no occasion to need it. Her great grace, charm and beauty pleased everybody extremely, and confirmed Don Fernando in their opinion as a man of little judgement, since he threw so much beauty aside.
But the one who marvelled most was Sancho Panza, because it seemed to him — as was indeed the truth — that in all the days of his life he had never seen so beautiful a creature. And so he asked the curate very earnestly to tell him who that beautiful lady was, and what she was looking for in those out-of-the-way parts.
"This beautiful lady, brother Sancho," answered the curate, "is — as though it were nothing at all — the heiress in the direct male line to the great kingdom of Micomicón, who comes looking for your master to ask him a boon, which is that he should undo a wrong or injury that a wicked giant has done her; and it is on the fame your master has as a good knight throughout the discovered world that this princess has come from Guinea to look for him."
"A lucky search and a lucky find," said Sancho Panza at this, "and more so if my master is fortunate enough to undo that injury and put that wrong right by killing that son of a bitch of a giant your worship speaks of — and kill him he will if he meets him, unless he happens to be a phantom, because against phantoms my master has no power at all.
"But one thing I want to beg your worship, among others, Señor Licentiate; and it's that, so that my master doesn't get the urge to be an archbishop, which is what I'm afraid of, your worship should advise him to marry this princess at once. And then he'll be made incapable of taking archbishop's orders and will easily come into his empire, and I to the end of my wishes. Because I've looked at it carefully and I find by my reckoning that it doesn't suit me for my master to be an archbishop, since I'm no use to the Church, being married; and to go about now getting dispensations so as to be able to hold a Church income, having a wife and children as I have, would be a never-ending business. So, sir, the whole point of it is that my master should marry this lady at once — whose name I don't know yet, and so I don't call her by it."
"She is called," answered the curate, "the Princess Micomicona; because her kingdom being called Micomicón, it is plain that she must be called that."
"There's no doubt about that," answered Sancho, "for I've seen a lot of people take their surname and family name from the place where they were born, calling themselves Pedro of Alcalá, Juan of Úbeda and Diego of Valladolid; and this same custom must be used over there in Guinea, the queens taking the names of their kingdoms."
"That must be it," said the curate; "and as for your master's marrying, I shall do everything in my power about it."
At which Sancho was as pleased as the curate was astonished at his simplicity, and at seeing how firmly the very same absurdities as his master's were fixed in his fancy, since without any doubt he gave himself to understand that his master would come to be an emperor.
By this time Dorotea had got up on the curate's mule and the barber had fitted the oxtail beard to his face, and they told Sancho to guide them to where Don Quixote was; and they warned him not to say that he knew the licentiate or the barber, because the whole point of his master's coming to be an emperor lay in his not knowing them. Neither the curate nor Cardenio chose to go with them — Cardenio so that Don Quixote should not remember the quarrel he had had with him, and the curate because his presence was not needed just then. And so they let them go ahead, and followed them on foot, little by little.
The curate did not fail to advise Dorotea what she had to do; to which she said that they need not worry, and that everything should be done without missing a point, exactly as the books of chivalry required and described it.
They must have gone three quarters of a league when they made out Don Quixote among some tangled rocks, dressed by now, though not in armour. And as soon as Dorotea saw him and was informed by Sancho that this was Don Quixote, she whipped up her palfrey, with the well-bearded barber following her. And on getting up to him, the squire threw himself off his mule and went to take Dorotea in his arms; and she, dismounting with great ease, went and knelt down before Don Quixote's feet. And although he struggled to raise her, she, without getting up, spoke to him in this manner:
"From here I shall not rise, O valorous and mighty knight, until your goodness and courtesy grant me a boon, which shall redound to the honour and glory of your person and to the good of the most disconsolate and injured maiden the sun has looked upon. And if it is so that the valour of your strong arm answers to the report of your immortal fame, you are bound to favour this unfortunate woman who comes from lands so far off, drawn by the scent of your famous name, seeking you as the remedy of her misfortunes."
"I shall not answer you a word, fair lady," answered Don Quixote, "nor hear anything more of your affairs, until you rise from the ground."
"I shall not rise, sir," answered the afflicted maiden, "unless first, by your courtesy, the boon I ask is granted me."
"I grant and concede it to you," answered Don Quixote, "provided that it need not be fulfilled to the harm or diminishment of my king, of my country, or of her who holds the key of my heart and my liberty."
"It shall not be to the harm or the diminishment of any of those you name, my good lord," replied the sorrowing maiden.
And while this was going on, Sancho Panza got close to his master's ear and said to him very quietly:
"Your worship can perfectly well grant her the boon she asks, sir, for it's nothing at all: it's only killing a great big giant; and the one who's asking it is the high princess Micomicona, queen of the great kingdom of Micomicón in Ethiopia."
"Let her be whoever she may," answered Don Quixote, "for I shall do what I am bound to do and what my conscience dictates to me, in accordance with what I have professed."
And turning to the maiden, he said:
"Let your great beauty rise, for I grant you the boon you may wish to ask of me."
"Then the one I ask," said the maiden, "is that your magnanimous person should come with me at once wherever I take you, and should promise me not to get involved in any other adventure or undertaking whatever until you have given me vengeance on a traitor who, against all divine and human law, has usurped my kingdom from me."
"I say that I grant it," answered Don Quixote, "and so, madam, you may from today on throw off the melancholy that is wearing you out and make your fainting hope take on new spirit and strength. For with God's help and my arm's, you shall soon see yourself restored to your kingdom and seated on the throne of your ancient and great estate, in spite and in defiance of the villains who may wish to gainsay it. And to work — for they say that danger generally lies in delay."
The distressed maiden struggled very insistently to kiss his hands, but Don Quixote, who was in everything a courteous and well-bred knight, would never allow it; instead he made her get up and embraced her with great courtesy and good breeding, and ordered Sancho to see to Rocinante's girths and arm him that very moment. Sancho took down the armour, which was hanging from a tree like a trophy, and, seeing to the girths, armed his master in a moment; and Don Quixote, finding himself armed, said:
"Let us go from here, in God's name, to favour this great lady."
The barber was still on his knees, taking great care to hide his laughter and to keep his beard from falling off — with whose falling everybody might perhaps have been left without achieving their good intention. And seeing that the boon had now been granted and how briskly Don Quixote was getting himself ready to go and fulfil it, he got up and took his lady by the other hand, and between the two of them they got her up on the mule. Then Don Quixote got up on Rocinante, and the barber settled himself on his mount, with Sancho left on foot — at which the loss of the grey came back to him afresh, with how much he wanted him now. But he bore it all cheerfully, since it seemed to him that his master was now on the road, and very near, to being an emperor; for he supposed without any doubt that he would marry that princess and be at the very least king of Micomicón.
The only thing that grieved him was the thought that that kingdom was in the land of the blacks, and that the people they would give him as his vassals would all be black. To which he at once found a good remedy in his imagination, and said to himself:
"What do I care if my vassals are black? Is there anything more to it than loading them up and bringing them to Spain, where I'll be able to sell them and where they'll pay me for them in cash, and with the money I'll be able to buy some title or some post to live comfortably on all the days of my life? Go on, then — go to sleep, and have no wit or ability for managing things and for selling thirty or ten thousand vassals in the time it takes to say knife! By God I'll shift the lot of them, small along with great, or however I can; and black as they may be, I'll turn them into white ones or yellow ones. Come along — do you think I suck my thumb?"
With this he went along so busy and so pleased that he forgot the trouble of walking on foot.
Cardenio and the curate were watching all this from among some thickets, and did not know what to do to join up with them. But the curate, who was a great contriver, immediately thought of what they should do to get what they wanted; and it was that with a pair of scissors he carried in a case he very smartly took off Cardenio's beard, and dressed him in a brown jacket of his own and gave him a black cloak, and he himself was left in his breeches and doublet. And Cardenio was left so different from what he had looked before that he would not have known himself, even if he had looked in a mirror.
This done — and although the others had gone on ahead while the two of them were disguising themselves — they easily came out on the high road before them, because the thickets and bad going of those places did not allow those on horseback to travel as fast as those on foot. In fact they placed themselves on the flat, at the way out of the sierra; and as soon as Don Quixote and his companions came out of it, the curate set himself to look at him very slowly, giving signs that he was gradually recognising him. And after he had been looking at him for a good while, he went up to him with open arms, saying at the top of his voice:
"Well met, mirror of chivalry, my good fellow-countryman Don Quixote of La Mancha, the flower and cream of gentility, the shelter and remedy of the needy, the quintessence of knights errant!"
And saying this, he had hold of Don Quixote round the knee of his left leg; and Don Quixote, appalled at what he was seeing and hearing this man say and do, set himself to look at him carefully, and finally recognised him and was left as though appalled at seeing him, and made a great effort to dismount. But the curate would not allow it, so that Don Quixote said:
"Let me be, your worship, Señor Licentiate; there is no reason why I should be on horseback and a person as reverend as your worship on foot."
"That I shall not allow on any account," said the curate. "Let your greatness stay on horseback, since it is on horseback that you perform the greatest exploits and adventures that have been seen in our age. As for me, unworthy priest that I am, it will be enough for me to get up behind on one of these gentlemen's mules who are travelling with your worship, if they do not take it amiss. And I shall even reckon that I am riding on the horse Pegasus, or on the zebra or mare that famous Moor Muzaraque rode, who to this day lies enchanted on the great hill of Zulema, not far from the great Compluto."
"I had not thought so far, my lord Licentiate," answered Don Quixote; "and I know that my lady the princess will be pleased, for love of me, to order her squire to give your worship the saddle of his mule, and he can settle himself behind, if the mule will stand it."
"She will stand it, I believe," answered the princess; "and I know too that there will be no need to order my lord the squire, for he is so courteous and so courtly that he will not allow a churchman to go on foot when he can go on horseback."
"That is so," answered the barber.
And dismounting in a moment, he invited the curate to take the saddle, and he took it without needing much asking. And the trouble was that when the barber was getting up behind, the mule — which was, after all, a hired one, and to say that it was a bad one that is enough — lifted its hindquarters a little and let fly two kicks in the air, which, if they had caught Master Nicolás in the chest or on the head, would have made him wish the devil had the whole expedition after Don Quixote. Even so, they startled him in such a way that he came down on the ground, with so little care for his beard that it fell off on the ground. And finding himself without it, he had no other remedy than to hurry to cover his face with both hands and to complain that they had knocked his teeth out.
Don Quixote, seeing that whole bundle of beard, with no jaws and no blood, a long way from the fallen squire's face, said:
"By the living God, this is a great miracle! It has knocked the beard off him and torn it off his face, as if it had been taken off on purpose!"
The curate, who saw the danger his invention ran of being discovered, ran at once for the beard and went with it to where Master Nicolás was lying, still shouting away; and with one movement, pulling his head against his own chest, he stuck it back on him, muttering over him some words which he said were a certain charm proper for sticking on beards, as they would see. And when he had it on him, he stood back, and the squire was left as well bearded and as sound as before — at which Don Quixote was extraordinarily astonished, and begged the curate to teach him that charm when he had a chance; for he understood that its power must extend to more than sticking on beards, since it was clear that where a beard was pulled off the flesh must be left raw and injured, and since it healed all that, it was good for more than beards.
"That is so," said the curate, and promised to teach it him at the first opportunity.
They arranged that for the moment the curate should ride, and that the three of them should change about at intervals until they reached the inn, which must be about two leagues from there. The three of them being mounted — that is to say, Don Quixote, the princess and the curate — and the three of them on foot — Cardenio, the barber and Sancho Panza — Don Quixote said to the maiden:
"Let your greatness, my lady, lead wherever it most pleases you."
And before she could answer, the licentiate said:
"Towards what kingdom does your ladyship mean to lead? Is it, by any chance, towards that of Micomicón? It must be, or I know little about kingdoms."
She, who was well up in everything, understood that she should answer yes; and so she said:
"Yes, sir, my road lies towards that kingdom."
"If that is so," said the curate, "we shall have to pass through the middle of my village, and from there your worship will take the route to Cartagena, where you can take ship with good luck. And if there is a favourable wind, a calm sea and no storms, in a little less than nine years you may be in sight of the great Lake Pissabed — I mean Maeotis — which is a little more than a hundred days' journey this side of your greatness's kingdom."
"Your worship is mistaken, my dear sir," she said, "because it is not two years since I left it; and truly I never had good weather, and in spite of that I have arrived at seeing what I so much wanted, which is my lord Don Quixote of La Mancha, whose fame reached my ears as soon as I set foot in Spain, and which moved me to look for him, so as to commend myself to his courtesy and trust my just cause to the valour of his unconquerable arm."
"No more: let my praises cease," said Don Quixote at this point, "because I am an enemy to every kind of flattery; and although this is not flattery, still such talk offends my chaste ears. What I can say, my lady, is that whether I have valour or not, whatever I have or have not is to be employed in your service to the point of losing my life. And so, leaving this for its own time, I beg the lord licentiate to tell me what the reason is that has brought him to these parts, so alone and with so few servants and so lightly equipped that it appals me."
"To that I shall answer briefly," answered the curate; "because your worship must know, Señor Don Quixote, that Master Nicolás, our friend and our barber, and I were going to Seville to collect a certain sum of money that a relative of mine who went over to the Indies many years ago had sent me — and not so few of them that they do not come to more than sixty thousand assayed pesos, which is something. And passing through these places yesterday, four highwaymen came out at us and took from us even the beards off our faces; and they took them in such a way that it was as well for the barber to put on false ones. And even this young man here" — pointing to Cardenio — "they left looking like a new man.
"And the good of it is that it is common report all over this district that the men who robbed us are some galley slaves who they say were set free, almost on this very spot, by a man so brave that in spite of the commissary and the guards he loosed the whole lot of them. And without any doubt he must have been out of his wits, or he must be as great a scoundrel as they are, or some man without a soul or a conscience, since he chose to loose the wolf among the sheep, the fox among the hens, the fly among the honey. He chose to defraud justice, to go against his king and natural lord, since he went against his just commands. He chose, I say, to take from the galleys their oarsmen, to throw the Holy Brotherhood into an uproar when it had been resting many years; he chose, in short, to do a deed by which his soul may be lost without his body's gaining anything."
Sancho had told the curate and the barber about the adventure of the galley slaves, which his master had brought off with so much glory to himself; and this was why the curate laid the colours on so thick in relating it, to see what Don Quixote would do or say. And Don Quixote's colour changed at every word, and he did not dare say that he had been the deliverer of those good people.
"These, then," said the curate, "were the men who robbed us; and God in his mercy pardon the man who kept them from being taken to the punishment they deserved."
The curate had hardly finished when Sancho said:
"Well, upon my faith, Señor Licentiate, the man who did that exploit was my master; and not for want of my telling him beforehand and warning him to look at what he was doing, and that it was a sin to give them their freedom, because every one of them was going along there for being an enormous scoundrel."
"You blockhead!" said Don Quixote at this. "It is no business or concern of knights errant to inquire whether the afflicted, chained and oppressed people they meet on the roads are going along in that fashion, or are in that distress, through their faults or through their merits. It is only their business to help them as people in need, setting their eyes on their sufferings and not on their villainies. I came upon a rosary and string of miserable and unfortunate people, and I did with them what my religion requires of me, and let the rest settle itself. And to whoever has thought ill of it — saving the holy dignity of the lord licentiate and his honourable person — I say that he knows little about the business of chivalry, and that he lies like a son of a bitch and a base-born man; and this I shall give him to understand with my sword, where it is set down at greater length."
And he said this while settling himself in his stirrups and pulling down his morion — because the barber's basin, which by his reckoning was Mambrino's helmet, he was carrying hung from the front of his saddle until he could get it mended from the bad treatment the galley slaves had given it.
Dorotea, who was quick-witted and full of humour, and who by now knew Don Quixote's deranged temper and that everybody was making fun of him except Sancho Panza, did not want to be behind the rest; and seeing him so angry, she said to him:
"Sir knight, may your worship remember the boon you have promised me, and that in accordance with it you cannot get involved in any other adventure, however urgent. Let your worship calm your breast, for if the lord licentiate had known that the galley slaves had been set free by that unconquered arm, he would have put three stitches in his mouth and even bitten his tongue three times over rather than have said a word that would work to your worship's displeasure."
"That I certainly swear to," said the curate, "and I would even have pulled out one of my moustaches."
"I shall be quiet, my lady," said Don Quixote, "and I shall hold back the just anger that had already risen in my breast, and shall go along quiet and peaceable until I have fulfilled the promised boon for you. But in payment for this good intention, I beg you to tell me, if it is not disagreeable to you, what your trouble is, and how many, who and what sort are the persons on whom I am to give you due, satisfying and complete vengeance."
"That I shall do gladly," answered Dorotea, "if it does not weary you to hear of griefs and misfortunes."
"It will not weary me, my lady," answered Don Quixote.
To which Dorotea answered:
"Then since that is so, let your worships give me your attention."
She had hardly said this when Cardenio and the barber placed themselves at her side, eager to see how the quick-witted Dorotea would invent her history; and Sancho did the same, being as much taken in by her as his master was. And she, after settling herself well in the saddle and preparing herself with a cough and other gestures, began very gracefully to speak in this way:
"First of all, I want your worships to know, my dear sirs, that I am called —"
And she stopped a little here, because she had forgotten the name the curate had given her. But he came to the rescue, because he understood what she was stuck on, and said:
"It is no wonder, my lady, that your greatness should be confused and embarrassed in telling your misfortunes; for they are generally such that they very often take away the memory of those they ill-treat, in such a way that they do not even remember their own names — as they have done with your great ladyship, who has forgotten that she is called the Princess Micomicona, lawful heiress to the great kingdom of Micomicón. And with this prompting your greatness can now easily bring back to your injured memory everything you wish to tell."
"That is the truth," answered the maiden, "and from now on I believe there will be no need to prompt me with anything, for I shall bring my true history into good harbour.
"Which is that the king my father, who is called Tinacrio the Knowing, was very learned in this thing they call the magic art, and found out by his science that my mother, whose name was Queen Jaramilla, was to die before him, and that shortly afterwards he too was to pass out of this life and I was to be left an orphan of father and mother.
"But he used to say that this did not weary him so much as what threw him into confusion, which was knowing for a very certain thing that a monstrous giant, lord of a great isle that almost borders on our kingdom, called Pandafilando of the Gloomy Eye — because it is an established fact that although he has his eyes in their place and straight, he always looks the wrong way as though he were cross-eyed, and he does this out of wickedness and to put fear and terror into those he looks at — I say that he learnt that this giant, on hearing that I was orphaned, was to come over my kingdom with a great force and take the whole of it from me, without leaving me one small village to take refuge in; but that I could avoid all this ruin and misfortune if I would marry him. But as far as he understood, he never expected that I should feel inclined to make so unequal a marriage; and in this he told the plain truth, because it has never crossed my mind to marry that giant — nor any other, however great and monstrous he might be.
"My father also said that after he was dead, and I saw Pandafilando beginning to come over my kingdom, I was not to wait to put myself in a state of defence, because that would be my destruction; but that I should freely leave the kingdom clear for him, if I wanted to avoid the death and total destruction of my good and loyal vassals, because it would not be possible to defend myself against the giant's devilish strength. But that I should at once set off with some of my people on the road to the Spains, where I should find the remedy of my troubles in finding a knight errant whose fame would by that time be spread throughout that whole kingdom, and who was to be called, if I do not remember wrong, Don Quickset or Don Kickshaw."
"Don Quixote she means, madam," said Sancho Panza at this point, "or, by another name, the Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance."
"That is the truth," said Dorotea. "He said further that he was to be tall of body, dry in the face, and that on the right side, under the left shoulder, or somewhere about there, he was to have a dark mole with certain hairs on it like bristles."
Hearing this, Don Quixote said to his squire:
"Come here, Sancho my son, help me undress; I want to see whether I am the knight that wise king left prophesied."
"But what does your worship want to undress for?" said Dorotea.
"To see whether I have that mole your father spoke of," answered Don Quixote.
"There is no need to undress," said Sancho; "I know that your worship has a mole of that description in the middle of your backbone, which is a sign of being a strong man."
"That is enough," said Dorotea, "because among friends one is not to look at small matters; and whether it is on the shoulder or on the backbone matters little. It is enough that there should be a mole, and let it be where it likes, since it is all the same flesh. And without a doubt my good father was right in everything, and I have been right in commending myself to Señor Don Quixote, for he is the man my father spoke of, since the marks of his face agree with those of the great fame this knight has not only in Spain but in the whole of La Mancha. For I had hardly disembarked at Osuna when I heard so many of his exploits told that my soul told me at once that he was the very man I had come to look for."
"But how did your worship disembark at Osuna, my lady," asked Don Quixote, "when it is not a seaport?"
But before Dorotea could answer, the curate took the matter in hand and said:
"The lady princess must mean that after she disembarked at Málaga, the first place where she heard news of your worship was Osuna."
"That is what I meant to say," said Dorotea.
"And that makes sense," said the curate; "and let your majesty go on."
"There is nothing more to go on with," answered Dorotea, "except that in the end my luck has been so good in finding Señor Don Quixote that I already count and hold myself as queen and mistress of my whole kingdom, since he, out of his courtesy and magnanimity, has promised me the boon of going with me wherever I take him — which will be nowhere but to set him in front of Pandafilando of the Gloomy Eye, so that he may kill him and give me back what he has so unreasonably usurped from me. For all this is bound to happen exactly to order, since Tinacrio the Knowing, my good father, left it so prophesied. He also left it said and written in Chaldean, or Greek, letters — for I cannot read them — that if this knight of the prophecy, after having cut the giant's throat, should wish to marry me, I was to give myself over to him at once and without any argument as his lawful wife, and give him possession of my kingdom along with the possession of my person."
"What do you think of that, friend Sancho?" said Don Quixote at this point. "Do you hear what is going on? Did I not tell you so? See whether we have a kingdom to rule and a queen to marry."
"I'll swear to that!" said Sancho. "And damn the man who doesn't marry her the moment he's slit Señor Pandafiddle's little gullet! Why, it isn't as if the queen were a bad one! May the fleas in my bed turn out as good!"
And saying this, he cut two capers in the air with every sign of the greatest delight, and then went to take the reins of Dorotea's mule; and making her stop, he knelt down before her, begging her to give him her hands to kiss as a sign that he took her for his queen and mistress. Which of the bystanders could have kept from laughing, seeing the master's madness and the servant's simplicity? In fact Dorotea gave them to him, and promised to make him a great lord in her kingdom when heaven should do her so much good as to let her recover it and enjoy it. Sancho thanked her in such words that he set them all laughing again.
"This, gentlemen," Dorotea went on, "is my history. It only remains to tell you that of all the escort I brought out of my kingdom, nobody is left me but this good bearded squire, because all the rest were drowned in a great storm we had in sight of the port; and he and I came to land on two planks, as though by a miracle. And so the whole course of my life is miracle and mystery, as you will have noticed. And if in anything I have gone too far, or been less exact than I should, put the blame on what the lord licentiate said at the beginning of my tale: that constant and extraordinary hardships take away the memory of the one who suffers them."
"They shall not take away mine, O high and valorous lady," said Don Quixote, "however many I go through in serving you, and however great and unheard-of they may be. And so I confirm afresh the boon I have promised you, and swear to go with you to the end of the world until I face that fierce enemy of yours, whose arrogant head I mean, with God's help and my arm's, to cut off with the edge of this — I do not want to say good sword, thanks to Ginés de Pasamonte, who took mine."
This he said between his teeth, and he went on to say:
"And after I have cut it off and put you in peaceful possession of your estate, it will be left to your own will to do with your person whatever comes best to your liking; because as long as I have my memory occupied and my will held captive, and my understanding lost, to that — and I say no more — it is not possible that I should face, even in thought, the idea of marrying, even if it were the phoenix itself."
What his master said at the last about not wanting to marry struck Sancho so badly that in great anger he raised his voice and said:
"I swear by me, and vow by me, that your worship, Señor Don Quixote, has not got a whole set of wits. Why, how is it possible that your worship should have any doubt about marrying so high a princess as this one? Do you think fortune is going to offer you good luck like this behind every corner? Is my lady Dulcinea more beautiful, by any chance? No, she certainly is not, nor by half; and I'm even ready to say she doesn't come up to the shoe of the one who's standing in front of you. So bad luck to the earldom I'm hoping for, if your worship goes about asking for truffles in the middle of the sea. Marry her, marry her at once, in Satan's name, and take that kingdom that's dropping into your hands as a free gift; and once you're a king, make me a marquis or a governor, and after that the devil can carry off the lot for all I care."
Don Quixote, hearing such blasphemies spoken against his lady Dulcinea, could not bear it; and raising his pike, without saying a word to Sancho and without so much as opening his mouth, he gave him two such blows that he brought him down on the ground. And if Dorotea had not shouted to him not to give him any more, he would certainly have taken his life then and there.
"Do you think," he said to him after a while, "you low peasant, that there is always to be room for you to put your hand in my crotch, and that it is all to be your going wrong and my forgiving you? Do not think it, you excommunicated scoundrel — for excommunicated you certainly are, since you have set your tongue on the peerless Dulcinea. And do you not know, you clodhopper, you porter, you rogue, that if it were not for the valour she pours into my arm, I should not have enough of it to kill a flea? Tell me, you sly fellow with a viper's tongue: who do you think has won this kingdom and cut off this giant's head and made you a marquis — for I count all this as done already and as a thing settled beyond appeal — if it is not Dulcinea's valour, taking my arm as the instrument of her exploits? She fights in me and conquers in me, and I live and breathe in her, and have life and being. Oh, you son of a bitch and a scoundrel, how ungrateful you are: you see yourself raised from the dust of the earth to be a titled lord, and you answer so good a turn by speaking ill of the woman who did it for you!"
Sancho was not in so bad a state that he did not hear everything his master said to him; and getting up with a fair amount of speed, he went and put himself behind Dorotea's palfrey, and from there said to his master:
"Tell me, sir: if your worship has made up your mind not to marry this great princess, it's clear that the kingdom won't be yours; and it not being yours, what favours can you do me? That's what I'm complaining about. Marry this queen once and for all, your worship, now we've got her here as though she'd rained down out of the sky, and afterwards you can go back to my lady Dulcinea. There must have been kings in the world who kept a mistress. As for the beauty, I don't meddle in it; because in truth, if it must be said, they both seem good to me — though I've never seen the lady Dulcinea."
"What do you mean, you have never seen her, you blaspheming traitor?" said Don Quixote. "Have you not just this minute brought me a message from her?"
"I say I haven't seen her at leisure enough," said Sancho, "to have taken particular note of her beauty and her good points one by one; but taken all in a lump, she seems good to me."
"Now I excuse you," said Don Quixote, "and forgive me the anger I have given you, for a man's first impulses are not in his own hands."
"I can see that," answered Sancho; "and so with me the urge to talk is always a first impulse, and I can't help saying, at least once, whatever comes to my tongue."
"For all that," said Don Quixote, "look out what you say, Sancho, because the pitcher goes so often to the well — and I say no more."
"Very well then," answered Sancho, "God is in heaven and sees the tricks, and he will be the judge of which of us does more harm: me for not speaking well, or your worship for not acting well."
"Let there be no more of it," said Dorotea. "Run, Sancho, and kiss your master's hand and ask his pardon; and from now on be more careful in your praise and your blame, and do not speak ill of that lady of El Toboso, whom I do not know except to serve her. And have confidence in God, for you shall not go without an estate to live in like a prince."
Sancho went with his head down and asked his master for his hand, and he gave it him with a composed bearing; and after he had kissed it, he gave him his blessing, and told Sancho that they should go on a little way ahead, because he had things to ask him and matters of great importance to discuss with him. Sancho did so, and the two of them drew off somewhat ahead, and Don Quixote said to him:
"Since you came back I have had no time or room to ask you many things in particular about the embassy you carried and the answer you brought. And now, since fortune has granted us the time and the place, do not deny me the happiness you can give me with such good news."
"Let your worship ask what you like," answered Sancho, "for I'll get as well out of it all as I got into it. But I beg your worship, my dear sir, not to be so vengeful from now on."
"Why do you say that, Sancho?" said Don Quixote.
"I say it," he answered, "because these blows just now were more for the quarrel the devil stirred up between the two of us the other night than for what I said against my lady Dulcinea, whom I love and revere like a holy relic — although there's nothing of the kind about her — simply because she belongs to your worship."
"Do not go back to that sort of talk, Sancho, on your life," said Don Quixote, "for it distresses me. I forgave you then, and you know well what they usually say: for a new sin, a new penance."
While the two of them were in this conversation, the curate said to Dorotea that she had shown great skill both in the tale itself and in its shortness, and in the resemblance it had to those in the books of chivalry. She said she had often amused herself with reading them, but that she did not know where the provinces and seaports were, and so had said at random that she had disembarked at Osuna.
"I understood that," said the curate, "and that is why I hurried to say what I said, and everything was put right. But is it not a strange thing to see how easily this unfortunate gentleman believes all these inventions and lies, simply because they have the style and manner of the follies in his books?"
"It is," said Cardenio, "and so rare and unheard-of a thing that I do not know whether, if a man wanted to invent it and make it up out of his head, there would be a wit sharp enough to hit on it."
"Well, there is another thing about it," said the curate: "that apart from the simplicities this good gentleman says that touch on his madness, if you talk to him about other things he reasons with excellent good sense and shows he has a clear and equable understanding in everything. So that as long as you do not touch him on his chivalries, nobody would judge him to be anything but a man of very good understanding."
While they were in this conversation, Don Quixote went on with his own, and said to Sancho:
"Let us throw our quarrels into the sea, friend Panza, and tell me now, without any regard to anger or resentment: where, how and when did you find Dulcinea? What was she doing? What did you say to her? What did she answer you? What face did she make while she read my letter? Who copied it out for you? And everything else that you see is worth knowing, asking and answering in this case — without adding anything or lying to please me, and without cutting it short either so as not to take my pleasure away."
"Sir," answered Sancho, "if the truth is to be told, nobody copied the letter out for me, because I didn't carry any letter."
"It is exactly as you say," said Don Quixote, "because I found the little pocket-book I wrote it in still in my possession two days after you left, which caused me the greatest distress, since I did not know what you would do when you found yourself without the letter; and I always believed you would come back from the place where you missed it."
"So I would have," answered Sancho, "if I hadn't got it by heart when your worship read it to me — so that I said it over to a parish clerk, who copied it out of my head so exactly, point by point, that he said that in all the days of his life, although he had read a great many letters of excommunication, he had never seen or read so fine a letter as that one."
"And have you still got it by heart, Sancho?" said Don Quixote.
"No, sir," answered Sancho, "because after I'd given it, as I saw it was going to be no further use, I set about forgetting it. And if I remember anything, it's that bit about the sodden — I mean the sovereign lady — and the last bit: 'Yours until death, the Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance.' And in between those two things I put in more than three hundred souls, and lives, and eyes of mine."
"None of that displeases me; go on," said Don Quixote. "You arrived — and what was that queen of beauty doing? I am certain you found her threading pearls, or embroidering some device with gold thread for this captive knight of hers."
"I found her doing nothing of the kind," answered Sancho, "but winnowing two bushels of wheat in a yard at her house."
"Then reckon," said Don Quixote, "that the grains of that wheat were grains of pearl, since her hands had touched them. And did you notice, my friend, whether the wheat was white or spring wheat?"
"It was neither: it was red," answered Sancho.
"Then I assure you," said Don Quixote, "that winnowed by her hands it made white bread, beyond any doubt. But go on: when you gave her my letter, did she kiss it? Did she put it on top of her head? Did she perform any ceremony worthy of such a letter — or what did she do?"
"When I was going to give it her," answered Sancho, "she was in the full swing of shaking a good lot of wheat she had in the sieve, and she said to me: 'Put that letter down on that sack, my friend; I can't read it until I've finished sifting all that's here.'"
"Discerning lady!" said Don Quixote. "That must have been so as to read it at her leisure and take pleasure in it. Go on, Sancho: and while she was about her business, what conversation did she have with you? What did she ask you about me? And what did you answer her? Finish, tell me all of it; do not leave the smallest thing in the inkwell."
"She asked me nothing," said Sancho; "but I told her how your worship, for her sake, was doing penance, stripped from the waist up, buried among these mountains as though you were a savage, sleeping on the ground, not eating bread off a tablecloth or combing your beard, weeping and cursing your fortune."
"In saying that I cursed my fortune you spoke wrongly," said Don Quixote, "because on the contrary I bless it, and shall bless it all the days of my life, for having made me worthy to deserve to love so high a lady as Dulcinea of El Toboso."
"She's high, all right," answered Sancho: "upon my word she's a good six inches taller than me."
"But how is that, Sancho?" said Don Quixote. "Have you measured yourself against her?"
"I measured myself this way," answered Sancho: "going up to help her put a sack of wheat on a donkey, we got so close together that I could see she had a good hand's breadth on me."
"But is it not true," replied Don Quixote, "that she accompanies and adorns that height with a thousand millions of graces of the soul? But you will not deny me one thing, Sancho: when you got close to her, did you not smell a Sabaean scent, an aromatic fragrance, a certain something good that I cannot manage to give a name to? I mean, a savour or a breath as if you were in the shop of some elegant glove-maker?"
"What I can say," said Sancho, "is that I smelt a bit of a mannish smell; and it must have been because with all that exercise she was sweaty and a bit leathery."
"It cannot have been that," answered Don Quixote, "but you must have had a cold in the head, or you must have been smelling yourself; because I know well what that rose among thorns smells of, that lily of the field, that dissolved amber."
"It may all be so," answered Sancho, "for often enough that smell comes off me that seemed to me then to be coming off her worship the lady Dulcinea; but there's nothing to be surprised at in that, since one devil is like another."
"Well then," Don Quixote went on, "here she has finished cleaning her wheat and sending it to the mill. What did she do when she read the letter?"
"The letter," said Sancho, "she didn't read, because she said she couldn't read or write. Instead she tore it up and made small pieces of it, saying she didn't want to give it to anybody to read, so that her secrets shouldn't be known in the village; and that what I'd told her by word of mouth about the love your worship had for her and the extraordinary penance you were doing on her account was enough.
"And finally she told me to tell your worship that she kissed your hands, and that she was left there with more desire to see you than to write to you; and that so she begged and ordered you that, on sight of the present, you should come out of those thickets and leave off doing absurd things, and set out that very moment on the road to El Toboso, unless something more important came up — because she had a great desire to see your worship. She laughed a great deal when I told her that your worship called yourself the Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance. I asked her whether the Basque from the other day had been there; she told me yes, and that he was a very decent man. I asked her about the galley slaves too, but she told me she hadn't seen any of them so far."
"So far everything goes well," said Don Quixote. "But tell me: what jewel was it she gave you on your leaving, for the news you carried her of me? Because it is an old and established custom among knights and ladies errant to give the squires, damsels or dwarfs who bring them news — of their ladies to them, and of their knights errant to the ladies — some rich jewel as a reward, in gratitude for their message."
"That may very well be so, and I hold it a good custom; but it must have been in times past, because now the custom must only be to give a piece of bread and cheese, which was what my lady Dulcinea gave me over the wall of a yard when I took my leave of her. And for a further mark of it, the cheese was sheep's cheese."
"She is generous in the extreme," said Don Quixote, "and if she did not give you a jewel of gold, it must without doubt have been because she did not have one there to hand to give you. But sleeves are welcome after Easter: I shall see her, and everything shall be put right.
"Do you know what I am amazed at, Sancho? That it seems to me you went and came back through the air, since you have taken little more than three days to go and come from here to El Toboso, there being more than thirty leagues from here to there. From which I give myself to understand that that wise necromancer who takes an interest in my affairs and is my friend — because there must be one, and there has to be one, on pain of my not being a good knight errant — I say that this person must have helped you along without your noticing it.
"For there are sages of this kind who take a knight errant sleeping in his bed and, without his knowing how or in what manner, he wakes next morning more than a thousand leagues from where he went to sleep. And if it were not for this, knights errant could not help one another in their dangers, as they do at every turn. For it happens that one of them is fighting in the mountains of Armenia with some dragon, or some fierce monster, or with another knight, and he is getting the worst of the battle and is already at the point of death — and when you least expect it, there appears over there, on top of a cloud or on a chariot of fire, another knight who is a friend of his, and who a little before was in England, and he helps him and saves him from death; and at night he is at home in his lodgings, having supper very comfortably. And it is often two or three thousand leagues from the one place to the other. And all this is done by the ingenuity and knowledge of these wise enchanters who look after these valorous knights.
"So, friend Sancho, I find no difficulty in believing that in so short a time you have gone and come back from this place to El Toboso, since, as I have said, some friendly sage must have carried you along without your noticing it."
"That must be it," said Sancho, "because upon my word Rocinante went along as if he had been a gypsy's donkey with quicksilver in his ears."
"Quicksilver, indeed!" said Don Quixote. "And a legion of devils besides, who are a people who travel and make others travel, without getting tired, as far as they take a fancy to.
"But leaving this aside: what do you think I ought to do now about my lady's ordering me to go and see her? Because although I see that I am obliged to carry out her command, I also see that I am prevented by the boon I have promised the princess who is travelling with us; and the law of chivalry forces me to keep my word before my own pleasure. On the one hand the desire to see my lady harries and wearies me; on the other, my pledged word and the glory I am to win in this enterprise urge and call me.
"But what I mean to do is to travel fast and get quickly to where this giant is; and on arriving I shall cut off his head and settle the princess peacefully in her estate, and at that very moment I shall turn back to see the light that lights my senses — to whom I shall make such excuses that she will come to think well of my delay, since she will see that it all works to the increase of her glory and fame. For all that I have won, win and shall win by arms in this life comes to me from the favour she gives me and from my being hers."
"Oh dear," said Sancho, "how damaged your worship is in the brainpan! Why, tell me, sir: does your worship mean to travel this whole road for nothing, and to let pass and lose so rich and distinguished a marriage as this, where they give you a kingdom for a dowry — a kingdom which upon my word I've heard is more than twenty thousand leagues round, and abounds in every one of the things that are needed to keep human life going, and is bigger than Portugal and Castile put together?
"Be quiet, for the love of God, and be ashamed of what you've said; and take my advice, and forgive me, and marry at once in the first place where there's a priest. And if not, there's our licentiate here, who'd do it beautifully. And note that I'm old enough now to give advice, and that this advice I'm giving fits your case like a mould; and that a bird in the hand is worth a vulture on the wing, because whoever has a good thing and chooses badly may be as angry as he likes but he'll get no satisfaction."
"Look, Sancho," answered Don Quixote: "if the advice you are giving me to marry is so that I shall be a king at once on killing the giant, and have the means to do you favours and give you what I promised, I would have you know that without marrying I shall be able to satisfy your wish very easily. Because before going into battle I shall stipulate, as a bonus, that if I come out the winner, then even if I do not marry they are to give me a part of the kingdom so that I can give it to whoever I like; and when they give it me, who do you want me to give it to except you?"
"That's clear enough," answered Sancho, "but let your worship take care to choose it towards the sea, because if the living doesn't suit me I can ship my black vassals off and do with them what I've said already. And your worship needn't trouble to go and see my lady Dulcinea for the present, but go and kill the giant and let's get this business finished; for by God, it's settled in my mind that it's going to be a very honourable and a very profitable one."
"I tell you, Sancho," said Don Quixote, "that you are right, and that I shall have to take your advice as far as going with the princess before going to see Dulcinea. And I warn you not to say anything to anybody, nor to those who are travelling with us, of what we have discussed and settled here; for since Dulcinea is so reserved that she does not want her thoughts known, it will not be right for me, or anybody else on my behalf, to reveal them."
"Well, if that's so," said Sancho, "how is it that your worship makes everybody he beats with his arm go and present themselves before my lady Dulcinea, which is as good as your signature that you love her and are in love with her? And since those who go are bound to go and kneel down in her presence and say they come on your worship's behalf to give her their obedience, how can the thoughts of the pair of you be kept hidden?"
"Oh, what a fool and what a simpleton you are!" said Don Quixote. "Do you not see, Sancho, that all that works to her greater exaltation? Because you must know that in this style of chivalry of ours it is a great honour for a lady to have many knights errant serving her, without their thoughts going any further than to serve her, simply because she is who she is, and expecting no other reward for their many good desires than that she should be content to accept them as her knights."
"With that kind of love," said Sancho, "I've heard it preached that we're to love Our Lord — for himself alone, without being moved by hope of glory or fear of punishment. Though I'd rather love and serve him for what I could get out of it."
"The devil take you for a peasant," said Don Quixote, "and what shrewd things you say sometimes! Anybody would think you had studied."
"Well, upon my word I can't read," answered Sancho.
At this Master Nicolás shouted to them to wait a little, as they wanted to stop and drink at a little spring that was there. Don Quixote stopped, to Sancho's no small pleasure, since he was tired by now of telling so many lies and was afraid his master would catch him out in his words; because although he knew that Dulcinea was a country girl of El Toboso, he had never seen her in his life.
Cardenio had by this time put on the clothes Dorotea had been wearing when they found her, which, although not very good, were a great improvement on the ones he was leaving off. They dismounted beside the spring, and with what the curate had provided himself with at the inn they satisfied — though only a little — the great hunger they were all carrying.
While they were doing this, a boy who was travelling that way happened to pass; and stopping to look very attentively at the people who were at the spring, a little later he rushed at Don Quixote and, throwing his arms round his legs, began to cry in good earnest, saying:
"Oh, my dear sir! Doesn't your worship know me? Look at me properly — I'm that boy Andrés that your worship untied from the oak tree where I was tied up."
Don Quixote recognised him, and taking him by the hand, he turned to those who were there and said:
"So that your worships may see how important it is to have knights errant in the world to undo the wrongs and injuries done in it by the insolent and wicked men who live in it, your worships must know that some days ago, passing through a wood, I heard some cries and some very pitiful shouts, as of an afflicted and needy person. I hurried at once, carried by my duty, towards the quarter where it seemed to me the lamentable voices were sounding, and I found tied to an oak tree this boy who is now standing here — at which I am delighted in my soul, because he will be a witness who will not let me lie in anything.
"I say he was tied to the oak, stripped from the waist up, and a peasant, who I afterwards learnt was his master, was flaying him with lashes from a mare's reins. And as soon as I saw him I asked the reason for so brutal a beating. The lout answered that he was whipping him because he was his servant, and that certain acts of carelessness he was guilty of came more from thieving than from stupidity. At which this child said: 'Sir, he's only whipping me because I ask him for my wages.' The master answered with I do not know what harangues and excuses, which although they were heard by me were not accepted. In short, I made him untie the boy, and took an oath from the peasant that he would take him along with him and pay him one real on top of another, and perfumed into the bargain.
"Is not all this true, Andrés my son? Did you not notice with what authority I ordered it, and with what humility he promised to do everything I laid on him and stated and required? Answer; do not be shy or hesitate over anything: tell these gentlemen what happened, so that it may be seen and considered how useful it is, as I say, to have knights errant on the roads."
"Everything your worship has said is perfectly true," answered the boy, "but the end of the business turned out completely the opposite of what your worship imagines."
"What do you mean, the opposite?" replied Don Quixote. "So the peasant did not pay you?"
"Not only did he not pay me," answered the boy, "but as soon as your worship had got out of the wood and we were left alone, he tied me up to the same oak again and gave me so many more lashes that I was left like Saint Bartholomew flayed. And at every lash he gave me he made some witty crack about your worship that would have made me laugh if I hadn't been in so much pain. In fact he left me in such a state that up to now I've been getting cured in a hospital of the harm the wicked peasant did me then.
"And your worship is to blame for the whole of it; because if you'd gone on your way and not come where nobody called you, and hadn't meddled in other people's business, my master would have been satisfied with giving me a dozen or two lashes and would then have let me go and paid me what he owed me. But as your worship dishonoured him so pointlessly and said so many insulting things to him, his temper caught fire; and as he couldn't take it out on your worship, when he found himself alone the storm burst on me, in such a way that I don't think I'll ever be a man again as long as I live."
"The trouble," said Don Quixote, "lay in my going away; for I should not have gone until I had left you paid, because I ought to have known well by long experience that there is no peasant who keeps the word he has given, if he sees that keeping it does not suit him. But you remember, Andrés, that I swore that if he did not pay you I would go and look for him, and that I would find him even if he hid himself in the belly of the whale."
"That's the truth," said Andrés, "but it was no use at all."
"Now you shall see whether it is any use," said Don Quixote.
And saying this, he got up in a great hurry and ordered Sancho to bridle Rocinante, who was grazing while they ate.
Dorotea asked him what it was he meant to do. He answered that he meant to go and look for the peasant and punish him for such wicked conduct, and get Andrés paid to the last maravedi, in spite and to the annoyance of every peasant in the world. To which she answered that he should note that, in accordance with the promised boon, he could not get involved in any undertaking until he had finished hers; and that since he knew this better than anybody, he should calm his breast until he came back from her kingdom.
"That is true," answered Don Quixote, "and Andrés must have patience until the return, as you say, madam. And I swear and promise him again afresh not to stop until I have him avenged and paid."
"I don't believe in those oaths," said Andrés. "I'd rather have something now to get me to Seville than all the vengeances in the world. Give me, if you've got any there, something to eat and take with me — and God be with your worship and with all knights errant, and may they go as well errant for themselves as they've gone for me."
Sancho took a piece of bread and another of cheese out of his store and, giving it to the lad, said to him:
"Here you are, brother Andrés, for a share of your misfortune falls on all of us."
"And what share falls on you?" asked Andrés.
"This share of bread and cheese I'm giving you," answered Sancho, "and God knows whether I'll be short of it or not; because I'd have you know, my friend, that we squires of knights errant are subject to a great deal of hunger and bad luck, and to other things besides that are better felt than told."
Andrés took hold of his bread and cheese, and seeing that nobody was giving him anything else, he bent his head and took the road in his hands, as they say. But it is quite true that on leaving he said to Don Quixote:
"For the love of God, sir knight errant, if you ever meet me again, even if you see them tearing me to pieces, don't help me or come to my rescue, but leave me to my misfortune; because it won't be so great that it isn't smaller than what will come to me from your worship's help — and God curse you, and all the knights errant that were ever born into the world."
Don Quixote was getting up to punish him, but the boy set off running in such a way that nobody dared follow him. Don Quixote was left utterly mortified by Andrés's story, and it was necessary for the others to take great care not to laugh, so as not to mortify him completely.
Their good meal being over, they saddled at once; and without anything happening to them worth telling, they reached the inn the next day — the terror and dread of Sancho Panza; and although he would have liked not to go into it, there was no escaping it.
The innkeeper's wife, the innkeeper, his daughter and Maritornes, who saw Don Quixote and Sancho coming, came out to receive them with every sign of great delight; and he received them with a grave bearing and approval, and told them to get him ready a better bed than the last time. To which their hostess answered that if he paid better than the other time, she would give him one fit for a prince. Don Quixote said he would; and so they got him a reasonable one ready in the same garret as before, and he lay down at once, because he came in very much battered and short of wits.
He had hardly shut himself in when the hostess flew at the barber and, seizing him by the beard, said:
"By all that's holy, you shan't make any more use of my tail for your beard, and you'll give me my tail back; because my husband's thing is going about all over the floor, which is a shame — I mean the comb, that I used to hang from my good tail."
The barber would not give it her, however hard she pulled, until the licentiate told him to give it her, because there was no longer any need to make use of that device but he should uncover himself and show himself in his own shape, and tell Don Quixote that when the thieving galley slaves had stripped them they had come to that inn in flight; and that if he asked about the princess's squire, they would tell him that she had sent him on ahead to give notice to the people of her kingdom that she was coming and was bringing with her the deliverer of them all. With this the barber willingly gave the tail back to the innkeeper's wife, and they likewise returned all the other accessories she had lent for Don Quixote's deliverance.
Everybody at the inn was amazed at Dorotea's beauty, and even at the fine build of the shepherd lad Cardenio. The curate had them prepare a meal for them from whatever there was in the inn, and the host, in hopes of better payment, promptly prepared them a reasonable dinner. And all this while Don Quixote slept, and they were of the opinion that he should not be woken, because sleeping would do him more good just then than eating.
Over dinner, with the innkeeper, his wife, his daughter, Maritornes and all the travellers there, they discussed Don Quixote's strange madness and the state they had found him in. The hostess told them what had happened to her and to the carrier with him, and looking round in case Sancho happened to be there and not seeing him, she told them the whole story of his blanketing — at which they got no small amount of pleasure. And when the curate said that the books of chivalry Don Quixote had read had turned his brain, the innkeeper said:
"I don't know how that can be; because in truth, as far as I understand, there's no better reading in the world. I've got two or three of them there myself, along with some other papers, and they've genuinely given me new life — not only me but a lot of other people. Because at harvest time a lot of reapers gather here on holidays, and there are always some who can read; and one of them picks up one of these books, and more than thirty of us gather round him, and we listen to him with such pleasure that it takes a thousand grey hairs off us. At least I can say for myself that when I hear about those furious, terrible blows the knights lay on, it makes me want to do the same, and I could go on listening to them night and day."
"And I'm no different," said the innkeeper's wife, "because I never have a good moment in my house except the one when you're listening to the reading — you're so besotted then that you forget to quarrel."
"That's the truth," said Maritornes; "and upon my word I greatly enjoy hearing those things too, they're very lovely. Especially when they tell how one lady or another is under some orange trees with her arms round her knight, and a duenna is standing guard for them, dying of envy and in a great fright. I say the whole of it is like honey."
"And what do you think, mistress?" said the curate, speaking to the innkeeper's daughter.
"I don't know, sir, upon my soul," she answered. "I listen to it as well, and in truth, although I don't understand it, I get pleasure from hearing it. But I don't take pleasure in the blows my father takes pleasure in, but in the laments the knights make when they're away from their ladies — for in truth they sometimes make me cry out of the pity I feel for them."
"So you would have given them relief, mistress," said Dorotea, "if they had wept for you?"
"I don't know what I'd have done," answered the girl; "I only know that some of those ladies are so cruel that their knights call them tigers and lions and a thousand other filthy things. And, Jesus! I don't know what sort of people they are, so heartless and so unfeeling, that rather than look at an honourable man they let him die or go mad. I don't know what all that prudishness is for: if they do it out of respectability, let them marry the men, for that's the very thing the men want."
"Be quiet, child," said the innkeeper's wife, "for you seem to know a great deal about these things, and it isn't right for young girls to know or say so much."
"As this gentleman asked me," she answered, "I couldn't help answering him."
"Very well then," said the curate; "bring me those books, my good host, for I want to see them."
"With pleasure," he answered.
And going into his room, he brought out of it an old little portmanteau fastened with a little chain; and opening it, he found in it three large books and some papers in a very good hand, written by hand. The first book he opened he saw was Don Cirongilio of Thrace, and the second Felixmarte of Hircania, and the other the History of the Great Captain Gonzalo Hernández de Córdoba, with the Life of Diego García de Paredes. As soon as the curate read the first two titles, he turned his face to the barber and said:
"What we need here now is my friend's housekeeper and his niece."
"We don't," answered the barber; "I know how to carry them off to the yard or the chimney myself — and upon my word there's a very good fire in it."
"So your worship wants to burn more books?" said the innkeeper.
"No more," said the curate, "than these two: the Don Cirongilio and the Felixmarte."
"But are my books heretics or phlegmatics, by any chance," said the innkeeper, "that you want to burn them?"
"Schismatics you mean, my friend," said the barber, "not phlegmatics."
"That's it," replied the innkeeper; "but if you want to burn one, let it be that one about the Great Captain and that Diego García; because I'd sooner let them burn a child of mine than let them burn either of the others."
"My dear brother," said the curate, "these two books are lying books and are full of absurdities and ravings; and this one about the Great Captain is true history, and contains the deeds of Gonzalo Hernández de Córdoba, who for his many great exploits deserved to be called by the whole world the Great Captain — a famous and glorious name, and deserved by him alone. And this Diego García de Paredes was a distinguished gentleman, a native of the city of Trujillo in Extremadura, a most valiant soldier, and of such natural strength that he stopped a millwheel with one finger in the middle of its spin; and, standing with a two-handed sword at the entrance to a bridge, he held back a whole innumerable army from crossing it; and he did other such things that — since he tells them and writes them himself, with the modesty of a gentleman writing his own chronicle — if somebody else, free and unbiased, had written them, they would have consigned to oblivion those of your Hectors, Achilleses and Rolands."
"Get along with you!" said the said innkeeper. "Look what he's astonished at — stopping a millwheel! By God, your worship ought to read now what Felixmarte of Hircania did, who with one back-handed stroke split five giants through the middle as if they'd been made of beans, like the little friars children make. And another time he charged an enormous and most powerful army, where he had more than a million six hundred thousand soldiers against him, all armed from foot to head, and he scattered the whole lot of them as if they'd been flocks of sheep.
"And what will they tell me about the excellent Don Cirongilio of Thrace, who was so brave and spirited, as will be seen in the book, where it tells how, sailing along a river, a fiery serpent came out at him from the middle of the water; and he, as soon as he saw it, threw himself on it and got astride its scaly back and gripped its throat with both hands so hard that, the serpent seeing that he was strangling it, it had no other way out but to let itself sink to the bottom of the river, carrying the knight with it, because he would never let go? And when they got down there he found himself in palaces and gardens so lovely that it was a marvel; and then the serpent turned into an ancient old man, who told him so many things that there's nothing more to hear. Be quiet, sir; if you heard this you'd go mad with pleasure. Two figs for the Great Captain and for that Diego García you talk about!"
Hearing this, Dorotea said quietly to Cardenio:
"Our host is not far off making a second part to Don Quixote."
"So it seems to me," answered Cardenio; "because, by the signs he gives, he takes it for certain that everything these books tell happened exactly as they write it, and barefoot friars would not make him believe anything else."
"Look, my friend," the curate said again, "there never was in the world a Felixmarte of Hircania, or a Don Cirongilio of Thrace, or other such knights as the books of chivalry tell of; because the whole thing is the invention and fiction of idle wits, who composed them for the purpose you speak of, of passing the time, as your reapers pass it reading them. Because I genuinely swear to you that such knights never existed in the world, and that such exploits and absurdities never happened in it."
"Tell that to another dog with that bone!" answered the innkeeper. "As if I didn't know how many make five and where my shoe pinches! Don't imagine your worship can feed me pap, because by God I'm not so green. It's a fine thing that your worship should want to give me to understand that everything these good books say is absurdity and lies — printed as they are with the licence of the gentlemen of the Royal Council, as though they were the sort of people who'd let so many lies be printed all together, and so many battles and so many enchantments that they take your wits away!"
"I have told you already, my friend," replied the curate, "that this is done to entertain our idle thoughts. And just as in well-ordered states it is allowed that there should be games of chess, ball and billiards to entertain those who have no work and ought not and cannot work, so it is allowed to print and to have such books, in the belief — as is the truth — that there could be nobody so ignorant as to take any of these books for true history.
"And if it were permitted me now, and the company required it, I would say some things about what books of chivalry ought to have in them if they are to be good ones, which would perhaps be of profit and even of pleasure to some people. But I hope a time will come when I can communicate it to somebody who can put it right; and in the meantime believe what I have told you, master innkeeper, and take your books, and settle it with their truths or their lies for yourself, and much good may they do you — and God grant that you may not come to limp on the same foot your guest Don Quixote limps on."
"Not I," answered the innkeeper. "I shan't be so mad as to make myself a knight errant; for I can see plainly that what was the custom in that time, when they say those famous knights went about the world, isn't the custom now."
Halfway through this conversation Sancho arrived, and he was left very confused and thoughtful at having heard it said that knights errant were not the custom nowadays, and that all the books of chivalry were foolishness and lies. And he resolved in his heart to wait and see what his master's journey came to; and that if it did not turn out with the happiness he expected, he was determined to leave him and go back to his wife and children and his usual work.
The innkeeper was carrying off the portmanteau and the books, but the curate said to him:
"Wait; I want to see what those papers are that are written in such a good hand."
The host took them out, and giving them to him to read, he saw some eight sheets of manuscript, and at the beginning they had a large title that said: The Tale of Reckless Curiosity. The curate read three or four lines to himself and said:
"Certainly the title of this tale does not strike me badly, and it makes me want to read the whole of it."
To which the innkeeper answered:
"Then your reverence may well read it; because I can tell you that some guests who have read it here have been very much pleased with it and have asked me for it very insistently. But I haven't wanted to give it them, meaning to give it back to whoever left this portmanteau forgotten here with these books and those papers; for it may well be that its owner will come back this way some time. And although I know I shall miss the books, upon my word I mean to give them back to him: for innkeeper though I am, I am still a Christian."
"You are quite right, my friend," said the curate; "but for all that, if the tale pleases me, you must let me copy it out."
"Very willingly," answered the innkeeper.
While the two of them were saying this, Cardenio had taken up the tale and begun to read in it; and thinking the same as the curate, he begged him to read it in a way that everybody could hear.
"I would read it," said the curate, "if it were not better to spend this time in sleeping than in reading."
"It will be rest enough for me," said Dorotea, "to pass the time hearing some tale, since my spirit is not yet so quiet that it lets me sleep when I ought to."
"Well then," said the curate, "I shall read it, if only out of curiosity; perhaps there will be something enjoyable in it."
Master Nicolás hurried to beg him the same, and Sancho too; which the curate seeing, and understanding that he would give everybody pleasure and would get some himself, he said:
"Then since that is so, let everybody give me their attention, for the tale begins like this."
In Florence, a rich and famous city of Italy in the province they call Tuscany, there lived Anselmo and Lotario, two rich and distinguished gentlemen, and such friends that by way of pre-eminence and by antonomasia they were called the two friends by everybody who knew them. They were unmarried, young men of the same age and the same habits — all of which was cause enough for the two of them to answer each other with a reciprocal friendship.
It is quite true that Anselmo was rather more inclined to the pastimes of love than Lotario, whose taste ran to hunting; but when the occasion came, Anselmo would give up going after his own pleasures to follow Lotario's, and Lotario would leave his to attend on Anselmo's. And in this way their wills went so exactly together that no well-regulated clock kept time with them.
Anselmo was head over ears in love with a distinguished and beautiful young lady of the same city, the daughter of such good parents and so good in herself that he decided — with the approval of his friend Lotario, without which he did nothing — to ask her parents for her as his wife; and so he put it into effect. And the man who carried the message was Lotario, and the man who concluded the business so much to his friend's liking that in a short time he found himself put in possession of what he wanted; and Camila was so pleased at having got Anselmo for a husband that she never stopped giving thanks to heaven, and to Lotario, by whose means so great a good had come to her.
The first few days — as all wedding days are usually cheerful — Lotario went on frequenting his friend Anselmo's house as he used to, doing his best to honour him, entertain him and give him pleasure in every way he could. But once the wedding was over and the frequency of visits and congratulations had settled down, Lotario began carefully to be careless about going to Anselmo's house, since it seemed to him — as it is reasonable that it should seem to all people of judgement — that a man ought not to visit and frequent the houses of his married friends in the same way as when they were single. Because although good and true friendship neither can nor ought to be suspect in anything, still, a married man's honour is so delicate a thing that it seems it can be offended even by his own brothers, let alone by his friends.
Anselmo noticed Lotario's slackness and complained bitterly about it, telling him that if he had known that getting married was going to prevent him from associating with him as he used to, he would never have done it; and that if, by the good understanding the two of them had while he was single, they had earned so sweet a name as being called the two friends, he should not allow so famous and so agreeable a name to be lost simply for the sake of playing the man of discretion, with no other occasion at all. And so he begged him — if it was permissible for such a way of speaking to be used between them — to be master of his house again and to come in and out of it as before, assuring him that his wife Camila had no other pleasure and no other wish than the one he wanted her to have, and that having learnt how truly the two of them loved each other, she was puzzled to see so much aloofness in him.
To all these and a great many other arguments that Anselmo made to Lotario to persuade him to come back to his house as he used to, Lotario answered with so much prudence, judgement and good sense that Anselmo was satisfied of his friend's good intentions; and they agreed together that on two days a week and on holidays Lotario should come and eat with him. And although this was settled between them, Lotario resolved to do no more than what he saw was best suited to his friend's honour, whose good name he valued more than his own.
He used to say, and said rightly, that a married man whom heaven had granted a beautiful wife should take as much care about what men friends he brought into his house as about seeing what women friends his wife associated with; because what is not done and arranged in the squares, in the churches, at public festivals or on pilgrimages — things husbands cannot always refuse their wives — is arranged and made easy in the house of the woman friend or relative who is most trusted.
Lotario also used to say that married men needed to have some friend each who would warn them of the mistakes in their conduct; because it often happens that, with the great love a husband has for his wife, he either does not warn her or does not tell her, so as not to annoy her, that she should do or leave off doing certain things which, done or not done, would work to his honour or his discredit. And being warned of this by his friend, he could easily put everything right.
But where is a friend to be found as judicious and as loyal and true as Lotario asks for here? I certainly do not know: only Lotario was such a man, who with all diligence and care looked after his friend's honour and contrived to trim, shave and shorten the days of the agreement about going to his house, so that the coming and going of a rich young man, well-bred and well-born, and with the good qualities he believed he had, into the house of so beautiful a woman as Camila, should not look bad to the idle common people and to wandering, malicious eyes. Because although her goodness and worth could put a bridle on any slandering tongue, still he did not want to put her good name or his friend's in any doubt; and for this reason he spent and occupied most of the agreed days on other things, which he gave out were unavoidable. And so, in complaints from the one and excuses from the other, a great many hours and parts of the day were passed.
It happened, then, that one day when the two of them were walking about a meadow outside the city, Anselmo said to Lotario something like this:
"You supposed, friend Lotario, that for the favours God has done me in making me the son of such parents as mine were, and in giving me, with no sparing hand, the goods both of nature and of fortune, I cannot answer with a gratitude that comes up to the good I have received — and above all to the good he did me in giving me you for a friend and Camila for my own wife: two treasures which I value, if not to the degree I ought, at least to the degree I can.
"Well, with all these things, which are generally the whole of what men live contented with and can live contented with, I live the most distressed and the most miserable man in the whole universe. Because for I do not know how many days a desire has been wearying and pressing on me so strange and so far outside the common way of other men that I am astonished at myself, and blame myself and scold myself when I am alone, and try to keep quiet about it and hide it even from my own thoughts. And it has been about as possible for me to come out with this secret as if I had deliberately tried to tell it to the whole world. And since in fact it has to come out into the open, I want it to be into the open of the archive of your secrecy; trusting that with it, and with the effort you will make, as my true friend, to put me right, I shall soon find myself free of the distress it causes me, and my happiness through your care will come up to the level my unhappiness has reached through my own madness."
Anselmo's words held Lotario in suspense, and he did not know what such a long preparation or preamble would come to; and although he kept turning over in his imagination what that desire could be that was wearying his friend so much, he always fell a long way wide of the mark of the truth. And to get quickly out of the agony that suspense caused him, he told him that he was doing a plain injury to their great friendship by going about looking for roundabout ways to tell him his most hidden thoughts, since he could certainly count on getting from him either advice for keeping them in check or help for carrying them out.
"That is the truth," answered Anselmo, "and with that confidence I let you know, friend Lotario, that the desire that wearies me is wondering whether Camila, my wife, is as good and as perfect as I think she is; and I cannot be certain of this truth except by testing her in such a way that the test shows the carats of her goodness, as fire shows those of gold.
"Because it is my opinion, my friend, that a woman is no better than she is or is not solicited, and that only that woman is strong who does not bend to the promises, the gifts, the tears and the constant importunities of eager lovers. For what is there to be thankful for," he said, "in a woman's being good, if nobody tells her to be bad? What is so great about a woman's being quiet and modest when she is given no opportunity to break out, and when she knows that she has a husband who, catching her in her first indiscretion, will take her life? So the woman who is good out of fear or for want of opportunity, I am not prepared to hold in the esteem in which I shall hold the woman who is solicited and pursued and comes out with the crown of victory.
"So that for these reasons, and for a great many others I could tell you to give credit and strength to the opinion I hold, I want Camila my wife to pass through these difficulties and be refined and assayed in the fire of finding herself courted and solicited — and by a man of enough worth to set his desires on her. And if she comes out of this battle, as I believe she will, with the palm, I shall count my good fortune unequalled; I shall be able to say that the emptiness of my desires is filled; I shall say that the strong woman fell to my lot, of whom the Wise Man says: who shall find her? And if this turns out the opposite of what I expect, then with the pleasure of seeing that I was right in my opinion I shall bear without pain the pain that my very costly experiment may reasonably cause me.
"And granted that nothing you may say to me against my wish is to be of any use in making me give up carrying it out, I want you, friend Lotario, to make yourself ready to be the instrument that works this piece of business I want; and I shall give you the opportunity to do it, and shall not fail to give you everything I see is needed for soliciting a modest, honourable, retiring and disinterested woman.
"And what moves me, among other things, to entrust so hard an enterprise to you is seeing that if Camila is conquered by you, the conquest is not to be pushed to the last extremity, but only to counting as done what is to be done, out of proper respect. And so I shall not be injured except in intention, and my injury will stay hidden in the virtue of your silence, which I know very well will be as everlasting as death's in anything that touches me. So that if you want me to have a life I can call one, you must from this moment enter this battle of love, not lukewarmly or lazily but with the eagerness and diligence my desire requires, and with the confidence our friendship assures me of."
These were the words Anselmo said to Lotario, to all of which he listened so attentively that except for the ones already written that he said to him, he did not open his lips until Anselmo had finished. And seeing that he was saying no more, after he had looked at him for a good while, as though he were looking at some other thing he had never seen before that caused him astonishment and dread, he said to him:
"I cannot persuade myself, friend Anselmo, that the things you have said to me are not a joke; for if I had thought you were saying them in earnest, I would not have let you get so far, since by refusing to listen to you I would have prevented your long harangue. Without a doubt I imagine either that you do not know me or that I do not know you. But no: I know very well that you are Anselmo, and you know that I am Lotario. The trouble is that I think you are not the Anselmo you used to be, and you must have thought that I am not the Lotario I ought to be either. Because the things you have said to me are not the things of that Anselmo my friend, nor are the things you ask of me to be asked of that Lotario you know.
"For good friends are to test their friends and make use of them, as a poet said, usque ad aras — which meant that they were not to make use of their friendship in things that were against God. Well, if a heathen felt this about friendship, how much better ought a Christian to feel it, who knows that for no human friendship is he to lose the divine one? And when a friend throws the bar so far as to set aside the claims of heaven in order to attend to his friend's, it ought not to be for light matters of small moment but for those on which his friend's honour and life depend.
"Then tell me now, Anselmo: which of these two things of yours is in danger, that I should venture to gratify you and do a thing as detestable as the one you are asking? Neither of them, certainly; on the contrary, you are asking me, as I understand it, to try and set about taking away your honour and your life, and taking away mine along with them. Because if I am to try to take away your honour, it is clear that I am taking away your life, since a man without honour is worse than a dead man; and I, being the instrument — as you want me to be — of so much harm to you, do I not come to be left dishonoured and, by the same reasoning, without a life?
"Listen, friend Anselmo, and have the patience not to answer me until I have finished telling you what occurs to me about what your desire has asked of you; for there will be time enough for you to reply and for me to listen."
"With pleasure," said Anselmo. "Say what you like."
And Lotario went on to say:
"It seems to me, Anselmo, that you have your wits at this moment in the state the Moors are always in, who cannot be given to understand the error of their sect by quotations from Holy Scripture, or by arguments that consist in the speculation of the understanding, or that are founded on articles of faith; but they must be brought palpable, easy, intelligible, demonstrative, indubitable examples, with mathematical demonstrations that cannot be denied — as when they say, 'If from two equal parts we take away equal parts, those that are left are equal too.' And when they do not understand this in words, as in fact they do not, it has to be shown them with the hands and put in front of their eyes; and even then nobody is able to persuade them of the truths of my sacred religion.
"And I shall have to use this same procedure and method with you; because the desire that has been born in you goes so far astray and so far outside anything that has a shadow of reason in it that it seems to me the time I spend giving you to understand your simplicity — for at present I do not want to give it another name — will be time wasted. And I am even inclined to leave you in your folly, as a punishment for your wicked wish; but the friendship I have for you does not let me use such severity, and does not allow me to leave you standing in such an obvious danger of ruining yourself.
"And so that you may see it clearly, tell me, Anselmo: have you not told me that I am to solicit a woman who keeps herself to herself, to persuade a modest woman, to make offers to a disinterested woman, to court a prudent woman? Yes, you have told me so. Well, if you know that you have a wife who keeps to herself, who is modest, disinterested and prudent, what are you looking for? And if you think that she is bound to come out the winner from all my assaults, as she will without a doubt, what better titles do you think you can give her afterwards than the ones she has now, or what will she be afterwards more than she is now? Either you do not hold her to be what you say, or you do not know what you are asking.
"If you do not hold her to be what you say, then why do you want to test her, instead of doing with her whatever comes best to your liking, as with a bad woman? But if she is as good as you believe, it will be an impertinent thing to make an experiment on the truth itself, since once it is made it will be left with the same estimation it had before.
"So that it is a conclusive argument that attempting things from which harm can come to us sooner than profit is the mark of unreasoning and reckless judgements — and the more so when people want to attempt things they are neither forced nor compelled to, and which show from a long way off that attempting them is plain madness.
"Difficult things are attempted for God, or for the world, or for both together. Those attempted for God are the ones the saints attempted, attempting to live the life of angels in human bodies. Those attempted out of respect for the world are those of the men who cross such an infinity of water, such a diversity of climates, such strangeness of peoples, in order to get these things they call the goods of fortune. And those attempted for God and for the world together are those of brave soldiers, who have hardly seen a gap opened in the enemy's wall as wide as a round cannonball could make when, putting aside all fear and without reasoning or noticing the plain danger that threatens them, carried on the wings of the desire to stand up for their faith, their nation and their king, they throw themselves fearlessly into the middle of a thousand opposing deaths that are waiting for them.
"These are the things that are usually attempted, and it is honour, glory and profit to attempt them, however full they may be of drawbacks and dangers. But the thing you say you want to attempt and put into practice will get you neither glory from God, nor goods of fortune, nor fame among men. Because supposing you come out of it as you want, you will be left no prouder, no richer and no more honoured than you are now; and if you do not come out of it, you will find yourself in the greatest misery that can be imagined. For it will be no use to you then to think that nobody knows the disaster that has happened to you, because it will be enough to afflict you and undo you that you know it yourself.
"And to confirm this truth I want to tell you a stanza that the famous poet Luigi Tansillo made at the end of the first part of his Tears of Saint Peter, which goes like this:
The grief grows, and the shame grows too, in Peter, when the day has shown itself; and although he sees nobody there, he is ashamed of himself, at seeing that he had sinned. For a great heart needs more than being looked at to move it to feel shame: it is ashamed of itself when it goes wrong, even if it sees nobody but heaven and earth.
"So that you will not escape your pain by secrecy; on the contrary, you will have to weep continually — if not tears from your eyes, then tears of blood from your heart, as that simple-minded doctor wept whom our poet tells us made the test of the cup, which the prudent Rinaldo, reasoning better, excused himself from making. And granted that that is a poetical fiction, it has shut up inside it moral secrets worth noting and understanding and imitating.
"What is more, with what I mean to tell you now you will finally come to recognise the great mistake you want to make. Tell me, Anselmo: if heaven or good luck had made you the lord and lawful possessor of a most perfect diamond, of whose quality and carats every jeweller who saw it was satisfied, and if they all with one voice and by common opinion said that in carats, quality and fineness it came up to everything the nature of such a stone could reach, and if you yourself believed it so, knowing nothing to the contrary — would it be right for you to take it into your head to take that diamond and put it between an anvil and a hammer, and there, by sheer force of blows and arms, test whether it is as hard and as fine as they say? And still more so if you actually did it? For supposing the stone resisted so foolish a test, it would not get any more value or any more fame from it; and if it broke, which it might well do, would not everything be lost? Certainly it would, leaving its owner in everybody's opinion as a simpleton.
"Then reckon, friend Anselmo, that Camila is a most perfect diamond, both in your estimation and in other people's, and that it is not right to put her in a position where she may be broken; since even if she is left whole, she cannot rise to any greater value than she has now, and if she failed and did not resist, consider from now on what state you would be left in without her, and how rightly you could blame yourself for having been the cause of her ruin and of your own.
"See that there is no jewel in the world worth as much as a chaste and honourable woman, and that the whole honour of women consists in the good opinion people have of them; and since your wife's is such that it reaches the extreme of goodness you know, why do you want to put this truth in doubt?
"Look, my friend, woman is an imperfect animal, and one ought not to put obstacles in her way to trip her up and make her fall, but to take them out and clear her road of every hindrance, so that without difficulty she may run lightly to attain the perfection she lacks, which consists in being virtuous.
"The naturalists tell us that the ermine is a little animal with an extremely white coat, and that when they want to hunt it, the hunters use this device: knowing the places it usually passes and comes to, they block them off with mud; and then, driving it, they head it towards that place; and as soon as the ermine reaches the mud it stands still and lets itself be taken and caught, rather than pass through the mire and lose and dirty its whiteness, which it values more than liberty and life.
"The modest and chaste woman is an ermine, and the virtue of modesty is whiter and cleaner than snow; and whoever wants her not to lose it, but rather to keep and preserve it, must use a different method from the one used with the ermine — because they are not to put in front of her the mire of the gifts and attentions of importunate lovers; since perhaps, and even without the perhaps, she has not enough virtue and natural strength to trample and pass through those obstacles by herself, and it is necessary to take them away and to put in front of her the cleanness of virtue and the beauty that a good name contains in itself.
"The good woman is likewise like a mirror of bright, clear glass; but it is liable to be misted over and darkened by any breath that touches it. With the modest woman one must use the method one uses with holy relics: worship them and do not touch them. A good woman is to be guarded and prized as a beautiful garden full of flowers and roses is guarded and prized, whose owner allows nobody to walk in it or handle it; it is enough that from a distance, and through the iron railings, people should enjoy its fragrance and its beauty.
"Finally, I want to tell you some verses that have come into my memory, which I heard in a modern play and which seem to me to be to the purpose of what we are discussing. A prudent old man was advising another, the father of a young girl, to keep her in, guard her and shut her up; and among other arguments he said this to him:"
Woman is made of glass; but one is not to test whether she can break or not, because anything might be.
And breaking is the easier thing, and it is no sense to put at risk of being broken what cannot be soldered again.
And let everybody hold this opinion, and I found it on reason: that if there are Danaës in the world, there are showers of gold as well.
"Everything I have said to you so far, Anselmo, has been about what concerns you; and now it is right that something should be heard about what concerns me. And if it is long, forgive me, for the labyrinth you have got into and want me to get you out of requires all of it.
"You take me for your friend and want to take away my honour, a thing that is against all friendship; and you not only aim at this but try to get me to take yours away from you. That you want to take mine away from me is clear, since when Camila sees that I am soliciting her, as you ask, it is certain that she must take me for a man without honour and without decency, seeing that I am attempting and doing a thing so far outside what being who I am and your friendship oblige me to. That you want me to take yours away from you there is no doubt, because Camila, seeing that I am soliciting her, is bound to think that I have seen in her some lightness that gave me the boldness to reveal my wicked desire to her; and her holding herself dishonoured, her dishonour touches you, as a thing belonging to you.
"And from this arises what is commonly discussed: that the husband of an adulterous wife, even though he does not know it and has given no occasion for his wife not to be what she ought, and even though it has not been in his hands, or through his carelessness and want of caution, to prevent his misfortune — for all that, they call him and name him by a name of reproach and contempt; and in a certain way those who know his wife's wickedness look at him with eyes of scorn, instead of looking at him with eyes of pity, seeing that it is not through his own fault but through the pleasure of his wicked partner that he is in that misfortune.
"But I want to tell you the reason why the husband of a bad wife is with just cause dishonoured, even though he does not know she is bad, and is not at fault, and has had no part in it and given no occasion for her being so. And do not grow tired of hearing me, for it will all work to your profit.
"When God created our first father in the earthly Paradise, Holy Scripture says that God poured sleep on Adam, and that while he was sleeping he took a rib out of his left side, from which he formed our mother Eve; and as soon as Adam woke and looked at her, he said: 'This is flesh of my flesh and bone of my bones.' And God said: 'For this shall a man leave his father and mother, and they shall be two in one same flesh.' And then the divine sacrament of matrimony was instituted, with such bonds that death alone can untie them. And this miraculous sacrament has such force and virtue that it makes two different persons one same flesh; and it does more still in good married couples, who, although they have two souls, have no more than one will.
"And from this it comes about that, the wife's flesh being one and the same with the husband's, the stains that fall on it, or the defects she brings on herself, work back on the husband's flesh, even though he has not, as has been said, given occasion for that harm. Because just as the pain of the foot, or of any limb of the human body, is felt by the whole body, since it is all of one same flesh, and the head feels the injury to the ankle although it did not cause it, so the husband shares in his wife's dishonour, being one same thing with her. And since the honours and dishonours of the world all are and are born of flesh and blood, and those of the bad wife are of that kind, it necessarily follows that the husband gets a share of them and is held dishonoured without knowing it.
"See, then, Anselmo, what danger you are putting yourself in by wanting to disturb the peace your good wife lives in. See out of what an empty and impertinent curiosity you want to stir up the humours that are now settled in your chaste wife's breast. Notice that what you are risking to gain is little, and that what you will lose will be so much that I shall leave it where it is, because I have no words to describe it.
"But if everything I have said is not enough to move you from your wicked purpose, you may well look for another instrument of your dishonour and misfortune, for I do not mean to be it, even if I lose your friendship for it — which is the greatest loss I can imagine."
Having said this, the virtuous and prudent Lotario fell silent; and Anselmo was left so confused and thoughtful that for a good while he could not answer him a word. But at last he said to him:
"With the attention you have seen, friend Lotario, I have listened to everything you wanted to say to me; and in your arguments, examples and comparisons I have seen the great good sense you have and the height of true friendship you have reached. And likewise I see and confess that if I do not follow your opinion and go after my own, I am running away from good and running after evil.
"This granted, you must consider that I am now suffering from the illness some women have, who take a fancy to eat earth, plaster, charcoal and other things that are worse — disgusting even to look at, let alone to eat. So that it is necessary to use some artifice for me to be cured; and this could easily be done, simply by your beginning, however lukewarmly and pretendingly, to solicit Camila. She will not be so soft as to lay her modesty on the ground at the first encounters; and with this beginning alone I shall be content, and you will have done what you owe to our friendship — not only giving me my life but persuading me that I am not without honour.
"And you are obliged to do this for one reason alone; and it is that, since I am, as I am, determined to put this test into practice, you are not to allow me to give an account of my folly to any other person, by which I would put in jeopardy the honour you are trying to keep me from losing. And if your own is not at the point it ought to be in Camila's opinion while you are soliciting her, it matters little or nothing, since shortly, seeing in her the integrity we expect, you will be able to tell her the plain truth of our device, and your reputation will go back to what it was.
"And since you are risking so little and can give me so much satisfaction by taking the risk, do not fail to do it, however many objections may be put in front of you; since, as I have said already, simply by your beginning I shall count the case as closed."
Lotario, seeing Anselmo's settled will, and not knowing what further examples to bring him or what further arguments to show him so that he should not follow it, and seeing that he was threatening to give an account of his wicked desire to somebody else, decided, to avoid a greater evil, to satisfy him and do what he asked — with the purpose and intention of steering the business in such a way that, without disturbing Camila's mind, Anselmo should be satisfied. And so he answered him that he should not communicate his idea to anybody else, and that he took that enterprise upon himself and would begin it whenever it best pleased Anselmo.
Anselmo embraced him tenderly and affectionately and thanked him for his offer as though he had done him some great favour; and it was agreed between the two of them that the work should begin the very next day. Anselmo said he would give him place and time to speak to Camila alone, and would likewise give him money and jewels to give her and to offer her. He advised him to give her music and to write verses in her praise; and that if he did not want to take the trouble of making them, he would make them himself. Lotario offered to do it all — with a very different intention from the one Anselmo supposed.
And with this arrangement they went back to Anselmo's house, where they found Camila anxious and worried, waiting for her husband, because that day he was later than usual in coming.
Lotario went off to his own house, and Anselmo stayed in his, as pleased as Lotario was thoughtful, not knowing what plan to lay so as to come well out of that impertinent business. But that night he thought of the way he would take to deceive Anselmo without offending Camila; and the next day he came to eat with his friend, and was well received by Camila, who received him and made much of him very willingly, understanding the goodwill her husband had for him.
They finished eating, the cloth was cleared, and Anselmo told Lotario to stay there with Camila while he went to see about a necessary piece of business, and that he would be back within an hour and a half. Camila begged him not to go, and Lotario offered to keep him company; but nothing was any use with Anselmo. On the contrary, he pressed Lotario to stay and wait for him, because he had a matter of great importance to discuss with him. He also told Camila not to leave Lotario alone until he came back. In fact he knew so well how to feign the necessity — or the foolishness — of his going away that nobody could have understood it was feigned.
Anselmo went, and Camila and Lotario were left alone at the table, because the rest of the household had all gone off to eat. Lotario saw himself put into the lists his friend had wanted, and with the enemy in front of him who could have conquered a squadron of armed knights with her beauty alone: consider whether it was reasonable that Lotario should be afraid of her.
But what he did was to put his elbow on the arm of his chair and his open hand against his cheek, and, begging Camila's pardon for the discourtesy, said that he wanted to rest a little until Anselmo came back. Camila answered that he would rest better on the sofa than in the chair, and so begged him to come and sleep on it. Lotario would not, and stayed there asleep until Anselmo came back; who, finding Camila in her own room and Lotario asleep, believed that as he had been away so long the two of them had by now had time to talk, and even to sleep, and could not wait for the hour when Lotario should wake so as to go out with him again and ask him about his fortunes.
Everything turned out as he wanted: Lotario woke, and the two of them left the house at once, and so he asked him what he wanted to know. And Lotario answered him that it had not seemed to him a good idea to reveal himself completely the first time; and so he had done nothing but praise Camila for her beauty, telling her that in the whole city there was no other subject of talk than her beauty and good sense; and that this had seemed to him a good beginning for making a start on winning her goodwill, and disposing her to listen to him another time with pleasure — using in this the device the devil uses when he wants to deceive somebody who is standing on the watchtower looking out for himself: he transforms himself into an angel of light, being an angel of darkness, and putting good appearances in front of him, at the end reveals who he is and gets his way, if his trick is not found out at the beginning.
All this pleased Anselmo greatly, and he said he would give him the same opportunity every day, even without going out of the house, because he would occupy himself in it with things that would keep Camila from finding out about their device.
It happened, then, that a great many days went by in which, without Lotario's saying a word to Camila, he answered Anselmo that he was speaking to her and could never get out of her the smallest sign of agreeing to anything that was wrong, or even give a sign of the shadow of hope; on the contrary, he said, she threatened him that if he did not get rid of that wicked thought, she would tell her husband.
"Very good," said Anselmo. "So far Camila has resisted words; we must see how she resists deeds. Tomorrow I shall give you two thousand gold crowns to offer her, and even to give her, and as many again to buy jewels to bait her with. For women are usually fond — and the more so if they are beautiful, however chaste they may be — of this business of turning themselves out well and going about elegantly. And if she resists this temptation, I shall be satisfied and shall trouble you no further."
Lotario answered that since he had begun, he would carry that enterprise through to the end, although he expected to come out of it worn out and beaten. The next day he received the four thousand crowns, and with them four thousand confusions, because he did not know what to say by way of a new lie. But in the end he decided to tell him that Camila stood as firm against gifts and promises as against words, and that there was no reason to weary himself any further, because all the time was being spent for nothing.
But fortune, which was steering things another way, arranged that, having left Lotario and Camila alone as he used to do at other times, Anselmo shut himself in a room and through the keyhole watched and listened to what the two of them were doing. And he saw that in more than half an hour Lotario did not say a word to Camila, and would not have said one if he had been there for a century; and he realised that everything his friend had told him about Camila's answers was fiction and lies.
And to see whether this was so, he came out of the room and, calling Lotario aside, asked him what news there was and what temper Camila was in. Lotario answered him that he did not mean to take another stitch in that business, because she answered so harshly and coldly that he had not the courage to say anything more to her.
"Ah, Lotario, Lotario!" said Anselmo. "How badly you answer what you owe me and the great trust I put in you! I have just been watching you through the opening this keyhole gives, and I have seen that you have not said a word to Camila — from which I give myself to understand that you have still to say her the first ones. And if this is so, as it certainly is, why do you deceive me, or why do you want to take away by your contrivance the means I might find of getting what I want?"
Anselmo said no more, but what he had said was enough to leave Lotario mortified and confused; who, almost as though taking it as a point of honour to have been caught out in a lie, swore to Anselmo that from that moment he took it so much upon himself to satisfy him and not to lie to him that he would see it for himself if he spied on him carefully — and what was more, that there would be no need to take any such trouble, because the trouble he meant to take to satisfy him would put him beyond all suspicion.
Anselmo believed him; and to give him a safer and less alarming opportunity, he decided to be away from his house for eight days, going to that of a friend of his who lived in a village not far from the city; with which friend he arranged that he should send for him very urgently, so as to have an excuse to give Camila for his going.
Unhappy and ill-advised Anselmo! What is it you are doing? What is it you are contriving? What is it you are arranging? See that you are working against yourself, contriving your own dishonour and arranging your own ruin. Your wife Camila is good; you possess her quietly and peacefully; nobody troubles your pleasure; her thoughts do not go beyond the walls of her house; you are her heaven on earth, the target of her desires, the fulfilment of her pleasures and the measure by which she measures her will, fitting it in everything to yours and to heaven's.
Well, if the mine of her honour, beauty, modesty and reserve gives you without any labour all the wealth it holds and all you could desire, why do you want to dig into the ground and look for new veins of new and never-before-seen treasure, putting yourself in danger that the whole thing may come down — since, after all, it rests on the weak supports of her frail nature? Consider that whoever looks for the impossible deserves to be denied the possible, as a poet said better, saying:
I look for life in death, for health in sickness, for liberty in prison, for a way out of what is shut, and for loyalty in the traitor.
But my luck, from which I never hope for any good, has laid it down with heaven that since I ask for the impossible, they shall not give me even the possible.
The next day Anselmo went off to the village, leaving word with Camila that during the time he was away Lotario would come to look after his house and to eat with her, and that she should take care to treat him as she would his own person. Camila, being a sensible and honourable woman, was distressed at the orders her husband was leaving her, and told him that he should note that it was not right for anybody, in his absence, to occupy the chair at his table; and that if he was doing it because he had no confidence that she could manage his house, he should try her this once and would see by experience that she was equal to greater responsibilities. Anselmo replied that this was his pleasure, and that she had nothing more to do than bow her head and obey him. Camila said she would do so, though against her will.
Anselmo left, and the next day Lotario came to the house, where he was received by Camila with a loving and modest welcome. She never put herself in a place where Lotario could see her alone, because she always went about surrounded by her menservants and maids — especially by a maid of hers called Leonela, whom she was very fond of, the two of them having been brought up together from childhood in Camila's parents' house, and when she married Anselmo she had brought her with her.
For the first three days Lotario never said anything to her, although he could have done, when the cloth was cleared and the household went off to eat in a great hurry, because Camila had ordered it so. And Leonela even had orders to eat before Camila did and never to move from her side. But she, having her thoughts set on other matters that pleased her, and needing those hours and that room to occupy them with her own satisfactions, did not always carry out her mistress's command; on the contrary, she left them alone as though that had been what she was ordered. But Camila's modest presence, the gravity of her face and the composure of her person was such that it put a bridle on Lotario's tongue.
But the good that Camila's many virtues did, in putting silence on Lotario's tongue, worked out more to the harm of them both. Because if his tongue was silent, his thoughts ran on and had room to contemplate, point by point, all the extremes of goodness and beauty that Camila had, which were enough to make a marble statue fall in love, let alone a heart of flesh.
Lotario looked at her in the room and the space where he ought to have been speaking to her, and considered how worthy she was of being loved; and this consideration began little by little to make assaults on the respect he had for Anselmo. And a thousand times he wanted to leave the city and go where Anselmo would never see him nor he see Camila; but the pleasure he found in looking at her got in the way and held him back. He forced himself and fought with himself to throw off and not to feel the pleasure that drew him to look at Camila. When he was alone he blamed himself for his folly, called himself a bad friend and even a bad Christian; he made arguments and comparisons between himself and Anselmo, and they all stopped at saying that Anselmo's madness and misplaced confidence had been greater than his own want of loyalty, and that if he had as good an excuse before God as before men for what he meant to do, he would not fear any punishment for his fault.
In the end Camila's beauty and goodness, together with the opportunity the ignorant husband had put into his hands, laid Lotario's loyalty on the ground. And without looking at anything except what his own pleasure inclined him to, at the end of three days of Anselmo's absence — during which he was in a continual battle to resist his desires — he began to make love to Camila, with so much agitation and with such loving words that Camila was taken aback, and did nothing except get up from where she was and go into her own room without answering him a word.
But Lotario's hope was not dismayed by this coldness — hope, which is always born together with love; on the contrary, he thought the more of Camila. And she, having seen in Lotario what she had never expected, did not know what to do with herself. And thinking it neither a safe nor a proper thing to give him occasion or opportunity to speak to her again, she decided to send that same night — as she did — a servant of hers with a note to Anselmo, in which she wrote these words:
Just as they say that an army looks wrong without its general and a castle without its governor, so I say that a young married woman looks far more wrong without her husband, when the justest of reasons do not prevent it. I find myself so badly off without you, and so incapable of putting up with this absence, that if you do not come soon I shall have to go and stay at my parents' house, even if I leave yours without a guard; because the one you left me, if he was left with that title, seems to me to be looking after his own pleasure more than after what concerns you. And since you are a man of sense, I have no more to say to you — nor is it right that I should say more.
Anselmo received this letter, and understood from it that Lotario had already begun the enterprise and that Camila must have answered as he wanted. And, extremely pleased at such news, he sent back word to Camila by mouth that she should on no account move out of his house, because he would be back very shortly.
Camila was astonished at Anselmo's answer, which put her into more confusion than before, because she neither dared to stay in her house nor to go to her parents'; for by staying her modesty ran into danger, and by going she went against her husband's command.
In the end she settled on what was worst for her, which was staying, and resolved not to run away from Lotario's presence, so as not to give her servants anything to talk about. And by now she was sorry she had written what she wrote to her husband, afraid he would think Lotario had seen some looseness in her that had moved him not to keep up the respect he owed her. But, relying on her own goodness, she trusted in God and in her own good intentions, with which she meant to resist in silence everything Lotario might want to say to her, without giving any further account to her husband, so as not to put him to some quarrel and trouble. And she was even looking for some way to excuse Lotario to Anselmo when he should ask her what had moved her to write him that note.
With these thoughts, more honourable than sound or useful, she spent another day listening to Lotario; who pressed so hard that Camila's firmness began to waver, and her modesty had a great deal of work to do to keep to her eyes so that they should not show some sign of the loving compassion that Lotario's tears and words had woken in her breast. All this Lotario noticed, and all of it inflamed him.
Finally it seemed to him that it was necessary, in the room and the time Anselmo's absence gave him, to tighten the siege round that fortress. And so he attacked her self-esteem with praises of her beauty, because there is nothing that more quickly brings down and levels the embattled towers of a beautiful woman's vanity than that same vanity, set on the tongue of flattery. In fact, with all diligence, he mined the rock of her integrity with such engines that even if Camila had been made entirely of bronze, she would have come to the ground. He wept, he begged, he offered, he flattered, he insisted and he pretended with so much feeling and with such signs of being in earnest that he broke through Camila's guard and came to triumph over what he had least expected and most desired.
Camila surrendered; Camila surrendered. But what wonder, if Lotario's friendship did not stay standing? A clear example that shows us that the passion of love is only conquered by running away from it, and that nobody should come to grips with so powerful an enemy, because divine strength is needed to conquer his human strength.
Only Leonela knew her mistress's weakness, because the two bad friends and new lovers could not hide it from her. Lotario did not want to tell Camila about Anselmo's plan, or that Anselmo had given him the opportunity to reach that point, so that she should not think less of his love and suppose that he had solicited her like that, by chance and without meaning it, and not on purpose.
A few days later Anselmo came back to his house, and did not notice what was missing in it, which was the thing he valued least and prized most. He went at once to see Lotario, and found him at home. They embraced each other, and the one asked for the news of his life or his death.
"The news I can give you, friend Anselmo," said Lotario, "is that you have a wife who can deservedly be the example and the crown of all good women. The words I have said to her the wind has carried off; my offers have been thought little of; my gifts have not been accepted; some pretended tears of mine have been notably laughed at. In short, just as Camila is the sum of all beauty, she is the storehouse where modesty resides and where good breeding and reserve live, along with every virtue that can make an honourable woman praiseworthy and fortunate.
"Take back your money, my friend, for I have it here without having had any need to touch it; Camila's integrity does not surrender to things as low as gifts and promises. Be content, Anselmo, and do not want to make any more tests than the ones you have made. And since you have crossed dry-shod the sea of the difficulties and suspicions men may and do have about women, do not choose to go into the deep ocean of new troubles all over again, or to make trial with another pilot of the soundness and strength of the ship heaven gave you as your lot to cross the sea of this world in. Instead, reckon that you are already in a safe harbour, and grapple yourself with the anchors of good sense, and let yourself lie there until they come to ask you for the debt that no human nobility excuses a man from paying."
Anselmo was extremely pleased with Lotario's words, and believed them exactly as though they had been spoken by some oracle. But for all that, he begged him not to give up the enterprise, even if it were only out of curiosity and for entertainment, and even if he did not from then on employ such urgent efforts as he had until then. And he said he only wanted him to write some verses in her praise under the name of Chloris, because he would give Camila to understand that he was in love with a lady to whom he had given that name so as to be able to celebrate her with the propriety her modesty deserved; and that if Lotario did not want to take the trouble of writing the verses, he would write them himself.
"That will not be necessary," said Lotario, "since the Muses are not such enemies of mine that they do not visit me for some hours in the year. Tell Camila what you have said about my pretended love affair; the verses I shall make, and if they are not as good as the subject deserves, they will at least be the best I can do."
On this the impertinent man and the treacherous friend agreed. And Anselmo, going back to his house, asked Camila the thing she was already surprised he had not asked her: which was to tell him the reason why she had written him the note she sent. Camila answered that it had seemed to her that Lotario looked at her a little more freely than when he was at home; but that she had been undeceived now and believed it had been her own imagination, because by now Lotario avoided seeing her and being alone with her.
Anselmo told her she could be perfectly easy about that suspicion, because he knew that Lotario was in love with a distinguished young lady of the city, whom he celebrated under the name of Chloris; and that even if he were not, there was nothing to fear from Lotario's honesty and from the great friendship between the two of them. And if Camila had not been warned by Lotario that that love affair with Chloris was a pretence, and that he had told Anselmo so in order to spend a few hours on Camila's own praises, she would without any doubt have fallen into the despairing net of jealousy; but being forewarned, she got through that alarm without distress.
The next day, the three of them being at table, Anselmo begged Lotario to say something of what he had composed to his beloved Chloris; since Camila did not know her, he could safely say whatever he liked.
"Even if she did know her," answered Lotario, "I would hide nothing; because when a lover praises his lady for being beautiful and reproaches her for being cruel, he does no discredit to her good name. But be that as it may, what I can say is that yesterday I made a sonnet on this Chloris's ingratitude, which goes like this:
In the silence of the night, when sweet sleep takes possession of mortals, I am giving to heaven and to my Chloris the poor account of my rich sufferings.
And at the time when the sun begins to show through the rosy gates of the east, with sighs and broken-off words I go over the old complaint again.
And when the sun, from its starred seat, sends its rays straight down to the earth, the weeping grows and I double my groans.
Night comes back, and I go back to the sad tale, and always I find, in this mortal struggle of mine, heaven deaf, and Chloris without ears."
Camila thought well of the sonnet, but Anselmo better, since he praised it and said that the lady who did not answer such plain truths was excessively cruel. To which Camila said:
"So everything that lovesick poets say is true?"
"As poets, they do not speak the truth," answered Lotario; "but as lovers, they always fall as short as they are truthful."
"There is no doubt of that," replied Anselmo — all of it to back up and give credit to Lotario's ideas with Camila, who was as unaware of Anselmo's contrivance as she was by now in love with Lotario.
And so, with the pleasure she took in anything of his, and the more so since she understood that his desires and his writings were aimed at her, and that she was the real Chloris, she begged him that if he knew another sonnet or other verses, he should say them.
"I do know one," answered Lotario, "but I do not think it is as good as the first — or, to put it better, less bad. And you can judge for yourselves, for here it is:
I know that I am dying; and if I am not believed, dying is the more certain, as it is more certain that I shall be seen dead at your feet, beautiful ingrate, sooner than repenting of adoring you.
I may find myself in the country of oblivion, stripped of life and glory and favour, and there it will be possible to see, in my opened breast, how your lovely face is carved there.
For I keep this relic for the hard passage my own persistence threatens me with, which draws its strength from your very severity.
Pity the man who sails, with the sky dark, over an unknown sea and a dangerous course, where neither pole star nor harbour offers itself."
Anselmo praised this second sonnet too, as he had done the first; and in this way he went on adding link after link to the chain with which his dishonour was being fastened and bound. For the more Lotario dishonoured him, the more he told him he was being honoured; and with this, every step Camila went down towards the centre of her disgrace, she went up, in her husband's opinion, towards the summit of virtue and of her good name.
It happened at this time that Camila, finding herself once — among other times — alone with her maid, said to her:
"I am mortified, Leonela my friend, to see how little I have known how to value myself, since I did not even make Lotario buy with time the complete possession of my will that I gave him so quickly. I am afraid he will think of my quickness, or my lightness, without noticing the force he used on me so that I could not resist him."
"Do not let that trouble you, my lady," answered Leonela, "for it is no argument, and no reason for the value to go down, that a thing should be given quickly — if what is given is good and worth valuing in itself. And it is even a common saying that whoever gives at once gives twice."
"They also say," said Camila, "that what costs little is valued at less."
"That argument does not apply to you," answered Leonela; "because love, as I have heard tell, sometimes flies and sometimes walks, runs with this man and goes slowly with that one, cools some and burns up others, wounds some and kills others; at one and the same moment it begins the race of its desires and at that same moment it finishes and concludes it; in the morning it will lay siege to a fortress and by night it has it surrendered, because there is no strength that resists it.
"And this being so, what are you frightened at, or what are you afraid of, if the same thing must have happened to Lotario, since love took my master's absence as the instrument for conquering us? And it necessarily followed that within that absence what love had determined should be brought to a conclusion, without giving time to time for Anselmo to have any of it to come back in, and for the work to be left unfinished by his presence. Because love has no better minister for carrying out what it wants than opportunity: it makes use of opportunity in all its doings, and chiefly at the beginnings. I know all this very well, more from experience than from hearsay; and one day I shall tell you about it, my lady, for I too am flesh and young blood.
"What is more, my lady Camila, you did not give yourself up or surrender so quickly that you had not first seen in Lotario's eyes, in his sighs, in his words and in his promises and gifts, the whole of his soul, seeing in it and in his virtues how worthy Lotario was of being loved. So if this is so, do not let those scrupulous and squeamish thoughts assault your imagination, but be assured that Lotario values you as you value him, and live contented and satisfied that, since you have fallen into love's snare, the man who has you tight is a man of worth and value.
"And that he not only has the four S's that they say good lovers must have, but a whole ABC from beginning to end. If you do not believe me, listen and you will see how I say it to you by heart. He is, from what I see and as it seems to me, appreciative, blameless, chivalrous, devoted, enamoured, firm, gallant, honourable, illustrious, just, kind, loyal, manly, noble, open-hearted, princely, quick-witted, rich, and the S's they talk about; and then tactful, and veracious. The X does not fit him, because it is a harsh letter; the Y I have said already with the I; and the Z — zealous guardian of your honour."
Camila laughed at her maid's ABC, and thought her better practised in the affairs of love than she said; and Leonela admitted it, revealing to Camila that she was carrying on a love affair with a well-born young man of the same city. At which Camila was disturbed, fearing that this was the road along which her own honour might run into danger. She pressed her to say whether their conversations went further than being conversations. Leonela, with little shame and a great deal of freedom, answered her that they did; because it is a certain thing by now that the carelessness of mistresses takes away the shame of their maids, who, when they see their mistresses stumble, think nothing of limping themselves, or of its being known.
Camila could do nothing but beg Leonela to say nothing about her own doings to the man she said was her lover, and to conduct her affairs in secret, so that they should not come to the knowledge of Anselmo or of Lotario. Leonela answered that she would do so, but she kept her word in such a way that she made good Camila's fear that she would lose her reputation through her. Because the immodest and impudent Leonela, once she saw that her mistress's conduct was not what it used to be, made bold to bring her lover into the house and lodge him there, confident that even if her mistress saw him she would not dare to expose him. For this is one of the harms, among others, that the sins of mistresses bring: that they make themselves slaves of their own maids and are obliged to cover up their immodesties and vile behaviour, as happened with Camila. For although she saw once and many times that her Leonela was with her gallant in a room of her house, not only did she not dare scold her, but she gave her the chance to shut him in there, and took away all the obstacles so that he should not be seen by her husband.
But she could not take them away enough to keep Lotario from seeing him come out once, at the break of dawn; who, not knowing who it was, thought at first that it must be some phantom. But when he saw him walk off, muffle himself up and cover himself with care and caution, he came down from his simple idea and fell into another, which would have been the ruin of everybody if Camila had not put it right.
Lotario thought that this man he had seen come out of Anselmo's house at such an hour had not gone into it on Leonela's account; he did not even remember that Leonela existed in the world. He only believed that Camila, in the same way as she had been easy and light with him, was so for somebody else. For these are the additions that a bad woman's wickedness brings with it: that she loses the credit of her honour with the very man she gave herself up to after being begged and persuaded, and he believes she gives herself up to others still more easily, and gives infallible credit to any suspicion that comes to him about it.
And it looks as though at this point Lotario's whole good understanding failed him, and every one of his prudent arguments went out of his memory; since without making a single one that was good, or even reasonable, without any more ado, before Anselmo got up, impatient and blinded by the jealous rage that was gnawing at his entrails, and dying to take revenge on Camila, who had offended him in nothing at all, he went to Anselmo and said to him:
"Know, Anselmo, that for many days I have been fighting with myself, forcing myself not to tell you what it is no longer possible or right for me to hide from you any longer. Know that Camila's fortress is now surrendered and subject to anything I may want to do with it.
"And if I have been slow to reveal this truth to you, it has been to see whether it was some light fancy of hers, or whether she was doing it to test me and see whether the love-making I began with her, with your leave, was carried on with a settled purpose. I likewise believed that if she had been what she ought to be, and what we both took her for, she would already have given you an account of my soliciting her; but having seen that she is slow about it, I recognise that the promises she has given me are true — that when you next go away from your house she will talk with me in the storeroom where your valuables are kept." And it was true that Camila used to talk with him there. "And I do not want you to run headlong to take some revenge, since the sin has not yet been committed except in thought, and it might be that between now and the time for putting it into practice Camila's thought would change and repentance be born in its place.
"And so, since you have always followed my advice in whole or in part, follow and keep one piece of advice I shall give you now, so that without any deception and with cautious forethought you may satisfy yourself of whatever you see best suits you. Pretend to go away for two or three days, as you do at other times, and arrange to stay hidden in your storeroom — since the tapestries that are there and other things you can hide behind offer you a great deal of convenience. And then you will see with your own eyes, and I with mine, what Camila wants; and if it is the wickedness that is more to be feared than hoped for, then with silence, shrewdness and discretion you may be the executioner of your own injury."
Anselmo was left absorbed, taken aback and astonished by Lotario's words, because they caught him at a time when he least expected to hear them; for he already took Camila to be the conqueror of Lotario's pretended assaults, and was beginning to enjoy the glory of the victory. He stayed silent for a good while, looking at the ground without moving an eyelash, and at last he said:
"You have done it, Lotario, as I expected of your friendship. In everything I shall follow your advice: do as you like and keep that secrecy you see is proper in a case as unexpected as this."
Lotario promised it him; and on leaving him, he repented entirely of everything he had told him, seeing how foolishly he had behaved, since he could have taken revenge on Camila, and not by so cruel and so dishonourable a road. He cursed his own understanding, called his hasty decision ugly, and did not know what course to take to undo what was done, or to find some reasonable way out of it. In the end he decided to give Camila a full account of it all; and as there was no lack of opportunity for doing so, he found her alone that same day, and she, as soon as she saw she could speak to him, said:
"Know, friend Lotario, that I have a grief in my heart which presses on it in such a way that it seems it wants to burst in my breast — and it will be a wonder if it does not. For Leonela's shamelessness has come to such a pitch that every night she shuts a gallant of hers into this house and stays with him until daylight, so much at the cost of my reputation that whoever sees him come out of my house at such extraordinary hours will be left an open field for judging it. And what wearies me is that I cannot punish her or scold her: her being the secretary of our own dealings has put a bridle on my mouth to keep quiet about hers, and I am afraid that some bad business will come of it."
When Camila first said this, Lotario believed it was a device to mislead him into thinking that the man he had seen come out was Leonela's and not hers; but seeing her weep and grieve, and beg him for a remedy, he came to believe the truth, and believing it, he was left completely confused and repentant. But for all that, he answered Camila that she should not distress herself, for he would arrange a remedy to put a stop to Leonela's insolence.
He also told her what, urged on by the furious rage of jealousy, he had said to Anselmo, and how it was arranged that he should hide in the storeroom to see plainly from there how little loyalty she kept for him. He begged her pardon for this madness, and asked her advice about how to remedy it and get well out of so tangled a labyrinth as his bad reasoning had put him into.
Camila was appalled to hear what Lotario told her, and with great anger and with many well-judged arguments she scolded him and called his wicked thought and the foolish, wicked decision he had taken ugly. But since a woman naturally has a quicker wit than a man both for good and for evil — although it begins to fail her when she deliberately sets herself to reason things out — Camila at that very instant found the way to remedy a business that seemed so past remedy. And she told Lotario to arrange that Anselmo should hide the next day where he had said, because she meant to make his hiding into a convenience by which from then on the two of them could enjoy each other without any alarm. And without declaring her whole plan to him, she warned him to be careful that once Anselmo was hidden he should come when Leonela called him, and that to everything she said to him he should answer as he would have answered if he had not known that Anselmo was listening. Lotario insisted that she should finish declaring her intention to him, so that he could keep to everything he saw was necessary with more safety and forethought.
"I say," said Camila, "that there is nothing more to keep to, except to answer me as I shall ask you." Camila did not want to give him a prior account of what she meant to do, being afraid that he would not want to follow the plan that seemed so good to her, and would follow or look for others that could not be as good.
With this Lotario went off; and Anselmo, the next day, with the excuse of going to that village of his friend's, left and came back to hide himself — which he was able to do conveniently, because Camila and Leonela deliberately gave him the opportunity.
Anselmo being hidden, then, with the sort of alarm one may imagine in a man who was expecting to see with his own eyes an anatomy made of the entrails of his honour, he was on the point of losing the highest good he thought he possessed in his beloved Camila. Camila and Leonela, being by now safe and certain that Anselmo was hidden, came into the storeroom; and Camila had hardly set foot in it when, giving a great sigh, she said:
"Ah, Leonela my friend! Would it not be better, before I come to carry out the thing I do not want you to know about — so that you may not try to prevent it — that you should take Anselmo's dagger, which I have asked you for, and run it through this shameful breast of mine? But do not do such a thing, for it will not be right that I should bear the penalty of another's fault. First I want to know what it was that Lotario's bold and immodest eyes saw in me that was the cause of giving him the boldness to reveal to me a desire as wicked as the one he has revealed, in contempt of his friend and to my dishonour. Go to that window, Leonela, and call him, for beyond any doubt he must be in the street waiting to put his wicked intention into effect. But my own intention shall be put into effect first, cruel as it is honourable."
"Ah, my lady!" answered the shrewd and forewarned Leonela. "What is it you want to do with this dagger? Do you by any chance want to take your own life, or to take Lotario's? For either of these things you may want must work out to the loss of your reputation and good name. It is better for you to hide the injury done you, and not to let this wicked man come into this house now and find us alone. Look, my lady, we are weak women and he is a man, and a determined one; and coming as he does with that wicked purpose, blind and full of passion, perhaps before you carry out yours he will do the thing that would be worse for you than taking your life. A curse on my lord Anselmo, for having given this shameless creature so much run of his house! And supposing, my lady, that you kill him, as I think you mean to do — what are we to do with him afterwards, once he is dead?"
"What, my friend?" answered Camila. "We shall leave him for Anselmo to bury; for it will be only right that he should count as a rest the labour he takes in putting his own infamy underground. Call him, and be quick; for all the time I delay in taking due vengeance for my injury, it seems to me that I am offending against the loyalty I owe my husband."
Anselmo was listening to all this, and at every word Camila said his thoughts changed. But when he understood that she was resolved to kill Lotario, he wanted to come out and reveal himself so that such a thing should not be done; but he was held back by the desire to see what all this gallantry and honourable resolution would come to, meaning to come out in time to prevent it.
At this Camila was taken by a violent faint, and throwing herself down on a bed that was there, Leonela began to weep very bitterly and to say:
"Ah, unlucky woman that I am, if I were unfortunate enough to have dying here in my arms the flower of the world's modesty, the crown of good women, the example of chastity —!"
And other things like these, so that nobody who heard her would not have taken her for the most grief-stricken and loyal maid in the world, and her mistress for another new and persecuted Penelope. Camila was not long in coming out of her faint; and on coming to herself, she said:
"Why do you not go, Leonela, and call the most loyal friend to a friend that ever the sun looked on or the night covered? Be quick, run, hurry, go — do not let the fire of the anger I have blow itself out with delay, and the just vengeance I am waiting for turn into threats and curses."
"I am going to call him now, my lady," said Leonela; "but you must first give me that dagger, so that while I am away you shall not do something with it that will leave everybody who loves you with cause to weep all their lives."
"Go without any fear, Leonela my friend, for I shall not," answered Camila. "Because although I may be bold and simple in your opinion in standing up for my honour, I shall not be as much so as that Lucretia they say killed herself without having committed any fault at all, and without first having killed the man who was the cause of her misfortune. I shall die, if I die, but it must be avenged and satisfied on the man who has given me cause to come to this pass and weep over his boldness, which was born so blamelessly on my side."
Leonela had to be begged a great deal before she would go out and call Lotario; but at last she went. And while she was away, Camila was left saying, as though she were talking to herself:
"God help me! Would it not have been more sensible to have sent Lotario away, as I have done many other times, instead of putting him in the position I have now put him in, of taking me for immodest and wicked, at least for the time I shall take to undeceive him? It would certainly have been better; but then I would not be avenged, nor my husband's honour satisfied, if he could get out again with clean hands and at an easy walk from where his wicked thoughts got him in.
"Let the traitor pay with his life for what he attempted with so lustful a desire. Let the world know, if it ever comes to know it, that Camila not only kept her loyalty to her husband but gave him vengeance on the man who dared to offend him.
"But for all that, I believe it would have been better to give an account of this to Anselmo. Yet I did point it out to him in the letter I wrote him at the village; and I believe that his not coming to remedy the harm I indicated to him there must have been because, out of pure goodness and trustfulness, he neither would nor could believe that in the breast of so firm a friend of his there could be room for any kind of thought against his honour. Nor did I believe it myself afterwards, for many days, nor would I ever have believed it if his insolence had not gone so far that the open gifts and the lavish promises and the constant tears made it plain to me.
"But why am I making these speeches now? Does a gallant resolution have any need of advice, by any chance? Certainly not. Away, then, with traitors — here, vengeance! Let the false man come in; let him come, let him arrive, let him die and be finished, and let what happens happen. I came clean into the power of the man heaven gave me for my own; clean I mean to come out of it — and at the most I shall come out bathed in my own chaste blood, and in the impure blood of the falsest friend that friendship ever saw in the world."
And saying this, she walked about the room with the dagger drawn, taking such wild and extravagant steps and making such gestures that she looked for all the world as if she had lost her wits, and were no delicate woman but some bravo in despair.
Anselmo was watching all of it, covered by some tapestries where he had hidden himself, and was astonished at all of it; and it already seemed to him that what he had seen and heard was satisfaction enough for greater suspicions than his, and by now he could have wished the test of Lotario's coming might not happen, being afraid of some sudden bad turn. And when he was just about to reveal himself and come out, to embrace his wife and undeceive her, he stopped, because he saw that Leonela was coming back leading Lotario by the hand.
And as soon as Camila saw him, she drew a great line on the floor in front of her with the dagger and said:
"Lotario, take note of what I say to you: if by any chance you dare to cross this line you see, or even to come up to it, at the moment I see you attempting it I shall run this dagger I have in my hands through my own breast. And before you answer me a word to this, I want you to listen to some others of mine; afterwards you shall answer whatever pleases you best.
"First, Lotario, I want you to tell me whether you know Anselmo my husband, and in what opinion you hold him; and secondly, I want to know as well whether you know me. Answer me this, and do not be alarmed, and do not think much about what you have to answer, for they are no difficult questions I am asking you."
Lotario was not so slow-witted that from the first moment Camila told him to have Anselmo hidden he had not realised what she meant to do; and so he fell in with her intention so cleverly and so promptly that between the two of them they would have made that lie pass for more than certain truth. And so he answered Camila in this way:
"I did not think, beautiful Camila, that you were calling me to ask me things so far outside the purpose I have come here with. If you are doing it to put off the favour you promised me, you could have kept it at a distance from further off; because the good we desire torments us more the nearer hope is to possessing it. But so that you may not say I do not answer your questions, I say that I know your husband Anselmo, and that the two of us have known each other since our earliest years; and I do not want to speak of what you know so well about our friendship, so as not to make myself a witness of the wrong love is making me do him — a powerful excuse for greater errors than this. You I know, and hold in the same possession that he holds you in; for if it were not so, for lesser charms than yours I would not have gone against what I owe to being who I am and against the sacred laws of true friendship, now broken and violated by me for so powerful an enemy as love."
"If you confess that," answered Camila, "mortal enemy of everything that justly deserves to be loved, with what face do you dare appear before one who you know is the mirror in which the man you ought to be looking at looks at himself — so that you might see with how little cause you injure him? But now, ah, unhappy woman that I am, I realise who it is that has made you take so little care of what you owe to yourself: it must have been some freedom of mine, which I will not call immodesty, since it will not have come from any deliberate decision but from one of those pieces of carelessness that women who think they have nobody to be on their guard against are apt to commit without noticing.
"If not, tell me: when, you traitor, did I answer your entreaties with any word or sign that could wake in you the shadow of a hope of fulfilling your shameful desires? When were your loving words not undone and rebuked by mine with severity and harshness? When were your many promises and your greater gifts believed by me, or accepted?
"But since it seems to me that nobody can persevere a long time in a purpose of love unless he is kept up by some hope, I choose to lay on myself the blame for your impertinence — since without a doubt some carelessness of mine has kept your attentions going so long. And so I mean to punish myself and give myself the penalty your fault deserves.
"And so that you might see that, being so inhuman to myself, it was not possible that I should be otherwise to you, I chose to bring you here to be a witness of the sacrifice I mean to make to the offended honour of my so honourable husband — wronged by you with the greatest care you were capable of, and by me as well, with the little caution I have kept about avoiding the occasion, if I gave you any, to favour and canonise your wicked intentions.
"I say again that the suspicion I have that some carelessness of mine bred such deranged thoughts in you is what wearies me most, and what I most want to punish with my own hands; because if another executioner punished me, perhaps my fault would be more public. But before I do this, I mean to kill as I die, and to take with me the man who will finally satisfy the desire for vengeance I hope for and have — seeing there, wherever I may go, the penalty imposed by that justice which is disinterested and does not bend for the man who has put me in such desperate straits."
And saying these words, with an incredible force and quickness she rushed at Lotario with the drawn dagger, with such signs of wanting to drive it into his breast that he was almost in doubt whether those demonstrations were false or true; for he was obliged to use both his ingenuity and his strength to prevent Camila from striking him. And she acted that strange deceit and villainy so vividly that, to give it the colour of truth, she chose to tint it with her own blood. For seeing that she could not get at Lotario — or pretending that she could not — she said:
"Since fortune will not satisfy my so just desire completely, at least it will not be powerful enough to keep me from satisfying it in part."
And forcing her dagger hand free, which Lotario had hold of, she pulled it out; and guiding its point to a place where it could not wound deeply, she drove it in and buried it above the hollow of her left side, close to the shoulder, and then let herself fall to the ground as though in a faint.
Leonela and Lotario were left taken aback and astonished at such an event, and still doubted the truth of the thing, seeing Camila stretched on the ground and bathed in her own blood. Lotario ran very quickly, terrified and out of breath, to pull out the dagger; and on seeing how small the wound was, he came out of the fear he had been in until then, and marvelled all over again at the shrewdness, prudence and great cleverness of the beautiful Camila. And to play his own part, he began to make a long, sad lamentation over Camila's body, as though she were dead, calling down a great many curses not only on himself but on the man who had been the cause of putting him in that position. And as he knew his friend Anselmo was listening to him, he said things that would have made anybody who heard him feel far more pity for him than for Camila, even judging her to be dead.
Leonela took her in her arms and put her on the bed, begging Lotario to go and look for somebody who would treat Camila secretly. She also asked his advice and opinion about what they should tell Anselmo about her mistress's wound if he happened to come before she was better. He answered that they should say whatever they liked, since he was in no state to give advice that would be of any use. He only told her to try to stop the bleeding, because he was going off where people would not see him. And with every sign of great grief and feeling, he left the house.
And when he found himself alone and in a place where nobody could see him, he never stopped crossing himself, marvelling at Camila's ingenuity and at Leonela's so entirely convincing gestures. He thought how thoroughly convinced Anselmo would now be that he had a second Portia for a wife, and he wanted to be with him so that the two of them could celebrate the most artfully hidden lie and truth that could ever have been imagined.
Leonela stopped her mistress's blood, as has been said, which was no more than was enough to give credit to their deceit; and washing the wound with a little wine, she bound it up as best she knew how, saying such things while she was dressing it that even if there had been nothing else before them, they would have been enough to make Anselmo believe he had in Camila an image of modesty itself.
To Leonela's words were joined others of Camila's, calling herself a coward and a poor-spirited creature, since courage had failed her at the moment when it was most needed for taking the life she so much loathed. She asked her maid's advice on whether or not she should tell her beloved husband about the whole affair; and Leonela told her not to tell him, because it would put him under an obligation to take revenge on Lotario, which could not happen without a great deal of risk to himself; and that a good wife was bound not to give her husband any occasion to quarrel, but to take away from him all those she possibly could.
Camila answered that his advice seemed very good to her and that she would follow it, but that in any case they would have to find something to tell Anselmo about the cause of that wound, which he could not fail to see. To which Leonela answered that she did not know how to tell a lie, even in fun.
"And what am I to know, my dear," replied Camila, "when I would not dare to forge or keep up a lie if my life depended on it? And if we cannot manage to find a way out of this, it will be better to tell him the naked truth than to have him catch us out in a lying account."
"Do not distress yourself, my lady," answered Leonela. "Between now and tomorrow I shall think what we are to tell him; and perhaps, the wound being where it is, you will be able to hide it without his seeing it, and heaven will be pleased to favour our so just and so honourable intentions. Calm yourself, my lady, and try to calm your agitation, so that my master shall not find you in a fright; and leave the rest to me and to God, who always comes to the help of good intentions."
Anselmo had been listening most attentively, and watching them act out the tragedy of the death of his honour — which the characters in it acted with such strange and effective feeling that it seemed they had been transformed into the very truth of what they were pretending. He was longing for night, and for the chance to get out of his house and go to see his good friend Lotario, so as to congratulate himself with him on the precious pearl he had found in the undeceiving proof of his wife's goodness. The two women took care to give him room and opportunity to get out, and he, not losing it, went out and then went to look for Lotario.
And when he had found him, it is not easy to tell the embraces he gave him, the things he said to him about his own happiness, the praises he gave Camila. All of which Lotario listened to without being able to show any sign of gladness, because it came into his memory how deceived his friend was and how unjustly he was wronging him. And although Anselmo could see that Lotario was not glad, he believed the cause was his having left Camila wounded and having been the cause of it himself; and so, among other things, he told him not to distress himself about what had happened to Camila, because without doubt the wound was slight, since the two of them had agreed to hide it from him. And that, this being so, there was nothing to fear, but that from then on he should take pleasure and be glad with him, since by Lotario's ingenuity and by his means he found himself raised to the highest happiness that could be wished for; and that he wanted their only entertainment to be making verses in praise of Camila, to make her eternal in the memory of the ages to come. Lotario praised his good resolution and said that for his part he would help to raise so illustrious a building.
With this Anselmo was left the most deliciously deceived man there could be in the world. He himself led home by the hand, believing he was leading the instrument of his glory, the whole ruin of his good name. Camila received him with a face that seemed put out, though with a soul that was laughing. This deception lasted some days, until, at the end of a few months, Fortune turned her wheel and the wickedness that had been covered up until then with so much artifice came out into the open, and Anselmo's reckless curiosity cost him his life.
There was not much left of the tale to read when out of the garret where Don Quixote was resting came Sancho Panza in a great commotion, shouting:
"Come, gentlemen, quickly, and help my master, who is in the middle of the hardest-fought and closest battle my eyes have ever seen! By the living God, he has dealt such a slash at the giant, the lady Princess Micomicona's enemy, that he has cut his head clean off, as though it had been a turnip!"
"What are you saying, brother?" said the curate, leaving off reading what was left of the tale. "Are you in your senses, Sancho? How the devil can what you say be so, when the giant is two thousand leagues from here?"
At this they heard a great noise in the room, and Don Quixote shouting:
"Hold, thief, villain, scoundrel! I have you here, and your scimitar shall not save you!"
And it seemed he was dealing great slashes at the walls. And Sancho said:
"There's no call to stop and listen: go in and separate the fight, or help my master — though there won't be any need now, because beyond a doubt the giant is dead by this time and giving God an account of his past and wicked life. I saw the blood running along the floor, and the head cut off and fallen to one side, and it's as big as a great wineskin."
"Strike me dead," said the innkeeper at this, "if Don Quixote — or Don Devil — hasn't dealt a slash at one of the skins of red wine that were standing full at the head of his bed, and the spilt wine must be what looks like blood to this good fellow."
And with this he went into the room, and everybody after him, and they found Don Quixote in the strangest costume in the world. He was in his shirt, which was not long enough to finish covering his thighs in front, and behind it was six fingers shorter. His legs were very long and thin, covered with hair and not in the least clean. On his head he had a little red cap, greasy, which belonged to the innkeeper. Round his left arm he had wound the bed-blanket, which Sancho had a grudge against — and he knew very well why. And in his right hand he had his drawn sword, with which he was dealing slashes in every direction, saying things as though he were genuinely fighting some giant.
And the best of it is that he did not have his eyes open, because he was asleep and dreaming that he was in battle with the giant; for so intense was his imagination of the adventure he was going to bring to an end that it made him dream he had already arrived in the kingdom of Micomicón and was already in the fight with his enemy. And he had dealt so many slashes at the wineskins, believing he was dealing them at the giant, that the whole room was full of wine.
Which the innkeeper seeing, he took such offence that he flew at Don Quixote and with his closed fist began to give him so many blows that if Cardenio and the curate had not pulled him off him, he would have finished the war of the giant himself. And in spite of all that, the poor knight did not wake up, until the barber brought a great cauldron of cold water from the well and threw it all over his body at one go, with which Don Quixote woke — but not with enough awareness to notice the state he was in.
Dorotea, who saw how short and thin his clothing was, would not come in to watch the battle of her champion and her enemy.
Sancho was going about looking for the giant's head all over the floor; and as he could not find it, he said:
"I know already that everything in this house is enchantment; because the other time, in this same place where I am standing now, they gave me a great many cuffs and blows without my knowing who was giving them me, and I could never see anybody. And now this head doesn't turn up that I saw cut off with my very own eyes, and the blood was running out of the body like out of a fountain."
"What blood and what fountain are you talking about, enemy of God and of his saints?" said the innkeeper. "Don't you see, you thief, that the blood and the fountain are nothing but these wineskins here that have been punctured and the red wine that's swimming about this room? — and may I see the soul of whoever punctured them swimming in hell!"
"I know nothing about it," answered Sancho. "All I know is that I'm going to be so unlucky that, for not finding this head, my earldom will melt away like salt in water."
And Sancho awake was in a worse state than his master asleep, so much had his master's promises done for him. The innkeeper was in despair at the squire's stolidity and the master's mischief, and swore it should not be like the last time, when they got away without paying; and that this time the privileges of his chivalry should not be any good to him for getting out of paying for the one thing and the other — down to the cost of the patches that would have to be put on the burst skins.
The curate had hold of Don Quixote's hands; and he, believing that the adventure was over now and that he was in the presence of the Princess Micomicona, knelt down in front of the curate, saying:
"Your greatness, high and famous lady, may well live from today on secure against any harm this base-born creature can do you; and I too, from today on, am released from the word I gave you, since with the help of God on high and with the favour of her for whom I live and breathe, I have kept it so well."
"Didn't I say so?" said Sancho, hearing this. "So I wasn't drunk after all! Just look whether my master hasn't got the giant salted down already! The bulls are as good as in the ring — my earldom is cast and moulded!"
Who could have kept from laughing at the absurdities of the two of them, master and man? Everybody laughed except the innkeeper, who was giving himself to Satan. But at last the barber, Cardenio and the curate did so much that with no small trouble they got Don Quixote into bed, and he fell asleep with every sign of enormous exhaustion.
They let him sleep, and went out into the porch of the inn to comfort Sancho Panza for not having found the giant's head; although they had more to do in calming the innkeeper, who was in despair at the sudden death of his wineskins. And the innkeeper's wife was saying at the top of her voice:
"In an evil moment and at an unlucky hour this knight errant came into my house — I wish my eyes had never seen him, for he costs me dear enough. The last time he went off with the reckoning for one night, for supper, bed, straw and barley for himself and his squire and a hack and a donkey, saying he was a knight adventurer — and may God give bad adventures to him and to every adventurer in the world — and that for this reason he was not obliged to pay anything, because that was how it stood written in the tariffs of knight-errantry.
"And now, on his account, this other gentleman came and carried off my tail, and has given it me back with more than two farthings' worth of damage, all bare, so that it can't serve for what my husband wants it for. And to finish and crown it all, bursting my wineskins and spilling my wine — and may I see his blood spilt! Well, don't let him imagine anything: by my father's bones and by my mother's memory, if they don't pay me for it farthing by farthing, my name isn't what my name is and I'm not my own father's daughter!"
These and other such speeches the innkeeper's wife made in great anger, and her good servant Maritornes helped her. The daughter said nothing, and smiled from time to time. The curate settled it all, promising to make good their loss as best he could, both of the wineskins and of the wine, and above all of the damage to the tail, which they made so much account of.
Dorotea comforted Sancho Panza by telling him that whenever it should appear to have been true that his master had beheaded the giant, she promised him, as soon as she found herself peacefully settled in her kingdom, to give him the best earldom in it. Sancho was comforted at this, and assured the princess that she could take it for certain that he had seen the giant's head, and that for a further mark of it, it had a beard that came down to its waist; and that if it did not turn up, it was because everything that happened in that house went by way of enchantment, as he had proved another time when he had lodged in it. Dorotea said she believed it, and that he should not distress himself, for everything would come out well and would turn out exactly to order.
Everybody being settled, the curate wanted to finish reading the tale, because he saw that there was not much of it left. Cardenio, Dorotea and all the rest begged him to finish it. He, wanting to give everybody pleasure — and because of the pleasure he took in it himself — went on with the tale, which went like this:
It happened, then, that through the satisfaction Anselmo felt about Camila's goodness, he lived a contented and carefree life; and Camila deliberately put on a cold face for Lotario, so that Anselmo should take the opposite view of the affection she had for him. And to confirm the thing further, Lotario asked leave not to come to the house any more, since the annoyance Camila got from the sight of him was so plainly shown; but the deceived Anselmo told him on no account to do such a thing. And in this way, in a thousand ways, Anselmo was the manufacturer of his own dishonour, believing he was the manufacturer of his own happiness.
At this point Leonela's own pleasure at finding herself given a free hand in her love affair went so far that, without looking at anything else, she went after it at full gallop, trusting that her mistress would cover for her — and would even advise her how she could go about it with little risk. In the end, one night Anselmo heard footsteps in Leonela's room, and wanting to go in and see who was making them, he found that the door was being held against him — a thing that gave him more determination to open it. And he forced it so hard that he opened it and got inside just in time to see a man jumping out of the window into the street; and hurrying to catch him or recognise him, he could do neither the one nor the other, because Leonela threw her arms round him, saying:
"Calm yourself, my dear master, and do not make a disturbance or go after the man who jumped out of here. It is my own affair, and so much so that he is my husband."
Anselmo would not believe it; on the contrary, blind with anger, he pulled out his dagger and tried to stab Leonela, telling her to tell him the truth or he would kill her. She, in her fright, not knowing what she was saying, said to him:
"Do not kill me, sir, for I shall tell you things of more importance than you can imagine."
"Tell them at once," said Anselmo; "if not, you are a dead woman."
"For the moment it will be impossible," said Leonela, "the state of confusion I am in. Leave me until tomorrow, and then you shall learn from me what will astonish you; and be assured that the man who jumped out of this window is a young man of this city who has given me his hand to be my husband."
Anselmo was calmed at this and was willing to wait the time he was asked for, because he did not expect to hear anything that was against Camila, being so satisfied and so sure of her goodness. And so he went out of the room and left Leonela shut up in it, telling her that she would not come out of there until she had told him what she had to tell him.
He then went to see Camila and to tell her, as he did tell her, everything that had passed between him and her maid, and the promise she had given him to tell him great and important things. Whether Camila was disturbed or not there is no need to say; because such fear came over her, genuinely believing — and it was to be believed — that Leonela was bound to tell Anselmo everything she knew about her want of good faith, that she had not the courage to wait and see whether her suspicion turned out false or not.
And that same night, when it seemed to her that Anselmo was asleep, she gathered together the best jewels she had and some money, and without being noticed by anybody she left the house and went to Lotario's, and told him what was happening and begged him to put her somewhere safe, or that the two of them should go off together where they could be safe from Anselmo. The confusion Camila put Lotario into was such that he could not answer her a word, nor could he settle what to do.
In the end he decided to take Camila to a convent where a sister of his was prioress. Camila consented to it; and with the speed the case demanded, Lotario took her and left her at the convent, and he likewise went away from the city at once, without telling anybody about his going.
When day broke, without noticing that Camila was missing from his side, in his eagerness to know what Leonela wanted to tell him, Anselmo got up and went to where he had left her shut in. He opened the door and went into the room, but did not find Leonela in it: he only found some sheets knotted together and tied to the window, a sign and mark that she had let herself down that way and gone.
He came back at once, very sad, to tell Camila about it; and not finding her in bed or anywhere in the house, he was appalled. He asked the servants of the house about her, but nobody could give him an account of what he asked for.
It happened by chance, as he was going about looking for Camila, that he saw her chests open and most of her jewels missing from them; and with this he finally realised his misfortune, and that Leonela was not the cause of his ruin. And exactly as he was, without finishing dressing, sad and thoughtful, he went to give an account of his misery to his friend Lotario. But when he did not find him, and his servants told him that he had been missing from the house that night and had taken with him all the money he had, he thought he would go out of his mind. And to finish and conclude it all, going back to his own house, he found in it not one of all the menservants and maidservants he had, but the house deserted and empty.
He did not know what to think, what to say or what to do, and little by little his wits were leaving him. He looked at himself and saw himself in an instant without a wife, without a friend and without servants; abandoned, as it seemed to him, by the sky that covered him; and above all without honour, because in Camila's absence he saw his own ruin.
He resolved at last, after a long while, to go to the village of his friend where he had been when he gave the opportunity for the whole of that misfortune to be contrived. He shut the doors of his house, got on his horse, and with fainting spirits set off. And he had hardly gone halfway when, harried by his own thoughts, he was obliged to dismount and tie his horse to a tree, at whose trunk he let himself drop, giving tender, sorrowful sighs; and there he stayed until it was almost dark.
And at that hour he saw a man coming on horseback from the city, and after greeting him he asked him what news there was in Florence. The citizen answered:
"The strangest that has been heard in it for many a day; because it is publicly said that Lotario, that great friend of Anselmo the rich man who lived by St John's, carried off Camila, Anselmo's wife, last night — and Anselmo has disappeared too. All this has been told by a maid of Camila's, whom the governor found last night letting herself down by a sheet from the windows of Anselmo's house. In fact I do not know exactly how the business went; I only know that the whole city is astonished at it, because such a thing was not to be expected from the great and familiar friendship of the two of them, which they say was so great that people used to call them the two friends."
"Is it known, by any chance," said Anselmo, "which road Lotario and Camila have taken?"
"Not in the least," said the citizen, "although the governor has been very diligent in looking for them."
"God go with you, sir," said Anselmo.
"And stay with you," answered the citizen, and went off.
With such disastrous news, Anselmo came very nearly to the point not only of losing his wits but of ending his life. He got up as best he could and reached his friend's house, who did not yet know his misfortune. But when he saw him arrive yellow, wasted and dried up, he understood that he was suffering under some grave trouble. Anselmo at once asked to be put to bed and to be given writing materials. It was done so, and they left him lying down and alone, because he wanted it so, and even asked them to shut the door.
Finding himself alone, then, he began to load his imagination so heavily with his misfortune that he plainly recognised that his life was coming to an end; and so he arranged to leave a record of the cause of his strange death. And beginning to write, before he had finished setting down everything he wanted to say, his breath failed him and he left his life in the hands of the grief his reckless curiosity had caused him.
The master of the house, seeing that it was late and that Anselmo did not call, decided to go in and find out whether his indisposition was getting worse; and he found him stretched out face downwards, half his body on the bed and the other half on the writing table, on which lay the paper written and open, and he still had the pen in his hand. The host went up to him, having called him first; and taking him by the hand, seeing that he did not answer and finding him cold, he saw that he was dead.
He was astonished and greatly distressed, and called the household to see the misfortune that had happened to Anselmo; and finally he read the paper, which he recognised as being written in Anselmo's own hand, and which contained these words:
A foolish and reckless desire has taken away my life. If the news of my death should reach Camila's ears, let her know that I forgive her, because she was not obliged to work miracles, nor did I have any need to want her to work them; and since I was the manufacturer of my own dishonour, there is no reason why —
This far Anselmo wrote, by which it could be seen that at that point, without being able to finish the sentence, his life finished.
The next day his friend gave notice of his death to Anselmo's relatives, who already knew of his misfortune, and to the convent where Camila was — who was almost at the point of keeping her husband company on that unavoidable journey, not because of the news of her dead husband but because of what she learnt about the absent friend. It is said that although she found herself a widow, she would not leave the convent, nor take her vows as a nun either, until, not many days later, news came to her that Lotario had died in a battle which at that time Monsieur de Lautrec fought against the Great Captain Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba in the kingdom of Naples, where the too late repentant friend had gone. Which Camila learning, she took her vows, and within a few days ended her life at the harsh hands of sorrow and melancholy. This was the end they all came to, born of so senseless a beginning.
"This tale," said the curate, "seems good to me; but I cannot persuade myself that it is true. And if it is invented, the author invented it badly, because it cannot be imagined that there is a husband so foolish as to want to make so costly an experiment as Anselmo's. If this case had been put between a gallant and a lady, it might have passed; but between husband and wife it has something of the impossible about it. And as far as the way of telling it goes, that does not displease me."
While they were at this, the innkeeper, who was standing at the door of the inn, said:
"This lot coming is a fine troop of guests: if they stop here, we shall have a gaudeamus."
"What sort of people are they?" said Cardenio.
"Four men," answered the innkeeper, "come riding short-stirruped in the Moorish fashion, with lances and shields, and all of them with black masks on. And along with them comes a woman dressed in white, on a side-saddle, with her face covered too, and two more lads on foot."
"Are they very close?" asked the curate.
"So close," answered the innkeeper, "that they are here now."
Hearing this, Dorotea covered her face and Cardenio went into Don Quixote's room; and they had hardly had time for this when there came into the inn everybody the innkeeper had described. The four on horseback, who were of very fine build and bearing, dismounted and went to help down the woman who was riding on the side-saddle; and one of them, taking her in his arms, set her down in a chair that stood at the door of the room where Cardenio had hidden himself.
In all this time neither she nor they had taken off their masks or said a single word — only that, on sitting down in the chair, the woman gave a deep sigh and let her arms fall, like a person ill and fainting. The lads on foot took the horses to the stable.
Seeing this, the curate, eager to know who these people were who went about in such dress and such silence, went to where the lads were and asked one of them what he wanted to know; who answered him:
"By God, sir, I couldn't tell you who these people are. All I know is that they look very distinguished, especially the one who went and took that lady you've seen in his arms; and I say this because all the rest treat him with respect, and nothing is done except what he orders and commands."
"And the lady — who is she?" asked the curate.
"I couldn't tell you that either," answered the lad, "because in the whole of the journey I haven't seen her face. Sigh I have heard her many times, and give such groans that with every one of them she seems to want to give up her soul. And it's no wonder we know no more than we've said, because my companion and I have only been with them two days; for having met them on the road, they begged us and persuaded us to come with them as far as Andalusia, offering to pay us very well for it."
"And have you heard any of them named?" asked the curate.
"Certainly not," answered the lad, "because they all travel with such silence that it's a marvel; there's nothing to be heard among them but the sighs and sobs of the poor lady, which move us to pity. And without a doubt we're convinced that she's being taken by force wherever she's going; and, from what you can gather from her dress, she's a nun, or is going to be one, which is the likelier; and perhaps because the convent must not be coming to her of her own will, she goes along sad, as she seems to be."
"It might all be so," said the curate.
And leaving them, he went back to where Dorotea was, who, having heard the muffled woman sigh, and moved by natural compassion, went up to her and said:
"What are you suffering from, my lady? See whether it is one of the things women generally have practice and experience in curing; for on my side I offer you a good will to serve you."
To all this the grief-stricken lady said nothing; and although Dorotea came back with greater offers, she still kept her silence, until the masked gentleman came up — the one the lad said the others obeyed — and said to Dorotea:
"Do not weary yourself, madam, in offering anything to that woman, because it is her custom not to be grateful for anything that is done for her; and do not try to get her to answer you, unless you want to hear some lie from her mouth."
"I have never told one," said the woman who until then had been silent. "On the contrary, it is because I am so truthful and so incapable of lying devices that I find myself now in such misfortune. And of this I want you yourself to be the witness, since my pure truth is what makes you false and a liar."
Cardenio heard these words very plainly and distinctly, being so close to the one who was saying them that only the door of Don Quixote's room stood between them; and as soon as he heard them, giving a great cry, he said:
"God help me! What is this I am hearing? What voice is this that has reached my ears?"
That lady turned her head at these shouts, thoroughly startled; and not seeing who was giving them, she stood up and went to go into the room. Which the gentleman seeing, he held her back without letting her move a step. In her agitation and distress the taffeta with which she had her face covered fell off, and revealed an incomparable beauty and a miraculous face — although colourless and terrified, because she was going about with her eyes searching every place her sight could reach, so eagerly that she looked like a person out of her senses; and these signs, without anybody's knowing why she made them, put great pity into Dorotea and into everybody who was looking at her.
The gentleman held her strongly by the shoulders; and being so busy holding her, he could not put a hand to lift the mask that was slipping down, as in fact it slipped off altogether. And raising her eyes, Dorotea, who was holding the lady in her arms, saw that the man who was also holding her was her own husband, Don Fernando; and she had hardly recognised him when, hurling out from the depths of her being a long and most sorrowful "Ah!" she let herself fall backwards in a faint; and if the barber had not been standing right there, who caught her in his arms, she would have come down on the ground.
The curate ran at once to take her mask off so as to throw water on her face; and as soon as he uncovered her, Don Fernando recognised her — for he was the one who was holding the other woman — and he was left as though dead at the sight of her. But not that he let go for all that of Luscinda, who was the one trying to get free of his arms; and she had recognised Cardenio by his cry, and he had recognised her. Cardenio likewise heard the "Ah!" that Dorotea gave when she fell fainting; and believing it was his Luscinda, he came out of the room in terror, and the first thing he saw was Don Fernando, holding Luscinda in his arms. Don Fernando also recognised Cardenio at once; and all three of them, Luscinda, Cardenio and Dorotea, were left dumb and taken aback, hardly knowing what had happened to them.
They were all silent and they all looked at each other: Dorotea at Don Fernando, Don Fernando at Cardenio, Cardenio at Luscinda and Luscinda at Cardenio. But the first to break the silence was Luscinda, speaking to Don Fernando in this way:
"Let me go, Señor Don Fernando, by what you owe to being who you are, since you will not do it for any other consideration. Let me get to the wall I am the ivy of, to the support they have not been able to part me from — not your importunities, or your threats, or your promises, or your gifts. Notice how heaven, by unusual roads and roads hidden from us, has put my true husband in front of me. And you know well, by a thousand costly experiences, that death alone would have been enough to rub him out of my memory. Let such plain undeceiving, then, be enough to make you turn — since you can do nothing else — your love into rage, your affection into resentment, and end my life with it; for if I give it up in front of my good husband I shall count it well spent. Perhaps by my death he will be satisfied of the faith I kept for him until the last extremity of my life."
Dorotea had meanwhile come to herself, and had been listening to all the words Luscinda said, by which she came to know who she was; and seeing that Don Fernando still did not let her out of his arms and did not answer her words, she forced herself as much as she could, got up and went and knelt at his feet; and shedding a great quantity of lovely and pitiable tears, she began to say to him:
"Unless it is, my lord, that the rays of this sun you hold eclipsed in your arms take away and dazzle those of your eyes, you will have seen by now that the woman kneeling at your feet is the luckless — until you choose otherwise — and unfortunate Dorotea.
"I am that humble country girl whom you, out of your goodness or your pleasure, chose to raise to the height of being able to call herself yours. I am the one who, shut inside the limits of modesty, lived a contented life until, at the sound of your importunities and your apparently just and loving protestations, she opened the doors of her reserve and handed you the keys of her liberty — a gift so ill repaid by you, as it plainly shows that I have been obliged to find myself in the place where you find me, and to see you in the state in which I see you.
"But for all this, I would not have it fall into your imagination to think that I have come here by the roads of my own dishonour, when I have been brought here only by those of the pain and grief of finding myself forgotten by you. You wanted me to be yours, and you wanted it in such a way that, although you may now want me not to be, it will not be possible for you to stop being mine.
"Consider, my lord, that the incomparable love I bear you may be some recompense for the beauty and nobility for which you are leaving me. You cannot belong to the beautiful Luscinda, because you are mine; nor can she be yours, because she is Cardenio's. And it will be easier for you, if you look at it, to bring your affections round to loving one who adores you than to bring one who loathes you round to loving you well.
"You solicited my carelessness; you begged my integrity; you were not ignorant of my rank; you know very well how I gave myself up to your whole will. You are left no room or refuge to call yourself deceived. And if this is so, as it is, and you are as much a Christian as you are a gentleman, why do you delay by so many roundabout ways to make me happy at the end, as you made me happy at the beginning?
"And if you will not have me for what I am, which is your true and lawful wife, have me at least and take me as your slave; for as long as I am in your power I shall count myself fortunate and well off. Do not allow, by leaving and abandoning me, that people should gather in knots over my dishonour; do not give my parents so bad an old age, since the loyal services they have always done yours as good vassals do not deserve it.
"And if it seems to you that you will be ruining your blood by mixing it with mine, consider that there is little or no nobility in the world that has not gone along that road, and that the blood taken from women is not what counts in illustrious descents; the more so as true nobility consists in virtue, and if that is lacking in you by denying me what you so justly owe me, then I shall be left with a better claim to nobility than the one you have.
"In the end, my lord, the last thing I say to you is that whether you will or not, I am your wife. Witnesses are your own words, which neither are nor ought to be lies, if it is the case that you pride yourself on the very thing you despise me for. A witness will be the signature you made, and a witness heaven, which you yourself called on as witness of what you promised me. And if all this fails, your own conscience will not fail to cry out silently in the middle of your happiness, standing up for this truth I have told you and disturbing your best pleasures and satisfactions."
These and other words the grief-stricken Dorotea said, with so much feeling and so many tears that the very men who came with Don Fernando, and all the rest who were present, joined her in them. Don Fernando listened to her without answering her a word, until she made an end of hers and a beginning of so many sobs and sighs that it would have had to be a heart of bronze that was not softened by such signs of grief.
Luscinda was looking at her, no less grieved by her suffering than astonished at her great good sense and beauty; and although she wanted to go to her and say some words of comfort to her, Don Fernando's arms would not let her, holding her tight. And he, full of confusion and dread, after a good while spent looking attentively at Dorotea, opened his arms and, setting Luscinda free, said:
"You have conquered, beautiful Dorotea, you have conquered; for it is not possible to have the heart to deny so many truths together."
With the faint Luscinda had had, as soon as Don Fernando let her go she was about to fall to the ground; but Cardenio being right there — who had placed himself behind Don Fernando's back so as not to be recognised — putting all fear aside and risking everything, ran to hold Luscinda up; and taking her in his arms, he said to her:
"If merciful heaven is pleased and willing that you should have some rest at last, my loyal, faithful and beautiful lady, nowhere do I believe you will have it more safely than in these arms that now receive you, and that received you once before, when fortune was willing that I could call you mine."
At these words Luscinda set her eyes on Cardenio; and having begun to recognise him, first by his voice, and making sure it was he by the sight of him, almost out of her senses and without regard for any decorum at all, she threw her arms round his neck, and putting her face against Cardenio's, said to him:
"You indeed, my lord, are the true master of this captive of yours, however much contrary fortune may prevent it, and however many threats are made against this life that is kept alive by yours."
This was a strange spectacle for Don Fernando and for all the bystanders, who marvelled at so unheard-of an event. It seemed to Dorotea that Don Fernando's face had lost its colour and that he was making as though to take revenge on Cardenio, because she saw him move his hand to put it on his sword; and as soon as she thought it, with unheard-of quickness she clasped him round the knees, kissing them and holding him so tight that she would not let him move; and without stopping her tears for a moment, she said to him:
"What is it you mean to do, my only refuge, in this so unexpected pass? At your feet you have your wife, and the woman you want to be your wife is in her husband's arms. Consider whether it will be right for you, or whether it will even be possible for you, to undo what heaven has done; or whether it will suit you to want to raise up and set level with yourself the woman who, setting aside every obstacle, confirmed in her truth and her constancy, has her own eyes before your eyes, and her face and breast bathed in the moisture of her love for her true husband.
"By the God who is, I beg you, and by who you yourself are I entreat you, that this so plain undeceiving should not only not increase your anger but diminish it in such a way that with quiet and calm you allow these two lovers to have theirs, without any hindrance from you, for all the time heaven may be pleased to grant it them. And in this you will show the generosity of your illustrious and noble breast, and the world will see that with you reason has more force than appetite."
While Dorotea was saying this, although Cardenio held Luscinda in his arms he did not take his eyes off Don Fernando, resolved that if he saw him make any movement to his disadvantage, he would try to defend himself and to set about, as best he could, everybody who showed themselves against him, even if it cost him his life.
But at this point Don Fernando's friends came up, and the curate and the barber, who had been present at all of it — and good Sancho Panza was not missing either. And they all surrounded Don Fernando, begging him to be good enough to look at Dorotea's tears; and that, what she had said in her speech being true — as they without doubt believed it was — he should not allow her to be cheated of such just hopes. That he should consider that it was not by chance, as it seemed, but by the particular providence of heaven that they had all come together in a place where none of them had least expected it.
And he should note, said the curate, that death alone could part Luscinda from Cardenio; and even if they were divided by the edge of some sword, they would count their death as the greatest happiness. And that in knots that cannot be undone it was the height of good sense, by forcing and conquering oneself, to show a generous spirit, allowing the two of them by his own will alone to enjoy the good that heaven had already granted them.
That he should likewise set his eyes on Dorotea's beauty, and would see that few or none could equal her, let alone have any advantage over her; and that to her beauty he should add her humility and the extreme of the love she bore him. And above all, that he should note that if he prided himself on being a gentleman and a Christian, he could do nothing else but keep the word he had given; and that by keeping it he would fulfil his duty to God and satisfy sensible people, who know and recognise that it is the prerogative of beauty, even in a humble subject, provided it goes with modesty, to be able to raise itself and be made equal to any height, without any note of degradation to the man who raises it and makes it equal to himself; and that when the strong laws of desire are obeyed, so long as no sin comes into it, the man who follows them ought not to be blamed.
In short, to these arguments they all added others, such and so many that Don Fernando's valiant breast — being, after all, nourished with illustrious blood — was softened and let itself be conquered by the truth, which he could not have denied even if he had wanted to. And the sign he gave of having surrendered and given himself over to the good opinion that had been put to him was to bend down and embrace Dorotea, saying to her:
"Get up, my lady; it is not right that the woman I hold in my soul should be kneeling at my feet. And if until now I have given no signs of what I say, perhaps it has been by heaven's arrangement, so that, seeing in you the faith with which you love me, I might know how to value you as you deserve. What I beg of you is that you should not reproach me with my bad conduct and my great carelessness; for the same occasion and force that moved me to accept you as mine was the very thing that drove me to try not to be yours. And that this is true, turn and look at the eyes of the now contented Luscinda, and in them you will find an excuse for all my errors. And since she has found and got what she wanted, and I have found in you everything I need, let her live safe and contented long and happy years with her Cardenio; for I shall pray to heaven to let me live them with my Dorotea."
And saying this, he embraced her again and put his face against hers with so tender a feeling that he had to take great care that the tears should not go on to give unmistakable signs of his love and his repentance. Luscinda's and Cardenio's did not do the same, nor did those of almost everybody who was there present; because they began to shed so many, some out of their own happiness and others out of other people's, that it seemed for all the world as if some grave and dreadful case had befallen the lot of them. Even Sancho Panza wept — although he afterwards said that he was only weeping because he saw that Dorotea was not, as he had thought, the queen Micomicona, from whom he was expecting so many favours.
The astonishment, along with the weeping, lasted some while in all of them; and then Cardenio and Luscinda went and knelt down before Don Fernando, thanking him for the kindness he had done them in such courteous words that Don Fernando did not know how to answer them; and so he raised them up and embraced them with signs of great love and great courtesy.
He then asked Dorotea to tell him how she had come to that place so far from her own. She, in short and well-judged words, told everything she had told Cardenio before; which Don Fernando and those who came with him enjoyed so much that they could have wished the tale had lasted longer — such was the charm with which Dorotea told her misfortunes.
And as soon as she had finished, Don Fernando told what had happened to him in the city after he found the paper in Luscinda's bosom, in which she declared that she was Cardenio's wife and could not be his. He said he had wanted to kill her, and would have done it if he had not been prevented by her parents; and that he had left her house in that state, furious and mortified, resolved to take revenge more conveniently. And that the next day he learnt that Luscinda had gone from her parents' house, without anybody's being able to say where she had gone; and that in the end, at the end of some months, he came to learn that she was in a convent, meaning to stay in it all her life if she could not spend it with Cardenio.
And that as soon as he learnt it, choosing those three gentlemen to go with him, he came to the place where she was; and that he had not wanted to speak to her, being afraid that once it was known he was there, the convent would be more closely guarded. And so, waiting for a day when the gate was open, he left the two of them to guard the door, and he with the other had gone into the convent looking for Luscinda, whom they found in the cloister talking to a nun; and snatching her up, without giving her room to do anything else, they had come away with her to a place where they got what they needed for bringing her along. All of which they had been able to do in complete safety, because the convent was out in the country, a good way outside the town.
He said that as soon as Luscinda saw herself in his power, she lost all her senses; and that after coming to herself she had done nothing but weep and sigh, without saying a word; and that in this way, accompanied by silence and tears, they had come to that inn — which for him was like having come to heaven, where all the misfortunes of earth are cancelled and come to an end.
Sancho was listening to all this with no small grief in his soul, seeing that his hopes of a title were disappearing and going up in smoke, and that the lovely Princess Micomicona had turned into Dorotea and the giant into Don Fernando, while his master was sleeping soundly away, quite unaware of everything that had happened.
Dorotea could not be sure that the good fortune she now had was not a dream. Cardenio was in the same state of mind, and Luscinda's ran on the same account. Don Fernando gave thanks to heaven for the favour he had received and for having brought him out of that tangled labyrinth where he had been so near to losing his good name and his soul. And in the end, everybody in the inn was contented and delighted at the good outcome of such knotted and desperate affairs.
The curate, being a man of judgement, set it all in order and congratulated each of them on the good they had got. But the one who most rejoiced and was most contented was the innkeeper's wife, because of the promise Cardenio and the curate had made her to pay her for all the damages and expenses that had come to her on Don Quixote's account.
Only Sancho, as has been said, was the afflicted, the unlucky and the sad one; and so, with a melancholy face, he went in to his master, who had just woken up, and said to him:
"Your worship, Sir Sorrowful Countenance, may perfectly well sleep as much as you like, without troubling to kill any giant or to give the princess back her kingdom, for it is all done and finished."
"That I well believe," answered Don Quixote, "because I have had with the giant the most monstrous and enormous battle I expect to have in all the days of my life; and with one backhand stroke — smack! — I brought his head down on the ground, and so much blood came out of him that the streams of it ran along the ground as though they had been water."
"As though they had been red wine, your worship might better have said," answered Sancho; "because I want your worship to know, if you don't know it already, that the dead giant is a punctured wineskin, and the blood is six gallons of red wine that it was carrying in its belly, and the cut-off head is the whore that bore me — and Satan take the lot of it."
"And what is this you are saying, madman?" replied Don Quixote. "Are you in your senses?"
"Get up, your worship," said Sancho, "and you'll see the fine job you've done and what we've got to pay; and you'll see the queen turned into a private lady called Dorotea, along with other events that will astonish you if you take them in."
"I should not be surprised at any of that," replied Don Quixote; "because, if you remember rightly, the last time we were here I told you that everything that happened here was a matter of enchantment, and it would be no great thing if it were the same now."
"I'd believe all of it," answered Sancho, "if my blanketing had been a thing of the same kind; but it wasn't, it was real and true. And I saw that the innkeeper who's here today had hold of one corner of the blanket and was pushing me up towards the sky with a great deal of charm and energy, and with as much laughing as strength; and where it comes to recognising people, it's my belief, simpleton and sinner though I am, that there's no enchantment at all in it, but a great deal of pounding and a great deal of bad luck."
"Very well, God will put it right," said Don Quixote. "Give me my clothes and let me go out there, for I want to see the events and transformations you speak of."
Sancho gave him his clothes; and while he was dressing, the curate told Don Fernando and the rest about Don Quixote's madness, and about the device they had used to get him off the Poor Rock, where he imagined he was on account of his lady's scorn. He likewise told them almost all the adventures Sancho had told, at which they were not a little astonished and amused, since it seemed to them what it seemed to everybody: that it was the strangest kind of madness that could enter a deranged mind.
The curate said further that, since the lady Dorotea's good fortune now prevented their going on with their plan, it was necessary to invent and find another for being able to get him back to his own country. Cardenio offered to carry on with what they had begun, and said that Luscinda would take and act Dorotea's part.
"No," said Don Fernando, "it shall not be so; I want Dorotea to go on with her own invention. As long as this good gentleman's village is not very far from here, I shall be glad to have his cure seen to."
"It is not more than two days' journey from here."
"Well, even if it were more, I should be pleased to travel them for the sake of doing so good a work."
At this point Don Quixote came out, armed at all points, with Mambrino's helmet — battered as it was — on his head, his buckler braced on his arm and leaning on his trunk of a pike. Don Fernando and the rest were taken aback by Don Quixote's strange appearance: seeing his face half a league long, dry and yellow, the mismatched pieces of his armour, and his solemn bearing, they stayed silent until they should see what he would say. And he, with great gravity and calm, setting his eyes on the beautiful Dorotea, said:
"I am informed, beautiful lady, by this squire of mine that your greatness has been annihilated and your being undone, since from the queen and great lady you used to be you have turned into a private young woman. If this has been by order of the necromancer king your father, out of fear that I would not give you the necessary and proper help, I say that he did not know and does not know the half of the Mass, and that he was little versed in the histories of chivalry; because if he had read them and gone through them as attentively and as thoroughly as I have gone through and read them, he would have found at every step how other knights of less fame than mine have brought off harder things — since it is no great matter to kill a little giant, however arrogant he may be. Because it is not many hours since I was face to face with him, and — I will say no more, so that they may not tell me I am lying; but time, the revealer of all things, will tell it when we least expect it."
"It was two wineskins you were face to face with, and no giant," said the innkeeper at this point.
Don Fernando ordered him to be quiet and on no account to interrupt Don Quixote's talk; and Don Quixote went on to say:
"I say, in short, high and disinherited lady, that if for the reason I have given your father has worked this metamorphosis on your person, you should give it no credit at all; because there is no danger on earth through which my sword will not open a road — with which, by laying your enemy's head on the ground, I shall put the crown of your own kingdom on your head within a few days."
Don Quixote said no more, and waited for the princess to answer him; and she, since she already knew Don Fernando's decision that the deception should be carried on until Don Quixote was taken back to his own country, answered him with a great deal of charm and gravity:
"Whoever told you, valorous Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance, that I had changed and altered my being did not tell you the truth; because I am today the same woman I was yesterday. It is true that certain fortunate events have made some change in me, and have given me the best fortune I could have wished myself; but I have not for that reason stopped being what I was before, or stopped having the same intention I have always had of making use of the valour of your valiant and invincible arm.
"So, my lord, let your goodness give back his honour to the father who begot me, and hold him for a wise and prudent man, since with his science he found so easy and so true a road for remedying my misfortune. For I believe that if it had not been for you, sir, I should never have managed to have the good fortune I have; and in this I speak as much truth as most of these gentlemen who are present are good witnesses of. What remains is that tomorrow we should set out, because today not much of a journey could be made; and for the rest of the good outcome I hope for, I shall leave it to God and to the valour of your breast."
This the quick-witted Dorotea said; and on hearing it, Don Quixote turned to Sancho and, with every sign of great anger, said to him:
"Now I tell you, little Sancho, that you are the biggest little scoundrel there is in Spain. Tell me, you vagabond thief: did you not just now finish telling me that this princess had turned into a girl called Dorotea, and that the head which I know I cut off a giant was the whore that bore you, along with other absurdities that put me in the greatest confusion I have ever been in in all the days of my life? I swear —" and he looked up at the sky and clenched his teeth "— that I am ready to make such havoc of you as will put salt in the brainpan of every lying squire of knights errant there may be in the world from this day on!"
"Let your worship calm down, my dear sir," answered Sancho. "It might well be that I was mistaken as far as the change of the lady Princess Micomicona goes; but as far as the giant's head goes — or at least the puncturing of the wineskins and the blood's being red wine — I am not mistaken, by the living God! Because the wineskins are there wounded, at the head of your worship's bed, and the red wine has made a lake of the room. And if not, you'll see it when the eggs are frying — I mean you'll see it when his worship the innkeeper here asks you for the damage on the lot of it. As for the rest, that the lady queen is as she was, I rejoice in my soul, because my share is in it, like everybody else's."
"Now I tell you, Sancho," said Don Quixote, "that you are an idiot; and forgive me, and enough of it."
"Enough," said Don Fernando, "and let no more be said about it. And since the lady princess says we are to travel tomorrow, because today it is late, let it be so; and tonight we can spend in good conversation until the coming day, when we shall all accompany Señor Don Quixote, because we want to be witnesses of the valorous and unheard-of exploits he is to perform in the course of this great enterprise he has taken on."
"It is I who am to serve you and go with you," answered Don Quixote; "and I am very grateful for the kindness done me and for the good opinion held of me, which I shall try to make come true, or it will cost me my life — and even more, if more can cost me."
Many words of politeness and many offers passed between Don Quixote and Don Fernando; but silence was put on all of it by a traveller who came into the inn at that moment, whose dress showed him to be a Christian newly come from the land of the Moors. For he came dressed in a short-skirted coat of blue cloth, with half sleeves and no collar; his breeches were likewise of blue linen, with a cap of the same colour; he wore date-coloured buskins and a Moorish scimitar hung from a baldric that crossed his chest.
Behind him came in, on a donkey, a woman dressed in the Moorish fashion, her face covered with a veil on her head; she wore a little brocade cap, and was dressed in a robe that covered her from her shoulders to her feet. The man was of a strong, well-favoured build, a little over forty years old, somewhat dark in the face, with long moustaches and a very well kept beard. In short, his bearing showed that if he had been well dressed people would have judged him to be a person of quality and well born.
On coming in he asked for a room; and when they told him there was none in the inn, he showed himself put out; and going up to the woman who by her dress appeared to be a Moor, he lifted her down in his arms. Luscinda, Dorotea, the innkeeper's wife, her daughter and Maritornes, drawn by the new dress they had never seen before, gathered round the Moorish woman; and Dorotea, who was always charming, polite and quick-witted, thinking that both she and the man who had brought her were distressed at the lack of a room, said to her:
"Do not let the lack of comfort here trouble you too much, my lady, for it is the nature of inns not to have any; but for all that, if you would like to come in with us" — pointing to Luscinda — "perhaps in the course of this journey you have found other welcomes not as good."
The veiled woman answered nothing to this, and did nothing but get up from where she had sat down; and putting both hands crossed on her breast and bending her head, she bowed her body as a sign that she was grateful. By her silence they supposed that without any doubt she must be a Moor and could not speak Christian.
At this the captive came up, having been busy with something else until then; and seeing that they had all gathered round the woman who came with him, and that she was silent at everything they said to her, he said:
"My ladies, this young woman hardly understands my language, and does not know how to speak any except the one of her own country; and that is why she must not have answered, and does not answer, what she is asked."
"She is asked nothing at all," answered Luscinda, "except to be offered our company for tonight and a share of the place where we shall settle ourselves, where she will be made as comfortable as the accommodation allows, with the goodwill that obliges us to serve all strangers who have need of it — especially when it is a woman one serves."
"On her behalf and my own," answered the captive, "I kiss your hands, my lady, and value very highly, and as it deserves, the kindness you offer; for on such an occasion, and from people of the sort your looks show you to be, it is easy to see that it must be very great."
"Tell me, sir," said Dorotea, "is this lady a Christian or a Moor? Because her dress and her silence make us think she is what we would not wish her to be."
"A Moor she is in her dress and in her body, but in her soul she is very much a Christian, because she has the greatest desire to be one."
"So she is not baptised?" asked Luscinda.
"There has been no opportunity for it," answered the captive, "since she left Algiers, her country and her home; and up to now she has not found herself in such immediate danger of death as to make it necessary to baptise her before she knew all the ceremonies our Mother the Holy Church requires. But God will be pleased that she shall soon be baptised with the propriety her quality deserves, which is more than her dress and mine show."
With these words he put a longing into everybody who was listening to know who the Moorish woman and the captive were; but nobody wanted to ask them just then, seeing that this was more a moment for getting them some rest than for asking them about their lives.
Dorotea took her by the hand and led her to sit down beside her, and asked her to take off her veil. She looked at the captive, as though asking him to tell her what they were saying and what she should do. He told her in Arabic that they were asking her to take off her veil, and that she should do it. And so she took it off, and revealed a face so beautiful that Dorotea thought her more beautiful than Luscinda, and Luscinda thought her more beautiful than Dorotea; and all the bystanders recognised that if any face could be set level with those two, it was the Moorish woman's, and there were even some who gave hers the advantage in something. And as beauty has the prerogative and grace of reconciling minds and drawing wills to itself, they all at once surrendered to the desire to serve and make much of the beautiful Moor.
Don Fernando asked the captive what the Moorish woman was called, and he answered Lela Zoraida; and as soon as she heard this she understood what they had asked the Christian, and said in a great hurry, full of distress and charm:
"No, no Zoraida: María, María!" — giving them to understand that she was called María and not Zoraida.
These words, and the great feeling with which the Moorish woman said them, made more than one tear fall from some of those who heard her, especially from the women, who by their nature are tender and compassionate. Luscinda embraced her very lovingly, saying to her:
"Yes, yes: María, María."
To which the Moorish woman answered:
"Yes, yes: María; Zoraida macange!" — which means no.
By now night was coming on, and by order of those who had come with Don Fernando the innkeeper had been busy and careful in getting them the best supper he possibly could. The hour arriving, then, they all sat down at a long table like a servants' hall table, because there was no round or square one in the inn; and they gave the head and chief place — although he refused it — to Don Quixote, who wanted the lady Micomicona to be at his side, since he was her protector. Then Luscinda and Zoraida sat down, and opposite them Don Fernando and Cardenio, and then the captive and the other gentlemen, and beside the ladies the curate and the barber.
And so they had supper very contentedly, and their contentment was increased when they saw that Don Quixote, leaving off eating and moved by the same sort of spirit that had moved him to talk as much as he did when he had supper with the goatherds, began to say:
"Truly, gentlemen, if it is properly considered, those who profess the order of knight-errantry see great and unheard-of things. If not — which of the living in the world, coming in now through the gate of this castle and seeing us in the state we are in, would judge and believe that we are who we are? Who could say that this lady at my side is the great queen we all know her to be, and that I am that Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance who goes about in the mouth of fame? There is no doubting it now: this art and calling exceeds all those that men have invented, and it is to be held in the greater esteem the more dangers it is subject to.
"Let them get out of my sight who say that letters have the advantage of arms; for I shall tell them, whoever they may be, that they do not know what they are saying. Because the reason such people generally give, and the one they chiefly rely on, is that the labours of the spirit exceed those of the body, and that arms are exercised with the body alone — as if it were a porter's trade, for which nothing is needed but good strength; or as if in this thing we call arms there were not shut up, for those of us who profess it, the acts of fortitude, which demand a great deal of understanding to carry out; or as if the spirit of the warrior who has charge of an army, or of the defence of a besieged city, did not work as hard with the spirit as with the body.
"If not, let it be seen whether by bodily strength a man can find out and guess the enemy's intention, his designs, his stratagems, his difficulties, or how to forestall the harm that is feared — for all these things are actions of the understanding, in which the body has no part at all.
"This being so, then, that arms require the spirit as much as letters do, let us see now which of the two spirits, the scholar's or the warrior's, works harder. And this will come to be known by the end and purpose each one is directed to, because that intention is to be valued higher which has the nobler end for its object.
"The end and purpose of letters — and I am not speaking now of divine letters, whose aim is to carry and guide souls to heaven, for no other can be set level with an end as endless as that; I speak of human letters — their end is to set distributive justice at its proper point and to give each man what is his, to understand and to see that good laws are kept. An end, certainly, generous and lofty and worthy of great praise, but not of so much as the one arms attend to, which have for their object and end peace, which is the greatest good men can desire in this life.
"And so the first good news the world had and men had were the news the angels gave on the night that was our day, when they sang in the air: 'Glory be in the highest, and peace on earth to men of good will.' And the salutation that the best master of earth and heaven taught his intimates and his favoured ones was to tell them that when they went into any house they should say: 'Peace be on this house.' And many other times he told them: 'My peace I give you, my peace I leave you; peace be with you' — like a jewel and a pledge given and left by such a hand; a jewel without which there can be no good at all, on earth or in heaven.
"This peace is the true end of war, for to say arms is the same thing as to say war. Granting this truth, then, that the end of war is peace, and that in this it has the advantage of the end of letters, let us come now to the bodily labours of the scholar and to those of the professor of arms, and let it be seen which are the greater."
Don Quixote went on with his talk in such a way, and in such good terms, that he obliged none of those who were listening to him to take him for a madman just then. On the contrary, as most of them were gentlemen, to whom arms belong, they listened to him very willingly; and he went on to say:
"I say, then, that the student's labours are these: chiefly poverty — not because they are all poor, but so as to put the case in the extremest terms it can have. And having said that he suffers poverty, it seems to me there was nothing more to say about his bad luck, because whoever is poor has nothing good. This poverty he suffers in all its parts, now in hunger, now in cold, now in nakedness, now in all of them together; but with all that, it is not so great that he does not eat, even if it is a little later than the usual hour, even if it is off the leavings of the rich — for the greatest wretchedness of the student is what they call among themselves going for the soup. And they do not lack somebody else's brazier or fireside, which if it does not warm them at least takes the edge off their cold, and in the end they sleep the night under a roof.
"I do not want to come to other small matters — that is, the lack of shirts and the shortage of shoes, the thinness and threadbareness of the coat, or that stuffing themselves with so much pleasure when good luck sends them some feast. By this road I have described, rough and difficult, tripping here, falling there, getting up further on, falling again here, they arrive at the rank they want. And having reached it, we have seen many of them who, having passed through these Syrtes and these Scyllas and Charybdises, as though carried on the wings of favourable fortune — I say we have seen them ruling and governing the world from a chair, their hunger changed into fullness, their cold into comfort, their nakedness into fine clothes, and their sleeping on a rush mat into resting between Holland sheets and damask: a reward justly deserved by their virtue.
"But set against and compared with the labours of the soldier, theirs are left a long way behind in everything, as I shall now say."
Going on, Don Quixote said:
"Since we began with the student's poverty and its parts, let us see whether the soldier is any richer. And we shall see that there is nobody poorer in poverty itself, because he depends on the miserableness of his pay, which comes either late or never, or on whatever he can scrape together with his own hands, at notable danger to his life and his conscience. And sometimes his nakedness is such that a slashed jerkin serves him for finery and for a shirt; and in the middle of winter, out in the open country, he generally repairs himself against the inclemency of the sky with nothing but the breath of his mouth — which, since it comes out of an empty place, I take it as established must come out cold, against all nature.
"Well, wait for him to wait for night to come so as to restore himself from all these discomforts in the bed that is waiting for him, which, unless it is his own fault, will never sin by being too narrow; for he may measure out on the ground as many feet as he likes, and turn over in it as he pleases, without any fear that the sheets will shrink on him.
"Let there come now, on top of all this, the day and the hour of taking his degree in his calling; let there come a day of battle, when they will put the doctor's cap on his head — made of lint, to dress some bullet wound which will perhaps have gone through his temples, or will leave him crippled of an arm or a leg. And when this does not happen, but merciful heaven guards him and keeps him alive and whole, it may be that he will be left in the same poverty he was in before, and that it will be necessary for one encounter after another, one battle after another, to happen, and for him to come out of them all the winner, in order to get on at all. But these miracles are seldom seen.
"But tell me, gentlemen, if you have thought about it: how many fewer are those rewarded by war than those who have perished in it? Without any doubt you must answer that there is no comparison, and that the dead cannot be brought to an account, while the living who have been rewarded could be counted in three figures.
"All this is the other way round with scholars, because out of their gowns' skirts — I will not say out of their sleeves — they all have something to keep themselves going with. So that although the soldier's labour is greater, his reward is a great deal less.
"But to this it can be answered that it is easier to reward two thousand scholars than thirty thousand soldiers, because the first are rewarded by giving them posts, which must of necessity be given to men of their profession, and the second cannot be rewarded except out of the very property of the lord they serve; and this impossibility strengthens my argument further. But let us leave this aside, for it is a labyrinth very hard to get out of, and come back to the pre-eminence of arms over letters — a matter which is still to be settled, considering the arguments each side puts forward for itself.
"Among the ones I have mentioned, letters say that without them arms could not be kept up, because war too has its laws and is subject to them, and laws fall under what letters and scholars are. To this arms answer that laws could not be kept up without them, because it is with arms that states are defended, kingdoms preserved, cities guarded, roads made safe and seas cleared of pirates; and in the end, if it were not for arms, states, kingdoms, monarchies, cities and the roads by sea and land would be subject to the severity and the confusion that war brings with it while it lasts and has licence to use its privileges and its forces.
"And it is a settled truth that the thing that costs most is valued, and ought to be valued, most highly. To reach eminence in letters costs a man time, sleepless nights, hunger, nakedness, dizziness, indigestion and other things attached to these, some of which I have already mentioned. But for a man to come by the proper steps to be a good soldier costs him everything it costs the student, in so much greater a degree that there is no comparison, because at every step he stands to lose his life.
"And what fear of want and poverty can reach or weary the student that comes up to the one a soldier has, who, finding himself besieged in some stronghold and standing at his post or on guard in some ravelin or cavalier, hears that the enemy are mining towards the place where he is, and cannot on any account move away from there or run away from the danger that threatens him so close at hand? The only thing he can do is to give his captain notice of what is happening, so that he can remedy it with a countermine, and to stay where he is himself, fearing and expecting the moment when he shall suddenly go up to the clouds without wings and come down to the depths against his will.
"And if this seems a small danger, let us see whether it is matched or bettered by that of two galleys ramming each other prow to prow in the middle of the wide sea, which, being locked and grappled together, leave the soldier no more space than the two feet of plank on the beak-head. And in spite of this, seeing that he has in front of him as many ministers of death threatening him as there are guns trained on him from the other side, not a lance-length from his body; and seeing that at the first slip of his feet he would go to visit the deep bosom of Neptune — in spite of all this, with an intrepid heart, carried by the honour that urges him on, he sets himself up as a target for all that musketry and tries to get across so narrow a passage to the enemy vessel.
"And what is most to be marvelled at is that one man has hardly fallen where he will not be able to get up again until the end of the world before another takes his very place; and if this one too falls into the sea, which is waiting for him like an enemy, another and another follows him without giving time to time for their deaths: the greatest courage and daring that can be found in all the passages of war.
"Blessed be those happy ages that were without the appalling fury of these devilish instruments of artillery, whose inventor is at this moment, I am convinced, being given in hell the reward of his diabolical invention — with which he made it possible for a base and cowardly arm to take the life of a valiant knight; and for a stray ball, without his knowing how or from where, in the middle of the courage and spirit that fires and animates brave breasts, fired off by a man who perhaps ran away and was frightened by the flash the powder made in going off in that accursed machine, to come and cut short and end in an instant the thoughts and the life of a man who deserved to enjoy them for long ages.
"And so, considering this, I am ready to say that it grieves me in my soul to have taken up this calling of knight errant in an age as detestable as this one we now live in. Because although no danger frightens me, still it makes me uneasy to think that powder and lead may take away from me the chance of making myself famous and known, by the valour of my arm and the edge of my sword, throughout the whole of the discovered earth. But let heaven do what it is pleased to do; for I shall be all the more esteemed, if I come out with what I am after, in proportion as I have exposed myself to greater dangers than the knights errant of past ages exposed themselves to."
All this long preamble Don Quixote made while the others were having supper, forgetting to lift a mouthful to his own mouth, although Sancho Panza had told him several times to eat his supper, for there would be time afterwards to say everything he wanted.
In those who had listened to him there came a fresh pity at seeing that a man who apparently had a good understanding and reasoned well about everything he discussed should have lost it so completely when it came to that black and pitch-dark chivalry of his. The curate told him that he was quite right in everything he had said in favour of arms, and that he himself, although a scholar and a graduate, was of the same opinion.
They finished supper and the cloth was cleared; and while the innkeeper's wife, her daughter and Maritornes were getting ready Don Quixote of La Mancha's garret, where they had decided that the women should shut themselves up alone that night, Don Fernando begged the captive to tell them the course of his life, because it could not fail to be strange and enjoyable, judging by the signs he had begun to give in coming in Zoraida's company.
To which the captive answered that he would very willingly do what he was asked, and that he was only afraid the tale would not be such as to give them the pleasure he wanted to; but that for all that, so as not to fail in obeying him, he would tell it. The curate and all the rest thanked him and begged him again; and he, seeing himself begged by so many, said that there was no need for begging where commanding had so much force.
"And so, let your worships give me your attention, and you will hear a true account, which perhaps the lying ones that are generally put together with careful and studied artifice could not come up to."
With this he made them all settle themselves and lend him a great silence; and he, seeing that they were quiet by now and waiting for whatever he might want to say, began to speak in a pleasant, calm voice in this way:
"My family had its beginning in a place in the mountains of León, with whom nature was more grateful and generous than fortune — although, in the narrow circumstances of those villages, my father still had the reputation of being rich, and he would genuinely have been so if he had been as clever at keeping his property as he was at spending it. And this disposition of his, of being open-handed and a spender, came from having been a soldier in the years of his youth; for soldiering is a school where the mean man becomes generous and the generous man a spendthrift. And if a few miserly soldiers are to be found, they are like monsters, seldom seen.
"My father went past the limits of generosity and came close to those of being a spendthrift — a thing that is of no use at all to a married man who has children to succeed him in his name and his condition. The ones my father had were three, all sons and all old enough to choose their walk in life.
"Seeing, then, that he could not, as he put it, hold his own hand back against his own disposition, my father chose to deprive himself of the instrument and cause that made him a spender and a giver — which was to deprive himself of his property, without which Alexander himself would have looked close-fisted.
"And so, calling the three of us alone into a room one day, he said something like what I shall now say: 'My sons, to tell you that I love you well, it is enough to know and to say that you are my sons; and to understand that I love you badly, it is enough to know that I do not hold my hand back where keeping your property is concerned. So that you may understand from now on that I love you as a father, and that I do not want to destroy you like a stepfather, I want to do a thing with you that I have had in mind for a long time and have arranged after mature consideration.
"'You are now of an age to take up a condition in life, or at least to choose a calling such that, when you are older, it will bring you honour and profit. And what I have thought of is to make four parts of my property: three of them I shall give you, to each what falls to him, without exceeding in anything; and the other I shall keep for myself, to live and keep myself the days heaven is pleased to give me of life.
"'But I should like each one of you, once he has in his own hands the part of the property that falls to him, to follow one of the roads I shall name. There is a proverb in our Spain which is, in my opinion, a very true one, as they all are, being brief maxims drawn from long and judicious experience; and the one I mean says: "The Church, or the sea, or the king's house" — as if it said more plainly: "Whoever wants to get on and be rich, let him either follow the Church, or go to sea and practise the art of trade, or go and serve kings in their households"; because they say: "A crumb from a king is worth more than a favour from a lord."
"'I say this because I should like — and it is my will — that one of you should follow letters, another trade, and the other serve the king in war, since it is hard to get into his service in his household; for although war does not give a man much wealth, it usually gives him a great deal of worth and a great deal of fame. Within eight days I shall give you the whole of your share in money, without cheating you of a farthing, as you will see by the fact. Tell me now whether you mean to follow my opinion and my advice in what I have put to you.'
"And ordering me, as the eldest, to answer, after telling him not to get rid of his property but to spend as much as he chose, since we were young enough to know how to earn it, I ended by concluding that I would fall in with what he wanted, and that mine was to follow the calling of arms, serving God and my king in it. The second brother made the same offers, and chose to go to the Indies, taking the property that fell to him invested in goods. The youngest, and, I believe, the wisest, said he wanted to follow the Church, or to go and finish the studies he had begun at Salamanca.
"As soon as we had finished agreeing and choosing our callings, my father embraced us all; and with the promptness he had promised, he carried out everything he had promised us. And giving each one his share, which as far as I remember was three thousand ducats each in money — because an uncle of ours bought the whole property and paid for it in cash, so that it should not go out of the family stock — on one and the same day the three of us took our leave of our good father.
"And on that same day, since it seemed to me an inhumanity that my father should be left old and with so little property, I got him to take two thousand ducats out of my three thousand, because the rest was enough for me to fit myself out with what a soldier needs. My two brothers, moved by my example, each gave him a thousand ducats: so that my father was left with four thousand in money, and three thousand more, which was apparently the value of the property that fell to him, which he would not sell but chose to keep as land.
"I say, in short, that we took our leave of him and of that uncle of ours I have mentioned, not without a great deal of feeling and tears from everybody; charging us to let them know, every time there was a chance of doing it, how we fared, well or badly. We promised it; and embracing us and giving us his blessing, one of us took the road to Salamanca, the other to Seville and I to Alicante, where I had news that there was a Genoese ship taking on a cargo of wool for Genoa.
"It will be twenty-two years this year since I left my father's house, and in all of them, although I have written some letters, I have had no news of him or of my brothers. And what I have gone through in this stretch of time I shall tell briefly.
"I took ship at Alicante, arrived at Genoa on a prosperous voyage, went from there to Milan, where I fitted myself out with arms and with some soldierly finery, and from there I meant to go and enlist in Piedmont; and being already on the road to Alessandria della Paglia, I had news that the great Duke of Alba was going over to Flanders. I changed my plan, went with him and served him in the campaigns he made; I was present at the deaths of the Counts of Egmont and Horn; I got to be ensign to a famous captain from Guadalajara called Diego de Urbina.
"And some time after I arrived in Flanders, news came of the league which His Holiness Pope Pius the Fifth, of happy memory, had made with Venice and with Spain against the common enemy, which is the Turk — who at that same time had won with his fleet the famous island of Cyprus, which was under Venetian rule: a lamentable and unfortunate loss. It was known for certain that the most serene Don John of Austria, natural brother of our good King Philip, was coming as general of this league. The enormous preparation for war that was being made was published abroad. All of which stirred me and moved my spirit and my desire to see myself in the campaign that was expected; and although I had hints, and almost certain promises, that at the first opportunity that offered I should be promoted to captain, I chose to leave it all and come, as I did come, to Italy.
"And my good luck willed that my lord Don John of Austria had just arrived at Genoa, on his way to Naples to join up with the Venetian fleet, as he afterwards did at Messina.
"I say, in short, that I found myself in that most fortunate campaign, made a captain of infantry by then, to which honourable rank my good luck raised me rather than my deserts. And on that day, which was so happy a one for Christendom — because on it the world and all the nations were undeceived of the error they were in, believing that the Turks were unbeatable at sea — on that day, I say, on which Ottoman pride and arrogance was broken, among all the fortunate men who were there (for the Christians who died there had more good fortune than those who were left alive and victorious), I alone was the unlucky one; since instead of being able to expect, if it had been in Roman times, some naval crown, I found myself on the night that followed so famous a day with chains on my feet and manacles on my hands.
"And it happened like this. Uchalí, king of Algiers, a bold and successful corsair, having attacked and taken the Maltese flagship — only three knights being left alive on her, and those badly wounded — Gian Andrea's flagship came up to help her, and I was on board with my company. And doing what I ought to on such an occasion, I leapt onto the enemy galley, which, sheering off from the one that had run against her, prevented my soldiers from following me; and so I found myself alone among my enemies, whom I could not resist because there were so many of them. In the end they overpowered me, covered with wounds. And as you gentlemen will have heard that Uchalí got away with his whole squadron, I came to be left a captive in his power, and I alone was the sad man among so many glad ones and the captive among so many free ones; for fifteen thousand Christians got the liberty they had longed for that day, all of whom had been at the oar in the Turkish fleet.
"They took me to Constantinople, where the Grand Turk Selim made my master general of the sea, because he had done his duty in the battle, having carried off the standard of the Order of Malta as a token of his valour.
"The second year, which was the year seventy-two, I found myself at Navarino, rowing in the flagship with the three lanterns. I saw and noted the opportunity that was lost there of catching the whole Turkish fleet in the harbour; because all the levantines and janissaries who were in it took it for certain that they would be attacked inside the harbour itself, and had their kit and their pasamaques — which are their shoes — ready to run away overland at once without waiting to be fought: such was the fear they had come to have of our fleet. But heaven ordered it otherwise — not through the fault or carelessness of the general who commanded our men, but through the sins of Christendom, and because God wills and allows that we should always have executioners to punish us.
"In fact Uchalí withdrew to Modon, which is an island next to Navarino; and putting his men ashore, he fortified the mouth of the harbour and stayed quiet until my lord Don John went back.
"On this voyage the galley called The Prize was taken, whose captain was a son of that famous corsair Barbarossa. She was taken by the flagship of Naples, called The She-Wolf, commanded by that thunderbolt of war, that father of soldiers, that fortunate and never-conquered captain Don Álvaro de Bazán, Marquis of Santa Cruz.
"And I do not want to leave out what happened at the taking of The Prize. Barbarossa's son was so cruel, and treated his captives so badly, that as soon as the men at the oar saw that the galley She-Wolf was coming up on them and overhauling them, they all let go of the oars at the same moment and seized their captain, who was standing on the gangway shouting to them to row faster; and passing him from bench to bench, from stern to bow, they gave him such bites that a little past the mast his soul had already passed to hell: such was, as I have said, the cruelty with which he treated them and the hatred they had for him.
"We went back to Constantinople; and the next year, which was seventy-three, it was learnt there how my lord Don John had taken Tunis and had taken that kingdom from the Turks and put Muley Hamet in possession of it, cutting off the hopes Muley Hamida had of reigning in it again — the cruellest and the bravest Moor the world ever had.
"The Grand Turk felt this loss deeply; and using the shrewdness they all have in his house, he made peace with the Venetians, who wanted it a great deal more than he did. And the next year, seventy-four, he attacked the Goletta and the fort which my lord Don John had left half built beside Tunis. In all these passages I was at the oar, without any hope of liberty — at least I did not hope to have it by ransom, because I had made up my mind not to write the news of my misfortune to my father.
"The Goletta was lost, in the end, and the fort was lost; against which two places there were seventy-five thousand paid Turkish soldiers, and of Moors and Arabs from all Africa more than four hundred thousand — this enormous number of men accompanied by so much ammunition and so many engines of war, and by so many pioneers, that with their hands and by handfuls of earth they could have buried the Goletta and the fort.
"The Goletta was lost first, held until then to be impregnable; and it was not lost through the fault of its defenders, who did in its defence everything they ought and could, but because experience showed how easily trenches could be raised in that desert sand — since at two hand-breadths water was found, and the Turks did not find it at two yards. And so with a great many sacks of sand they raised the trenches so high that they overtopped the walls of the fort; and firing down on it from above, nobody could stand there or attend to the defence.
"It was the general opinion that our men should not have shut themselves into the Goletta but should have waited for the landing out in the open; and those who say this speak from a distance and with little experience of such cases. Because if in the Goletta and the fort there were hardly seven thousand soldiers, how could so small a number, however brave they might be, come out into the open and hold the fortifications at the same time against so great a number as the enemy's? And how is it possible for a fortress not to be lost when it is not relieved, and the more so when it is besieged by enemies who are many and obstinate, and in their own country?
"But to many it seemed, and so it seemed to me, that it was a particular grace and favour that heaven did Spain in allowing that workshop and cloak of wickedness to be razed — that glutton or sponge and moth of the endless sums of money that were spent there to no purpose, serving no other end than to keep alive the memory of its having been won by the most fortunate and unconquered Charles the Fifth; as though it were necessary, to make that memory eternal — as it is and will be — that those stones should hold it up.
"The fort was lost too; but the Turks won it foot by foot, because the soldiers who defended it fought so valiantly and so strongly that they killed more than twenty-five thousand of the enemy in twenty-two general assaults they made on them. Of the three hundred who were left alive, not one was taken prisoner unwounded — a certain and clear sign of their effort and valour, and of how well they had defended and held their positions.
"A small fort or tower in the middle of the lagoon surrendered on terms, in the charge of Don Juan Zanoguera, a Valencian gentleman and a famous soldier. They took prisoner Don Pedro Puertocarrero, general of the Goletta, who did everything possible to defend his fortress; and he felt the loss of it so much that he died of grief on the road to Constantinople, where they were taking him captive.
"They likewise took prisoner the general of the fort, who was called Gabrio Cervellón, a Milanese gentleman, a great engineer and a most valiant soldier. Many people of note died in these two fortresses, one of whom was Pagán de Oria, a knight of the habit of St John, of a generous disposition, as was shown by the extreme liberality he used towards his brother, the famous Gian Andrea de Oria. And what made his death more pitiful was his having died at the hands of some Arabs he trusted, seeing the fort already lost, who offered to take him in Moorish dress to Tabarca, which is a little port or station the Genoese who work at coral-fishing have on those shores. These Arabs cut off his head and brought it to the general of the Turkish fleet, who fulfilled on them our Castilian proverb, 'Though the treason pleases, the traitor is loathed'; for they say the general ordered the men who brought him the present to be hanged, because they had not brought the man alive.
"Among the Christians who were lost in the fort was one called Don Pedro de Aguilar, a native of I do not know what place in Andalusia, who had been an ensign in the fort, a soldier of great account and of rare understanding: he had a particular gift in what they call poetry. I say this because his luck brought him to my galley and to my bench, and to being a slave of my own master. And before we left that harbour, this gentleman made two sonnets by way of epitaphs, one to the Goletta and the other to the fort. And truly I must say them, because I know them by heart and I think they will cause pleasure rather than distress."
The moment the captive named Don Pedro de Aguilar, Don Fernando looked at his companions, and all three of them smiled; and when he came to speak of the sonnets, one of them said:
"Before your worship goes any further, I beg you to tell me what became of this Don Pedro de Aguilar you have mentioned."
"What I know," answered the captive, "is that at the end of two years he spent in Constantinople he escaped in Albanian dress with a Greek spy; and I do not know whether he got to freedom, although I believe he did, because a year later I saw the Greek in Constantinople, and I could not ask him how that journey turned out."
"Well, he did," answered the gentleman; "because that Don Pedro is my brother, and he is now at home in our village, well and rich, married and with three children."
"Thanks be to God," said the captive, "for so many favours as he did him; because there is no happiness on earth, to my mind, that comes up to gaining a lost liberty."
"And what is more," replied the gentleman, "I know the sonnets my brother made."
"Then say them, your worship," said the captive, "for you will know how to say them better than I do."
"With pleasure," answered the gentleman; "and the one about the Goletta went like this."
Blessed souls, who from the mortal veil free and released, by the good you did, rose up from the low earth to the highest and best part of heaven,
and, burning with anger and with honourable zeal, exercised the strength of your bodies, so that with your own blood and other men's you coloured the neighbouring sea and the sandy ground:
life failed before courage did in your weary arms, which, dying, carry the victory in being defeated.
And this mortal, sad fall of yours between the wall and the sword is winning you fame that the world gives you, and heaven glory.
"That is exactly the way I know it," said the captive.
"Then the one about the fort, if I do not remember it wrong," said the gentleman, "goes like this:
Out of this barren, ruined ground, out of these clods thrown down on the floor, the holy souls of three thousand soldiers rose living to a better dwelling,
the strength of their sturdy arms having first been exercised in vain, until at last, being few and weary, they gave up their lives to the edge of the sword.
And this is the ground that has continually been full of a thousand lamentable memories in the ages past and present.
But no juster souls than these will ever have risen from its hard bosom to the clear sky, nor did it ever hold up bodies as brave."
The sonnets were thought well of, and the captive was glad at the news they gave him of his comrade; and going on with his tale, he said:
"The Goletta and the fort having surrendered, then, the Turks gave orders for the Goletta to be dismantled — because the fort was left in such a state that there was nothing to level. And to do it more quickly and with less labour, they mined it in three places; but with none of them could they blow up what seemed the weakest part, which were the old walls; while everything that was left standing of the new fortification the Fratín had built came down very easily.
"In short, the fleet went back to Constantinople triumphant and victorious; and a few months later my master Uchalí died — the man they called Uchalí Fartax, which means, in the Turkish language, the scabby renegade, because that is what he was. And it is the custom among the Turks to take names from some defect they have or some good quality they possess. And this is because there are among them only four surnames of families, which descend from the Ottoman house, and the rest, as I have said, take their name and surname either from the blemishes of the body or the virtues of the mind.
"And this Scabby Man rowed at the oar as a slave of the Grand Signor for fourteen years, and at more than thirty-four years of age he turned renegade, out of spite because a Turk, while he was at the oar, gave him a slap in the face; and to be able to revenge himself he gave up his faith. And his ability was so great that, without rising by the disgusting means and roads by which most of the Grand Turk's favourites rise, he came to be king of Algiers and afterwards general of the sea, which is the third highest office in that dominion.
"He was a Calabrian by nation, and morally he was a decent man, and treated his captives with a great deal of humanity; he came to have three thousand of them, who after his death were shared out, as he left it in his will, between the Grand Signor — who is also the inheriting son of everybody who dies, and comes in for a share along with the rest of the children the dead man leaves — and his own renegades.
"And I fell to a Venetian renegade whom Uchalí, when he was a ship's boy on a vessel, had taken prisoner, and had loved so much that he was one of his most indulged favourites; and he came to be the cruellest renegade that has ever been seen. He was called Hassan Aga, and came to be very rich and to be king of Algiers; and it was with him that I came from Constantinople, somewhat pleased at being so near Spain — not because I meant to write to anybody about my unfortunate case, but to see whether luck was more favourable to me in Algiers than in Constantinople, where I had already tried a thousand ways of escaping and none of them had come off or come out well. And I meant in Algiers to look for other means of getting what I so much wanted; because hope never abandoned me of having my liberty, and when what I contrived and planned and put into practice did not have an outcome that answered to the intention, then, without abandoning myself, I would invent and look for another hope to keep me going, however weak and feeble it might be.
"With this I kept life going, shut up in a prison or house that the Turks call a bagnio, where they shut up the Christian captives — both the king's and those belonging to private persons; and those they call the store captives, which is like saying captives of the town council, who serve the city in the public works it carries out and in other jobs. And these particular captives have very great difficulty in getting their liberty; for as they belong to the community and have no particular master, there is nobody with whom to arrange their ransom, even if they have one.
"To these bagnios, as I have said, some private people of the town generally bring their captives, chiefly when they are for ransom, because there they keep them at their ease and in safety until their ransom comes. The king's captives who are for ransom likewise do not go out to work with the rest of the gang, except when their ransom is slow in coming; and then, to make them write for it more urgently, they make them work and go for firewood with the others, which is no small labour.
"I, then, was one of the ransom men; because as soon as it was known that I was a captain, although I stated my small means and my lack of property, it was of no use in keeping them from putting me in the number of the gentlemen and the ransom people. They put a chain on me, more as a mark of ransom than to keep me by it; and so I passed my life in that bagnio with a great many other gentlemen and people of standing, marked and held to be for ransom.
"And although hunger and nakedness might weary us at times, and indeed almost always, nothing wearied us so much as hearing and seeing, at every turn, the never-before-seen or heard-of cruelties my master practised on the Christians. Every day he hanged his man, impaled that one, cut off this one's ears; and this on so little occasion, and with so little of any, that the Turks recognised he did it for no other reason than to do it, and because it was his natural disposition to be the murderer of the whole human race.
"The only man who came off well with him was a Spanish soldier called something de Saavedra; who, although he had done things that will stay in the memory of those people for many years, and all of them to get his liberty, was never given a blow by him, or ordered to be given one, or spoken a bad word to. And for the least of the many things he did, we were all afraid he would be impaled, and he was afraid of it himself more than once. And if time allowed it, I would say something now of what this soldier did, which would be enough to entertain you and astonish you a great deal better than the tale of my own history.
"I say, then, that over the courtyard of our prison came the windows of the house of a rich and distinguished Moor; which, as the Moors' windows generally are, were more holes than windows, and even these were covered with very thick, tight lattices.
"It happened, then, that one day, being on a terrace of our prison with three other companions, having jumping matches in our chains to pass the time, and being alone, because all the other Christians had gone out to work, I happened to raise my eyes and saw that out of those closed little windows I have mentioned there appeared a cane, and at the end of it a cloth tied on; and the cane was swaying and moving about, almost as though it were making signs for us to come and take it.
"We looked at it, and one of the men who were with me went and put himself under the cane, to see whether they would let it go, or what they would do; but as soon as he arrived they raised the cane and moved it from side to side, as though they were saying no with the head. The Christian came back, and they lowered it again and made the same movements as before. Another of my companions went, and the same thing happened to him as to the first. Finally the third went, and it went with him as with the first and the second.
"Seeing this, I did not want to leave off trying my luck; and as soon as I came and put myself under the cane, they let it drop, and it fell at my feet inside the bagnio. I hurried to untie the cloth, in which I saw a knot, and inside it came ten cianíis, which are coins of low-grade gold the Moors use, each one worth ten of our reals. Whether I was pleased with the find there is no need to say, since my delight was as great as my astonishment at thinking where that good could come to us from — especially to me, since the signs of their not having wanted to let the cane go except to me plainly said that the favour was being done to me.
"I took my good money, broke the cane, went back to the little terrace, looked at the window, and saw that out of it there came a very white hand, which they opened and shut very quickly. From this we understood, or imagined, that some woman who lived in that house must have done us that kindness; and as a sign that we were grateful for it, we made salaams in the Moorish fashion, bending the head, bowing the body and putting our arms on our breasts.
"A little later they put out of the same window a small cross made of canes, and then took it in again. This sign confirmed us in the belief that some Christian woman must be a captive in that house, and that she was the one who was doing us this kindness; but the whiteness of the hand and the bracelets we saw on it undid this idea, although we supposed she must be a Christian turned renegade, whom their own masters generally take as their lawful wives, and even count it good luck, because they value them more highly than the women of their own nation.
"In all our reasoning we fell a long way wide of the truth of the case; and so all our entertainment from then on was watching and taking our bearings from the window where the star of the cane had appeared to us. But a good fortnight went by in which we did not see it, or the hand either, or any other sign.
"And although in this time we tried with all diligence to find out who lived in that house, and whether there was any Christian renegade woman in it, there was never anybody who could tell us anything except that a distinguished, rich Moor lived there called Hadji Morato, who had been governor of La Pata, which is an office of high standing among them.
"But when we were least expecting any more cianíis to rain from that quarter, we suddenly saw the cane appear, and another cloth on it with a bigger knot; and this was at a time when the bagnio, as the last time, was empty and without people. We made the usual test, each of the same three of us going before I did; but the cane surrendered to nobody but me, for on my arriving they let it fall.
"I untied the knot and found forty Spanish gold crowns and a paper written in Arabic, and at the end of the writing a great cross drawn. I kissed the cross, took the crowns, went back to the terrace, we all made our salaams, the hand appeared again, I made signs that I would read the paper, they shut the window.
"We were all left confused and delighted with what had happened; and as none of us understood Arabic, our desire to understand what the paper contained was great, and greater still was the difficulty of finding somebody to read it.
"In the end I made up my mind to trust a renegade, a native of Murcia, who had declared himself a great friend of mine, and had given pledges between the two of us that obliged him to keep any secret I entrusted to him. Because some renegades, when they mean to go back to Christian country, are apt to bring with them signed papers from important captives, in which they certify, in the form they can, that such-and-such a renegade is a decent man, and that he has always done good to Christians, and that he means to escape at the first opportunity that offers.
"Some men get these certificates with a good intention, others make use of them by chance and by design: for on coming to raid the Christian country, if by any chance they are wrecked or taken prisoner, they pull out their signed papers and say that by those papers it will be seen with what purpose they were coming, which was to stay in the Christian country, and that this was why they had come out privateering with the rest of the Turks. With this they escape that first onslaught and are reconciled to the Church without any harm being done them; and when they see their chance they go back to Barbary to be what they were before. Others there are who use these papers, and get them, with a good intention and do stay in Christian country.
"Well, one of the renegades I have described was this friend of mine, who had certificates from all our companions in which we vouched for him as much as we possibly could; and if the Moors had found these papers on him they would have burnt him alive.
"I learnt that he knew Arabic very well, and not only how to speak it but how to write it; but before revealing myself to him completely, I told him to read me that paper, which I had happened to find in a hole in my quarters. He opened it and stayed a good while looking at it and construing it, muttering between his teeth. I asked him whether he understood it; he told me very well, and that if I wanted him to give it me word for word, I should give him ink and pen so that he could do it better. We at once gave him what he asked for, and he translated it little by little; and on finishing, he said: 'Everything that is here in Spanish, without a letter missing, is what this Moorish paper contains; and it must be noted that where it says Lela Marién it means Our Lady the Virgin Mary.'
"We read the paper, and it went like this:
When I was a little girl, my father had a slave woman who taught me the Christian prayer in my own language, and told me many things about Lela Marién. The Christian woman died, and I know she did not go to the fire but to Allah, because afterwards I saw her twice, and she told me to go to the country of the Christians to see Lela Marién, who loved me very much. I do not know how to go: many Christians have I seen through this window, and none of them has seemed to me a gentleman but you. I am very beautiful and young, and I have a great deal of money to take with me: see whether you can arrange how we may go, and you shall be my husband there if you like; and if you do not like, it will not matter to me, for Lela Marién will give me somebody to marry. I wrote this: look who you give it to to read; do not trust any Moor, because they are all treacherous. This grieves me a great deal: I could wish you would not reveal yourself to anybody, because if my father knows it he will throw me at once into a well and cover me with stones. On the cane I shall put a thread: tie the answer there; and if you have nobody to write Arabic for you, tell me by signs, for Lela Marién will make me understand you. May she and Allah keep you, and that cross which I kiss many times, for so the captive woman told me to do.
"Consider, gentlemen, whether it was reasonable that the words of this paper should astonish us and delight us. And they did so, both of them, in such a way that the renegade realised that this paper had not been found by chance but had really been written to one of us; and so he begged us that, if what he suspected was true, we should trust him and tell him, and he would risk his life for our liberty.
"And saying this, he pulled out of his breast a metal crucifix and with many tears swore by the God that image represented — in whom he, sinner and wicked man though he was, believed well and faithfully — to keep loyalty and secrecy with us in everything we might want to reveal to him. Because it seemed to him, and he almost prophesied, that by means of the woman who had written that paper, he and all of us were to have our liberty, and he was to see himself in the state he so much desired, which was to be brought back into the bosom of Holy Church, his mother, from whom he was cut off and separated like a rotten limb through his ignorance and his sin.
"The renegade said this with so many tears and with signs of so much repentance that we all agreed, and came round to declaring the truth of the case to him; and so we gave him an account of everything, hiding nothing from him. We showed him the little window where the cane appeared, and he marked the house from there, and undertook to take particular and great care to find out who lived in it.
"We agreed likewise that it would be well to answer the Moorish girl's note; and as we had somebody who knew how to do it, the renegade immediately wrote down the words I dictated to him, which were exactly the ones I shall say — because of all the substantial points that happened to me in this affair, not one has gone out of my memory, nor will it go while I have life.
"In fact, what was answered to the Moorish girl was this:
May the true Allah keep you, my lady, and that blessed Marién, who is the true mother of God and is the one who has put it into your heart to go to the Christian country, because she loves you well. Pray to her to be pleased to give you to understand how you may put into practice what she commands you, for she is so good that she will do it. On my part and on the part of all these Christians who are with me, I offer to do everything we can for you, to the death. Do not fail to write to me and let me know what you mean to do, for I shall always answer you; because the great Allah has given us a Christian captive who can speak and write your language as well as you will see by this paper. So that without any fear you may let us know everything you wish. As for what you say, that if you go to the Christian country you are to be my wife, I promise it you as a good Christian; and know that the Christians keep what they promise better than the Moors do. May Allah and Marién his mother be in your keeping, my lady.
"This paper being written and closed, I waited two days for the bagnio to be empty as it usually was, and then went out to the usual place on the little terrace to see whether the cane appeared, which was not long in showing itself. As soon as I saw it, although I could not see who was putting it out, I showed the paper, as though giving them to understand that they should put out the thread; but it was already put on the cane, and I tied the paper to it. And a little later our star appeared again, with the white flag of peace of the little bundle. They let it drop, and I picked it up, and found in the cloth, in coin of every kind of silver and gold, more than fifty crowns — which fifty times over doubled our delight and confirmed our hope of getting our liberty.
"That same night our renegade came back and told us he had learnt that in that house lived the very Moor we had been told was called Hadji Morato, extremely rich in every way, who had one daughter only, heiress to the whole of his property; and that it was the general opinion throughout the city that she was the most beautiful woman in Barbary. And that many of the viceroys who came there had asked for her as a wife, and she had never wanted to marry. And he also learnt that she had had a Christian slave woman, who was already dead. All of which agreed with what came in the paper.
"We at once went into council with the renegade about what plan should be adopted for getting the Moorish girl away and coming, all of us, to Christian country; and in the end it was agreed for the time being that we should wait for Zoraida's next word — for that was the name of the woman who now wants to be called María — because we saw plainly that she, and nobody else, was the one who was to find a way through all those difficulties. When we had settled this, the renegade said we should not be distressed, for he would either lose his life or set us at liberty.
"For four days the bagnio was full of people, which was why the cane was four days in appearing; at the end of which, in the usual emptiness of the bagnio, it appeared with the cloth so pregnant that it promised a most fortunate delivery. The cane and the cloth bent down to me, and I found in it another paper and a hundred gold crowns, with no other money at all. The renegade was there; we gave him the paper to read inside our quarters, and he said it went like this:
I do not know, my lord, how to arrange for us to go to Spain, nor has Lela Marién told me, although I have asked her. What can be done is that I shall give you through this window a great deal of gold money: ransom yourself with it, and your friends, and let one of you go to Christian country and buy a boat there and come back for the rest. And I shall be found in my father's garden, which is at the Bab Azoun gate, near the shore, where I am to be all this summer with my father and my servants. From there, by night, you can get me out without any fear and take me to the boat. And remember that you are to be my husband, because if not I shall ask Marién to punish you. If you trust nobody to go for the boat, ransom yourself and go, for I know that you will come back better than another, since you are a gentleman and a Christian. Try to find out where the garden is; and when you walk that way I shall know that the bagnio is empty, and I shall give you a great deal of money. Allah keep you, my lord.
"This is what the second paper said and contained. Which everybody seeing, each one offered to be the one who was ransomed, and promised to go and come back with complete punctuality; and I offered to do the same. To all of which the renegade objected, saying that on no account would he consent to any one of them going free until they all went together, because experience had shown him how badly free men kept the promises they made in captivity.
"For a great many times some important captives had used that remedy, ransoming one man to go to Valencia or Majorca with money to be able to fit out a boat and come back for the men who had ransomed him, and they had never come back; because the liberty they had got and the fear of losing it again rubbed out of their memories every obligation in the world. And in confirmation of the truth he was telling us, he told us briefly a case that had happened at almost that same time to some Christian gentlemen, the strangest that ever happened in those parts, where at every turn things of great terror and astonishment happen.
"In fact he came round to saying that what could and ought to be done was that the money that was to be given for ransoming the Christian should be given to him to buy a boat there in Algiers, on the pretext of setting up as a merchant and trader at Tetuan and on that coast; and that once he was master of the boat, a plan would easily be found for getting them out of the bagnio and putting them all aboard.
"The more so as, if the Moorish girl gave money to ransom them all, as she said, then once they were free it would be the easiest thing in the world to take ship even in the middle of the day. And that the greatest difficulty that presented itself was that the Moors do not allow any renegade to buy or own a boat, unless it is a big vessel for going privateering, because they are afraid that a man who buys a boat — especially if he is a Spaniard — only wants it to go to the Christian country. But that he would smooth over this obstacle by getting a Tagarin Moor to go partners with him in the ownership of the boat and in the profits of the merchandise; and under this cover he would come to be master of the boat, with which he counted everything else as done.
"And although it had seemed better to me and my companions to send for the boat to Majorca, as the Moorish girl said, we did not dare contradict him, being afraid that if we did not do what he said he would give us away and put us in danger of losing our lives if he revealed Zoraida's dealings — for whose life we would all have given our own.
"And so we decided to put ourselves in God's hands and in the renegade's; and at that same moment an answer was sent to Zoraida, telling her that we would do everything she advised, because she had thought it out as well as if Lela Marién had told her, and that it lay with her alone to put the business off or to put it into practice at once. I offered myself afresh to be her husband. And with this, another day when the bagnio happened to be empty, at different times, with the cane and the cloth, she gave us two thousand gold crowns and a paper in which she said that on the first jumá — which is Friday — she was going to her father's garden, and that before she went she would give us more money; and that if that was not enough we should let her know, and she would give us as much as we asked for, because her father had so much that he would not miss it — the more so as she had the keys of everything.
"We at once gave five hundred crowns to the renegade to buy the boat. With eight hundred I ransomed myself, giving the money to a Valencian merchant who happened to be in Algiers at the time, who ransomed me from the king by taking me on his word, giving his own word that with the first vessel that came from Valencia he would pay my ransom. Because if he had handed over the money at once, it would have given the king grounds for suspecting that my ransom had been in Algiers for a long time and that the merchant had kept quiet about it for his own profit. In fact my master was so full of quibbles that on no account did I dare have the money paid out at once.
"On the Thursday before the Friday when the beautiful Zoraida was to go to the garden, she gave us another thousand crowns and let us know she was going, begging me that if I was ransomed I should find out at once where her father's garden was, and that in any case I should look for an occasion to go there and see her. I answered her in a few words that I would do so, and that she should take care to commend us to Lela Marién with all those prayers the captive woman had taught her.
"This done, they arranged for our three companions to be ransomed, so as to make it easier to get out of the bagnio, and because, seeing me ransomed and themselves not, when there was money, they might be upset and the devil might persuade them to do something to Zoraida's harm. For although their being who they were might have made me safe from this fear, still I did not want to put the business at risk; and so I had them ransomed by the same arrangement as I ransomed myself, handing all the money to the merchant so that he could stand surety with certainty and safety — to whom we never revealed our dealings and our secret, because of the danger there was."
"Not a fortnight went by before our renegade had bought a very good boat, big enough for more than thirty people; and to make his business safe and give it a colour, he decided to make — as he did make — a voyage to a place called Sargel, which is thirty leagues from Algiers towards Oran, where there is a great trade in dried figs. Two or three times he made this voyage in the company of the Tagarin I have mentioned. Tagarins is what they call in Barbary the Moors of Aragon, and the ones from Granada they call Mudéjares; and in the kingdom of Fez they call the Mudéjares elches, who are the people that king most makes use of in war.
"I say, then, that every time he passed with his boat he anchored in a little cove that was not two crossbow shots from the garden where Zoraida was waiting; and there the renegade would station himself very deliberately with the young Moors who pulled at the oar, either to say his prayers or as though rehearsing in play what he meant to do in earnest. And so he would go to Zoraida's garden and ask her father for fruit, and her father would give it him without knowing him.
"And although he would have liked to speak to Zoraida, as he afterwards told me, and to tell her that he was the man who by my orders was to take her to the Christian country, and that she should be contented and easy in her mind, it was never possible for him — because Moorish women do not let themselves be seen by any Moor or Turk unless their husband or their father orders it. With Christian captives they let themselves be dealt with and talked to, even more than would be reasonable; and I should have been sorry if he had spoken to her, for perhaps he would have alarmed her by letting her see that her business was in the mouths of renegades.
"But God, who was ordering it another way, gave no opportunity for our renegade's good intention. And he, seeing how safely he came and went to Sargel, and that he anchored when and how and where he liked, and that the Tagarin his companion had no will but what his own ordered, and that I was already ransomed, and that all that was lacking was to find some Christians to pull at the oar, told me to look out which men I wanted to bring with me apart from the ransomed ones, and to have them spoken to for the coming Friday, which he had settled on for our departure.
"Seeing this, I spoke to twelve Spaniards, all of them strong men at the oar, and of the sort who could get out of the city most freely; and it was no small matter to find so many at that juncture, because there were twenty vessels out privateering and they had taken all the oar-men away — and these would not have been found either if their master had not stayed that summer without going out privateering, to finish a galliot he had on the stocks.
"To these men I said nothing except that on the coming Friday afternoon they should go out one by one, without being noticed, and make their way towards Hadji Morato's garden, and wait there for me until I came. I gave this instruction to each of them separately, with orders that even if they saw other Christians there, they should tell them nothing except that I had ordered them to wait in that place.
"This done, I had another thing to do, which was the one that mattered most to me: and that was to let Zoraida know the point the business had reached, so that she should be forewarned and on her guard, and should not be startled if we came on her suddenly before the time when she could imagine the Christians' boat could be back. And so I decided to go to the garden and see whether I could speak to her; and on the pretext of gathering some herbs, one day before my departure I went there.
"And the first person I met was her father, who said to me, in a language which throughout Barbary, and even in Constantinople, is found between captives and Moors — which is neither Moorish nor Castilian nor of any other nation, but a mixture of all the languages, with which we all understand each other — I say, then, that in this manner of speech he asked me what I was looking for in that garden of his, and whose man I was. I answered him that I was a slave of Arnaute Mamí — and this because I knew very well that he was a great friend of his — and that I was looking for all sorts of herbs to make a salad. He asked me next whether I was a man for ransom or not, and how much my master was asking for me.
"While we were in all these questions and answers, the beautiful Zoraida came out of the garden house, who had seen me a long while before; and as Moorish women make no scruple at all about showing themselves to Christians, nor do they avoid them, as I have said, she thought nothing of coming to where her father was with me. Indeed, as soon as her father saw her coming, and coming slowly, he called her and told her to come up.
"It would be too much for me to describe now the great beauty, the elegance, the splendid and rich adornment with which my beloved Zoraida showed herself to my eyes. I shall only say that more pearls hung from her lovely neck, ears and hair than she had hairs on her head. On her ankles, which she wore bare in their fashion, she wore two carcajes — for that is what the bangles or anklets are called in Moorish — of the purest gold, with so many diamonds set in them that she afterwards told me her father valued them at ten thousand doubloons; and the ones she wore on her wrists were worth as much again.
"The pearls were in great quantity and very fine, because the greatest finery and splendour of Moorish women is to adorn themselves with rich pearls and seed-pearl; and so there are more pearls and seed-pearl among the Moors than among all the other nations. And Zoraida's father had the reputation of having a great many, and the best in Algiers, and of likewise having more than two hundred thousand Spanish crowns — of all of which she was mistress who is now mistress of me.
"Whether with all this adornment she could then look beautiful or not may be guessed from what is left of her after so many hardships, and what she must have been in her prosperity. Because it is well known that some women's beauty has its days and its seasons, and requires circumstances to lessen it or increase it; and it is a natural thing that the passions of the mind should raise it or lower it, though most often they destroy it.
"I say, in short, that she came then dressed to the height and beautiful to the height — or at least she seemed to me the most beautiful I had seen until then. And with this, seeing the obligations she had put me under, it seemed to me that I had before me a deity from heaven, come down to earth for my delight and my rescue.
"As soon as she came up, her father told her in their language that I was a captive of his friend Arnaute Mamí and had come to look for salad herbs. She took it up, and in that mixture of languages I have described she asked me whether I was a gentleman and what the reason was that I did not ransom myself. I answered her that I was already ransomed, and that from the price she could see what my master valued me at, since he had been given fifteen hundred zoltanís for me.
"To which she answered: 'Truly, if you had belonged to my father, I would have made him refuse twice that for you; because you Christians always lie in everything you say, and make yourselves out poor in order to cheat the Moors.'
"'That may well be, my lady,' I answered her, 'but truly I have dealt honestly with my master, and I deal honestly, and shall deal honestly, with everybody in the world.'
"'And when do you go?' said Zoraida.
"'Tomorrow, I think,' I said, 'because there is a French vessel here that sails tomorrow, and I mean to go in her.'
"'Would it not be better,' replied Zoraida, 'to wait until ships come from Spain, and go with them instead of with the French, who are no friends of yours?'
"'No,' I answered; 'although if it is true, as there is news, that a Spanish ship is on its way, I would still wait for her, except that it is more certain I shall be leaving tomorrow. Because the desire I have to see myself in my own country, and with the people I love, is so great that it will not let me wait for another opportunity, however much better, if it is slow in coming.'
"'You must without doubt be married in your own country,' said Zoraida, 'and that is why you want to go and be with your wife.'
"'I am not married,' I answered, 'but I have given my word to marry as soon as I get there.'
"'And is the lady beautiful to whom you gave it?' said Zoraida.
"'So beautiful,' I answered, 'that to describe her and tell you the truth, she is very like you.'
"At this her father laughed heartily and said: 'By Allah, Christian, she must be very beautiful indeed if she is like my daughter, who is the most beautiful woman in this whole kingdom. If you do not believe it, look at her carefully and you will see that I am telling you the truth.'
"Zoraida's father served us as interpreter for most of these words and speeches, being the better linguist; because although she spoke the bastard language which, as I have said, is used there, she made her meaning clearer by signs than by words.
"While we were in these and a great many other exchanges, a Moor came running up and said at the top of his voice that four Turks had jumped over the hedges or walls of the garden and were picking the fruit, although it was not ripe. The old man was startled, and so was Zoraida; because the fear the Moors have of the Turks is common and almost natural, especially of the soldiers, who are so insolent and have so much power over the Moors who are subject to them that they treat them worse than if they were their own slaves.
"I say, then, that her father said to Zoraida: 'Daughter, get back to the house and shut yourself in, while I go and speak to these dogs; and you, Christian, look for your herbs and go, and good luck to you, and may Allah take you safely to your own country.'
"I bowed, and he went off to look for the Turks, leaving me alone with Zoraida, who began to make as though to go where her father had ordered her. But her father had hardly been hidden by the trees of the garden when she turned to me with her eyes full of tears and said: 'Ámexi, Christian, ámexi?' — which means: 'Are you going, Christian, are you going?'
"I answered her: 'Yes, my lady, but on no account without you. Expect me on the first jumá, and do not be alarmed when you see us; for beyond any doubt we shall go to the Christian country.'
"I said this to her in such a way that she understood very well all the words that passed between us; and putting one arm round my neck, she began to walk towards the house with fainting steps. And luck willed — and it might have been very bad luck if heaven had not ordered it otherwise — that as the two of us were going along in the manner and posture I have described, with one arm round my neck, her father, who was already coming back from sending off the Turks, saw us in the state and manner we were going in, and we saw that he had seen us.
"But Zoraida, being alert and quick-witted, would not take her arm off my neck; on the contrary, she came closer to me and put her head on my breast, bending her knees a little, giving clear signs and appearances of fainting; and I likewise gave it to be understood that I was holding her up against my will.
"Her father came running to where we were, and seeing his daughter in that state, asked her what was the matter; but as she did not answer him, her father said: 'Without any doubt she has fainted with the shock of these dogs coming in.' And taking her from mine, he leaned her against his own breast; and she, giving a sigh and with her eyes not yet dry of tears, said again: 'Ámexi, Christian, ámexi' — 'Go, Christian, go.'
"To which her father answered: 'It does not matter, daughter, that the Christian should go; he has done you no harm, and the Turks have gone now. Let nothing alarm you, for there is nothing that can distress you, since, as I have told you, the Turks went back the way they came at my request.'
"'They alarmed her, sir, as you say,' I said to her father; 'but since she says I am to go, I do not want to distress her. Stay in peace, and with your leave I shall come back, if it should be necessary, for herbs to this garden; for according to my master there are none better for salad anywhere than here.'
"'You may come back for as many as you like,' answered Hadji Morato; 'for my daughter does not say this because you or any of the Christians annoyed her, but because in meaning to say that the Turks should go, she said that you should go — or because it was time for you to look for your herbs.'
"With this I took my leave of the two of them at once; and she, her soul being torn out of her by the look of it, went off with her father. And I, on the pretext of looking for herbs, went thoroughly and at my leisure round the whole garden: I looked carefully at the ways in and out, and at the strength of the house, and at the conveniences that might offer for making the whole of our business easier. This done, I came away and gave the renegade and my companions an account of everything that had happened; and by now I could not wait for the hour of seeing myself enjoying without alarm the good fortune that luck was offering me in the beautiful and lovely Zoraida.
"In the end the time passed and the day and hour we so much wanted came; and all of us following the order and plan we had many times settled on with careful consideration and long discussion, we had the good outcome we wanted. Because on the Friday that followed the day I talked with Zoraida in the garden, our renegade at nightfall anchored the boat almost opposite where the most beautiful Zoraida was.
"The Christians who were to pull at the oar were already prepared and hidden in various places all round about there. They were all in suspense and excitement, waiting for me, eager by now to attack the vessel they had in front of their eyes; because they did not know about the renegade's arrangement, but thought that they had to get and win their liberty by strength of arm, taking the lives of the Moors who were in the boat.
"It happened, then, that as soon as I showed myself, and my companions, all the rest who were hidden and saw us came up to us. This was at an hour when the city was already shut and nobody appeared anywhere in that whole stretch of country.
"When we were together, we were in doubt whether it would be better to go first for Zoraida or to overpower first the Moorish rowers who pulled at the oar in the boat. And while we were in this doubt, our renegade came up to us asking what we were waiting for, since it was time now and all his Moors were off their guard and most of them asleep. We told him what we were hesitating over, and he said that the thing that mattered most was to take the vessel first, which could be done with the greatest ease and without any danger, and that then we could go for Zoraida.
"What he said seemed good to all of us; and so, without delaying any further, with him leading, we came to the vessel; and jumping in first, he put his hand to a scimitar and said in Moorish: 'Let none of you move from here unless he wants it to cost him his life.' By this time almost all the Christians had got in. The Moors, who were of little spirit, hearing their captain speak in that fashion, were appalled; and without a single one of them putting a hand to his weapons — for they had few or almost none — they let themselves be tied hand and foot by the Christians without saying a word; which the Christians did very quickly, threatening the Moors that if they raised their voices in any way whatever, they would put the whole lot of them to the sword on the spot.
"This being done, half of our men staying behind to guard them, the rest of us, with the renegade again leading the way, went to Hadji Morato's garden; and good luck willed that on getting there to open the gate, it opened as easily as if it had not been shut. And so, with great quietness and silence, we got to the house without being heard by anybody.
"The most beautiful Zoraida was waiting for us at a window; and as soon as she heard people, she asked in a low voice whether we were nizarani — as much as to say or to ask whether we were Christians. I answered her that we were, and that she should come down. When she recognised me she did not hesitate a moment, but without answering me a word came down in an instant, opened the door and showed herself to us all, so beautiful and so richly dressed that I cannot manage to describe it.
"As soon as I saw her I took one of her hands and began to kiss it, and the renegade did the same, and my two comrades; and the rest, who did not know the case, did what they saw us do, so that it looked for all the world as if we were thanking her and acknowledging her as the mistress of our liberty.
"The renegade asked her in the Moorish language whether her father was in the garden. She answered that he was, and that he was asleep.
"'Then it will be necessary to wake him,' replied the renegade, 'and to take him with us, and everything of value there is in this beautiful garden.'
"'No,' she said. 'My father is not to be touched on any account, and there is nothing else in this house except what I am taking, which is so much that there will be plenty for you all to be left rich and contented; and wait a little and you shall see.'
"And saying this she went in again, saying she would be back very soon and that we should stay still without making any noise. I asked the renegade what had passed between them, and he told me; and I told him that in nothing was more to be done than what Zoraida wanted.
"And just as she was coming back loaded with a little chest full of gold crowns — so many that she could hardly hold it up — bad luck would have it that her father woke in the meantime and heard the noise going on in the garden. And leaning out of the window, he immediately recognised that all the people in it were Christians; and giving a great many loud, wild shouts, he began to cry in Arabic: 'Christians, Christians! Thieves, thieves!' At which shouts we were all thrown into the greatest and most fearful confusion.
"But the renegade, seeing the danger we were in and how much it mattered to him to succeed in that enterprise before we were heard, went up very quickly to where Hadji Morato was, and some of us went up along with him; for I did not dare to leave Zoraida, who had let herself fall into my arms as though in a faint.
"In short, those who went up managed so well that in a moment they came down with Hadji Morato, bringing him with his hands tied and a handkerchief put in his mouth, which did not let him say a word, threatening him that speaking would cost him his life. When his daughter saw him she covered her eyes so as not to see him, and her father was appalled, not knowing how willingly she had put herself into our hands. But feet being what was most needed then, with diligence and speed we got into the boat, where those who had stayed in her were waiting for us, afraid of some bad turn happening to us.
"Hardly two hours of the night could have gone by when we were all in the boat, in which the tying was taken off Zoraida's father's hands and the cloth out of his mouth; but the renegade told him again not to say a word, or they would take his life. He, seeing his daughter there, began to sigh most tenderly, and more so when he saw that I was holding her tightly in my arms and that she, without defending herself or complaining or drawing away, stayed still. But for all that he kept quiet, so that they should not carry out the many threats the renegade was making him.
"Seeing herself in the boat, then, and that we were about to put the oars in the water, and seeing her father there and the other Moors who were tied up, Zoraida told the renegade to ask me to do her the kindness of loosing those Moors and giving her father his liberty, because she would throw herself into the sea sooner than see before her eyes, and on her account, a father who had loved her so much taken away captive.
"The renegade told me; and I answered that I was very willing. But he answered that it was not advisable, because if they were left there they would raise the alarm in the countryside at once and rouse the city, and would be the cause of light frigates coming out to look for them and cutting them off by land and sea, so that we should not be able to escape; and that what could be done was to give them their liberty on reaching the first Christian land. We were all of this opinion; and Zoraida, who was given an account of it with the reasons that moved us not to do at once what she wanted, was also satisfied.
"And then, with joyful silence and glad diligence, each of our brave rowers took his oar, and we began, commending ourselves to God with all our hearts, to steer for the islands of Majorca, which is the nearest Christian land.
"But because of the north wind blowing a little and the sea being somewhat rough, it was not possible to hold the course for Majorca, and we were obliged to let ourselves go along the coast towards Oran, not without a great deal of distress on our part, for fear of being spotted from the town of Sargel, which lies on that coast sixty miles from Algiers. And we were likewise afraid of meeting in that stretch one of the galliots that ordinarily come with merchandise from Tetuan — although each of us on his own, and all of us together, presumed that if we met a merchant galliot, so long as it was not one of those that go privateering, not only should we not be lost but we should take a vessel in which we could finish our voyage more safely.
"While we were sailing, Zoraida kept her head between my hands so as not to see her father, and I felt that she was calling on Lela Marién to help us.
"We must have sailed a good thirty miles when day broke on us, about three musket shots off the land, all of which we saw was deserted and with nobody to spot us. But for all that, by strength of arm we worked our way a little further out to sea, which was somewhat calmer by now; and having got out almost two leagues, orders were given for the men to row in watches while we ate something, for the boat was well provisioned. But the rowers said this was no time to take any rest, and that those who were not rowing should give them something to eat, since they would not let go of the oars on any account.
"It was done so; and at this a steady wind began to blow, which obliged us to make sail at once and leave the oar and head for Oran, it being impossible to make any other voyage. It was all done with the greatest speed; and so, under sail, we ran more than eight miles an hour, with no other fear at all except that of meeting a vessel that was out privateering."
"We gave the Moorish rowers something to eat, and the renegade comforted them by telling them that they were not being taken away as captives, and that at the first opportunity they would be given their liberty. The same was said to Zoraida's father, who answered:
"'Any other thing I might expect and believe of your generosity and good conduct, Christians; but as for giving me my liberty, do not take me for so simple as to imagine it. For you never put yourselves in danger to take it from me in order to give it back so generously — especially knowing who I am, and the profit that can come to you from giving it me. Which profit, if you will name it, I offer you here and now whatever you may want for me and for that unfortunate daughter of mine; or, if not, for her alone, who is the greatest and the better part of my soul.'
"On saying this he began to weep so bitterly that he moved us all to compassion and forced Zoraida to look at him; and she, seeing him weep, was so softened that she got up from my feet and went to embrace her father; and putting her face against his, the two of them began such tender weeping that a great many of us who were there joined them in it.
"But when her father saw her dressed as if for a feast and with so many jewels on her, he said to her in their language: 'What is this, daughter? Yesterday at nightfall, before this terrible misfortune we are in came upon us, I saw you in your ordinary house clothes; and now, without your having had time to dress, and without any glad news having been given you to celebrate by adorning and beautifying yourself, I see you turned out in the best clothes I knew how and was able to give you when fortune was more favourable to us. Answer me this, for it holds me more in suspense and astonishment than the very misfortune I find myself in.'
"Everything the Moor said to his daughter the renegade translated for us, and she answered him not a word. But when he saw at one side of the boat the little chest where she used to keep her jewels — which he well knew he had left in Algiers and had not brought to the garden — he was still more bewildered, and asked her how that chest had come into our hands and what was inside it.
"To which the renegade, without waiting for Zoraida to answer him, answered: 'Do not weary yourself, sir, in asking Zoraida your daughter so many things, because with one answer of mine I shall satisfy you on all of them. And so I want you to know that she is a Christian, and that she has been the file for our chains and the liberty of our captivity. She is here of her own free will, as glad — as far as I can imagine — to see herself in this state as a man who comes out of darkness into light, out of death into life, and out of pain into glory.'
"'Is what this man says true, daughter?' said the Moor.
"'It is,' answered Zoraida.
"'So in fact,' replied the old man, 'you are a Christian, and the one who has put her father into the power of his enemies?'
"To which Zoraida answered: 'The one who is a Christian I am; but not the one who has put you in this position, because my wish never went so far as to leave you or to do you harm, but to do myself good.'
"'And what good is it that you have done yourself, daughter?'
"'That,' she answered, 'you must ask of Lela Marién, for she will be able to tell you better than I can.'
"The Moor had hardly heard this when with incredible speed he threw himself headfirst into the sea, where without any doubt he would have drowned if the long, encumbering robe he was wearing had not held him up a little on the water. Zoraida cried out for them to get him out, and so we all hurried up; and taking hold of him by his robe, we pulled him out half drowned and unconscious — at which Zoraida was so distressed that, as though he were already dead, she made a tender and sorrowful lament over him.
"We turned him face downwards, he brought up a great deal of water, and he came to himself at the end of two hours; during which, the wind having changed, it suited us to turn back towards land and to pull hard at the oars so as not to run aground on it. But our good luck willed that we came to a cove that lies beside a little promontory or cape which the Moors call La Cava Rumía, which in our language means the wicked Christian woman; and it is a tradition among the Moors that the Cava, through whom Spain was lost, is buried in that place, because cava in their language means wicked woman and rumía Christian. And they even count it a bad omen to come and anchor there when necessity forces them to it, because they never anchor there without it — although for us it was no shelter of a wicked woman but a safe harbour of rescue, the sea being as rough as it was.
"We put our sentries ashore and never let go of the oars; we ate some of what the renegade had provided, and prayed to God and to Our Lady with all our hearts to help us and favour us so that we might come happily to the end of so fortunate a beginning. Orders were given, at Zoraida's entreaty, that we should put her father ashore and all the other Moors who came tied up there, because she had not the heart, and her tender feelings could not bear, to see her father tied up before her eyes and those people of her own country prisoners. We promised her to do so at the time of our leaving, since there was no danger in leaving them in that place, which was uninhabited.
"Our prayers were not so empty that they were not heard by heaven; for in our favour the wind then changed, the sea grew calm, and invited us to go back cheerfully to going on with the voyage we had begun.
"Seeing this, we untied the Moors and put them ashore one by one, at which they were astonished. But on coming to put Zoraida's father ashore, who was by now fully in his senses, he said:
"'Why do you think, Christians, that this wicked female is glad that you should give me my liberty? Do you think it is out of pity for me? Certainly not, but she does it because of the obstacle my presence will be to her when she wants to put her wicked desires into practice. And do not think that what has moved her to change her religion is her understanding that yours has the advantage of ours, but her knowing that in your country immodesty is practised more freely than in ours.'
"And turning to Zoraida — while I and another Christian held him fast by both arms, so that he should not do something wild — he said to her: 'Oh, shameless girl and ill-advised child! Where are you going, blind and out of your wits, in the power of these dogs, our natural enemies? Cursed be the hour in which I begot you, and cursed be the indulgences and pleasures I have brought you up in!'
"But seeing that he looked like not finishing so quickly, I hurried to put him ashore; and from there he went on at the top of his voice with his curses and laments, praying to Mohammed to pray to Allah to destroy us, confound us and finish us. And when, having made sail, we could no longer hear his words, we saw his actions, which were tearing at his beard, pulling out his hair and rolling on the ground. But once he raised his voice in such a way that we could make out that he was saying: 'Come back, beloved daughter, come back to land, for I forgive you everything. Hand those men that money, which is theirs now, and come back and comfort this poor sad father of yours, who will leave his life on this deserted sand if you leave him!'
"All of which Zoraida heard, and felt all of it, and wept over it; and she could not manage to say or answer him a word except: 'May it please Allah, my father, that Lela Marién, who has been the cause of my being a Christian, may comfort you in your sorrow. Allah knows well that I could not do anything other than what I have done, and that these Christians owe nothing to my will; for even if I had wanted not to come with them and to stay at home, it would have been impossible for me, so hard did my soul press me to carry out this thing which seems to me as good as you, beloved father, judge it wicked.'
"This she said at a time when her father could not hear her, and we could not see him any more. And so, comforting Zoraida, we all attended to our voyage, which the wind itself made so easy for us that we took it as certain that at daybreak the next day we should see ourselves on the shores of Spain.
"But as good fortune seldom or never comes pure and simple, without being accompanied or followed by some evil that disturbs it or startles it, our luck willed — or perhaps the curses the Moor had thrown at his daughter, which are always to be feared, whatever father they come from — our luck willed, I say, that when we were well out to sea, and almost three hours of the night had gone by, going along with the sail spread from top to bottom and the oars lashed, because the favourable wind saved us the labour of needing them, by the light of the moon, which was shining clearly, we saw close to us a round ship which, with all her sails spread and her helm a little to windward, was crossing in front of us — and this so close that we were obliged to strike sail so as not to run into her, and they likewise put their helm hard over to give us room to pass.
"They had come to the ship's side to ask us who we were and where we were sailing and where we came from. But because they asked us this in French, our renegade said: 'Let nobody answer; for these are certainly French corsairs, who prey on everything.'
"Because of this warning, nobody answered a word; and having gone a little way ahead, so that the ship was now to leeward, they suddenly let off two pieces of artillery, and by the look of it both of them were loaded with chain-shot, because with one they cut our mast through the middle and brought it down along with the sail into the sea; and immediately, firing off another piece, the ball came and struck the middle of our boat, so that it opened her right up, without doing any other harm. But as we saw ourselves going to the bottom, we all began to shout for help and to beg the men in the ship to take us in, because we were sinking.
"They then struck sail; and putting the skiff or boat into the sea, as many as twelve Frenchmen got into it, well armed with their muskets and their matches lit, and so came alongside ours. And seeing how few we were and how the boat was sinking, they took us in, saying that this had happened to us for having used the discourtesy of not answering them. Our renegade took the chest with Zoraida's riches and dropped it into the sea, without anybody's noticing what he did.
"In short, we all went over to the French, who, after informing themselves of everything they wanted to know about us, as though they had been our chief enemies, stripped us of everything we had; and from Zoraida they took even the anklets she wore on her feet. But what they did to Zoraida did not distress me as much as the fear I had that they would pass from taking her most rich and precious jewels to taking the jewel that was worth most and that she prized most. But the desires of those people do not extend beyond money, and their greed never sees itself satisfied with that; which then went so far that they would even have taken the captives' clothes off us if they had been of any use to them.
"And there was an opinion among them that we should all be thrown into the sea wrapped in a sail, because they meant to trade at some ports in Spain under the name of Bretons, and if they took us alive they would be punished when their theft was discovered. But the captain, who was the one who had stripped my beloved Zoraida, said he was satisfied with the prize he had, and that he did not want to touch at any Spanish port but to pass the straits of Gibraltar by night, or as best he could, and to go to La Rochelle, which he had sailed from. And so they agreed to give us the skiff of their ship, and everything needed for the short voyage we had left — which they did the next day, in sight of the land of Spain; at which sight all our distresses and poverties were completely forgotten, as though they had never happened to us: such is the pleasure of getting back a lost liberty.
"It could have been about midday when they put us into the boat, giving us two barrels of water and some ship's biscuit. And the captain, moved by I do not know what compassion, as the most beautiful Zoraida was getting in, gave her as much as forty gold crowns, and would not let his soldiers take from her these same clothes she now has on.
"We got into the boat; we thanked them for the kindness they were doing us, showing ourselves more grateful than aggrieved. They stood out to sea, holding their course for the straits; and we, without looking to any other pole star than the land that showed in front of us, rowed so hard that at sunset we were so close that we could easily, as it seemed to us, have got there before it was quite dark. But as the moon did not appear that night and the sky showed dark, and as we did not know the district we were in, it did not seem to us a safe thing to run ashore, as many of us thought we should — saying that we ought to make for it even if it was among rocks and far from any town, because in that way we should settle the fear it was reasonable to have that corsair vessels from Tetuan might be about in those parts: men who spend the night in Barbary and the dawn on the coasts of Spain, and generally take a prize and go home to sleep again. But of the conflicting opinions, the one adopted was that we should approach little by little and, if the calmness of the sea allowed it, land wherever we could.
"So it was done; and it must have been a little before midnight when we came to the foot of an enormous, high mountain, not so close to the sea that it did not leave a little space for landing comfortably. We ran onto the sand, went ashore, kissed the ground, and with tears of the gladdest happiness we all gave thanks to God, our Lord, for the incomparable good he had done us.
"We got the provisions out of the boat, hauled her up on land and went a great way up the mountain; because even there we were still, and we still could not settle our hearts, nor could we quite believe that it was Christian land that was now holding us up.
"Day broke later, in my opinion, than we would have wished. We finished climbing the whole mountain to see whether any settlement could be made out from up there, or any shepherds' huts; but however far we stretched our eyes, we made out neither settlement nor person nor path nor road. For all that, we decided to go inland, since it could not fail to happen that we should soon find somebody to give us news of the country.
"But what wearied me most was seeing Zoraida going on foot over those rough places; for although I once put her on my shoulders, my weariness tired her more than her rest rested her; and so she would never again let me take that labour on. And with a great deal of patience and signs of cheerfulness, I always leading her by the hand, we must have gone a little less than a quarter of a league when there came to our ears the sound of a small bell — a clear sign that there was a flock somewhere near.
"And all of us looking carefully to see whether anybody appeared, we saw at the foot of a cork tree a young shepherd, who with great calm and unconcern was carving a stick with a knife. We shouted; and he, raising his head, sprang lightly to his feet; and, as we afterwards learnt, the first people who came into his view were the renegade and Zoraida. And as he saw them in Moorish dress, he thought that the whole of Barbary was down on him; and diving into the wood ahead with extraordinary speed, he began to give the loudest shouts in the world, saying: 'Moors, there are Moors in the country! Moors, Moors! To arms, to arms!'
"At these shouts we were all left in confusion, and did not know what to do with ourselves. But considering that the shepherd's shouts were bound to raise the countryside, and that the coastguard cavalry were bound to come at once to see what it was, we decided that the renegade should take off his Turkish clothes and put on a captive's jacket that one of us gave him at once, although he was left in his shirt. And so, commending ourselves to God, we went by the same road we had seen the shepherd take, expecting all the time that the coastguard cavalry would come down on us.
"And our expectation did not deceive us; because two hours had not gone by when, having come out of those thickets onto a plain, we made out as many as fifty horsemen coming towards us at great speed at a half-gallop. And as soon as we saw them we stood still waiting for them. But when they came up and saw, instead of the Moors they were looking for, so many poor Christians, they were bewildered; and one of them asked us whether we were by any chance the reason why a shepherd had called to arms.
"'Yes,' I said; and I was about to begin telling him my story, and where we came from and who we were, when one of the Christians who came with us recognised the horseman who had asked us the question, and said, without letting me say another word: 'Thanks be to God, gentlemen, who has brought us to so good a place! Because if I am not mistaken, the ground we are treading is that of Vélez Málaga — unless the years of my captivity have taken from my memory the recollection that you, sir, who are asking us who we are, are Pedro de Bustamante, my uncle.'
"The Christian captive had hardly said this when the horseman threw himself off his horse and came to embrace the young man, saying: 'Nephew of my soul and my life, I know you now; and I have wept for you as dead, I and my sister your mother and all your family, who are still alive; and God has been pleased to give them life so that they may enjoy the pleasure of seeing you. We knew already that you were in Algiers, and by the signs and appearance of your clothes and those of everybody in this company, I understand that you have had a miraculous deliverance.'
"'So it is,' answered the young man, 'and there will be time left for us to tell you all about it.'
"As soon as the horsemen understood that we were Christian captives, they got down off their horses, and each of them offered us his own to take us to the city of Vélez Málaga, which was a league and a half from there. Some of them went back to fetch the boat to the city, when we told them where we had left it; others took us up behind them, and Zoraida rode behind the Christian's uncle.
"The whole town came out to receive us, having already heard the news of our coming from somebody who had gone on ahead. They were not astonished at seeing freed captives or captive Moors, because all the people of that coast are used to seeing both the one and the other; but they were astonished at Zoraida's beauty, which at that instant and season was at its height, both with the weariness of the journey and with the gladness of finding herself at last in Christian country without the alarm of being lost. And this had brought such colour into her face that, unless my love was deceiving me then, I shall dare to say that there was no lovelier creature in the world — at least that I had ever seen.
"We went straight to the church to give thanks to God for the favour we had received; and as soon as Zoraida came into it, she said that there were faces there that looked like Lela Marién's. We told her they were images of her, and as best he could the renegade gave her to understand what they meant, so that she might worship them as if each one of them were really the same Lela Marién who had spoken to her. She, who has a good understanding and a quick, clear nature, at once understood everything that was said to her about the images.
"From there they took us and shared us out in different houses of the town; but the renegade, Zoraida and I were taken by the Christian who had come with us to his parents' house, who were moderately well off in the goods of fortune, and they made much of us with as much love as of their own son.
"Six days we stayed at Vélez, at the end of which the renegade, having made whatever declaration he needed, went off to the city of Granada to be brought back by means of the Holy Inquisition into the most holy bosom of the Church. The other freed Christians each went wherever seemed best to them, and Zoraida and I were left alone, with nothing but the crowns the Frenchman's courtesy gave Zoraida — with which I bought this animal she rides on. And I, serving her up to now as a father and a squire and not as a husband, we go with the intention of seeing whether my father is alive, or whether either of my brothers has had more prosperous luck than mine — although, since heaven has made me Zoraida's companion, it seems to me that no other lot could come to me, however good, that I should value more highly.
"The patience with which Zoraida bears the discomforts poverty brings with it, and the desire she shows to see herself a Christian at last, is so great and such that it astonishes me and moves me to serve her all the time of my life — although the pleasure I have in seeing myself hers and in her being mine is disturbed and undone by not knowing whether I shall find in my own country some corner to shelter her in, and whether time and death may have made such a change in the property and lives of my father and my brothers that I shall hardly find anybody who knows me, if they are gone.
"I have no more, gentlemen, to tell you of my history; whether it is agreeable and out of the ordinary, let your own good judgements decide. For my own part I can say that I could have wished to tell it you more briefly — although the fear of boring you has taken more than four circumstances off my tongue."
The captive fell silent on saying this, and Don Fernando said to him:
"Certainly, captain, the manner in which you have told this strange affair has been such that it matches the novelty and strangeness of the case itself. The whole of it is out of the ordinary and rare, and full of incidents that astonish and hold in suspense whoever hears them. And the pleasure we have got in listening to it is such that even if tomorrow's daylight found us still entertained with the same tale, we should be glad to have it begun all over again."
And on saying this, Don Fernando and all the rest offered him everything in their power for his service, in words and terms so affectionate and so genuine that the captain thought himself very well repaid by their goodwill. In particular Don Fernando offered him that if he would go back with him, he would get the marquis his brother to be godfather at Zoraida's baptism, and that for his own part he would fit him out in such a way that he could enter his own country with the standing and the comfort that were due to his person. For all of which the captive thanked him most courteously, but he would not accept any of his generous offers.
At this point night was coming on; and as it closed in, a coach arrived at the inn with some men on horseback. They asked for lodging; to whom the innkeeper's wife answered that there was not a hand's breadth free in the whole inn.
"Well, even if that is so," said one of the men on horseback who had come in, "there is bound to be room for his lordship the judge who is here."
At this title the hostess was flustered, and said:
"Sir, the fact of the matter is that I have no beds; if his worship the judge brings one, as he must do, let him come in and welcome, and my husband and I will get out of our own room to make his worship comfortable."
"Very well then," said the squire.
But by this time a man had got out of the coach whose dress at once showed the office and rank he held; because the long gown with the ruffled sleeves he was wearing showed that he was a judge, as his servant had said. He was leading by the hand a young girl of about sixteen, dressed for travelling, so smart, so beautiful and so graceful that the sight of her put everybody into admiration — so much so that if they had not seen Dorotea and Luscinda and Zoraida, who were at the inn, they would have believed that another beauty like this girl's could hardly be found.
Don Quixote was present when the judge and the girl came in, and as soon as he saw him he said:
"Your worship may safely come in and take your ease in this castle; for although it is narrow and badly furnished, there is no narrowness and no discomfort in the world that does not make room for arms and letters — and the more so if arms and letters bring beauty as their guide and leader, as your worship's letters bring in this fair maiden, before whom not only should castles be opened and thrown wide, but crags should divide and mountains split and bow down to make her welcome. Come in, your worship, I say, to this paradise, for here you will find stars and suns to keep company with the heaven your worship brings with you. Here you will find arms at their height and beauty at its extreme."
The judge was astonished at Don Quixote's speech, and set himself to look at him very deliberately, and his figure astonished him no less than his words. And without finding any words to answer him with, he was astonished all over again when he saw before him Luscinda, Dorotea and Zoraida, who at the news of the new guests, and at what the innkeeper's wife had told them of the girl's beauty, had come to see her and welcome her. But Don Fernando, Cardenio and the curate made him plainer and more courtly offers. In fact his lordship the judge came in bewildered, both at what he saw and at what he heard, and the beauties of the inn gave the beautiful girl their welcome.
In short, the judge saw plainly that all the people who were there were people of standing; but Don Quixote's figure, face and bearing baffled him. And courteous offers having passed among them all, and the accommodation of the inn having been reckoned up, what had already been arranged was arranged: that all the women should go into the garret already mentioned and that the men should stay outside, as though on guard over them. And so the judge was content that his daughter — for that was who the girl was — should go with those ladies, which she did very willingly. And with part of the innkeeper's narrow bed and half of the one the judge had brought, they settled themselves that night better than they had expected.
The captive, whose heart had been leaping from the moment he saw the judge with a suspicion that this was his brother, asked one of the servants who came with him what his name was and whether he knew what part of the country he came from. The servant answered him that he was called Licentiate Juan Pérez de Viedma, and that he had heard he came from a place in the mountains of León. With this account, and with what he had seen, he was finally confirmed in the belief that this was his brother, who had followed letters on their father's advice. And in excitement and delight, calling Don Fernando, Cardenio and the curate aside, he told them what was happening, assuring them that this judge was his brother.
The servant had also told him that he was going out as a judge to the Indies, to the High Court of Mexico. He learnt too that the girl was his daughter, at whose birth her mother had died, and that he had been left very rich by the dowry which stayed in the house with the daughter. He asked their advice as to how he should reveal himself, or how to find out first whether, once he had revealed himself, his brother would be ashamed at seeing him poor or would receive him warmly.
"Leave the making of that trial to me," said the curate; "the more so as there is no thinking otherwise than that you, captain, will be very well received. Because the worth and prudence that your brother's good face reveals give no signs of his being arrogant or ungracious, or of his not knowing how to set the accidents of fortune at their proper value."
"For all that," said the captain, "I would like to make myself known to him not suddenly but by roundabout ways."
"I tell you again," answered the curate, "that I shall manage it in a way that will leave us all satisfied."
By this time supper was ready, and they all sat down at the table except the captive and the ladies, who had supper by themselves in their room. In the middle of supper the curate said:
"Of your worship's very name, my lord judge, I had a comrade in Constantinople, where I was a captive for some years; which comrade was one of the bravest soldiers and captains in the whole Spanish infantry — but as much as he had of courage and worth, so much he had of bad luck."
"And what was this captain called, my dear sir?" asked the judge.
"He was called," answered the curate, "Ruy Pérez de Viedma, and he was a native of a place in the mountains of León; and he told me a thing that had happened to his father with his brothers which, if it had not been told me by a man as truthful as he was, I should have taken for one of those tales old women tell by the fire in winter.
"Because he told me that his father had divided his property among the three sons he had, and had given them certain pieces of advice, better than Cato's. And I can tell you that the choice he made of coming to the wars had turned out so well for him that in a few years, by his own worth and effort, with no arm to help him but his own great virtue, he rose to be a captain of infantry and to see himself in the way and in the standing to be soon a colonel. But fortune was against him; for where he might have expected to find it good, there he lost it, along with his liberty, in that most fortunate day when so many recovered theirs — which was the battle of Lepanto. I lost mine at the Goletta, and afterwards, by different turns, we found ourselves comrades in Constantinople. From there he went to Algiers, where I know that one of the strangest cases that have ever happened in the world happened to him."
From here the curate went on, and with brief compression told what had happened to his brother with Zoraida; to all of which the judge listened so attentively that never had he been so much of a hearer — which is what his title of oidor means — as he was then. The curate only went as far as the point when the French stripped the Christians who were in the boat, and the poverty and want in which his comrade and the beautiful Moorish woman had been left; of whom he had not learnt what had become of them, nor whether they had reached Spain or whether the French had carried them off to France.
The captain was listening to everything the curate said, standing a little way off, and was noting every movement his brother made. And seeing that the curate had now come to the end of his tale, he gave a great sigh, and with his eyes filling with water, said:
"Oh, sir, if you knew what news it is you have told me, and how nearly it touches me — so nearly that I am forced to give signs of it with these tears which, against all my discretion and reserve, are coming out of my eyes! That valorous captain you speak of is my elder brother, who, being stronger and of loftier thoughts than I or another younger brother of mine, chose the honourable and worthy calling of war, which was one of the three roads our father put to us, as your comrade told you in the tale you thought you heard from him.
"I followed letters, in which God and my own diligence have put me in the position you see. My youngest brother is in Peru, so rich that with what he has sent my father and me he has fully made good the share he took, and has even put into my father's hands the means to satisfy his natural generosity; and I likewise have been able to keep myself with more decency and standing in my studies and to reach the post you see me in.
"My father is still alive, dying with the longing to hear of his eldest son, and asking God with continual prayers that death may not close his eyes until he sees his son's alive. About whom I am amazed that, being so sensible a man, in so many hardships and afflictions, or in prosperous turns, he should have neglected to send his father news of himself; because if he or any of us had known, he would have had no need to wait for the miracle of the cane to get his ransom.
"But what I am afraid of now is wondering whether those Frenchmen may have given him his liberty, or may have killed him to cover up their theft. All this will mean that I shall go on with my journey, not with the pleasure I began it with but with nothing but melancholy and sadness.
"Oh, my good brother, if only I knew now where you were! For I would go and look for you and free you from your hardships, even if it were at the cost of my own. Oh, if only somebody would take news to our old father that you were alive, even if you were in the most hidden dungeons of Barbary — for his riches, and my brother's and mine, would get you out of them! Oh Zoraida, beautiful and generous, if only somebody could repay the good you did a brother of mine! If only somebody could be present at the new birth of your soul, and at the wedding, which would give us all so much happiness!"
These and other such words the judge said, so full of compassion at the news he had been given of his brother that everybody who heard him joined him in showing the feeling they had for his grief.
The curate, then, seeing how well he had come out with his plan and with what the captain wanted, did not want to keep them all sad any longer; and so he got up from the table and went into where Zoraida was, and took her by the hand, and after her came Luscinda, Dorotea and the judge's daughter. The captain was waiting to see what the curate meant to do, which was that, taking him too by the other hand, he went with the two of them to where the judge and the other gentlemen were, and said:
"Let your tears cease, my lord judge, and let your wish be filled with all the good that could be wished for; since you have before you your good brother and your good sister-in-law. This man you see here is Captain Viedma, and this is the beautiful Moorish woman who did him so much good. The Frenchmen I told you of put them in the straits you see, so that you might show the generosity of your good heart."
The captain ran to embrace his brother, and his brother put both hands on his chest so as to look at him a little further off; but when he had finished recognising him, he embraced him so tightly, shedding such tender tears of happiness, that most of those who were present had to join him in them. The words the two brothers said to each other, the feelings they showed, I hardly think can be imagined, let alone written down.
There, in a few words, they gave each other an account of their fortunes; there the good friendship of two brothers was shown at its height; there the judge embraced Zoraida; there he offered her his property; there he made his daughter embrace her; there the beautiful Christian girl and the most beautiful Moorish girl set everybody's tears going again.
There Don Quixote stood attentive, without saying a word, considering these very strange events and putting them all down to the chimeras of knight-errantry.
There it was arranged that the captain and Zoraida should go back with his brother to Seville and let their father know of his being found and of his freedom, so that he might come as best he could to be present at Zoraida's wedding and baptism — since it was not possible for the judge to leave the journey he was on, because he had news that in a month's time the fleet would sail from Seville to New Spain, and it would be a great inconvenience to him to lose the passage.
In short, everybody was contented and glad at the captive's good fortune; and as the night had now gone almost two thirds of its journey, they agreed to go to bed and rest for what was left of it. Don Quixote offered to keep watch over the castle, so that they should not be attacked by some giant or other wandering scoundrel, greedy for the great treasure of beauty that castle held. Those who knew him thanked him for it, and gave the judge an account of Don Quixote's strange humour, which he found not a little entertaining.
Only Sancho Panza was in despair at how long they were taking to go to bed; and he alone settled himself better than any of them, lying down on his donkey's harness, which was to cost him as dear as will be told further on.
The ladies having gone to their room, then, and the rest having settled themselves as best they could, Don Quixote went out of the inn to stand sentry over the castle, as he had promised.
It happened, then, that a little before dawn came, there reached the ladies' ears a voice so tuneful and so good that it obliged them all to give it their attention — especially Dorotea, who was awake, and at whose side slept Doña Clara de Viedma, for that was the name of the judge's daughter. Nobody could imagine who the person was who sang so well; and it was a single voice, without any instrument to accompany it. Sometimes it seemed to them that the singing was in the yard, sometimes that it was in the stable; and while they were in this confusion, listening very attentively, Cardenio came to the door of the room and said:
"Whoever is not asleep, listen; you will hear the voice of a muleteer's boy who sings in such a way that he enchants."
"We are already listening to it, sir," answered Dorotea.
And with this Cardenio went away; and Dorotea, giving it all the attention she could, made out that what was being sung was this.
A sailor of love am I, and on his deep ocean I sail without any hope of reaching any harbour.
I go on following a star that I make out from far off, lovelier and more shining than any Palinurus saw.
I do not know where it guides me, and so I sail in confusion, my soul intent on watching it, careful and careless at once.
Impertinent reserves, a modesty beyond the custom, are clouds that hide her from me when I most try to see her.
O clear and shining star, in whose light I burn myself away: the moment you hide from me will be the moment of my death.
The singer having got to this point, it seemed to Dorotea that it would not be right for Clara to miss hearing so good a voice; and so, shaking her one way and the other, she woke her, saying:
"Forgive me, child, for waking you, since I do it so that you may have the pleasure of hearing the best voice you will perhaps have heard in the whole of your life."
Clara woke up thoroughly drowsy, and the first time did not understand what Dorotea was saying to her; and asking her again, Dorotea told her again, at which Clara paid attention. But she had hardly heard two lines that the singer was going on with when such a strange trembling took her, as though she were ill with some grave attack of the ague; and hugging Dorotea tightly, she said to her:
"Oh, lady of my soul and my life, why did you wake me? For the greatest good fortune that could come to me just now was to have my eyes and my ears shut, so as not to see or hear that unhappy musician."
"What is this you say, child? They tell me the man who is singing is a muleteer's boy."
"He is nothing of the kind: he is the lord of villages," answered Clara, "and of the place he holds in my soul so securely that if he does not choose to leave it, it will not be taken from him for ever."
Dorotea was astonished at the girl's feeling words, thinking that they went a long way beyond the good sense her few years promised; and so she said to her:
"You speak in such a way, Señora Clara, that I cannot understand you: explain yourself more, and tell me what you mean about a soul and villages and this musician, whose voice has left you in such distress. But do not tell me anything just now, for I do not want to lose, by attending to your alarm, the pleasure I get from listening to the singer; for it seems to me that he is going back to his song with new verses and a new tune."
"Very well," answered Clara.
And so as not to hear him she stopped up both her ears with her hands, at which Dorotea was astonished too; and Dorotea, listening to what was being sung, found that it went on in this way:
Sweet hope of mine, who, breaking through impossibilities and thickets, go steadily on the road that you yourself invent and prepare: do not lose heart at seeing yourself at every step beside the step of your own death.
Lazy men do not attain honourable triumphs or any victory, nor can those be happy who, not standing up against fortune, surrender, helpless, all their senses to soft idleness.
That love should sell his glories dear is very reasonable, and is fair dealing; for there is no richer treasure than the one that is assayed by his own pleasure, and it is a plain thing that what costs little is not valued.
Persistence in love sometimes attains impossible things; and so, although with mine I follow the hardest roads of love, I do not for that reason despair of reaching heaven from the earth.
Here the voice came to an end, and Clara made a beginning of fresh sobs. All of which inflamed Dorotea's desire to know the cause of such sweet singing and such sad weeping. And so she asked her again what it was she had meant to tell her before. Then Clara, afraid that Luscinda might hear her, hugging Dorotea tightly, put her mouth so close to Dorotea's ear that she could safely speak without being heard by anybody else, and said to her:
"This man who is singing, my lady, is the son of a gentleman, a native of the kingdom of Aragon, the lord of two villages, who lived opposite my father's house at Court. And although my father had the windows of his house covered with cloths in winter and lattices in summer, I do not know how it was or was not, but this gentleman, who was at his studies, saw me — and I do not know whether it was at church or somewhere else.
"In the end he fell in love with me, and gave me to understand it from the windows of his house with so many signs and so many tears that I had to believe him, and even love him, without knowing what it was he wanted of me. Among the signs he made me was one of putting his two hands together, giving me to understand that he would marry me; and although I should have been very glad if it had been so, being alone and without a mother I did not know who to talk it over with, and so I let it be without giving him any other favour except that, when my father was out of the house and his was too, I would raise the cloth or the lattice a little and let myself be seen at full length — at which he made such a festival that he gave signs of going out of his mind.
"At this the time of my father's departure came on, which he learnt about, and not from me, since I could never tell him. He fell ill, as I understand it, of grief; and so on the day we left I could never see him to say goodbye to him, even with my eyes.
"But after two days of travelling, on going into an inn at a place a day's journey from here, I saw him at the door of the inn, dressed as a muleteer's boy, so to the life that if I had not carried him so well painted in my soul it would have been impossible to recognise him. I recognised him, I was astonished and I was glad. He looked at me by stealth from my father, whom he always hides from when he crosses in front of me on the roads and at the inns we come to. And as I know who he is, and consider that for love of me he comes on foot and with so much hardship, I am dying of distress; and where he puts his feet I put my eyes.
"I do not know with what intention he comes, or how he has been able to escape from his father, who loves him extraordinarily, because he has no other heir and because he deserves it, as your worship will see when you see him. And I can tell you more: that everything he sings he gets out of his own head, for I have heard it said that he is a very great scholar and poet. And there is more: that every time I see him or hear him sing, I tremble all over and start with fright, afraid my father will recognise him and come to know of what we want.
"In my life I have never spoken a word to him, and for all that I love him in such a way that I shall not be able to live without him. This, my lady, is all I can tell you about this musician whose voice has pleased you so much; from which alone you may see plainly that he is no muleteer's boy, as you say, but the lord of souls and villages, as I have told you."
"Say no more, Señora Doña Clara," said Dorotea at this point, and this while kissing her a thousand times; "say no more, I say, and wait for the new day to come, for I hope in God so to direct your affairs that they may have the happy end so honourable a beginning deserves."
"Oh, my lady," said Doña Clara, "what end can be hoped for, if his father is so distinguished and so rich that he will think I cannot even be his son's servant, much less his wife? And as for marrying without my father's knowledge, I would not do it for anything in the world. All I could wish is that this young man would go back and leave me; perhaps by not seeing him, and with the great distance of the road we are going, the pain I feel now would be eased — although I can tell you that this remedy I am imagining will do me very little good.
"I do not know what the devil this has been, or how this love I have for him got in, seeing that I am such a girl and he such a boy; for truly I believe we are of the very same age, and I am not sixteen yet — for my father says I shall be sixteen on Saint Michael's day coming."
Dorotea could not help laughing to hear how like a child Doña Clara talked, and said to her:
"Let us rest, madam, for what little I think is left of the night, and God will send the morning and we shall prosper — or my hands will serve me badly."
With this they settled down, and a great silence was kept throughout the inn. The only people who were not asleep were the innkeeper's daughter and Maritornes her servant; who, since they already knew the humour Don Quixote sinned by, and that he was outside the inn armed and on horseback keeping watch, decided between them to play some joke on him, or at least to pass a little time listening to his absurdities.
Now the fact is that in the whole inn there was no window that looked out onto the fields except a hole in a hayloft, through which they threw the straw out. To this hole the two half-maidens came, and saw that Don Quixote was on horseback, leaning on his pike, giving from time to time such sorrowful, deep sighs that with each one his soul seemed to be torn out of him. And they likewise heard him say in a soft, delicate, loving voice:
"O my lady Dulcinea of El Toboso, extreme of all beauty, end and completion of good sense, storehouse of the best charm, treasury of modesty, and finally the very idea of everything profitable, honourable and delightful there is in the world! And what may your grace be doing now? Have you by any chance your thoughts on your captive knight, who has of his own will chosen to expose himself to so many dangers simply to serve you?
"Give me news of her, O luminary of the three faces! Perhaps out of envy of hers you are looking at her now; either walking about some gallery of her sumptuous palaces, or leaning on some balcony, considering how, without loss to her modesty and her greatness, she is to calm the storm this troubled heart of mine suffers for her sake; what glory she is to give my pains, what quiet to my anxiety and, in the end, what life to my death and what reward to my services.
"And you, sun, who must by now be saddling your horses in haste so as to get up early and go out to see my lady — as soon as you see her, I beg you to greet her on my behalf; but take care that on seeing her and greeting her you do not give her the kiss of peace on her face, for I shall be more jealous of you than you were of that swift ingrate who made you sweat and run so hard over the plains of Thessaly, or along the banks of the Peneus — for I do not properly remember where you ran that time, jealous and in love."
Don Quixote had got to this point in his sorrowful speech when the innkeeper's daughter began to hiss at him and to say:
"My dear sir, will your worship please come over here?"
At which signs and voice Don Quixote turned his head, and saw by the light of the moon — which was then at its full brightness — that he was being called from the hole which seemed to him a window, and one with gilded bars at that, as befits the windows of such rich castles as he imagined that inn to be. And at that instant it presented itself to his mad imagination that once again, as the last time, the fair maiden, daughter of the lady of that castle, conquered by her love for him, was coming back to solicit him. And with this thought, so as not to show himself discourteous and ungrateful, he turned Rocinante's reins and came up to the hole; and as soon as he saw the two girls, he said:
"I pity you, fair lady, for having set your loving thoughts in a quarter where it is not possible to answer you as your great worth and gentility deserve; for which you must not blame this wretched knight errant, whom love has made incapable of surrendering his affections to any woman but the one who, at the moment his eyes saw her, made her the absolute mistress of his soul.
"Forgive me, good lady, and get you back to your room, and do not, by declaring your desires to me any further, oblige me to show myself more ungrateful. And if out of the love you bear me you find in me anything else with which to satisfy you, so long as it is not that same love, ask it of me; for I swear to you, by that absent sweet enemy of mine, to give it you on the spot, even if you asked me for a lock of Medusa's hair, which was all snakes, or for the very rays of the sun shut up in a phial."
"My lady has need of nothing of the sort, sir knight," said Maritornes at this point.
"Then what has your lady need of, discerning duenna?" answered Don Quixote.
"Only one of your beautiful hands," said Maritornes, "so as to relieve with it the great longing that has brought her to this hole, so much at the risk of her honour that if her lord father had heard her, the smallest slice of her would have been her ear."
"I should have liked to see that!" answered Don Quixote. "But he will take good care not to, unless he wants to make the most disastrous end that any father in the world ever made, for having laid hands on the delicate limbs of his lovesick daughter."
It seemed to Maritornes that Don Quixote would certainly give the hand they had asked for; and settling in her mind what she was going to do, she got down from the hole and went to the stable, where she took the halter of Sancho Panza's donkey and came back to her hole very quickly, just as Don Quixote had got to his feet on Rocinante's saddle so as to reach the barred window where he imagined the wounded maiden to be. And on giving her his hand, he said:
"Take, madam, this hand — or rather, this executioner of the world's evildoers; take this hand, I say, which no other woman's has touched, not even hers who has complete possession of the whole of my body. I do not give it you to kiss, but so that you may look at the fabric of its sinews, the linking of its muscles, the width and roominess of its veins; from which you may gather what the strength must be of the arm that has such a hand."
"Now we shall see," said Maritornes.
And making a running noose in the halter, she threw it round his wrist; and getting down from the hole, she tied what was left very tightly to the bolt of the hayloft door. Don Quixote, feeling the roughness of the cord on his wrist, said:
"It seems more as though your worship were grating my hand than caressing it; do not treat it so badly, for it is not to blame for the harm my will does you; nor is it right that you should take out the whole of your annoyance on so small a part of me. Consider that whoever loves well does not revenge herself so ill."
But nobody was listening to any of these speeches of Don Quixote's by now, because as soon as Maritornes had tied him, she and the other girl went off dying of laughter, and left him held in such a way that it was impossible for him to get free.
He was, then, as has been said, standing on his feet on Rocinante, with his whole arm through the hole and tied by the wrist to the bolt of the door, in the greatest fear and anxiety — for if Rocinante moved to one side or the other, he would be left hanging by the arm. And so he did not dare make any movement at all, although from Rocinante's patience and quietness one might well expect that he would stay without moving for a whole century.
In short, seeing himself tied and that the ladies had gone away, Don Quixote set himself to imagine that all this was being done by way of enchantment, as the last time, when in that same castle that enchanted Moor of a carrier had pounded him. And he cursed to himself his own want of judgement and reasoning; since, having come out of that castle so badly the first time, he had ventured to go into it a second, it being an established maxim among knights errant that when they have tried an adventure and not succeeded in it, it is a sign that it is not reserved for them but for others, and so they have no need to try it a second time.
For all that, he pulled at his arm to see whether he could get free; but he was so well tied that all his attempts were in vain. It is quite true that he pulled cautiously, so that Rocinante should not move; and although he would have liked to sit down and settle himself in the saddle, he could do nothing but stand up, or tear his hand off.
There was the wishing for Amadis's sword, against which no enchantment had any power; there was the cursing of his fortune; there was the exaggerating of the loss the world would suffer by his absence for as long as he stayed there enchanted — for he had beyond any doubt come to believe that he was; there was the remembering all over again of his beloved Dulcinea of El Toboso; there was the calling for his good squire Sancho Panza, who, buried in sleep and stretched out on his donkey's pack-saddle, at that moment did not remember the mother that bore him; there he called on the sages Lirgandeo and Alquife to help him; there he invoked his good friend Urganda to come to his rescue; and finally, there the morning caught him, so desperate and bewildered that he bellowed like a bull. Because he did not expect that daylight would put his trouble right, since he took it to be everlasting, believing himself to be enchanted. And what made him believe it was seeing that Rocinante moved neither much nor little; and he believed that in that fashion, without eating or drinking or sleeping, he and his horse would have to stay until that evil influence of the stars was past, or until some wiser enchanter disenchanted him.
But he was very much deceived in his belief; because dawn had hardly begun to break when four men on horseback arrived at the inn, very well turned out and equipped, with their muskets across their saddlebows. They knocked with great blows at the inn door, which was still shut; which Don Quixote seeing from where he still did not leave off keeping sentry, he said in an arrogant, loud voice:
"Knights, or squires, or whoever you may be: you have no reason to knock at the gates of this castle; for it is plain enough that at such an hour either those within are asleep, or it is not the custom of fortresses to be opened until the sun is spread over the whole ground. Draw off outside, and wait for the day to grow light, and then we shall see whether it is right or not that they should open to you."
"What the devil sort of fortress or castle is this," said one of them, "to oblige us to keep such ceremonies? If you are the innkeeper, order them to open to us; for we are travellers who want no more than to give our mounts some barley and go on, because we are in a hurry."
"Do I look to you, gentlemen, as if I had the build of an innkeeper?" answered Don Quixote.
"I do not know what you have the build of," answered the other, "but I know that you talk nonsense in calling this inn a castle."
"A castle it is," replied Don Quixote, "and one of the best in this whole province; and it has people inside it who have had a sceptre in their hand and a crown on their head."
"It would be better the other way round," said the traveller: "the sceptre on the head and the crown in the hand. And it will be, if it comes to it, that there must be some company of players inside, who often have those crowns and sceptres you speak of; because in an inn as small as this, and where such silence is kept, I do not believe people worthy of a crown and sceptre are lodged."
"You know little of the world," replied Don Quixote, "since you are ignorant of the things that generally happen in knight-errantry."
The companions who came with the questioner were getting tired of the conversation he was having with Don Quixote, and so they went back to knocking with great fury; and it was in such a way that the innkeeper woke up, and everybody else in the inn as well; and so he got up to ask who was knocking.
It happened at this time that one of the mounts the four men who were knocking had come on came up to smell Rocinante, who, melancholy and sad, with his ears drooping, was holding up his stretched-out master without moving. And as after all he was made of flesh, although he looked as if he were made of wood, he could not help responding and turning to smell the one who was coming to caress him. And so he had hardly moved at all when Don Quixote's joined feet slipped apart, and, sliding off the saddle, he would have come down on the ground if he had not been left hanging by the arm — a thing that caused him so much pain that he believed either that they were cutting off his wrist or that his arm was being torn off. Because he was left so close to the ground that with the very tips of his toes he kissed the earth; which was to his own harm, because, feeling how little he lacked to put the soles of his feet on the ground, he wore himself out and stretched as far as he could to reach it: exactly like men who are given the torture of the pulley, hung at just-touching and not-touching, who are themselves the cause of increasing their own pain by the eagerness they put into stretching, deceived by the hope that presents itself to them that with a very little more stretching they will reach the ground.
In fact Don Quixote gave so many shouts that the innkeeper, quickly opening the inn doors, came out in a fright to see who was giving such cries, and those who were outside did the same. Maritornes, who had already woken at the same shouts, imagining what it might be, went to the hayloft and untied, without anybody's seeing her, the halter that was holding Don Quixote up; and he immediately came down on the ground in sight of the innkeeper and the travellers, who, coming up to him, asked him what was the matter with him that he was giving such shouts. He, without answering a word, took the cord off his wrist and, getting to his feet, mounted Rocinante, braced his shield, levelled his pike, and, taking a good stretch of ground, came back at a half gallop, saying:
"Whoever shall say that I have been enchanted with any just title — provided my lady the Princess Micomicona gives me leave for it — I give him the lie, I challenge him and defy him to single combat."
The new travellers were astonished at Don Quixote's words, but the innkeeper took them out of that astonishment by telling them that this was Don Quixote and that there was no need to take any notice of him, because he was out of his mind.
They asked the innkeeper whether by any chance a boy of about fifteen had come to that inn, dressed as a muleteer's lad, with such-and-such a description — giving exactly the description of Doña Clara's lover. The innkeeper answered that there were so many people at the inn that he had not noticed the one they were asking about. But one of them, having seen the coach the judge had come in, said:
"He must certainly be here, because this is the coach they say he is following. Let one of us stay at the door and the rest go in and look for him; and it would be as well too if one of us went right round the inn, so that he does not get away over the yard walls."
"That is what we will do," answered one of them.
And two of them going inside, one stayed at the door and the other went off to go round the inn — all of which the innkeeper watched, and could not make out what all these measures were being taken for, although he well believed they were looking for the lad whose description they had given him.
By this time day was breaking; and for that reason as well as because of the noise Don Quixote had made, everybody was awake and getting up — especially Doña Clara and Dorotea, who, the one in alarm at having her lover so close and the other in her eagerness to see him, had been able to sleep very badly that night.
Don Quixote, who saw that none of the four travellers took any notice of him or answered his challenge, was dying and raging with vexation and fury. And if he had found in the ordinances of his chivalry that a knight errant might lawfully take on and undertake another enterprise when he had given his word and faith not to enter on any until he had finished the one he had promised, he would have attacked the lot of them and made them answer him whether they liked it or not. But since it seemed to him neither proper nor becoming to begin a new enterprise until he had put Micomicona in her kingdom, he had to keep quiet and stay still, waiting to see what those travellers' measures would come to.
One of them found the young man he was looking for asleep beside a muleteer's boy, quite unaware that anybody was looking for him, let alone that anybody would find him. The man took him by the arm and said to him:
"Certainly, Señor Don Luis, the clothes you have on answer well to who you are, and the bed I find you in speaks well of the indulgence your mother brought you up with."
The young man rubbed his sleepy eyes and looked slowly at the man who had hold of him, and then recognised that he was a servant of his father's, at which he got such a shock that he could not manage, or was not able, to say a word to him for a good while. And the servant went on to say:
"There is nothing else to be done here, Señor Don Luis, but to be patient and go back home — unless your worship would like your father and my master to go to the other world; because nothing else is to be expected from the grief he is left in through your being away."
"But how did my father know," said Don Luis, "that I was coming this road and in this dress?"
"A student," answered the servant, "whom you told about your plans was the one who revealed it, moved by pity at what he saw your father doing the moment he missed you. And so he sent off four of his servants to look for you, and we are all here at your service, more delighted than can be imagined at the good errand we shall go back on, taking you to the eyes that love you so much."
"That will be as I choose, or as heaven ordains," answered Don Luis.
"What can you choose, or what can heaven ordain, except to agree to your going back? For nothing else is going to be possible."
All these words that passed between the two of them were heard by the muleteer's boy beside whom Don Luis had been lying; and getting up from there, he went to tell Don Fernando and Cardenio and the rest — who had dressed by now — what was going on. He told them how that man called this boy "Don", and what words were passing, and how he wanted to take him back to his father's house and the boy did not want to go. And with this, and with what they knew of him from the fine voice heaven had given him, they were all seized with a great desire to know more particularly who he was, and even to help him if anybody tried to use force on him. And so they went towards the quarter where he was still talking and arguing with his servant.
At this Dorotea came out of her room, and behind her Doña Clara in great distress; and Dorotea, calling Cardenio aside, told him in a few words the story of the musician and Doña Clara. And he told her too what was happening about his father's servants coming to look for him, and he did not say it so quietly that Clara failed to hear it; at which she was so far out of herself that if Dorotea had not come to hold her, she would have come down on the floor. Cardenio told Dorotea that they should go back to their room, and that he would try to put everything right; and they did so.
By now all four of the men who had come looking for Don Luis were inside the inn and gathered round him, urging him to go back at once, without a moment's delay, to comfort his father. He answered that he could on no account do it until he had finished a business in which his life, his honour and his soul were at stake. The servants then pressed him, saying that on no account would they go back without him, and that they would take him whether he liked it or not.
"That you will not do," replied Don Luis, "unless you take me dead — although whatever way you take me, it will be taking me without my life."
By this time everybody else in the inn had come up to the argument, especially Cardenio, Don Fernando, his companions, the judge, the curate, the barber and Don Quixote, who by now thought there was no further need to guard the castle. Cardenio, who already knew the young man's story, asked those who wanted to take him what moved them to want to take that boy away against his will.
"What moves us," answered one of the four, "is to give his father back his life, which through this gentleman's absence is in danger of being lost."
To this Don Luis said:
"There is no need to give an account of my affairs here: I am free, and I shall go back if I choose to, and if not, none of you is going to force me."
"Reason will force your worship," answered the man; "and when reason is not enough with your worship, it will be enough with us to do what we came for and what we are bound to do."
"Let us know what all this is at bottom," said the judge at this point.
But the man, who knew him as a neighbour of his house, answered:
"Does your worship not know, my lord judge, this gentleman, who is your neighbour's son, and who has got away from his father's house in dress as unbecoming to his rank as your worship can see?"
The judge then looked at him more attentively and recognised him; and embracing him, he said:
"What childishness is this, Señor Don Luis, or what causes so powerful that they have moved you to come in this way, and in this dress, which so ill becomes your quality?"
Tears came into the young man's eyes, and he could not answer a word. The judge told the four men to calm down, for it would all be settled properly; and taking Don Luis by the hand, he drew him aside and asked him what this coming had been about.
And while he was asking him this and other questions, they heard great shouts at the door of the inn; and the cause of them was that two guests who had lodged there that night, seeing everybody busy finding out what the four men were after, had tried to go without paying what they owed. But the innkeeper, who attended more to his own business than to other people's, caught them as they came out of the door and asked for his money, and reproached them for their bad intentions in such words that he moved them to answer him with their fists; and so they began to lay into him in such a way that the poor innkeeper had to shout and call for help.
The innkeeper's wife and daughter could see nobody less occupied and able to help him than Don Quixote, to whom the innkeeper's daughter said:
"Help my poor father, sir knight, by the power God gave you; for two wicked men are pounding him like grain."
To which Don Quixote answered very slowly and with great composure:
"Fair maiden, there is no place for your petition at present, because I am prevented from getting involved in another adventure while I have not brought to a head one that my word has committed me to. But what I can do to serve you is this, as I shall now tell you: run and tell your father to keep up that battle as best he can and on no account to let himself be beaten, while I ask the Princess Micomicona's leave to be able to help him in his distress; for if she gives it me, take it as certain that I shall get him out of it."
"Sinner that I am!" said Maritornes, who was standing there. "Before your worship gets that leave you speak of, my master will already be in the other world."
"Only let me get the leave I speak of, madam," answered Don Quixote; "for once I have it, it will make very little difference that he should be in the other world, for I shall get him out of there in spite of the whole world's gainsaying it — or at the very least I shall give you such revenge on those who have sent him there that you will be more than moderately satisfied."
And without saying any more he went and knelt down before Dorotea, asking her in knightly and errant words that her greatness might be pleased to give him leave to succour and help the governor of that castle, who was in grave straits. The princess gave it him with a good will, and he at once, bracing his shield and putting his hand to his sword, hurried to the door of the inn, where the two guests were still handling the innkeeper roughly. But as soon as he arrived he stopped short and stayed still, although Maritornes and the innkeeper's wife kept asking him what he was waiting for, and telling him to help their master and husband.
"I hold back," said Don Quixote, "because it is not lawful for me to put my hand to my sword against people of squirely rank; but call my squire Sancho here to me, for this defence and vengeance is his affair and concern."
This was going on at the door of the inn, and there the punches and cuffs were flying in fine style, all to the harm of the innkeeper and to the fury of Maritornes, the innkeeper's wife and her daughter, who were in despair at seeing Don Quixote's cowardice and at how badly things were going for their husband, master and father.
But let us leave him here, for there will be no lack of somebody to help him; and if not, let the man who takes on more than his strength promises suffer and hold his tongue. And let us go back fifty paces to see what Don Luis answered the judge, whom we left aside asking him the reason for his coming on foot and dressed in such vile clothes. To which the young man, taking hold of his hands tightly, as a sign that some great grief was pressing on his heart, and shedding tears in great abundance, said to him:
"My dear sir, I can tell you nothing else except that from the moment heaven willed it and our being neighbours made it easy for me to see my lady Doña Clara, your daughter and my mistress, from that instant I made her the mistress of my will. And if yours, my true lord and father, does not prevent it, this very day she is to be my wife.
"For her I left my father's house, and for her I put on this dress, so as to follow her wherever she went, like the arrow to its target or the sailor to the pole star. She knows no more of my feelings than what she has been able to gather from the times she has seen my eyes weeping from a distance. You know already, sir, my parents' wealth and nobility, and that I am their only heir: if it seems to you that these are qualities enough for you to venture to make me happy in everything, receive me at once as your son. For if my father, carried away by other designs of his own, should not approve of this good fortune I have managed to find for myself, time has more power to undo and change things than human wills have."
The lovesick young man fell silent on saying this; and the judge was left, on hearing him, taken aback, bewildered and astonished, both at having heard the manner and the good sense with which Don Luis had revealed his feelings, and at finding himself at a point where he did not know what course to take in so sudden and unexpected a business. And so he answered nothing except that he should be easy for the present and keep his servants occupied so that they should not take him back that day, so that there might be time to consider what would be best for everybody. Don Luis kissed his hands by force, and even bathed them in tears — a thing that might have softened a heart of marble, let alone the judge's, who, being a man of sense, had already recognised how good that marriage was for his daughter, although, if it were possible, he would have wanted to bring it about with the consent of Don Luis's father, who he knew meant to get his son a title.
By this time the guests had made peace with the innkeeper, having paid him everything he asked, more through Don Quixote's persuasion and good arguments than through threats; and Don Luis's servants were waiting for the end of the judge's talk and their master's decision, when the devil, who never sleeps, arranged that at that very moment there came into the inn the barber from whom Don Quixote had taken Mambrino's helmet and Sancho Panza the ass's harness, which he had exchanged for his own. And this barber, taking his donkey to the stable, saw Sancho Panza mending something or other on the pack-saddle; and as soon as he saw it he recognised it, and made bold to rush at Sancho, saying:
"Ah, you thief, I have you here! Give me back my basin and my pack-saddle, along with all the harness you stole from me!"
Sancho, seeing himself attacked so suddenly and hearing the abuse being flung at him, with one hand took hold of the pack-saddle and with the other gave the barber such a cuff that he bathed his teeth in blood; but the barber did not for that let go of the hold he had on the pack-saddle. On the contrary, he raised his voice in such a way that everybody in the inn came running at the noise and the quarrel, and he was saying:
"Help, in the name of the king and the law! On top of my getting my own property back, this thieving highwayman wants to kill me!"
"You lie," answered Sancho, "for I am no highwayman: my master Don Quixote won these spoils in fair war."
Don Quixote was there by now, very pleased at seeing how well his squire both defended and attacked; and from then on he counted him a man of worth, and resolved in his heart to dub him a knight at the first chance that offered, thinking that the order of chivalry would be well bestowed on him.
Among other things the barber said in the course of the quarrel, he came to say:
"Gentlemen, this pack-saddle is as much mine as the death I owe to God, and I know it as well as if I had given birth to it; and there is my ass in the stable, who will not let me lie. If not, try it on him, and if it does not fit him to a hair I shall stand as a liar. And there is more: that the same day it was taken from me, they also took from me a new brass basin that had never been used, which was worth a crown of anybody's money."
Here Don Quixote could not hold himself in without answering; and putting himself between the two of them and separating them, and depositing the pack-saddle on the ground so that it should stay in plain sight until the truth came out, he said:
"So that your worships may see clearly and plainly the error this good squire is in, since he calls a basin what was, is and shall be Mambrino's helmet, which I took from him in fair war and made myself lord of by lawful and legitimate possession! As for the pack-saddle, I do not meddle in it; all I can say about it is that my squire Sancho asked my leave to take the trappings off this defeated coward's horse and adorn his own with them. I gave it him and he took them; and as for their having turned from trappings into a pack-saddle, I can give no other explanation than the ordinary one: that transformations of that sort are seen in the events of chivalry. In confirmation of which, run, Sancho my son, and bring out here the helmet this good man says is a basin."
"By God, sir," said Sancho, "if we have no other proof of our case than the one your worship gives, that Malbrino helmet is as much a basin as this good man's trappings are a pack-saddle!"
"Do as I tell you," replied Don Quixote; "for not everything in this castle is to be guided by enchantment."
Sancho went to where the basin was and brought it; and as soon as Don Quixote saw it, he took it in his hands and said:
"Let your worships look with what face this squire could say that this is a basin and not the helmet I have described. And I swear by the order of chivalry I profess that this is the same helmet I took from him, without anything having been added to it or taken away."
"There is no doubt about that," said Sancho at this, "because from the time my master won it until now he has only fought one battle with it, when he set free those unlucky men in chains; and if it hadn't been for this basinhelm, he wouldn't have come off very well that time either, because there was a great deal of stone-throwing in that engagement."
"What do your worships think, gentlemen," said the barber, "of what these fine gentlemen maintain, since they still insist that this is not a basin but a helmet?"
"And whoever says the contrary," said Don Quixote, "I shall make him see that he lies, if he is a knight; and if a squire, that he lies a thousand times over."
Our own barber, who was present at all of it, knowing Don Quixote's humour so well, chose to encourage his nonsense and carry the joke further so that everybody should laugh; and he said, speaking to the other barber:
"Master barber, or whoever you are, know that I too am of your trade, and have had my certificate of examination these twenty years and more, and I know very well every one of the instruments of barbering, without missing one. And neither more nor less, I was for a time in my youth a soldier, and I know too what a helmet is, and what a morion, and a close casque, and other things belonging to soldiering — I mean to the kinds of arms soldiers carry. And I say, saving a better opinion, and always deferring to a better understanding, that this piece which is here in front of us and which this good gentleman has in his hands is not only not a barber's basin, but is as far from being one as white is from black and truth from lies. I also say that this, although it is a helmet, is not a whole helmet."
"Certainly not," said Don Quixote, "because it is missing half of it, which is the beaver."
"That is so," said the curate, who had already understood his friend the barber's intention.
And Cardenio confirmed the same, and Don Fernando and his companions; and even the judge would have helped on the joke for his part if he had not been so preoccupied with Don Luis's business; but the earnest of what he was thinking about held him so much in suspense that he attended little or not at all to those pleasantries.
"God help me!" said the outwitted barber at this. "Is it possible that so many honourable people should say that this is not a basin but a helmet? This looks like a thing that could astonish a whole university, however learned it is. Enough: if this basin is a helmet, then this pack-saddle must be a horse's trappings too, as this gentleman has said."
"It looks like a pack-saddle to me," said Don Quixote, "but I have already said that I do not meddle in that."
"Whether it is a pack-saddle or trappings," said the curate, "depends on nothing more than Señor Don Quixote's saying so; for in these matters of chivalry all these gentlemen and I give him the advantage."
"By God, my dear sirs," said Don Quixote, "the things that have happened to me in this castle, in the two times I have lodged in it, are so many and so strange that I do not dare to say anything positively about whatever may be asked concerning what is contained in it, because I imagine that everything that goes on here goes by way of enchantment. The first time an enchanted Moor who is in it wearied me a great deal, and it went not much better for Sancho with certain followers of his. And last night I hung by this arm for nearly two hours, without knowing how or why I came to fall into that misfortune. So that for me now to put myself into a thing of so much confusion and give my opinion would be falling into rash judgement.
"As for what they say, that this is a basin and not a helmet, I have already answered; but as for declaring whether that is a pack-saddle or trappings, I do not dare to give a definitive sentence: I simply leave it to your worships' good judgement. Perhaps, since you are not dubbed knights as I am, the enchantments of this place will have nothing to do with your worships, and your understandings will be free, and you will be able to judge the things of this castle as they really and truly are, and not as they seemed to me."
"There is no doubt," Don Fernando answered to this, "that Señor Don Quixote has spoken very well today in saying that the settling of this case belongs to us. And so that it may go on a better footing, I shall take these gentlemen's votes in secret, and shall give full and clear notice of the result."
For those who knew about Don Quixote's humour, all this was matter for the greatest laughter; but to those who did not know about it, it seemed the greatest absurdity in the world — especially to Don Luis's four servants, and to Don Luis neither more nor less, and to three other travellers who had happened to come to the inn and who looked as if they were officers of the Holy Brotherhood, as in fact they were.
But the one who was most in despair was the barber, whose basin, there in front of his eyes, had turned into Mambrino's helmet, and whose pack-saddle he had no doubt at all was about to turn into a rich horse's trappings. And both sides laughed to see how Don Fernando went about taking the votes of one man after another, speaking to them in the ear so that they might declare in secret whether that jewel they had fought so much over was a pack-saddle or trappings. And after he had taken the votes of those who knew Don Quixote, he said aloud:
"The case is, my good man, that I am tired by now of taking so many opinions; because I see that there is nobody I ask what I want to know who does not tell me that it is nonsense to say this is a donkey's pack-saddle, and that it is a horse's trappings, and of a thoroughbred horse at that. And so you will have to be patient; because in spite of you and of your ass, this is trappings and not a pack-saddle, and you have argued and proved your side very badly."
"May I have no share in heaven," said the out-barbered barber, "if all your worships are not mistaken; and may my soul appear before God as this appears to me to be a pack-saddle and not trappings. But there, laws go where kings will — and so on; and I say no more. And truly I am not drunk, for I have not broken my fast — unless it is with sinning."
The foolish things the barber said caused no less laughter than Don Quixote's absurdities; and Don Quixote at this point said:
"There is nothing more to do here but that each man should take what is his own; and whom God gave it to, may Saint Peter bless it for him."
One of the four servants said:
"Unless this is a heavy joke, I cannot persuade myself that men of as good an understanding as all these people here are, or seem to be, would dare to say and maintain that this is not a basin and that not a pack-saddle. But since I see that they maintain it and say it, I give myself to understand that there is some mystery in insisting on a thing so contrary to what truth itself and experience itself show us. Because I swear by all that's holy" — and he hurled out a round oath — "that everybody alive in the world today shall not persuade me otherwise than that this is a barber's basin and that a donkey's pack-saddle."
"It might well be a she-donkey's," said the curate.
"It comes to the same," said the servant, "for the case does not turn on that, but on whether it is or is not a pack-saddle, as your worships say."
Hearing this, one of the officers who had come in, who had heard the quarrel and dispute, full of anger and annoyance said:
"It is as much a pack-saddle as my father is; and whoever has said or shall say anything else must be drunk as a grape."
"You lie like a base-born scoundrel," answered Don Quixote.
And raising his pike, which he never let out of his hands, he was going to bring it down on his head with such a blow that if the officer had not got out of the way he would have left him stretched out there. The pike went to pieces on the ground, and the other officers, who saw their companion badly used, raised their voices calling for help in the name of the Holy Brotherhood.
The innkeeper, who was of the company, ran at once for his staff of office and his sword and placed himself at his companions' side. Don Luis's servants gathered round Don Luis so that he should not get away from them in the uproar. The barber, seeing the house in confusion, took hold of his pack-saddle again, and Sancho did the same. Don Quixote put his hand to his sword and charged the officers. Don Luis shouted to his servants to leave him and go to the help of Don Quixote, and of Cardenio and Don Fernando, who were all supporting Don Quixote.
The curate shouted, the innkeeper's wife screamed, her daughter was distressed, Maritornes wept, Dorotea was bewildered, Luscinda taken aback and Doña Clara in a faint. The barber pounded Sancho, Sancho ground the barber. Don Luis, when one of his servants dared to take him by the arm so that he should not get away, gave him a punch that bathed his teeth in blood; the judge defended him; Don Fernando had an officer under his feet and was measuring his body with them entirely to his own satisfaction. The innkeeper raised his voice again, calling for help in the name of the Holy Brotherhood — so that the whole inn was wailing, shouting, screaming, confusion, fears, alarms, disasters, sword-strokes, cuffs, blows, kicks and effusion of blood.
And in the middle of this chaos, machine and labyrinth of things, it presented itself to Don Quixote's memory that he saw himself plunged head and heels into the discord of Agramante's camp; and so he said in a voice that made the inn thunder:
"Hold, all of you! Let everybody sheathe his sword! Let everybody be calm! Let everybody listen to me, if everybody wants to be left alive!"
At which great shout everybody stopped, and he went on to say:
"Did I not tell you, gentlemen, that this castle was enchanted, and that some region of devils must live in it? In confirmation of which, I want you to see with your own eyes how the discord of Agramante's camp has been transferred and moved here among us. See how over there they fight for the sword, here for the horse, over yonder for the eagle, over here for the helmet; and we are all fighting, and none of us understands one another. Come, then, your worship, my lord judge, and your worship, master curate, and let one of you act as King Agramante and the other as King Sobrino, and make peace among us; because by God Almighty it is great knavery that so many people of standing as we are here should kill one another for such trifling causes."
The officers, who did not understand Don Quixote's phrases and saw themselves badly handled by Don Fernando, Cardenio and their companions, would not calm down; the barber would, because in the quarrel he had had both his beard and his pack-saddle undone. Sancho, at his master's slightest word, obeyed like a good servant. Don Luis's four servants also stayed still, seeing how little they gained by not doing so. Only the innkeeper insisted that the insolences of that madman must be punished, who at every turn threw his inn into an uproar.
In the end the noise was quieted for the time being, the pack-saddle stayed trappings till the day of judgement, and the basin stayed a helmet and the inn a castle in Don Quixote's imagination.
Everybody being quiet, then, and made friends at the urging of the judge and the curate, Don Luis's servants went back to insisting that he should come away with them that moment. And while he was dealing with them, the judge consulted with Don Fernando, Cardenio and the curate about what he ought to do in that case, telling them the arguments Don Luis had put to him. In the end it was agreed that Don Fernando should tell Don Luis's servants who he was, and that it was his wish that Don Luis should go with him to Andalusia, where he would be valued by his brother the marquis as Don Luis's worth deserved; because in this way it was known from Don Luis's own intention that he would not for the present go back to his father's eyes if they tore him to pieces. So the four of them, understanding Don Fernando's rank and Don Luis's intention, decided between them that three of them should go back to tell his father what was happening, and that the other should stay to serve Don Luis and not to leave him until they came back for him, or until he saw what his father ordered.
In this way that whole machine of quarrels was quieted by Agramante's authority and King Sobrino's prudence. But the enemy of concord and the rival of peace, seeing himself despised and made a fool of, and how little fruit he had got out of putting them all into so confused a labyrinth, decided to try his hand again, raising up new quarrels and disturbances.
The fact is that the officers had quieted down, having overheard the rank of the men they had been fighting, and had withdrawn from the quarrel, since it seemed to them that whatever way it turned out they were bound to get the worst of the battle. But one of them — the one who had been pounded and trampled by Don Fernando — remembered that among some warrants he carried for arresting certain criminals, he carried one against Don Quixote, whom the Holy Brotherhood had ordered to be arrested for the freedom he had given the galley slaves, and as Sancho had very reasonably feared.
Thinking of this, then, he wanted to make certain whether the description he carried of Don Quixote fitted; and pulling a parchment out of his shirt, he came upon the one he was looking for. And setting himself to read it slowly, because he was not a good reader, at every word he read he set his eyes on Don Quixote and went on comparing the description in the warrant with Don Quixote's face; and he found that beyond any doubt this was the man the warrant spoke of. And he had hardly made certain when, gathering up his parchment, he took the warrant in his left hand and with his right seized Don Quixote by the neck so tightly that he did not let him breathe, and said at the top of his voice:
"Help, in the name of the Holy Brotherhood! And so that it may be seen that I ask it in earnest, let this warrant be read, in which it is set down that this highwayman is to be arrested."
The curate took the warrant and saw that everything the officer said was true, and how it agreed with Don Quixote's description; and Don Quixote, seeing himself badly treated by that villainous scoundrel, with his temper at its height and the very bones of his body cracking, as best he could seized the officer by the throat with both hands — so that if he had not been rescued by his companions, he would have left his life there before Don Quixote let go his hold.
The innkeeper, who was bound to support men of his own office, ran at once to help him. The innkeeper's wife, seeing her husband in a quarrel again, raised her voice again, whose note was taken up at once by Maritornes and her daughter, calling for help from heaven and from those who were there. Sancho, seeing what was going on, said:
"By the living Lord, everything my master says about the enchantments of this castle is true, since it is not possible to live one hour in it in peace!"
Don Fernando separated the officer and Don Quixote, and, to the satisfaction of both, unlocked their hands, which had the one a firm hold on the collar of the other's coat and the other on the other's throat. But the officers did not for this stop demanding their prisoner, and that people should help them to hand him over tied up and delivered entirely to their will, because that was what the service of the king and of the Holy Brotherhood required; on whose behalf they again asked for help and support in making that arrest of that robber and highwayman of paths and highways.
Don Quixote laughed to hear these words; and with great calm he said:
"Come here, you low and base-born people: do you call it robbery on the highway to give liberty to men in chains, to loose prisoners, to help the wretched, to raise up the fallen, to relieve the needy? Ah, infamous people, deserving by your low and vile understanding that heaven should not communicate to you the worth that is shut up in knight-errantry, nor give you to understand the sin and ignorance you are in in not reverencing the shadow, let alone the presence, of any knight errant!
"Come here, you gang of thieves and not officers of the gang, highway robbers with the licence of the Holy Brotherhood; tell me: who was the ignorant man who signed a warrant of arrest against such a knight as I am? Who was the man who did not know that knights errant are exempt from every court of law, and that their law is their sword, their statutes their courage, their ordinances their own will?
"Who was the idiot, I say again, who does not know that there is no patent of gentility with as many privileges and exemptions as the one a knight errant acquires on the day he is dubbed a knight and gives himself up to the hard exercise of chivalry? What knight errant ever paid poll tax, sales tax, the queen's shoe-money, the royal levy, road toll or ferry? What tailor ever charged him for making a suit of clothes? What governor of a castle took him in and made him pay his share of the reckoning? What king did not seat him at his table? What maiden did not take a fancy to him and surrender herself to him, at his whole liking and pleasure? And, in the end, what knight errant has there been, is there, or ever shall be in the world, who has not the spirit to give, single-handed, four hundred blows to four hundred officers who set themselves in front of him?"
While Don Quixote was saying this, the curate was persuading the officers that Don Quixote was out of his wits, as they could see by his deeds and his words, and that there was no reason to carry the business further, since even if they arrested him and took him away, they would have to let him go again as a madman. To which the man with the warrant answered that it was not his business to judge Don Quixote's madness but to do what his superior had ordered him; and that once he was arrested, they could let him go three hundred times for all he cared.
"For all that," said the curate, "this time you are not to take him — nor will he let himself be taken, as far as I can see."
In fact the curate knew so much to say to them, and Don Quixote knew how to do so many mad things, that the officers would have been madder than he was if they had not recognised Don Quixote's failing; and so they thought it best to calm down, and even to act as mediators in making peace between the barber and Sancho Panza, who were still keeping up their quarrel with great bitterness.
Finally, as officers of the law, they mediated the case and were arbitrators in it, in such a way that both parties were left, if not completely contented, at least somewhat satisfied — because the pack-saddles were exchanged but not the girths and headstalls. And as for the business of Mambrino's helmet, the curate, on the sly and without Don Quixote's knowing about it, gave him eight reals for the basin, and the barber made out a receipt for it and an undertaking not to claim he had been cheated, then or for ever after, amen.
These two quarrels being quieted, then, which were the chief and weightiest ones, it remained for Don Luis's servants to agree that three should go back and one should stay to go with him where Don Fernando wanted to take him. And as good luck and better fortune had already begun to break lances and smooth away difficulties in favour of the lovers at the inn and the brave men in it, it chose to carry it through and give everything a happy outcome; for the servants agreed to everything Don Luis wanted. At which Doña Clara was so delighted that nobody who looked at her face at that moment could have failed to see the joy of her soul.
Zoraida, although she did not properly understand all the things she had seen, grew sad and glad by guesswork, according to what she saw and noted in each person's face — especially her Spaniard's, on whom she always had her eyes fixed and her soul hanging.
The innkeeper, who had not failed to notice the gift and payment the curate had made the barber, asked for Don Quixote's reckoning, together with the damage to his wineskins and the loss of his wine, swearing that neither Rocinante nor Sancho's donkey should leave the inn until he was paid to the last farthing. The curate quieted it all and Don Fernando paid it — although the judge had also very willingly offered the payment. And they were all left in such peace and quiet that the inn no longer seemed the discord of Agramante's camp, as Don Quixote had called it, but the very peace and quiet of the time of Octavian; for all of which it was the general opinion that thanks were due to the good intentions and great eloquence of the curate and to Don Fernando's incomparable generosity.
Finding himself free and clear, then, of so many quarrels, his squire's as well as his own, it seemed to Don Quixote that it would be as well to go on with the journey he had begun and put an end to that great adventure he had been called and chosen for. And so with settled determination he went and knelt down before Dorotea, who would not let him say a word until he got up; and he, to obey her, got to his feet and said to her:
"It is a common proverb, fair lady, that diligence is the mother of good fortune, and in many and grave matters experience has shown that the promptness of the man of business brings a doubtful suit to a good end. But in nothing is this truth better shown than in matters of war, where speed and quickness forestall the enemy's plans and win the victory before the opponent puts himself on his guard.
"All this I say, high and precious lady, because it seems to me that our staying in this castle is by now without profit, and might do us so much harm that we should see it one day. For who knows whether by hidden and diligent spies your enemy the giant may already have learnt that I am going to destroy him, and, time allowing him, may fortify himself in some impregnable castle or fortress against which my efforts and the strength of my untiring arm would be of little use? So, my lady, let us forestall his designs, as I have said, with our own diligence, and let us set off at once and good fortune go with us; for your greatness's having your fortune as you wish it depends on nothing more than my not being slow in coming face to face with your opponent."
Don Quixote fell silent and said no more, and waited with great composure for the fair princess's answer; who, with a lordly manner suited to Don Quixote's style, answered him in this way:
"I thank you, sir knight, for the desire you show to favour me in my great distress, exactly as befits a knight, whose business and concern it is to favour orphans and the needy; and may heaven grant that your desire and mine be fulfilled, so that you may see that there are grateful women in the world. And as for my departure, let it be at once; for I have no will but yours: dispose of me entirely as you like and please, for she who once handed you the defence of her person and put in your hands the restoring of her dominions is not going to want to go against whatever your prudence may ordain."
"In God's hands be it," said Don Quixote. "Since it is so that a lady humbles herself before me, I do not want to lose the chance of raising her up and setting her on her inherited throne. Let the departure be at once, because what they usually say — that danger lies in delay — is putting spurs to my desire and to the road. And since heaven has not created, nor hell seen, anybody who could frighten me or make me a coward, saddle Rocinante, Sancho, and get your donkey ready and the queen's palfrey; and let us take our leave of the governor and of these gentlemen and go from here this very moment."
Sancho, who was present at all of it, said, shaking his head from side to side:
"Ah, sir, sir, there's more mischief in the little village than is talked about — saving the respect due to the honourable ladies present."
"What mischief can there be in any village, or in all the cities in the world, that can be talked about to my discredit, peasant?"
"If your worship gets angry," answered Sancho, "I'll be quiet, and leave off saying what I'm bound to say as a good squire, and as a good servant ought to say to his master."
"Say what you like," replied Don Quixote, "so long as your words are not aimed at making me afraid; for if you are afraid, you are behaving as who you are, and if I am not, I am behaving as who I am."
"It isn't that — sinner that I was before God!" answered Sancho. "It's that I take it as certain and settled that this lady who says she is queen of the great kingdom of Micomicón is no more so than my mother; because if she were what she says, she wouldn't go about nuzzling with one of the people in this company at every turn of the head and every time our backs are turned."
Dorotea turned red at Sancho's words, because it was true that her husband Don Fernando had once or twice, by stealth from other eyes, gathered with his lips part of the reward his desires deserved; which Sancho had seen, and it had seemed to him that such freedom was more the mark of a court lady than of the queen of so great a kingdom. And she neither could nor would answer Sancho a word, but let him go on with his talk; and he went on to say:
"I say this, sir, because if, after we have travelled roads and highways and gone through bad nights and worse days, the man who is enjoying himself at this inn is to come and pick the fruit of our labours, there is no reason for me to hurry and saddle Rocinante and put the pack-saddle on the donkey and get the palfrey ready; for it would be better for us to stay still, and let every whore spin her own flax, and let's eat."
God help me, how great the anger was that Don Quixote felt on hearing his squire's unseemly words! I say it was so great that with a stumbling voice and a stammering tongue, shooting live fire out of his eyes, he said:
"Oh, you villainous scoundrel, ill-mannered, unseemly, ignorant, ineloquent, foul-tongued, insolent, back-biting and slanderous creature! Have you dared to say such words in my presence and in that of these illustrious ladies, and dared to put such indecencies and impudences into your muddled imagination? Get out of my presence, monster of nature, treasury of lies, cupboard of falsehoods, granary of knaveries, inventor of wickednesses, publisher of stupidities, enemy of the respect due to royal persons! Go; do not appear before me, on pain of my anger!"
And saying this, he arched his eyebrows, blew out his cheeks, looked all round him and gave the ground a great stamp with his right foot — all signs of the anger shut up in his entrails. At which words and furious gestures Sancho was left so shrunken and frightened that he would have been glad if at that instant the earth had opened under his feet and swallowed him. And he did not know what to do with himself but to turn his back and get away from his master's angry presence.
But the quick-witted Dorotea, who by now understood Don Quixote's humour so well, said, to soften his anger:
"Do not be vexed, Sir Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance, at the foolish things your good squire has said, because perhaps he must not say them without some occasion; nor can it be suspected of his good understanding and Christian conscience that he would bear false witness against anybody. And so it must be believed, without putting any doubt on it, that since in this castle, as you say yourself, sir knight, everything goes and happens by way of enchantment, it might be — I say — that Sancho saw by this devilish means what he says he saw, so much to the offence of my modesty."
"By omnipotent God I swear," said Don Quixote at this, "that your greatness has hit the point, and that some evil vision must have been put before this poor sinner Sancho, which made him see what it would have been impossible to see except by way of enchantments; for I know well from this unfortunate man's goodness and innocence that he does not know how to bear false witness against anybody."
"So it is and so it shall be," said Don Fernando; "for which reason your worship, Señor Don Quixote, ought to forgive him and bring him back into the fold of your favour, sicut erat in principio, before such visions took his wits away."
Don Quixote answered that he did forgive him; and the curate went for Sancho, who came very humbly, and, kneeling down, asked his master for his hand. And he gave it him, and after letting him kiss it he gave him his blessing, saying:
"Now you will finally recognise, Sancho my son, that what I have told you many other times is true — that everything in this castle is done by way of enchantment."
"That is what I believe," said Sancho, "except that business of the blanket, which really happened in the ordinary way."
"Do not believe it," answered Don Quixote; "for if it had been so, I would have avenged you then, and even now. But neither then nor now could I, or did I see, anybody on whom to take vengeance for your injury."
They all wanted to know what this business of the blanket was, and the innkeeper told them, point by point: the aerial flights of Sancho Panza, at which they all laughed not a little, and at which Sancho would have been no less mortified if his master had not assured him all over again that it was an enchantment — although Sancho's foolishness never went so far that he believed it was not the plain and settled truth, with no mixture of deception in it, that he had been tossed in a blanket by people of flesh and blood, and not by phantoms dreamed or imagined, as his master believed and maintained.
Two days had now gone by since that distinguished company had been at the inn; and thinking it was now time to leave, they made arrangements so that, without Dorotea and Don Fernando putting themselves to the trouble of going back with Don Quixote to his village on the pretext of Queen Micomicona's deliverance, the curate and the barber might take him away, as they wanted, and try to have his madness cured in his own country.
And what they arranged was that they came to terms with an ox-carter who happened to pass that way, so that he should carry him in this fashion. They made a kind of cage of barred timbers, big enough for Don Quixote to fit comfortably inside it; and then Don Fernando and his companions, with Don Luis's servants and the officers, together with the innkeeper, all by the curate's arrangement and advice, covered their faces and disguised themselves, some one way and some another, so that Don Quixote should think they were different people from the ones he had seen in that castle.
This done, with the greatest silence they went in to where he was sleeping and resting after the past scuffles. They came up to him, sleeping free and safe from any such event; and taking a firm hold on him, they tied his hands and feet very securely, so that when he woke with a start he could not stir, or do anything except be astonished and taken aback at seeing such strange faces in front of him.
And at once he fell into the notion his continual, deranged imagination presented him with, and believed that all those figures were phantoms of that enchanted castle, and that without any doubt he was now enchanted, since he could neither move nor defend himself — exactly as the curate, the contriver of this machine, had thought it would happen.
Sancho alone, of everybody present, was in his own right senses and in his own right figure; who, although he wanted very little of having the same disease as his master, did not fail to recognise who all those counterfeit figures were. But he did not dare unstitch his mouth until he saw what that assault on and imprisonment of his master would come to — and his master did not say a word either, waiting to see the end of his misfortune. Which was that, bringing the cage there, they shut him inside it and nailed the timbers so firmly that they could not have been broken with two good pulls.
They then took him on their shoulders; and as they went out of the room there was heard a fearful voice, as fearful as the barber knew how to make it — not the pack-saddle one but the other — which said:
"O Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance! Let not the imprisonment thou goest in cause thee any affliction, for so it behoveth, that thou mayest the sooner finish the adventure wherein thy great valour hath placed thee. Which shall be finished when the furious Manchegan lion and the white Tobosan dove shall lie together in one, after their high necks have been bowed to the soft matrimonical yoke; from which unheard-of union there shall come forth into the light of the world brave whelps, who shall imitate the rampant claws of their valiant father. And this shall be before the pursuer of the fleeing nymph shall twice make his visit to the shining signs in his swift and natural course.
"And thou, O most noble and obedient squire that ever had sword at his belt, beard on his face and smell in his nostrils, be not dismayed or discontented to see carried off thus before thine own eyes the flower of knight-errantry; for soon, if it please the fashioner of the world, thou shalt see thyself so lofty and so exalted that thou shalt not know thyself, and the promises thy good master hath made thee shall not go unfulfilled. And I assure thee, on the part of the wise Lady Liarina, that thy wages shall be paid thee, as thou shalt see by the deed. And follow the footsteps of the valiant and enchanted knight, for it is fitting that thou shouldst go where ye both shall stop. And since it is not lawful for me to say more, God be with you; for I return to where I myself know."
And on finishing the prophecy he raised his voice to a high pitch and then lowered it, with such a tender note that even those who were in on the joke came near to believing that what they heard was true.
Don Quixote was left comforted by the prophecy he had heard, because he immediately gathered its meaning entire; and he saw that they were promising him that he would be joined in holy and lawful matrimony with his beloved Dulcinea of El Toboso, from whose happy womb would come the whelps, who were his children, for the everlasting glory of La Mancha. And believing this thoroughly and firmly, he raised his voice, and, giving a great sigh, said:
"O you, whoever you may be, who have prophesied so much good to me! I beg you to ask on my behalf the wise enchanter who has charge of my affairs not to let me perish in this prison where they are now taking me, until I have seen fulfilled such glad and incomparable promises as the ones that have been made to me here. For once this is so, I shall count the pains of my prison a glory, and these chains that gird me a relief, and this bed they lay me on not a hard field of battle but a soft couch and a happy bridal bed.
"And as far as the comfort of Sancho Panza my squire goes, I trust in his goodness and good conduct that he will not leave me in good luck or in bad; because even if it should not come about, through his short fortune or mine, that I can give him the isle, or something equivalent that I have promised him, at least his wages cannot be lost, for in my will, which is already made, I have set down what is to be given him — not in proportion to his many good services but to my own means."
Sancho Panza bowed to him with great politeness and kissed both his hands — because he could not have kissed one, both being tied together.
Then those apparitions took the cage on their shoulders and settled it on the ox-cart.
When Don Quixote saw himself caged in that fashion and up on the cart, he said:
"I have read many and very grave histories of knights errant, but I have never read, or seen, or heard that enchanted knights are carried off in this way and at the pace these lazy, slow animals promise. Because they generally carry them off through the air, with extraordinary speed, shut up in some grey dark cloud, or in some chariot of fire, or else on some hippogriff or other such beast. But that they should now be carrying me on an ox-cart — by the living God, it puzzles me!
"But perhaps the chivalry and the enchantments of these times of ours must follow a different road from the one the ancients followed. And it might also be that, as I am a new knight in the world and the first to have brought back to life the now forgotten calling of adventuring chivalry, other kinds of enchantment and other ways of carrying off the enchanted may also have been newly invented. What do you think of this, Sancho my son?"
"I don't know what I think," answered Sancho, "not being as well read as your worship in errant writings. But for all that, I'd dare to state and swear that these apparitions going about here are not altogether Catholic."
"Catholic? My father!" answered Don Quixote. "How can they be Catholic when they are all devils who have taken on phantom bodies in order to come and do this and put me in this state? And if you want to see the truth of it, touch them and feel them, and you will find that they have no body but of air, and that they consist of nothing but the appearance."
"By God, sir," replied Sancho, "I've touched them already; and this devil going about here so busily is plump with flesh, and has another property very different from the one I've heard say devils have. Because, according to what people say, they all smell of brimstone and other bad smells; but this one smells of amber half a league off."
Sancho said this about Don Fernando, who, being such a great lord, must have smelt of what Sancho said.
"Do not be surprised at that, friend Sancho," answered Don Quixote; "for I would have you know that devils know a great deal, and although they carry smells about with them, they themselves smell nothing, because they are spirits; and if they do smell, they cannot smell good things but only bad and stinking ones. And the reason is that, since wherever they are they carry hell with them, and cannot receive any kind of relief in their torments, and since a good smell is a thing that delights and pleases, it is not possible that they should smell anything good. And if it seems to you that this devil you speak of smells of amber, either you are deceiving yourself or he wants to deceive you by making you not take him for a devil."
All this conversation passed between master and man. And Don Fernando and Cardenio, afraid that Sancho might come to see all the way through their invention — which he was already very close on the heels of — decided to cut it short by leaving; and calling the innkeeper aside, they ordered him to saddle Rocinante and put the pack-saddle on Sancho's donkey, which he did very quickly.
By this time the curate had come to terms with the officers to accompany him as far as his village, giving them so much a day. Cardenio hung on the pommel of Rocinante's saddle the shield on one side and the basin on the other, and by signs ordered Sancho to get up on his ass and take Rocinante's reins, and stationed the two officers with their muskets on the two sides of the cart.
But before the cart moved, the innkeeper's wife, her daughter and Maritornes came out to say goodbye to Don Quixote, pretending that they were weeping with grief at his misfortune; to whom Don Quixote said:
"Do not weep, my good ladies, for all these misfortunes go with those who profess what I profess; and if these calamities did not happen to me, I should not count myself a famous knight errant. Because to knights of little name and fame such things never happen, since there is nobody in the world who remembers them. To the valorous, yes; for they have many princes and many other knights envying their virtue and their courage, who try by wicked means to destroy the good. But for all that, virtue is so powerful that by itself alone, in spite of all the necromancy known to its first inventor Zoroaster, it will come out victorious from every trial and will give light to the world, as the sun gives it in the sky.
"Forgive me, fair ladies, if through any carelessness of mine I have done you any wrong; for wilfully and knowingly I never did any to anybody. And pray to God to get me out of these prisons where some ill-intentioned enchanter has put me; for if I see myself free of them, the favours you have done me in this castle will not fall out of my memory, that I may repay them and serve them and reward them as they deserve."
While the ladies of the castle were doing this with Don Quixote, the curate and the barber took their leave of Don Fernando and his companions, and of the captain and his brother and all those contented ladies, especially Dorotea and Luscinda. They all embraced and agreed to send each other news of how they fared, Don Fernando telling the curate where he should write to him so as to let him know how Don Quixote ended, assuring him that there would be nothing that would give him more pleasure than to know it; and that he likewise would let him know about everything he saw might give him pleasure, both about his marriage and about Zoraida's baptism, and how Don Luis turned out, and Luscinda's return home. The curate promised to do everything he was asked, with complete punctuality. They embraced again, and again made fresh offers.
The innkeeper came up to the curate and gave him some papers, telling him he had found them in the lining of the portmanteau where the Tale of Reckless Curiosity had been found; and that since their owner had never come back that way, he should take the lot of them, for as he could not read he did not want them. The curate thanked him; and opening them at once, he saw that at the beginning of the writing it said: The Tale of Rinconete and Cortadillo — from which he understood it was some story, and gathered that since the Reckless Curiosity had been good, this one would be too, since they might all be by the same author. And so he kept it, meaning to read it when he had the chance.
He got on his horse, and his friend the barber too, with their masks on so that they should not be immediately recognised by Don Quixote, and they set off riding behind the cart. And the order they went in was this: the cart went first, driven by its owner; on the two sides went the officers, as has been said, with their muskets; then came Sancho Panza on his ass, leading Rocinante by the rein. Behind all this came the curate and the barber on their powerful mules, with their faces covered as has been said, with a grave, composed bearing, travelling no faster than the slow pace of the oxen allowed. Don Quixote went along seated in the cage, his hands tied, his feet stretched out and leaning against the bars, with as much silence and as much patience as though he had not been a man of flesh but a statue of stone.
And so, at that pace and in that silence, they travelled a good two leagues, until they came to a valley which seemed to the ox-driver a suitable place to rest and give the oxen some grazing. And discussing it with the curate, the barber was of the opinion that they should go on a little further, because he knew that behind a rise that showed close by there was a valley with more grass, and much better than the one where they wanted to stop. The barber's opinion was taken, and so they went on with their journey.
At this the curate turned his head and saw that behind them were coming some six or seven men on horseback, well turned out and equipped, by whom they were soon overtaken, because they were travelling not with the phlegm and calm of oxen but like men riding canons' mules and eager to get quickly to the inn for their midday rest, which showed less than a league from there. The busy men came up to the lazy ones and greeted each other courteously; and one of those who were coming — who was, in short, a canon of Toledo and master of the rest who were with him — seeing the orderly procession of cart, officers, Sancho, Rocinante, curate and barber, and above all Don Quixote caged and imprisoned, could not help asking what it meant to be taking that man along in that way; although he had already given himself to understand, seeing the officers' insignia, that he must be some villainous highwayman, or some other criminal whose punishment belonged to the Holy Brotherhood. One of the officers, to whom the question was put, answered like this:
"Sir, what it means for this gentleman to be going along in this fashion, let him say himself, because we do not know."
Don Quixote heard the conversation and said:
"Are your worships by any chance, sir knights, versed and expert in this matter of knight-errantry? Because if you are, I shall tell you my misfortunes; and if not, there is no reason for me to weary myself in telling them."
And by this time the curate and the barber had come up, seeing that the travellers were in conversation with Don Quixote of La Mancha, so as to answer in such a way that their contrivance should not be discovered.
The canon answered what Don Quixote had said:
"Truly, brother, I know more about books of chivalry than about Villalpando's Compendium of Logic. So that if it depends on nothing more than that, you may safely tell me whatever you like."
"In God's hands be it," replied Don Quixote. "Since that is so, I want you to know, sir knight, that I go enchanted in this cage through the envy and fraud of wicked enchanters; for virtue is more persecuted by the wicked than loved by the good. A knight errant I am, and not one of those whose names Fame never remembered to make everlasting in her memory, but one of those who, in spite and to the vexation of envy itself, and of all the magi Persia bred, the brahmins India and the gymnosophists Ethiopia, shall set his name in the temple of immortality, to serve as an example and a model in the ages to come, where knights errant may see the steps they must follow if they wish to reach the summit and honourable height of arms."
"Señor Don Quixote of La Mancha speaks the truth," said the curate at this point; "for he goes enchanted in this cart, not through his own faults and sins but through the ill will of those whom virtue annoys and courage angers. This, sir, is the Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance, if you have ever heard him named, whose valorous exploits and great deeds shall be written on hard bronze and in everlasting marble, however much envy may weary itself in darkening them and malice in hiding them."
When the canon heard the prisoner and the free man speak in such a style, he came near to crossing himself in astonishment, and could not make out what had happened to him; and all those who came with him fell into the same astonishment.
At this Sancho Panza, who had come close to hear the conversation, said, to patch everything up:
"Now, gentlemen, love me or hate me for what I say, the fact of the matter is that my master Don Quixote is as much enchanted as my mother is. He has his wits whole, he eats and drinks and does his necessities like other men, and as he did them yesterday, before they caged him. This being so, how do they want to make me understand that he goes enchanted? For I have heard a great many people say that the enchanted neither eat nor sleep nor talk, and my master, if nobody stops him, will talk more than thirty attorneys."
And turning to look at the curate, he went on to say:
"Ah, master curate, master curate! Did your worship think I don't know you, and do you suppose I don't fathom and guess what these new enchantments are aiming at? Well, let me tell you I know you, however much you cover your face, and let me tell you I understand you, however much you disguise your tricks. In the end, where envy reigns virtue cannot live, nor generosity where there is meanness.
"Devil take it! For if it hadn't been for your reverence, this would be the hour when my master was married to the Princess Micomicona and I was a count at the very least — for nothing else was to be expected, both from the goodness of my master, the Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance, and from the greatness of my services. But I see now that what they say is true: that the wheel of Fortune goes round faster than a millwheel, and that those who were riding high yesterday are on the floor today. It grieves me for my children and my wife, because when they could and should have expected to see their father come in at their door made a governor or viceroy of some isle or kingdom, they will see him come in made a stable-boy.
"All this I have said, master curate, is nothing more than to urge on your paternity to make a matter of conscience of the bad treatment my master is being given, and to look out that God does not call you to account in the next life for this imprisonment of my master, and charge you with all those rescues and good deeds my master Don Quixote is failing to do in this time he is a prisoner."
"Mend me those lamps!" said the barber at this point. "So you too, Sancho, are of your master's brotherhood? By the living Lord, I am beginning to see that you will have to keep him company in the cage, and that you will end as enchanted as he is, for as much as you have caught of his humour and his chivalry! In an evil hour you got yourself pregnant with his promises, and in an evil hour that isle you so much want got into your brainpan."
"I am not pregnant by anybody," answered Sancho, "nor am I a man to let myself be got pregnant, not by the king himself; and poor as I am, I am an Old Christian and I owe nothing to anybody. And if I want isles, other men want worse things; and every man is the son of his own deeds. And, being a man, I might come to be Pope, let alone governor of an isle — the more so as my master may win so many that he will be short of people to give them to.
"Let your worship look how you talk, master barber; for there is more to it than shaving beards, and there is a difference between one Peter and another. I say this because we all know one another, and no loaded dice are to be thrown at me. And as for this business of my master's enchantment, God knows the truth; and let it stay there, because stirring it only makes it worse."
The barber did not want to answer Sancho, in case with his simplicities he should reveal what he and the curate were so anxious to conceal. And for this same fear the curate had told the canon to ride on a little ahead, and he would tell him the mystery of the caged man, along with other things that would entertain him. The canon did so and went on ahead with his servants and with him; and he listened attentively to everything the curate chose to tell him about Don Quixote's character, life, madness and habits, telling him briefly the beginning and the cause of his derangement and the whole progress of his adventures, up to his having been put in that cage, and the plan they had of taking him to his own country to see whether by some means they could find a remedy for his madness.
The servants and the canon were astonished all over again at hearing Don Quixote's extraordinary history; and on finishing hearing it, he said:
"Truly, master curate, I find by my own reckoning that these things they call books of chivalry are harmful to the state. And although, carried away by an idle and false taste, I have read almost the beginning of most of those that are in print, I have never been able to bring myself to read a single one from beginning to end — because it seems to me that, more or less, they are all one and the same thing, and this one has no more in it than that, nor that one than the other.
"And as it seems to me, this kind of writing and composition comes under the head of those fables they call Milesian, which are nonsensical tales that aim only at giving pleasure and not at teaching: the opposite of what the apologue fables do, which give pleasure and teach at the same time. And granting that the chief purpose of such books is to give pleasure, I do not know how they can achieve it, being full of so many and such outrageous absurdities. For the pleasure the soul conceives must come from the beauty and harmony it sees or contemplates in the things that sight or imagination sets before it; and everything that has ugliness and disorder in it can cause us no contentment at all.
"Then what beauty can there be, or what proportion of the parts to the whole and of the whole to the parts, in a book or fable where a lad of sixteen deals a slash at a giant like a tower and divides him into two halves, as if he were made of sugar-paste? Or where, when they want to paint us a battle, after saying that on the enemy side there are a million combatants, so long as the hero of the book is against them we must of necessity, however it displeases us, understand that this knight won the victory by the valour of his strong arm alone?
"Then what shall we say of the readiness with which a queen or an heiress empress lets herself be carried off in the arms of a wandering and unknown knight? What mind, unless it is altogether barbarous and uncultivated, can be satisfied with reading that a great tower full of knights goes sailing over the sea like a ship with a favourable wind, and tonight is in Lombardy and tomorrow morning in the lands of Prester John of the Indies, or in others that neither Ptolemy discovered nor Marco Polo saw?
"And if it were answered to me that the men who compose such books write them as things of fiction, and that so they are not obliged to look at niceties or truths, I would answer them that a lie is the better the more it looks like truth, and pleases the more the more it has of the doubtful and the possible about it. Lying fables must be married to the understanding of those who read them, being written in such a way that, making impossibilities easy, levelling out great things, holding minds in suspense, they may astonish, hold, excite and entertain, so that wonder and delight go along at one and the same pace. And none of these things can be done by a man who runs away from likeness to truth and from imitation, in which the perfection of what is written consists.
"I have never seen any book of chivalry that makes a whole body of a fable with all its limbs, so that the middle corresponds to the beginning and the end to the beginning and the middle; instead they compose them with so many limbs that it looks more as if they meant to form a chimera or a monster than to make a well-proportioned figure. Besides this, they are harsh in style, incredible in their exploits, lascivious in their love affairs, ill-mannered in their courtesies, long in their battles, foolish in their arguments, absurd in their journeys; and finally, they are strangers to all judicious craft, and for this reason deserve to be banished from the Christian commonwealth as a useless people."
The curate listened to him with great attention, and thought him a man of good understanding and that he was right in everything he said; and so he told him that, being of the same opinion himself and having a grudge against books of chivalry, he had burnt all Don Quixote's, which were a great many. And he told him about the scrutiny he had made of them, and which he had condemned to the fire and which he had left alive — at which the canon laughed not a little, and said that for all the ill he had spoken of such books, he found one good thing in them: that they were a subject on which a good mind could show itself, because they gave a long, broad field over which the pen could run without any hindrance.
There it could describe shipwrecks, storms, encounters and battles; painting a valorous captain with all the qualities required to be one, showing himself prudent in forestalling the tricks of his enemies, and an eloquent orator in persuading or dissuading his soldiers, mature in counsel, quick in decision, as brave in waiting as in attacking; painting now a lamentable and tragic event, now a glad and unexpected happening; there a most beautiful lady, modest, clever and reserved; here a Christian knight, brave and courteous; over there an outrageous barbarian braggart; over here a courteous prince, valorous and well-mannered; representing the goodness and loyalty of vassals, the greatness and favours of lords.
Now he can show himself an astrologer, now an excellent cosmographer, now a musician, now well informed in matters of state, and sometimes the chance will come to him to show himself a necromancer, if he likes. He can show the cunning of Ulysses, the piety of Aeneas, the courage of Achilles, the misfortunes of Hector, the treacheries of Sinon, the friendship of Euryalus, the generosity of Alexander, the valour of Caesar, the clemency and truthfulness of Trajan, the fidelity of Zopyrus, the prudence of Cato; and, in the end, all those actions that can make an illustrious man perfect — now putting them in one man alone, now dividing them among many.
"And this being done with a pleasant style and with an ingenious invention that comes as close as possible to the truth, he will without doubt weave a web of various and beautiful threads which, once finished, will show such perfection and beauty that it will achieve the best end that is aimed at in writing, which is to teach and give pleasure at the same time, as I have said already. Because the loose form of writing in these books gives the author room to show himself epic, lyric, tragic, comic, with all those parts that the sweetest and most agreeable arts of poetry and rhetoric hold in themselves; for the epic can be written in prose as well as in verse."
"It is exactly as your worship says, master canon," said the curate; "and for this reason those who up to now have composed such books deserve more blame, for having taken no notice of any good reasoning, or of the art and rules by which they might have guided themselves and become as famous in prose as the two princes of Greek and Latin poetry are in verse."
"I, at least," replied the canon, "have had a certain temptation to write a book of chivalry, keeping in it all the points I have mentioned. And if I am to confess the truth, I have more than a hundred pages written. And to make trial of whether they came up to my own estimate of them, I have shown them to men passionately fond of this kind of reading, learned and judicious, and to others who are ignorant and attend only to the pleasure of hearing absurdities; and from all of them I have found an agreeable approval.
"But for all that, I have not gone on with it, both because it seems to me I am doing a thing outside my profession and because I see that the number of the simple is greater than that of the prudent; and although it is better to be praised by the few who are wise than laughed at by the many who are fools, I do not want to submit myself to the muddled judgement of the conceited common crowd, whose business it is for the most part to read such books.
"But what most took it out of my hands, and even out of my thoughts, to finish it was an argument I made with myself, drawn from the plays that are performed nowadays, saying: 'If those that are in use now, both the invented ones and those from history, all or most of them are known absurdities and things without head or tail — and in spite of that the crowd hears them with pleasure and holds them and approves them as good, when they are so far from being so; and the authors who compose them and the actors who perform them say that they have to be so because that is how the crowd wants them and not otherwise; and that the ones which have a plan and follow the fable as art requires serve for nothing but four judicious men who understand them, while all the rest are left with no notion of their craftsmanship; and that it suits them better to earn a living from the many than a reputation from the few — in that case my book, after I have singed my eyebrows keeping the rules I have mentioned, will end by leaving me like the tailor on the corner, who sewed for nothing and found the thread himself.'
"And although I have sometimes tried to persuade the actors that they are deceived in the opinion they hold, and that they will draw more people and win more fame by performing plays that follow the art than with the absurd ones, they are so tied and welded to their own opinion that there is no argument or evidence that will get them out of it.
"I remember that one day I said to one of these obstinate men: 'Tell me, do you not remember that a few years ago three tragedies were performed in Spain, composed by a famous poet of these kingdoms, which were such that they astonished, delighted and held in suspense everybody who heard them, simple and prudent alike, the crowd and the select alike — and those three alone gave the players more money than thirty of the best that have been made since?'
"'No doubt,' answered the manager I speak of, 'your worship must mean La Isabela, La Filis and La Alejandra.'
"'Those are the ones I mean,' I replied; 'and see whether they kept the precepts of the art well, and whether by keeping them they failed to appear what they were and to please everybody. So the fault does not lie with the crowd, who ask for absurdities, but with those who do not know how to put anything else on. Why, La ingratitud vengada was no absurdity, nor did La Numancia have any in it, nor was any to be found in El mercader amante, nor in La enemiga favorable either, nor in certain others that have been composed by some poets of understanding, for their own fame and renown and for the profit of those who have performed them.'
"And I added other things to these, with which, in my opinion, I left him somewhat confused but neither satisfied nor convinced enough to be got out of his mistaken idea."
"Your worship has touched on a matter, master canon," said the curate at this point, "that has woken in me an old grudge I have against the plays that are in use now — such a grudge that it matches the one I have against the books of chivalry. Because, the play having to be, as Cicero thinks, a mirror of human life, an example of manners and an image of truth, the ones that are performed now are mirrors of absurdity, examples of foolishness and images of lasciviousness.
"For what greater absurdity can there be in the matter we are discussing than for a baby in swaddling clothes to come on in the first scene of the first act, and in the second to come on already a bearded man? And what greater than to paint us a brave old man and a cowardly young one, a rhetorical footman, a page giving counsel, a king turned porter and a princess turned scullery maid?
"What shall I say, then, of the care they take over the times in which the actions they perform can or could have happened, except that I have seen a play whose first act began in Europe, whose second was in Asia and whose third finished in Africa — and if it had been in four acts, the fourth would have finished in America, and so it would have been done in all four quarters of the world?
"And if imitation is the chief thing a play must have, how is it possible to satisfy any moderate understanding when, inventing an action that takes place in the time of King Pepin and Charlemagne, the very man who plays the leading part in it is said to have been the Emperor Heraclius who entered Jerusalem with the Cross, and the man who won the Holy Sepulchre like Godfrey of Bouillon, when there are endless years between the one and the other? And when, the play being founded on an invented thing, they attribute historical truths to it and mix in with it pieces of other events that happened to different people at different times — and this not with likely contrivances but with plain errors, altogether inexcusable?
"And the bad thing is that there are ignorant men who say that this is what perfection is, and that anything else is looking for dainties. And what if we come to religious plays? What false miracles they invent in them, what apocryphal and ill-understood things, attributing to one saint the miracles of another! And even in secular plays they dare to work miracles, with no more respect or consideration than their thinking that such a miracle and stage effect, as they call it, will go down well there, so that ignorant people may be astonished and come to the play. All of which is to the prejudice of truth and to the damage of history, and even to the disgrace of the Spanish wits; because foreigners, who keep the laws of drama with great exactness, take us for barbarians and ignoramuses when they see the absurdities and follies of the plays we make.
"And it would not be enough excuse for this to say that the chief purpose well-ordered states have in allowing public plays to be performed is to entertain the community with some honest recreation and to divert it at times from the bad humours that idleness generally breeds; and that since this is achieved with any play, good or bad, there is no need to lay down laws or to oblige those who compose and perform them to make them as they ought to be made, since, as I have said, what is aimed at in them is achieved with any of them.
"To which I would answer that this end would be achieved a great deal better, beyond all comparison, with good plays than with those that are not good. Because after hearing a play that is well made and well ordered, the listener would come away cheered by the comic parts, taught by the serious ones, astonished by the events, made wiser by the arguments, forewarned by the deceptions, made shrewd by the examples, angry against vice and in love with virtue; for all these effects a good play must wake in the mind of whoever listens to it, however rustic and dull he may be. And it is impossible with every impossibility that a play which has all these qualities should fail to cheer and entertain, satisfy and content, a great deal more than one which lacks them — as for the most part these do that are ordinarily performed nowadays.
"And the poets who compose them are not to blame for it, because there are some among them who know very well where they go wrong and know extremely well what they ought to do; but as plays have become a saleable commodity, they say, and they say truly, that the players would not buy them if they were not of that stamp. And so the poet tries to fall in with what the player who is to pay him for his work asks of him.
"And that this is true may be seen by the many and endless plays composed by a most fortunate wit of these kingdoms, with so much elegance, so much charm, such graceful verse, such good arguments, such weighty maxims, and, in the end, so full of eloquence and loftiness of style that his fame fills the world. And through his wanting to fit in with the players' taste, they have not all reached — as some of them have reached — the point of perfection they require.
"Others compose them with so little care for what they are doing that after they have been performed the players have to run away and go into hiding, afraid of being punished — as they often have been — for having performed things to the prejudice of certain kings and to the dishonour of certain families.
"And all these troubles would stop, and a great many more that I do not mention, if there were at Court some intelligent and judicious person to examine all plays before they were performed — not only those that were put on at Court but all that people wanted to perform in Spain — and without whose approval, seal and signature no magistrate in his own district would allow any play to be performed. And in this way the players would take care to send their plays to Court and could perform them in safety; and those who compose them would look at what they were doing with more care and study, being afraid of having to put their works through the strict examination of somebody who understands. And in this way good plays would be made and what is aimed at in them would be most happily achieved: the entertainment of the people, the reputation of the wits of Spain, the profit and safety of the players and the saving of the trouble of punishing them.
"And if the same man, or another, were given the charge of examining the books of chivalry that were newly composed, without doubt some might come out with the perfection your worship has described, enriching our language with the agreeable and precious treasure of eloquence, and giving occasion for the old books to be darkened by the light of the new ones that came out, for the honest pastime not only of the idle but of the busiest people; for it is not possible for the bow to be always bent, nor can human nature and weakness keep going without some lawful recreation."
The canon and the curate had got to this point in their conversation when the barber, riding ahead, came up to them and said to the curate:
"Here, sir licentiate, is the place I said would be a good one for us to take our midday rest while the oxen have fresh and plentiful grazing."
"So it seems to me too," answered the curate.
And on telling the canon what he meant to do, he too wanted to stay with them, invited by the site of a beautiful valley that offered itself to their sight. And both to enjoy it and to enjoy the curate's conversation, of whom he had by now grown fond, and to learn in more detail about Don Quixote's exploits, he ordered some of his servants to go to the inn, which was not far from there, and to bring from it whatever there was to eat, for all of them, because he had decided to take his midday rest in that place that afternoon. To which one of his servants answered that the pack-mule with the supplies, which must be at the inn by now, was carrying provisions enough to make it unnecessary to take anything from the inn but barley.
"Well, if that is so," said the canon, "let all the mounts be taken over there, and have the pack-mule brought back."
While this was going on, Sancho, seeing that he could speak to his master without the constant attendance of the curate and the barber, whom he regarded as suspect, came up to the cage where his master was and said to him:
"Sir, to unburden my conscience I want to tell you how things stand about this enchantment of yours; and it is that these two who are coming along here with their faces covered are the curate of our village and the barber. And I imagine they have hit on this plan of carrying you off like this out of pure envy at your worship's getting ahead of them in doing famous deeds. This truth being granted, it follows that you do not go enchanted but hoodwinked and made a fool of. As proof of which I want to ask you one thing; and if you answer me as I believe you are bound to answer, you will touch this trick with your hand and will see that you do not go enchanted but with your judgement upside down."
"Ask what you like, Sancho my son," answered Don Quixote, "and I shall satisfy you and answer entirely as you wish. And as for your saying that those men who are coming and going with us are the curate and the barber, our fellow-countrymen and acquaintances, it may well be that they seem to be the very men; but that they really and in fact are, do not believe that on any account.
"What you have to believe and understand is that if they look like them, as you say, it must be that those who have enchanted me will have taken that appearance and likeness; because it is easy for enchanters to take whatever shape they fancy, and they will have taken those of these friends of ours to give you occasion to think what you are thinking and to put you in a labyrinth of fancies from which you could not manage to get out, even if you had Theseus's thread.
"And they will also have done it so that I should waver in my understanding and not be able to make out where this injury comes to me from. Because if on the one hand you tell me that the barber and the curate of our village are with me, and on the other I see myself caged, and know of myself that human strength, unless it were supernatural, would not be enough to cage me — what do you want me to say or think, except that the manner of my enchantment goes beyond every one I have read of in all the histories that treat of knights errant who have been enchanted? So you may set your mind at peace and rest about believing that they are the men you say, because they are as much those men as I am a Turk. And as for your wanting to ask me something, say on, and I shall answer you even if you go on asking me from now till tomorrow."
"Our Lady help me!" answered Sancho, giving a great shout. "And is it possible that your worship is so thick in the skull and so short of brains that you do not see that what I am telling you is the plain truth, and that in this imprisonment and misfortune of yours malice has a larger part than enchantment? But since it is so, I mean to prove to you plainly that you do not go enchanted. If not, tell me — and so may God get you out of this storm, and so may you find yourself in my lady Dulcinea's arms when you least expect it —"
"Have done with conjuring me," said Don Quixote, "and ask what you like; for I have told you already that I shall answer you with complete punctuality."
"That is what I ask," replied Sancho; "and what I want to know is that you should tell me, without adding or taking away anything at all but with the whole truth, as it is expected that all those who profess arms should tell it and do tell it — as your worship professes them, under the title of knights errant —"
"I say that I shall not lie in anything," answered Don Quixote. "Do finish asking, for truly you weary me with so many safeguards, entreaties and preambles, Sancho."
"I say that I am sure of my master's goodness and truthfulness; and so, because it bears on our case, I ask, speaking with all respect, whether by any chance since your worship has been caged and, in your own opinion, enchanted in this cage, you have felt the wish and the need to do the greater or the lesser waters, as they say."
"I do not understand that about doing waters, Sancho; make yourself clearer if you want me to answer you straight."
"Is it possible that your worship does not understand about doing the lesser or the greater waters? Why, at school they wean the boys on it. Well, let me tell you that what I mean is whether you have felt the need to do the thing that cannot be got out of."
"Ah, now, now I understand you, Sancho! And many times; and I have the need even now. Get me out of this danger, for things are not altogether clean here!"
"Ah," said Sancho, "I have you now! This is what I wanted to know as I want my own soul and my own life. Come here, sir: could you deny what they commonly say hereabouts when a person is out of sorts — 'I don't know what is the matter with so-and-so, he neither eats nor drinks nor sleeps nor answers to the point what he is asked; you would think he was enchanted'? From which it comes out that those who do not eat or drink or sleep or do the natural acts I speak of are the ones who are enchanted — but not those who have the need your worship has, and who drinks when he is given drink, and eats when he has food, and answers everything he is asked."
"You speak the truth, Sancho," answered Don Quixote; "but I have told you already that there are many kinds of enchantment, and it might be that with time they have changed from one kind to another, and that the custom now is for the enchanted to do everything I do, although they did not do it before. So that against the custom of the times there is no arguing and no drawing conclusions. I know and am convinced that I go enchanted, and this is enough for the safety of my conscience — which I should burden very heavily if I thought I was not enchanted and let myself stay in this cage, idle and cowardly, cheating of my help all those needy and distressed people who at this very hour must have a pressing and extreme need of my aid and protection."
"For all that," replied Sancho, "I say that for greater abundance and satisfaction it would be as well if your worship tried to get out of this prison — which I undertake with all my power to make easy, and even to get you out of it — and tried once more to get up on your good Rocinante, who also seems to go enchanted, so melancholy and sad is he. And this done, let us try our luck again at looking for more adventures; and if it does not turn out well for us, we still have time to come back to the cage, in which I promise, on the word of a good and loyal squire, to shut myself up along with your worship, if by any chance your worship should be so unlucky, or I so simple, as not to manage to bring off what I say."
"I am content to do as you say, brother Sancho," replied Don Quixote; "and when you see an opening for putting my liberty into effect, I shall obey you in everything and through everything. But you, Sancho, will see how mistaken you are in your understanding of my misfortune."
In this talk the knight errant and the ill-erring squire entertained themselves until they arrived where the curate, the canon and the barber, already dismounted, were waiting for them.
The ox-driver at once unyoked the oxen from the cart and let them go at their ease about that green and pleasant spot, whose coolness invited people to enjoy it — not people as enchanted as Don Quixote but as alert and judicious as his squire; who begged the curate to allow his master to come out of the cage for a while, because if they did not let him come out, that prison would not travel as clean as the decency of such a knight as his master required.
The curate understood him and said he would very willingly do what he asked if he were not afraid that as soon as his master found himself at liberty he would be up to his old tricks and go off where nobody would ever see him again.
"I stand surety against his running away," answered Sancho.
"And I too," said the canon, "and the more so if he gives me his word as a knight not to leave us until it is our wish."
"I do give it," answered Don Quixote, who was listening to all of it; "the more so as a man who is enchanted, as I am, is not free to do with his person what he likes, because the one who enchanted him can make him not stir from one spot for three centuries; and if he should have run away, he will bring him back through the air."
And since this was so, they might very well let him loose, especially as it was so much to everybody's advantage; and if they would not let him loose, he warned them that he could not help troubling their sense of smell, unless they got out of the way.
The canon took him by the hand, although he had them tied, and on his good faith and word they let him out of the cage — at which he was infinitely and enormously glad to find himself outside it. And the first thing he did was to stretch his whole body, and then he went to where Rocinante was, and, giving him two pats on the hindquarters, said:
"I still hope in God and in his blessed Mother, flower and mirror of horses, that we shall soon see ourselves both as we would wish: you with your master on your back, and I on top of you, exercising the office God threw me into the world for."
And saying this, Don Quixote went off with Sancho to a remote place, from which he came back much relieved and with more eagerness to put into practice whatever his squire should decide.
The canon watched him, and marvelled at the strangeness of his great madness, and at the fact that in everything he said and answered he showed himself to have an excellent understanding, only losing his stirrups — as has been said other times — when he was talked to about chivalry. And so, moved by compassion, after they had all sat down on the green grass to wait for the canon's supplies, he said to him:
"Is it possible, sir gentleman, that the bitter and idle reading of books of chivalry can have had so much power over your worship as to turn your judgement in such a way that you come to believe that you go enchanted, along with other things of that stamp, as far from being true as lying itself is from the truth?
"And how is it possible that there should be a human understanding that gives itself to believe that there have been in the world that infinity of Amadises, and that mob of so many famous knights, so many emperors of Trebizond, so many Felixmartes of Hircania, so many palfreys, so many wandering damsels, so many serpents, so many dragons, so many giants, so many unheard-of adventures, so many kinds of enchantment, so many battles, so many outrageous encounters, so much splendour of costume, so many princesses in love, so many squires made counts, so many amusing dwarfs, so many love-notes, so much wooing, so many valiant women — and, in the end, so many and such nonsensical things as the books of chivalry contain?
"For my own part I can say that when I read them, so long as I do not set my imagination on thinking that they are all lies and frivolity, they give me some pleasure; but when I realise what they are, I throw the best of them against the wall, and would even throw it into the fire if I had one near or in front of me — as deserving such a punishment for being false and deceitful and outside the dealings common nature calls for, and as inventors of new sects and a new way of life, and as giving occasion for the ignorant crowd to come to believe and hold as true all the foolishness they contain.
"And they even have such daring that they dare to disturb the wits of judicious and well-born gentlemen, as may be plainly seen from what they have done with your worship, since they have brought you to such a pass that it is necessary to shut you in a cage and carry you about on an ox-cart, like a man who takes or carries a lion or a tiger from place to place to make money out of letting people see it.
"Come, Señor Don Quixote, have pity on yourself, and come back into the fold of good sense, and learn to use the great share of it heaven was pleased to give you, employing the most fortunate talent of your mind on some other reading that may work to the profit of your conscience and the increase of your honour!
"And if, still carried away by your natural inclination, you want to read books of exploits and of chivalry, read in Holy Scripture the book of Judges; for there you will find grand truths and deeds as true as they are brave. Lusitania had a Viriathus; Rome a Caesar; Carthage a Hannibal; Greece an Alexander; Castile a Count Fernán González; Valencia a Cid; Andalusia a Gonzalo Fernández; Extremadura a Diego García de Paredes; Jerez a Garci Pérez de Vargas; Toledo a Garcilaso; Seville a Don Manuel de León — the reading of whose valorous deeds can entertain, teach, delight and astonish the loftiest minds that read them.
"This indeed will be reading worthy of your worship's good understanding, my dear Señor Don Quixote; out of which you will come learned in history, in love with virtue, taught in goodness, improved in your habits, brave without rashness, bold without cowardice — and all this for the honour of God, your own profit and the fame of La Mancha, from where, as I have learnt, your worship takes your beginning and origin."
Don Quixote listened most attentively to the canon's arguments; and when he saw that he had made an end of them, after looking at him for a good while he said to him:
"It seems to me, sir gentleman, that your worship's talk has been aimed at wanting to give me to understand that there have been no knights errant in the world, and that all the books of chivalry are false, lying, harmful and useless to the state; and that I have done wrong in reading them, and worse in believing them, and worse still in imitating them, having set myself to follow the very hard profession of knight-errantry that they teach — denying to me that there have been in the world any Amadises, of Gaul or of Greece, or any of the other knights the writings are full of."
"It is all exactly to the letter as your worship goes on relating it," said the canon at this.
To which Don Quixote answered:
"Your worship added too, saying that such books had done me a great deal of harm, since they had turned my judgement and put me in a cage, and that it would be better for me to mend my ways and change my reading, reading other books that are truer and that give more pleasure and teach better."
"That is so," said the canon.
"Then I," replied Don Quixote, "find by my own reckoning that the man out of his senses and enchanted is your worship, since you have set yourself to speak so many blasphemies against a thing so accepted in the world and held to be so true that whoever denied it, as your worship denies it, would deserve the same punishment your worship says you give the books when you read them and they annoy you.
"Because to try to give anybody to understand that Amadis never existed in the world, or any of the other adventuring knights the histories are packed with, will be to try to persuade them that the sun does not give light, or ice cold, or the earth support. For what mind can there be in the world that could persuade another that the business of the princess Floripes and Guy of Burgundy was not true, and the business of Fierabrás at the bridge of Mantible, which happened in the time of Charlemagne — which I swear is as true as it is now daylight?
"And if that is a lie, then it must be a lie too that there was ever a Hector, or an Achilles, or the war of Troy, or the Twelve Peers of France, or King Arthur of England, who to this day goes about turned into a crow and is expected back in his kingdom at any moment. And they will also make bold to say that the history of Guarino Mezquino is a lie, and that of the quest of the Holy Grail, and that the loves of Sir Tristram and Queen Iseult are apocryphal, like those of Guinevere and Lancelot — when there are people who can almost remember having seen the duenna Quintañona, who was the best pourer of wine that Great Britain ever had.
"And this is so much the case that I remember a grandmother of mine on my father's side saying to me, when she saw some duenna in a venerable headdress: 'That one, grandson, is like the duenna Quintañona' — from which I argue that she must have known her, or at least must have managed to see some portrait of her.
"And who could deny that the history of Pierres and the fair Magalona is true, since even to this day one may see in the royal armoury the peg with which the valiant Pierres steered the wooden horse he rode through the air on, which is a little bigger than a cart shaft? And beside the peg is Babieca's saddle, and at Roncesvalles is Roland's horn, as big as a great beam; from which it is to be inferred that there were Twelve Peers, that there was a Pierres, that there were Cids and other such knights,
the sort of men that people say go riding to their adventures.
"If not, let them also tell me that it is not true that the valiant Portuguese Juan de Merlo was a knight errant, who went to Burgundy and fought in the city of Arras with the famous lord of Charny, called Monsieur Pierres, and afterwards in the city of Basle with Monsieur Henri de Remestán, coming out of both enterprises victorious and full of honourable fame; and the adventures and challenges likewise carried through in Burgundy by the valiant Spaniards Pedro Barba and Gutierre Quijada — from whose family I descend in the direct male line — defeating the sons of the Count of St Pol.
"Let them deny me too that Don Fernando de Guevara did not go looking for adventures in Germany, where he fought Messer George, a knight of the house of the Duke of Austria. Let them say that the jousts of Suero de Quiñones at the Pass were a joke; and the enterprises of Monsieur Luis de Falces against Don Gonzalo de Guzmán, a Castilian knight — along with a great many other exploits performed by Christian knights, both of these kingdoms and of foreign ones, so authentic and true that I say again that whoever denied them would be wanting in all reason and good sense."
The canon was astonished to hear the mixture Don Quixote made of truths and lies, and to see the knowledge he had of all those things touching and concerning the deeds of his errant chivalry; and so he answered him:
"I cannot deny, Señor Don Quixote, that some of what your worship has said is true, especially as far as the Spanish knights errant go; and likewise I am willing to grant that there were Twelve Peers of France, but I am not willing to believe that they did all the things Archbishop Turpin writes of them. Because the truth of it is that they were knights chosen by the kings of France, whom they called peers because they were all equal in worth, in quality and in valour — at least, if they were not, it was reasonable that they should be; and it was like one of the religious orders in use now, of Santiago or of Calatrava, in which it is assumed that those who profess it must be, or ought to be, valorous, brave and well-born knights. And as they now say knight of St John, or of Alcántara, in those days they said knight of the Twelve Peers, because twelve equals were chosen for that military order.
"As for there having been a Cid there is no doubt, nor about Bernardo del Carpio either; but that they did the exploits people speak of, I believe there is a very great deal of doubt. As for that other matter of the peg your worship speaks of belonging to Count Pierres, and that it stands beside Babieca's saddle in the royal armoury, I confess my sin: I am so ignorant, or so short-sighted, that although I have seen the saddle I have not noticed the peg — and it being as big as your worship says."
"Well, it is there, without any doubt," replied Don Quixote; "and for a further mark of it, they say it is kept in a leather case so that it does not get rusty."
"That may all be," answered the canon; "but by the orders I have taken, I do not remember having seen it. Yet even granting that it is there, I do not for that undertake to believe the histories of so many Amadises, or those of that mob of knights people tell us about; nor is it right that a man like your worship, so honourable and of such good qualities and endowed with so good an understanding, should give himself to believe that so many and such strange follies as those written in the nonsensical books of chivalry are true."
"That is a fine thing!" answered Don Quixote. "Books that are printed with the licence of kings and with the approval of those they were submitted to, and that are read and celebrated with general pleasure by the great and the small, by the poor and the rich, by the learned and the ignorant, by commoners and gentlemen — in short, by every kind of person, of whatever rank and condition — are these to be lies? And especially when they carry so much appearance of truth, since they tell us the father, the mother, the country, the relatives, the age, the place and the exploits, point by point and day by day, that such a knight performed or such knights performed.
"Be quiet, your worship, do not say such a blasphemy — and believe me, in this I am advising you what you ought to do as a man of sense — but read them, and you will see the pleasure you get from that reading.
"If not, tell me: is there any greater delight than to see, as we might put it, a great lake of boiling pitch showing itself here in front of us now, bubbling away, with a great many serpents, snakes and lizards and many other kinds of fierce and appalling animals swimming and crossing about in it; and out of the middle of the lake there comes a most sorrowful voice, saying: 'Thou, knight, whoever thou art, who art looking on this fearful lake, if thou wouldst attain the treasure hidden beneath these black waters, show the valour of thy strong breast and throw thyself into the middle of its black and burning liquor; for if thou dost not so, thou shalt not be worthy to see the high marvels that are shut up and contained in the seven castles of the seven fays that lie beneath this blackness'?
"And that the knight has hardly finished hearing the fearful voice when, without going into any further reckoning with himself, without stopping to consider the danger he is putting himself in, and even without stripping off the weight of his heavy armour, commending himself to God and to his lady, he throws himself into the middle of the boiling lake; and when he least expects it and does not know where he is to stop, he finds himself among flowering fields, with which the Elysian ones have nothing to do at all?
"There it seems to him that the sky is more transparent, and that the sun shines with a newer brightness. There is offered to his eyes a pleasant wood made up of trees so green and leafy that their greenness gladdens the sight, while the sweet, unlearned song of the small, endless, painted birds that go crossing among the tangled branches entertains the ears. Here he discovers a little stream whose cool waters, which look like liquid crystal, run over fine sands and white pebbles that resemble sifted gold and pure pearls. Over there he sees a cunningly made fountain of variegated jasper and smooth marble; over here he sees another decorated in the grotesque style, where the small shells of mussels, with the twisted white and yellow houses of the snail, set in a disordered order with pieces of shining crystal and counterfeit emeralds mixed in among them, make a varied work, so that art, imitating nature, seems there to beat her.
"Over yonder there suddenly discovers itself to him a strong castle or splendid palace, whose walls are of solid gold, whose battlements are of diamonds, whose gates are of jacinth; in short, it is of such admirable workmanship that, the material it is made of being no less than diamonds, carbuncles, rubies, pearls, gold and emeralds, the making of it is worth still more.
"And is there anything more to see, after seeing this, than to see coming out of the castle gate a good number of maidens, whose elegant and splendid costumes, if I set myself now to describe them as the histories tell them to us, would be a never-ending business? And then to see the one who seemed the chief of them all take by the hand the daring knight who threw himself into the boiling lake, and lead him, without saying a word to him, into the rich palace or castle, and have him stripped as naked as his mother bore him, and bathed with warm waters, and then anointed all over with scented ointments, and dressed in a shirt of the finest silk, all scented and perfumed; and another maiden come and throw over his shoulders a cloak which, at the very least, they say is generally worth a city, and even more?
"What a thing it is, then, when they tell us that after all this they take him to another hall, where he finds the tables laid with such order that he is taken aback and astonished! What, to see them pour water on his hands, all of it distilled from amber and scented flowers! What, to have him seated on an ivory chair! What, to see all the maidens serve him, keeping a marvellous silence! What, to have brought to him such a variety of dishes, so tastily cooked that his appetite does not know which to stretch out a hand to! What must it be to hear the music that plays while he eats, without anybody's knowing who sings it or where it sounds from!
"And, the meal being over and the tables cleared, for the knight to be left leaning back in his chair, and perhaps picking his teeth as the custom is, and all at once there comes in at the door of the hall another maiden far more beautiful than any of the first ones, and sits down at the knight's side, and begins to give him an account of what castle that is, and how she is held enchanted in it, along with other things that hold the knight in suspense and astonish the readers who go on reading his history?
"I do not want to go on any longer about this, since it may be gathered from it that any part one reads, of any history of a knight errant, is bound to cause pleasure and wonder in anybody who reads it. And believe me, your worship, and, as I have told you before, read these books, and you will see how they banish whatever melancholy you have and improve your temper, if by any chance it is a bad one.
"For my own part I can say that since I have been a knight errant I have been brave, courteous, generous, well-bred, open-handed, polite, daring, gentle, patient, an endurer of hardships, of imprisonments, of enchantments. And although it is so short a time since I saw myself shut in a cage like a madman, I expect, by the valour of my arm, heaven favouring me and fortune not being against me, in a few days to see myself king of some kingdom, where I may show the gratitude and generosity my breast holds.
"For upon my word, sir, the poor man is incapable of showing the virtue of generosity to anybody, however completely he possesses it; and gratitude that consists only in the wish is a dead thing, as faith without works is dead. For this reason I could wish that fortune would soon offer me some occasion to make me an emperor, so as to show my heart by doing good to my friends — especially to this poor Sancho Panza, my squire, who is the best man in the world; and I should like to give him an earldom I have promised him this long while, except that I am afraid he will not have the ability to govern his estate."
Sancho heard almost these last words of his master's, and said to him:
"Do your best, Señor Don Quixote, to give me that earldom, as much promised by your worship as it is hoped for by me; for I promise you that I shall not be short of ability to govern it. And when I am short of it, I have heard it said that there are men in the world who take lords' estates on lease and give them so much a year, and they take care of the governing themselves, and the lord sits with his legs stretched out enjoying the income they give him without troubling about anything else. And that is what I shall do, and I shall not stick at so much more or so much less, but shall get out of the whole thing at once and enjoy my income like a duke, and let them settle it among themselves."
"That, brother Sancho," said the canon, "holds good as far as enjoying the income goes; but as for administering justice, the lord of the estate must attend to it, and here comes in ability and good judgement, and above all the honest intention of getting it right. If this is missing at the beginning, the middle and the end will always go wrong; and so God generally helps the good intention of the simple man as much as he withholds his favour from the bad intention of the clever one."
"I know nothing about those philosophies," answered Sancho Panza; "all I know is that I would know how to govern the earldom as soon as I had it. For I have as much soul as anybody else and as much body as the biggest, and I should be as much king of my estate as anybody else is of his. And being so, I should do what I liked; and doing what I liked, I should do as I pleased; and doing as I pleased, I should be contented; and when a man is contented, he has nothing more to want; and having nothing more to want, that is the end of it. So let the estate come, and God be with you and let us see each other, as one blind man said to another."
"Those are not bad philosophies, as you call them, Sancho; but for all that, there is a great deal to be said on this matter of earldoms."
To which Don Quixote replied:
"I do not know that there is any more to be said; I simply guide myself by the example the great Amadis of Gaul gives me, who made his squire count of the Firm Isle. And so I can, without any scruple of conscience, make Sancho Panza a count, who is one of the best squires any knight errant ever had."
The canon was astonished at the well-ordered absurdities Don Quixote had spoken, at the manner in which he had painted the adventure of the Knight of the Lake, at the impression the deliberate lies of the books he had read had made on him — and finally he was astonished at Sancho's foolishness, in wanting so eagerly to get the earldom his master had promised him.
By this time the canon's servants were coming back, having gone to the inn for the pack-mule with the supplies; and making a table of a carpet and of the green grass of the meadow, they sat down in the shade of some trees and ate there, so that the ox-driver should not lose the convenience of that spot, as has been said.
And while they were eating, they suddenly heard a loud crashing and the sound of a bell that came from among some brambles and thick bushes that were nearby; and at the same instant they saw coming out from among those thickets a beautiful goat, her whole coat mottled with black, white and brown. Behind her came a goatherd shouting at her and saying the words they use to her to make her stop or come back to the flock. The runaway goat, frightened and terrified, came to the company as though to take refuge with them, and stopped there. The goatherd came up, and taking her by the horns, said to her as though she were capable of reasoning and understanding:
"Ah, wanderer, wanderer, Spotty, Spotty, how lame you have been going these last few days! What wolves frighten you, my girl? Won't you tell me what this is, my beauty? But what can it be except that you are female and cannot keep still? A curse on your nature and on the nature of all those you take after! Come back, come back, my friend; for if not as contented, at least you will be safer in your own fold or with your companions. For if you, who are to guard them and lead them, go about so unguided and so far off the road, what will become of them?"
The goatherd's words gave pleasure to those who heard them, especially to the canon, who said to him:
"On your life, brother, take it easy for a while and do not be in such a hurry to get this goat back to her flock; for since she is female, as you say, she must follow her natural instinct, however much you set yourself to prevent it. Take this mouthful and have a drink, and you will cool your temper down, and meanwhile the goat can rest."
And to say this and to give him the loins of a cold rabbit on the point of his knife were all one. The goatherd took it and thanked him; he drank and calmed down, and then said:
"I should not like your worships to take me for a simpleton because I have talked to this animal so seriously; for truly the words I said to her are not without a meaning. A rustic I am, but not so much of one that I do not understand how a man must deal with men and with beasts."
"That I well believe," said the curate; "for I know by experience that the mountains breed scholars and the shepherds' huts hold philosophers."
"At least, sir," replied the goatherd, "they take in men who have learnt their lesson. And so that you may believe this truth and touch it with your hand — although it may look as if I were inviting myself without being asked — if you do not object to it and would like, gentlemen, to lend me an attentive ear for a short while, I shall tell you a true story that will bear out what that gentleman" — pointing to the curate — "has said, and what I have said."
To this Don Quixote answered:
"Since I see that this case has a certain something of the shadow of an adventure of chivalry about it, I for my part will listen to you very willingly, brother; and so will all these gentlemen, for as much as they are people of good sense and lovers of curious novelties that hold, gladden and entertain the senses — as I have no doubt your tale will do. Begin, then, my friend, and we shall all listen."
"I take mine out," said Sancho; "I am going off to that stream there with this pie, where I mean to stuff myself for three days. Because I have heard my master Don Quixote say that a knight errant's squire is to eat, when the chance offers, until he can eat no more, on the grounds that they are apt to happen into a wood so tangled that they cannot manage to get out of it in six days; and if a man does not go in full, or with his saddlebags well provided, he may stay there — as many a man does stay — turned into mummy-meat."
"You are quite right, Sancho," said Don Quixote. "Go where you like and eat what you can; for I have had enough, and all I have left is to give my soul its refreshment, as I shall by listening to this good man's tale."
"So shall we all give ours theirs," said the canon.
And then he asked the goatherd to begin what he had promised. The goatherd gave two pats on the back to the goat, which he had by the horns, saying to her:
"Lie down beside me, Spotty; there is still time for us to get back to our fold."
It seems the goat understood him, because as soon as her master sat down she stretched herself out beside him very quietly, and, looking him in the face, gave him to understand that she was attending to what he was saying. And he began his history like this.
"Three leagues from this valley there is a village which, although small, is one of the richest anywhere in this district; and in it there was a very honourable farmer — so much so that, although being honoured goes with being rich, he was more honoured for the virtue he had than for the wealth he possessed.
"But what made him happiest, as he used to say, was having a daughter of such extraordinary beauty, rare good sense, charm and virtue that anybody who knew her and looked at her was astonished to see the extraordinary qualities heaven and nature had enriched her with. As a little girl she was beautiful, and she went on growing in beauty, and at the age of sixteen she was most beautiful of all.
"The fame of her beauty began to spread through all the villages round about — and why do I say through the villages round about only, when it spread to distant cities and even got into the halls of kings and into the ears of every kind of person, who came from all quarters to see her as a rare thing or as an image that works miracles? Her father guarded her, and she guarded herself; for there are no padlocks, guards or locks that guard a young girl better than those of her own reserve.
"The father's wealth and the daughter's beauty moved a great many people, both from the village and from outside it, to ask for her as a wife. But he, as the man whose business it was to dispose of so rich a jewel, went about bewildered, unable to decide which of the endless number who pestered him he would hand her to. And among the many who had that good wish I was one, and I was given many great hopes of success by knowing that her father knew who I was: that I was a native of the same village, clean in blood, in the flower of my age, very rich in property and no less finished in my wits.
"With all these same qualities another man of the same village asked for her too, which was the reason for suspending and putting into the balance her father's inclination — since it seemed to him that his daughter would be well bestowed on either of us. And to get out of this difficulty, he decided to tell Leandra about it, for that is the name of the rich girl who has put me in this misery, noting that since the two of us were equal, it was right to leave the choosing to his beloved daughter's own liking — a thing worth imitating by all fathers who want to settle their children in life. I do not say they should let them choose in low and wicked matters, but that they should put good ones before them, and of the good ones let them choose as they like.
"I do not know what Leandra's liking was; I only know that her father put us both off with his daughter's youth and with general words, which neither bound him nor released us either. My rival is called Anselmo and I Eugenio, so that you may have the names of the people this tragedy contains — whose ending is still hanging in the balance, though it can easily be understood that it will be a disastrous one.
"At this time there came to our village a certain Vicente de la Rosa, the son of a poor farmer of the same place; which Vicente came from Italy and from various other parts, where he had been a soldier. A captain who happened to pass through with his company had taken him away from our village when he was a boy of about twelve, and the lad came back twelve years later dressed as a soldier, painted with a thousand colours, covered with a thousand glass trinkets and fine steel chains. Today he put on one piece of finery and tomorrow another, but all of them flimsy, painted, of little weight and less substance.
"The country people, who are naturally spiteful, and who when idleness gives them the chance are spite itself, noticed it and counted his finery and ornaments point by point, and found that the outfits were three, of different colours, with their garters and stockings; but he made so many combinations and inventions out of them that if they had not been counted, there would have been people ready to swear he had shown off more than ten changes of clothing and more than twenty sets of plumes. And do not let what I am telling you about the clothes seem impertinent and excessive, because they make a good part of this story.
"He used to sit on a stone bench under a great poplar that stands in our square, and there he kept us all open-mouthed, hanging on the exploits he went on telling us about. There was no country in the whole globe he had not seen, nor any battle he had not been in. He had killed more Moors than Morocco and Tunis hold, and had fought more single combats — according to him — than Gante and Luna, Diego García de Paredes and a thousand others he named; and he had come out of all of them victorious, without their having shed a single drop of his blood.
"On the other hand, he showed the marks of wounds which, although they could not be made out, he gave us to understand were musket shots got in different skirmishes and actions. And finally, with unheard-of arrogance, he addressed his equals — and the very men who knew him — with the familiar 'you', and said that his father was his own arm, his family his own deeds, and that as a soldier he owed nothing even to the king himself.
"Added to these arrogances was his being a bit of a musician and playing a guitar with a strumming style, so that some people said he made it talk. But his gifts did not stop there, for he also had the gift of poetry; and so out of every trifle that happened in the village he composed a ballad a league and a half long.
"This soldier, then, that I have painted here — this Vicente de la Rosa, this bravo, this dandy, this musician, this poet — was seen and looked at many times by Leandra from a window of her house that looked onto the square. The tinsel of his showy clothes made her fall in love; his ballads enchanted her, for of every one he composed he handed round twenty copies; the exploits he had recounted of himself came to her ears; and finally — as the devil must have arranged it so — she came to fall in love with him before any notion of courting her had been born in him.
"And as in matters of love there is none that is more easily brought off than the one that has the lady's own wish on its side, Leandra and Vicente easily came to an understanding; and before any of her many suitors had realised what she wanted, she had already got it — having left the house of her dear and beloved father, for a mother she has none, and gone away from the village with the soldier, who came out of this enterprise with more triumph than out of all the many he laid claim to.
"The event astonished the whole village, and everybody who heard of it. I was left taken aback, Anselmo appalled, her father grief-stricken, her relatives shamed, the law busy, the officers of the Brotherhood alert. The roads were watched, the woods were searched and everything else there was; and at the end of three days they found the capricious Leandra in a cave in a mountain, stripped to her shift, without a great deal of money and the most precious jewels she had taken from her home.
"They brought her back into her injured father's presence; they asked her about her misfortune; she confessed without any pressing that Vicente de la Rosa had deceived her, and under his word to be her husband had persuaded her to leave her father's house; that he would take her to the richest and most delightful city there was in the whole universe, which was Naples; and that she, badly advised and worse deceived, had believed him; and, robbing her father, had given herself up to him the very night she disappeared; and that he had taken her to a rough mountain and shut her up in that cave where they had found her.
"She also told how the soldier, without taking her honour, had robbed her of everything she had, and had left her in that cave and gone away — an event that astonished everybody all over again.
"It was hard for us to believe the young man's continence, but she maintained it so earnestly that it was enough to comfort the disconsolate father, who made no account of the wealth they had taken from him, since they had left him his daughter with the jewel which, once lost, leaves no hope of ever being recovered again.
"The same day Leandra reappeared, her father made her disappear from our eyes and took her away to shut her up in a convent in a town near here, hoping that time would wear away some part of the bad opinion his daughter had put herself in. Leandra's few years served as an excuse for her fault, at least with those who had no interest in her being bad or good; but those who knew her good sense and great understanding did not put her sin down to ignorance, but to her forwardness and to the natural inclination of women, which for the most part is generally headstrong and ill-ordered.
"Leandra being shut up, Anselmo's eyes were left blind — or at least with nothing to look at that gave him any pleasure; and mine in darkness, with no light to guide them to anything enjoyable. With Leandra's absence our sadness grew and our patience shrank; we cursed the soldier's finery and abominated Leandra's father's want of caution.
"Finally Anselmo and I agreed to leave the village and come to this valley, where he, pasturing a great quantity of sheep of his own and I a numerous flock of goats, also mine, pass our lives among the trees, giving vent to our passions, either singing together the praises or the reproaches of the beautiful Leandra, or sighing alone and communicating our complaints to the sky by ourselves.
"In imitation of us, a great many others of Leandra's suitors have come to these rough mountains, following the same occupation as ours; and there are so many of them that it seems this place has been turned into pastoral Arcadia, so full is it of shepherds and folds, and there is no part of it where the name of the beautiful Leandra is not heard. This man curses her and calls her capricious, changeable and immodest; that one condemns her as easy and light; another absolves her and forgives her; another arraigns her and reproaches her; one celebrates her beauty, another disowns her character; and in the end they all dishonour her and they all adore her.
"And the madness of them all goes so far that there are men who complain of her disdain without ever having spoken to her, and even men who lament and feel the raging disease of jealousy, which she never gave anybody cause for — because, as I have said already, her sin was known before her wish was. There is no hollow in a rock, no bank of a stream, no shade of a tree that is not occupied by some shepherd telling his misfortunes to the air. Echo repeats the name of Leandra wherever it can be formed: Leandra the mountains ring with, Leandra the streams murmur, and Leandra keeps us all in suspense and enchanted, hoping without hope and fearing without knowing what we fear.
"Among all these deranged men, the one who shows himself to have the least and the most judgement is my rival Anselmo, who, having so many other things to complain of, complains only of absence; and to the sound of a rebeck, which he plays admirably, he makes his complaint in singing, with verses that show his good understanding. I follow another and easier road, and to my mind the sounder one, which is to speak ill of the lightness of women, of their inconstancy, of their double dealing, of their dead promises, of their broken faith and, in the end, of the little judgement they have in knowing where to place their thoughts and intentions.
"And this, gentlemen, was the reason for the words and arguments I made to this goat when I got here; for because she is female I think little of her, although she is the best in my whole fold. This is the story I promised to tell you; and if I have been long-winded in telling it, I shall not be short in serving you: near here I have my hut, and in it I have fresh milk and very tasty cheese, along with various ripe fruits no less agreeable to the sight than to the taste."
The goatherd's tale gave general pleasure to everybody who had listened to it; and it was particularly well received by the canon, who with unusual curiosity noted the manner in which he had told it — as far from seeming a rustic goatherd as it was close to showing him a well-bred courtier. And so he said the curate had spoken very well in saying that the mountains bred scholars.
They all made offers to Eugenio; but the one who showed himself most generous in this was Don Quixote, who said to him:
"Certainly, brother goatherd, if I found myself in a position to be able to begin any adventure, I would set out this very moment so that you might come well out of yours. For I would get Leandra out of the convent — where she must without any doubt be against her will — in spite of the abbess and of anybody who tried to prevent it, and would put her in your hands, so that you might do with her entirely as you liked and pleased, keeping, however, the laws of chivalry, which command that no wrong whatever shall be done to any maiden. Although I hope in God Our Lord that the power of a malicious enchanter will not be so great that the power of another better-intentioned enchanter cannot be greater; and for that time I promise you my favour and help, as my profession obliges me to — which is nothing else than to favour the helpless and the needy."
The goatherd looked at him; and seeing Don Quixote in such bad condition and of such an appearance, he was astonished and asked the barber, who was near him:
"Sir, who is this man, who has such a build and talks in such a way?"
"Who should he be," answered the barber, "but the famous Don Quixote of La Mancha, undoer of injuries, righter of wrongs, the shelter of maidens, the terror of giants and the winner of battles?"
"That sounds to me," answered the goatherd, "like what one reads in the books of knights errant, who did all that your worship says of this man; though it is my opinion either that your worship is joking or that this fine gentleman must have the rooms of his head empty."
"You are an enormous scoundrel," said Don Quixote at this; "and it is you who are empty and short of brains, for I am fuller than the very great whore of a bitch who bore you ever was."
And saying and doing, he snatched up a loaf that was near him and hit the goatherd full in the face with it, with such fury that he flattened his nose. But the goatherd, who did not understand jokes, seeing how much in earnest they were ill-treating him, without any respect for the carpet or the cloths or all those who were eating, leapt on Don Quixote; and seizing him by the neck with both hands, he would not have hesitated to strangle him if Sancho Panza had not come up at that moment and taken hold of him by the shoulders and thrown him down on top of the table, breaking plates, smashing cups and spilling and scattering everything that was on it.
Don Quixote, finding himself free, ran to get on top of the goatherd; who, with his face covered in blood and pounded with Sancho's kicks, was going about on all fours looking for one of the knives from the table so as to take some bloody revenge — but the canon and the curate prevented him. The barber, however, so arranged it that the goatherd got Don Quixote underneath him, on whom he rained such a number of blows that as much blood rained from the poor knight's face as from his own.
The canon and the curate were bursting with laughter, the officers were leaping with joy, and both sides were egging them on as people do with dogs when they are locked in a fight. Only Sancho Panza was in despair, because he could not shake off one of the canon's servants, who was preventing him from helping his master.
In short, everybody being in merriment and festival except the two pounding men who were clawing at each other, they heard the sound of a trumpet so sad that it made them turn their faces towards where it seemed to be sounding. But the one who was most excited at hearing it was Don Quixote, who, although he was underneath the goatherd, very much against his will and rather more than moderately pounded, said to him:
"Brother devil — for it is not possible that you should not be one, since you have had the strength and the force to subdue mine — I beg you that we may make a truce, for no more than an hour; because the sorrowful sound of that trumpet that reaches our ears seems to me to be calling me to some new adventure."
The goatherd, who was tired by now of pounding and being pounded, let him go at once; and Don Quixote got to his feet, likewise turning his face to where the sound was heard, and suddenly saw coming down a slope a great many men dressed in white, in the manner of penitents.
The case was that that year the clouds had refused their dew to the earth, and in all the places of that district processions, prayers and penances were being made, asking God to open the hands of his mercy and send them rain. And to this end the people of a village that was nearby were coming in procession to a hermitage of devotion that stood on a rise in that valley.
Don Quixote, seeing the strange clothes of the penitents, without its crossing his mind how many times he must have seen them before, imagined that this was a matter of adventure and that it belonged to him alone, as a knight errant, to undertake it. And he was further confirmed in this fancy by thinking that an image they were carrying covered in mourning must be some great lady whom those villains and discourteous scoundrels were carrying off by force.
And as soon as this fell into his mind, he ran with great speed to Rocinante, who was grazing about, and took the bridle and the shield off the saddlebow, and bridled him in a moment; and asking Sancho for his sword, he mounted Rocinante and braced his shield and said in a loud voice to everybody who was present:
"Now, valorous company, you shall see how much it matters that there should be knights in the world who profess the order of knight-errantry. Now, I say, you shall see, in the setting free of that good lady who is being carried off captive there, whether knights errant are to be valued."
And on saying this he squeezed his thighs against Rocinante, because spurs he had none; and at full gallop — because a flat-out charge is not read of anywhere in this whole true history as ever having been made by Rocinante — he went to meet the penitents, although the curate and the canon and the barber went to stop him. But it was not possible for them, nor did the shouts Sancho gave him stop him either, saying:
"Where are you going, Señor Don Quixote? What devils have you in your breast, urging you to go against our Catholic faith? Take notice — bad luck to me — that that is a procession of penitents, and that the lady they are carrying on the platform is the most blessed image of the spotless Virgin. Look what you are doing, sir, for this once it may be said that it is not what you know about."
Sancho wearied himself in vain, because his master was so set on reaching the sheeted men and on freeing the mourning lady that he did not hear a word; and even if he had heard it, he would not have turned back if the king had ordered him to.
He got to the procession, then, and pulled up Rocinante, who by then was wanting to rest a little, and in a disturbed, hoarse voice said:
"You who, perhaps because you are not good men, hide your faces: attend and listen to what I want to say to you."
The first to stop were those who were carrying the image; and one of the four priests who were singing the litanies, seeing Don Quixote's strange appearance, Rocinante's thinness and other laughable details he noticed and made out in Don Quixote, answered him, saying:
"Brother, if you want to tell us anything, tell it quickly, because these brothers are opening their own flesh, and we cannot — nor is it reasonable that we should — stop to hear anything at all, unless it is so short that it can be said in two words."
"In one I shall say it," replied Don Quixote, "and it is this: that you should this instant set free that beautiful lady, whose tears and sad face give clear signs that you are carrying her off against her will and that you have done her some notorious wrong. And I, who was born into the world to undo such injuries, shall not allow her to go one step further without giving her the liberty she wants and deserves."
At these words, everybody who heard them realised that Don Quixote must be some madman, and they set to laughing very heartily — whose laughter was putting powder to Don Quixote's anger, for without saying another word he drew his sword and charged at the litter. One of those who were carrying it, leaving the load to his companions, came out to meet Don Quixote, brandishing a forked prop or stave with which he supported the litter while he rested; and taking on it a great slash Don Quixote dealt him, which cut it in two, with the last third that was left in his hand he gave Don Quixote such a blow on top of one shoulder, on the sword side, that his shield could not cover him against such peasant force, and poor Don Quixote came to the ground in a very bad way.
Sancho Panza, who was panting along at his heels, seeing him fallen, shouted to his pounder not to give him another blow, because he was a poor enchanted knight who had never done harm to anybody in all the days of his life. But what stopped the countryman was not Sancho's shouts but seeing that Don Quixote did not stir hand or foot; and so, believing that he had killed him, he quickly pulled his tunic up to his belt and set off running across the country like a fallow deer.
By this time everybody in Don Quixote's company had come up to where he was; and the people of the procession, who saw them coming at a run, and with them the officers with their crossbows, feared some evil turn, and they all made a ring round the image; and, with their hoods raised, gripping their scourges — and the priests their candlesticks — they waited for the assault, determined to defend themselves and even to attack their assailants if they could. But fortune managed it better than was expected, because Sancho did nothing but throw himself on his master's body, making over him the most sorrowful and the most laughable lament in the world, believing that he was dead.
The curate was recognised by another curate who was in the procession, whose recognition put the two squadrons' conceived fear to rest. The first curate gave the second, in a couple of sentences, an account of who Don Quixote was; and so both he and the whole crowd of penitents went to see whether the poor knight was dead, and they heard Sancho Panza saying with tears in his eyes:
"Oh flower of chivalry, who with one blow of a stave brought to an end the course of your so well-spent years! Oh honour of your family, honour and glory of all La Mancha and even of the whole world, which, with you gone out of it, will be left full of evildoers with no fear of being punished for their evil deeds! Oh generous beyond all the Alexanders, since for only eight months of service you had given me the best isle the sea girds and surrounds! Oh humble with the arrogant and arrogant with the humble, attempter of dangers, endurer of insults, in love without a cause, imitator of the good, scourge of the wicked, enemy of the base — in short, a knight errant, which is everything that can be said!"
At Sancho's shouts and groans, Don Quixote came back to life, and the first word he said was:
"The man who lives absent from you, sweetest Dulcinea, is subject to greater miseries than these. Help me, friend Sancho, to get onto the enchanted cart, for I am in no state to press Rocinante's saddle, since this whole shoulder of mine is smashed to pieces."
"That I shall do very willingly, my dear sir," answered Sancho; "and let us go back to my village in the company of these gentlemen, who wish you well, and there we shall arrange to make another sally that may bring us more profit and fame."
"You speak well, Sancho," answered Don Quixote, "and it will be great prudence to let this evil influence of the stars that is now running blow itself out."
The canon, the curate and the barber told him he would do very well to do as he said; and so, having taken great pleasure in Sancho Panza's simplicities, they put Don Quixote on the cart as he had come before.
The procession formed up again and went on its way. The goatherd took his leave of everybody. The officers would not go any further, and the curate paid them what was owing to them. The canon asked the curate to let him know how Don Quixote turned out, whether he was cured of his madness or went on in it; and with this he took his leave to go on with his journey. In the end they all separated and parted, leaving alone the curate and the barber, Don Quixote and Panza, and the good Rocinante, who through everything he had seen had been as patient as his master.
The ox-driver yoked his oxen and settled Don Quixote on a bundle of hay, and with his usual phlegm followed the road the curate wanted; and at the end of six days they arrived at Don Quixote's village, which they entered in the middle of the day, which happened to be a Sunday, and the people were all in the square, through the middle of which Don Quixote's cart passed.
They all ran to see what was coming in the cart; and when they recognised their fellow-countryman they were amazed, and a boy ran off to give the news to his housekeeper and his niece that their uncle and master was coming thin and yellow, stretched out on a heap of hay on an ox-cart. It was a pitiful thing to hear the cries the two good women raised, the slaps they gave themselves, the curses they hurled all over again at the accursed books of chivalry — all of which broke out afresh when they saw Don Quixote come in at their doors.
At the news of Don Quixote's arrival, Sancho Panza's wife came running, who had already learnt that he had gone off with him serving as his squire; and as soon as she saw Sancho, the first thing she asked him was whether the ass had come back well. Sancho answered that he had come back better than his master.
"Thanks be to God," she replied, "who has done me so much good. But now tell me, my friend: what good have you got out of your squiring? What skirt do you bring me? What little shoes for your children?"
"I bring none of that, wife," said Sancho, "although I bring other things of more moment and consideration."
"That gives me a great deal of pleasure," answered his wife. "Show me those things of more consideration and more moment, my dear; I want to see them, so as to cheer up this heart of mine, which has been so sad and discontented in all the ages of your absence."
"I shall show you them at home, wife," said Panza; "and for now be content, for if God is pleased that we should go out on another journey to look for adventures, you will soon see me a count or governor of an isle — and not one of the ones about here, but the best that can be found."
"May heaven grant it, husband, for we have great need of it. But tell me: what is this about isles? I do not understand it."
"Honey is not for the ass's mouth," answered Sancho. "In due time you will see, wife, and you will even be astonished to hear yourself called Your Ladyship by all your vassals."
"What is this you are saying, Sancho, about ladyships and isles and vassals?" answered Juana Panza — for that was Sancho's wife's name, although they were not related, but because in La Mancha it is the custom for wives to take their husbands' surname.
"Do not be in such a hurry, Juana, to know all this so fast; it is enough that I am telling you the truth, and sew up your mouth. I shall only tell you, just in passing, that there is nothing more delightful in the world than for an honourable man to be squire to a knight errant who goes looking for adventures. It is quite true that most of the ones you find do not turn out as much to your liking as a man would want, because out of a hundred you meet, ninety-nine generally come out crooked and awry. I know it by experience, because out of some of them I have come blanketed and out of others pounded. But for all that, it is a fine thing to be waiting for what will happen, crossing mountains, searching woods, treading rocks, visiting castles, putting up at inns entirely as you please, without paying — the devil take it — a maravedi."
All this talk passed between Sancho Panza and Juana Panza his wife, while Don Quixote's housekeeper and niece received him and undressed him and stretched him out in his old bed. He looked at them with squinting eyes and could not manage to understand where he was.
The curate charged the niece to take great care to look after her uncle, and to be on the alert that he did not escape from them again, telling her what it had been necessary to do to bring him home. Here the two of them raised their cries to heaven again; there the curses on the books of chivalry broke out afresh; there they begged heaven to confound in the centre of the abyss the authors of so many lies and absurdities. Finally they were left bewildered and afraid that they would find themselves without their master and uncle the moment he had any improvement; and it turned out just as they imagined it.
But the author of this history, although he has searched with curiosity and diligence for the deeds Don Quixote performed on his third sally, has not been able to find any account of them, at least in authentic writings. Only fame has kept, in the memories of La Mancha, that Don Quixote, the third time he left his house, went to Saragossa, where he was present at some famous jousts that were held in that city, and that things happened to him there worthy of his valour and good understanding.
Nor could he learn anything at all about his end and death, nor would he have learnt it or known it if good luck had not sent him an ancient physician who had in his possession a leaden box which, as he said, had been found in the pulled-down foundations of an ancient hermitage that was being rebuilt. In which box some parchments had been found, written in Gothic letters but in Castilian verse, which contained many of his exploits and gave an account of the beauty of Dulcinea of El Toboso, of Rocinante's figure, of Sancho Panza's faithfulness and of the burial of Don Quixote himself, with various epitaphs and eulogies of his life and habits.
And the ones that could be read and made out clearly were those the trustworthy author of this new and never-before-seen history sets down here. Which author asks those who read it, as a reward for the immense labour it cost him to inquire and search all the archives of La Mancha in order to bring it to light, nothing except that they should give it the same credit that judicious people usually give to the books of chivalry that are so much in favour in the world; for with this he will count himself well paid and satisfied, and will be encouraged to bring out and look for others, if not as truthful, at least of as much invention and entertainment.
The first words written on the parchment that was found in the leaden box were these:
The Academicians of Argamasilla, a Place in La Mancha, on the Life and Death of the Valorous Don Quixote of La Mancha, hoc scripserunt:
Monicongo, Academician of Argamasilla, on the Tomb of Don Quixote
The madcap who adorned La Mancha with more spoils than Jason of Crete; the judgement that had its weathervane sharp where it would have been better broad;
the arm whose strength stretched so far that it reached from Cathay to Gaeta; the most appalling and most discerning muse that ever graved verses on a plate of bronze;
the man who left the Amadises behind and thought very little of the Galaors, resting on his own love and gallantry;
the man who silenced the Belianises, the man who went erring on Rocinante, lies beneath this cold stone.
Paniaguado, Academician of Argamasilla, in laudem Dulcineae del Toboso
This woman you see with the beefy face, high in the bosom and spirited in her bearing, is Dulcinea, queen of El Toboso, whom the great Quixote was in love with.
For her he trod the one side and the other of the great Black Sierra, and the famous field of Montiel, as far as the grassy plain of Aranjuez, on foot and weary.
Rocinante's fault — oh, hard star! — that this Manchegan lady and this unconquered knight errant, in their tender years:
she, by dying, left off being beautiful, and he, though he stands written in marble, could not escape love, angers and deceits.
Capricioso, Most Judicious Academician of Argamasilla, in Praise of Rocinante, Don Quixote of La Mancha's Horse
On the proud diamond throne that Mars treads with bloody feet, the frenzied Manchegan flies his standard with an unheard-of effort.
He hangs up his arms and the fine steel with which he wrecks, levels, splits and cleaves: new exploits! But art invents a new style for the new paladin.
And if Gaul prides itself on its Amadis, by whose brave descendants Greece triumphed a thousand times and spreads her fame,
today the hall where Bellona presides crowns Quixote; and lofty La Mancha prides itself on him more than Greece or Gaul on theirs.
Never does oblivion stain his glories, since even Rocinante, in being gallant, surpasses Brigliadoro and Bayard.
Burlador, Academician of Argamasilla, to Sancho Panza
Sancho Panza is this man, small in body but great in worth: a strange miracle! The simplest and most guileless squire the world ever had, I swear and certify.
He was within a hair's breadth of being a count, if there had not conspired to do him harm the insolence and the injuries of this stingy age, which does not spare even a donkey.
On one of those he rode — begging pardon for the word — this meek squire, behind the meek horse Rocinante and behind his master.
Oh, empty hopes of mankind! How you go past with your promise of rest, and end at last in shadow, in smoke, in a dream!
Cachidiablo, Academician of Argamasilla, on the Tomb of Don Quixote
Here lies the knight, well pounded and ill-erring, whom Rocinante carried along one road and another.
Sancho Panza the blockhead lies beside him too, the most faithful squire that the squire's trade ever saw.
Tiquitoc, Academician of Argamasilla, on the Tomb of Dulcinea of El Toboso
Here rests Dulcinea; and although she was plump of flesh, she was turned to dust and ashes by appalling and ugly death.
She was of pure-bred stock, and had some hints of a lady about her; she was the great Quixote's flame, and she was the glory of her village.
These were the verses that could be read; the rest, the lettering being worm-eaten, were handed to an academician so that he might make them out by guesswork. It is understood that he has done it, at the cost of many sleepless nights and a great deal of labour, and that he means to bring them out, in hopes of Don Quixote's third sally.
Forsi altro canterà con miglior plettro.
God help me, how eagerly you must be waiting now, illustrious reader — or common reader, whichever you are — for this prologue, believing you will find in it revenges, quarrels and abuse of the author of the second Don Quixote; I mean the man they say was begotten at Tordesillas and born at Tarragona.
Well, in truth I am not going to give you that satisfaction; for although injuries wake anger in the humblest breasts, in mine this rule shall have its exception. You would like me to call him an ass, an idiot and an impudent fellow, but it does not cross my mind: let his own sin punish him, let him eat it with his own bread, and let him settle it himself.
What I have not been able to help feeling is that he marks me down as old and one-handed — as though it had been in my power to hold back time so that it should not pass over me, or as though my maiming had been got in some tavern, and not on the highest occasion that past ages ever saw, or present ages see, or ages to come can hope to see.
If my wounds do not shine in the eyes of whoever looks at them, they are valued at least in the esteem of those who know where they were got; for a soldier looks better dead in the battle than free in flight. And this is so much the case with me that if they were to put an impossibility before me now and make it easy for me, I would rather have been in that prodigious action than be whole of my wounds now without having been in it. The wounds a soldier shows in his face and on his breast are stars that guide others to the heaven of honour and to the wish for a just praise. And it must be noted that a man does not write with his grey hairs but with his understanding, which generally improves with the years.
I have also felt his calling me envious, and describing to me, as though I were ignorant, what a thing envy is; when in plain fact, of the two kinds there are, I know only the holy kind, the noble and well-intentioned one. And this being so, as it is, I am not likely to persecute any priest, and the more so if he has in addition the rank of familiar of the Holy Office. And if he said it on behalf of the man he seems to have said it for, he was mistaken from beginning to end; for I worship that man's genius, and admire his works and his continual and virtuous industry.
But in fact I am grateful to this gentleman the author for saying that my Exemplary Novels are more satirical than exemplary — but that they are good; and they could not be good if they did not have a bit of everything in them.
It seems to me you are telling me that I am keeping myself very much in bounds and holding myself well within the limits of my own modesty, knowing that affliction should not be added to the afflicted, and that the affliction this gentleman must be feeling is certainly great, since he does not dare to appear in the open field and under a clear sky, hiding his name and inventing his birthplace, as though he had committed some treason against his sovereign.
If by any chance you should come to know him, tell him from me that I do not count myself injured; for I know very well what the devil's temptations are, and that one of the greatest of them is to put it into a man's understanding that he can compose and print a book, and get as much fame by it as money, and as much money as fame. And in confirmation of this, I want you, with your good humour and charm, to tell him this story:
There was in Seville a madman who fell into the most amusing absurdity and obsession that any madman in the world ever fell into. And it was that he made a tube out of a cane, sharpened at the end; and on catching some dog in the street, or anywhere else, he would hold one of its hind feet down with one of his own and lift the other with his hand, and as best he could he would fit the tube into the place where, by blowing into it, he made the dog round as a ball. And when he had it in that state he would give it two little pats on the belly and let it go, saying to the bystanders, who were always many: "Do your worships suppose it is a small labour to blow up a dog?"
Does your worship suppose now that it is a small labour to make a book?
And if this story does not fit him, you may tell him this one, my friend the reader, which is also about a madman and a dog:
There was in Córdoba another madman, who had the habit of carrying on top of his head a piece of marble slab, or a stone that was not very light; and on coming upon some dog that was off its guard, he would go up close to it and drop the weight plumb down on it. The dog would be furious, and, barking and howling, would not stop for three streets.
Now it happened that among the dogs he let the load down on was a dog belonging to a cap-maker, whom his master was very fond of. The stone came down, hit him on the head, the pounded dog set up a howl, his master saw it and felt it, seized a measuring rod and came out at the madman and did not leave a whole bone in him. And at every blow he gave him he said: "You thieving dog — my pointer? Didn't you see, you cruel man, that my dog was a pointer?" And repeating the word "pointer" over and over, he sent the madman away beaten to a pulp.
The madman took the lesson to heart and withdrew, and for more than a month he did not come out into the square. At the end of which time he came back with his invention and with a heavier load. He would go up to where a dog was and, looking at it very carefully and fixedly, and without wanting or daring to let the stone down, he would say: "This is a pointer — look out!" In fact every dog he came upon, even if they were mastiffs or lapdogs, he said was a pointer; and so he never let the stone go again.
Perhaps something of the sort may happen to this historian: that he will not dare to let the weight of his wit down again on books which, when they are bad, are harder than rocks.
Tell him too that as for the threat he makes me, that his book is going to take my profits away, I do not care a farthing; and, borrowing from the famous interlude of La Perendenga, I answer him: long live my lord the Alderman, and Christ be with us all.
Long live the great Count of Lemos, whose Christian spirit and generosity, well known as they are, keep me on my feet against all the blows of my short fortune; and long live the supreme charity of the most illustrious Archbishop of Toledo, Don Bernardo de Sandoval y Rojas — and let there be no printing presses in the world for all I care, and let them print more books against me than there are letters in the Coplas de Mingo Revulgo.
These two princes, without any flattery of mine or any other kind of applause soliciting them, out of their goodness alone have taken it on themselves to do me kindness and favour me; and in this I count myself happier and richer than if fortune had set me on its summit by the ordinary road. A poor man may have honour, but not a vicious man; poverty may cloud nobility over, but it cannot darken it altogether; and since virtue gives off some light of itself, even through the obstacles and the chinks of straitened means, it comes to be valued by lofty and noble spirits, and consequently favoured.
And say no more to him — nor do I want to say any more to you, except to warn you to consider that this second part of Don Quixote which I am offering you is cut by the same craftsman and out of the same cloth as the first, and that in it I give you Don Quixote at greater length, and, in the end, dead and buried, so that nobody may dare to bring fresh testimonies against him — for those we have are enough, and it is enough too that an honourable man should have given an account of these judicious follies without wanting to go into them all over again. For the abundance of things, even good ones, makes them cease to be valued, and their scarcity, even of bad ones, counts for something.
I was forgetting to tell you to expect the Persiles, which I am now finishing, and the second part of the Galatea.
When I sent Your Excellency my plays some days ago, printed before they were performed, if I remember rightly I said that Don Quixote was standing with his spurs on, ready to go and kiss Your Excellency's hands. And now I say that he has put them on and set off; and if he gets there, it seems to me I shall have done Your Excellency some service, because I am being pressed very hard from endless quarters to send him, so as to take away the queasiness and the nausea that another Don Quixote has caused, who under the name of a second part has gone about the world in disguise.
And the man who has shown most eagerness for him has been the great emperor of China; for a month ago he wrote me a letter in the Chinese language by a special courier, asking me — or rather begging me — to send him one, because he wanted to found a college where the Castilian language should be taught, and he wanted the book they read to be the history of Don Quixote. And along with this he told me that I should come and be the rector of that college.
I asked the messenger whether His Majesty had given him any money towards my expenses for me. He answered that it had not so much as crossed his mind. "Well then, brother," I answered him, "you may go back to your China at your ten leagues a day, or your twenty, or whatever rate you were dispatched at; for I am not in health to set out on so long a journey, and besides being ill I am very short of money. And emperor for emperor and monarch for monarch, in Naples I have the great Count of Lemos, who, without so many little titles of colleges and rectorships, keeps me, protects me and does me more kindness than I can manage to wish for."
With this I sent him off, and with this I take my leave, offering Your Excellency The Labours of Persiles and Sigismunda, a book I shall finish within four months, Deo volente; and which must be either the worst or the best that has been composed in our language — I mean of the books of entertainment. And I say that I repent of having said the worst, because according to my friends' opinion it is bound to reach the highest degree of goodness possible.
May Your Excellency come back in the health that is wished for you; for Persiles will by then be ready to kiss your hands, and I your feet, as the servant I am of Your Excellency's. From Madrid, the last day of October of sixteen hundred and fifteen.
Your Excellency's servant,
Cide Hamete Benengeli relates, in the second part of this history and the third sally of Don Quixote, that the curate and the barber went almost a month without seeing him, so as not to bring back and put into his mind the things that had happened. But they did not for that leave off visiting his niece and his housekeeper, charging them to take care to look after him, giving him comforting things to eat that were suitable for the heart and the brain, from which, by all good reasoning, his whole misfortune proceeded.
The women said that this was what they were doing, and what they would go on doing with all possible goodwill and care, because they could see that from moment to moment their master was giving signs of being in his full senses; at which the two men were greatly pleased, since it seemed to them they had done right in bringing him home enchanted on the ox-cart, as was told in the first part of this history — as great as it is exact — in its last chapter.
And so they decided to visit him and make trial of his improvement, although they held it almost impossible that he should have any; and they agreed not to touch him on any point of knight-errantry, so as not to run the risk of unstitching the stitches of the wound, which were still so tender.
They visited him, then, and found him sitting up in bed dressed in a green baize jacket, with a red Toledo cap; and he was so dried up and shrivelled that he looked like nothing but a thing made of mummy-flesh. He received them very well; they asked him about his health, and he gave an account of himself and of it with great good sense and in very elegant words.
And in the course of their talk they came to discuss this thing they call statecraft and forms of government, correcting this abuse and condemning that, reforming one custom and banishing another, each of the three of them making himself a new legislator, a modern Lycurgus or a brand-new Solon; and they so remade the state that it seemed as though they had put it in a forge and taken out a different one from the one they put in. And Don Quixote spoke with so much judgement on all the subjects that were touched on that the two examiners believed beyond any doubt that he was completely well and in his full senses.
The niece and the housekeeper were present at the conversation, and could not stop giving thanks to God at seeing their master with so good an understanding. But the curate, changing his first plan, which was not to touch him on anything to do with chivalry, wanted to make a complete trial of whether Don Quixote's soundness was false or true; and so, by one step and another, he came to relate some news that had come from the court. And among other things he said that it was held for certain that the Turk was coming down with a powerful fleet, and that his design was not known, nor where so great a storm-cloud would burst; and that with this fear, which almost every year sounds the alarm on us, the whole of Christendom was under arms, and His Majesty had had the coasts of Naples and Sicily and the island of Malta provided for. To this Don Quixote answered:
"His Majesty has acted like a most prudent warrior in providing for his states in time, so that the enemy should not find him unprepared. But if my advice were taken, I would advise him to use a precaution which His Majesty at this hour must be very far from thinking of."
The curate had hardly heard this when he said to himself:
"God hold you in his hand, poor Don Quixote; for it seems to me that you are hurling yourself down from the high summit of your madness into the deep abyss of your simplicity."
But the barber, who had already hit on the same thought as the curate, asked Don Quixote what this precaution was that he said it would be well to take; perhaps it might be such that it should go on the list of the many impertinent pieces of advice that are generally given to princes.
"Mine, master shaver," said Don Quixote, "will not be impertinent but pertinent."
"I do not say it in that sense," replied the barber, "but because experience has shown that all or most of the schemes that are put to His Majesty are either impossible, or absurd, or to the harm of the king or the kingdom."
"Well, mine," answered Don Quixote, "is neither impossible nor absurd, but the easiest, the justest and the handiest and quickest that could come into any schemer's head."
"Your worship is slow in telling it, Señor Don Quixote," said the curate.
"I should not like," said Don Quixote, "to tell it here now and have it in the ears of the gentlemen of the Council tomorrow morning, and somebody else carry off the thanks and the reward for my labour."
"For my part," said the barber, "I give my word, here and before God, not to say what your worship may tell us to king or knave or any earthly man — an oath I learnt from the ballad about the curate who in the preamble told the king about the thief who had stolen his hundred doubloons and his fast-trotting mule."
"I know no stories," said Don Quixote, "but I know that this is a good oath, on the strength of my knowing that master barber is a decent man."
"And even if he were not," said the curate, "I stand security and answer for him that in this case he will say no more than a dumb man, on pain of paying whatever is judged and sentenced against him."
"And who stands security for your worship, master curate?" said Don Quixote.
"My profession," answered the curate, "which is to keep secrets."
"Body of me!" said Don Quixote at this. "Is there anything more to it than for His Majesty to order by public proclamation that all the knights errant who are wandering about Spain should gather at the court on a set day? For even if no more than half a dozen came, there might come among them one who would be enough on his own to destroy the whole power of the Turk.
"Give me your attention, your worships, and follow me. Is it by any chance a new thing for a single knight errant to undo an army of two hundred thousand men, as though they all together had one single throat, or were made of sugar-paste? If not, tell me: how many histories are full of these marvels? If only — in an unlucky hour for me, I will not say for anybody else — the famous Don Belianis were alive today, or one of the countless line of Amadis of Gaul! For if any one of these were alive today and came face to face with the Turk, upon my word I would not want to be the Turk. But God will look after his people, and will provide somebody who, if not as fierce as the knights errant of the past, at least will not be inferior to them in spirit. And God understands me, and I say no more."
"Oh!" said the niece at this point. "Kill me if my master does not want to be a knight errant again!"
To which Don Quixote said:
"A knight errant I shall die; and let the Turk come down or go up when he pleases and with as much power as he can muster. I say again that God understands me."
At this point the barber said:
"I beg your worships to give me leave to tell a short story that happened in Seville, which fits so exactly here that it makes me want to tell it."
Don Quixote gave him leave, and the curate and the rest gave him their attention, and he began in this way:
"In the madhouse at Seville there was a man whom his relatives had put there for want of wits. He was a graduate in canon law from Osuna; but even if he had been one from Salamanca, in many people's opinion he would still have been mad.
"This graduate, after some years of confinement, gave himself to understand that he was sane and in his full senses; and with this notion he wrote to the archbishop, begging him earnestly and in very well-ordered terms to order him to be got out of the misery he was living in, since by God's mercy he had now recovered his lost wits — but that his relatives, so as to enjoy their share of his property, were keeping him there, and in spite of the truth wanted him to be mad until his death.
"The archbishop, persuaded by many well-ordered and judicious notes, ordered a chaplain of his to find out from the warden of the house whether what that licentiate wrote him was true, and likewise to talk with the madman, and if he thought he had his wits, to take him out and set him at liberty.
"The chaplain did so; and the warden told him that the man was still mad — that although he often talked like a person of great understanding, in the end he would let fly with so many foolish things that in number and in size they matched his earlier displays of good sense, as could be tested by talking to him. The chaplain wanted to test it; and being put with the madman, he talked with him for an hour and more, and in all that time the madman never said a crooked or absurd word. On the contrary, he spoke so carefully that the chaplain was obliged to believe that the madman was sane.
"And among other things the madman told him was that the warden had a grudge against him, so as not to lose the presents his relatives made him for saying that he was still mad and had only lucid intervals; and that the greatest enemy he had in his misfortune was his own large property, since his enemies, so as to enjoy it, played false and cast doubt on the favour Our Lord had done him in turning him from a beast back into a man.
"In the end he spoke in such a way that he made the warden suspect, his relatives greedy and heartless, and himself so sensible that the chaplain determined to take him away with him so that the archbishop might see him and touch with his hand the truth of that business.
"With this good faith the good chaplain asked the warden to have the clothes the licentiate had come in given back to him. The warden said again that he should consider what he was doing, because without any doubt the licentiate was still mad. The warden's warnings and cautions were of no use at all in stopping the chaplain from taking him away; the warden obeyed, seeing that it was the archbishop's order.
"They put the licentiate's own clothes on him, which were new and decent; and when he saw himself dressed like a sane man and stripped of the madman's dress, he begged the chaplain out of charity to give him leave to go and say goodbye to his companions the madmen. The chaplain said he wanted to go with him and see the madmen who were in the house.
"They went up, in fact, along with some others who happened to be there; and the licentiate, coming to a cage where there was a furious madman — though at that moment quiet and calm — said to him: 'My brother, see whether you have any commands for me, because I am going home; for God has been pleased, out of his infinite goodness and mercy and without my deserving it, to give me back my wits. I am well now and sane; for with regard to God's power nothing is impossible. Have great hope and trust in Him; for since He has brought me back to my former state, He will bring you back to yours too if you trust in Him. I shall take care to send you some good things to eat, and eat them in any case; because I would have you know that it is my belief, as a man who has been through it, that all our madness comes from having empty stomachs and brains full of air. Take heart, take heart; for weakening under misfortunes wears down the health and brings on death.'
"All these words of the licentiate's were heard by another madman who was in another cage opposite the furious one's; and getting up from an old rush mat where he was lying stark naked, he asked at the top of his voice who it was that was going away well and sane. The licentiate answered: 'It is I, brother, who am going; for I have no need to stay here any longer, for which I give endless thanks to heaven, that has done me so great a favour.'
"'Look what you say, licentiate; do not let the devil deceive you,' replied the madman. 'Rest your feet and stay quietly at home, and you will save yourself the journey back.'
"'I know I am well,' replied the licentiate, 'and there will be no need to go round the stations again.'
"'You well?' said the madman. 'Very good, we shall see; go with God. But I swear to you by Jupiter, whose majesty I represent on earth, that for this sin alone which Seville is committing today, in taking you out of this house and holding you for sane, I mean to inflict such a punishment on it that the memory of it shall last for ever and ever, amen. Do you not know, you wretched little licentiate, that I can do it — since, as I say, I am Jupiter the Thunderer, and hold in my hands the burning bolts with which I can and do threaten and destroy the world? But with one thing only do I mean to punish this ignorant town, and that is by not raining on it or on its whole district and neighbourhood for three whole years, which are to be counted from the day and moment this threat has been made. You free, you well, you sane — and I mad, and I sick, and I tied up? I shall think of raining about as soon as I think of hanging myself.'
"The bystanders were attentive to the madman's shouts and words; but our licentiate, turning to our chaplain and taking him by the hands, said to him: 'Do not distress yourself, my dear sir, or take any notice of what this madman has said; for if he is Jupiter and will not rain, I, who am Neptune, the father and god of the waters, will rain as often as I take a fancy to and as often as it is needed.'
"To which the chaplain answered: 'For all that, Señor Neptune, it will not be well to annoy Señor Jupiter. Let your worship stay at home, and another day, when there is more convenience and more time, we shall come back for your worship.'
"The warden and the bystanders laughed, at whose laughter the chaplain was half mortified; they took the licentiate's clothes off him, he stayed in the house, and that is the end of the story."
"So this is the story, master barber," said Don Quixote, "that fitted so exactly here that you could not help telling it? Ah, master shaver, master shaver, how blind is the man who cannot see through a sieve! And is it possible that your worship does not know that comparisons made between one wit and another, one valour and another, one beauty and another and one family and another are always odious and badly received?
"I, master barber, am not Neptune the god of the waters, nor do I try to get anybody to hold me for sensible when I am not. I only weary myself with giving the world to understand the error it is in in not bringing back to itself that most happy time when the order of knight-errantry was in the field. But our depraved age is not worthy to enjoy so great a good as the ages enjoyed when the knights errant took on themselves and threw on their own shoulders the defence of kingdoms, the protection of maidens, the succouring of orphans and wards, the punishment of the arrogant and the reward of the humble.
"Most of the knights who are in use now hear the rustle of the damasks, the brocades and the other rich stuffs they dress in sooner than the mail they arm themselves with. There is no knight now who sleeps in the open fields, exposed to the severity of the sky, armed at all points from feet to head. There is nobody now who, without taking his feet out of the stirrups and leaning on his lance, merely tries to snatch a little sleep, as the knights errant did.
"There is nobody now who, coming out of this wood, goes into that mountain, and from there treads a barren, deserted seashore, most often stormy and rough; and, finding on it and at its edge a small boat with no oars, sail, mast or rigging at all, throws himself into it with an intrepid heart, giving himself up to the merciless waves of the deep sea, which now carry him up to the sky and now bring him down to the abyss; and he, setting his breast against the irresistible storm, when he least expects it finds himself three thousand leagues and more from the place where he embarked; and, leaping onto a remote and unknown shore, things happen to him worthy of being written not on parchment but on bronze.
"But now idleness triumphs over diligence, laziness over labour, vice over virtue, arrogance over courage, and the theory of arms over the practice of them — which lived and shone only in the ages of gold and in the knights errant.
"If not, tell me: who more virtuous and more valiant than the famous Amadis of Gaul? Who more judicious than Palmerin of England? Who more accommodating and handy than Tirant lo Blanc? Who more elegant than Lisuarte of Greece? Who more slashed and more slashing than Don Belianis? Who more intrepid than Perion of Gaul, or who more given to attempting dangers than Felixmarte of Hircania, or who more sincere than Esplandián? Who more headlong than Don Cirongilio of Thrace? Who fiercer than Rodomonte? Who more prudent than King Sobrino? Who more daring than Rinaldo? Who more unconquerable than Roland? And who more gallant and more courteous than Ruggiero, from whom the dukes of Ferrara are descended today, according to Turpin in his Cosmography?
"All these knights, and a great many others I could name, master curate, were knights errant, the light and glory of chivalry. It is of these, or of such men as these, that I could have wished the men of my scheme to be; and if they were, His Majesty would find himself well served and would save a great deal of expense, and the Turk would be left tearing his beard. And so I do not want to stay at home, since the chaplain does not take me out of it; and if his Jupiter, as the barber has said, will not rain, here am I, who will rain whenever I take a fancy to. I say this so that Master Basin may know that I understand him."
"Truly, Señor Don Quixote," said the barber, "I did not mean it in that sense; and so God help me as my intention was a good one, and your worship ought not to take offence."
"Whether I can take offence or not," answered Don Quixote, "I know myself."
To this the curate said:
"Well, I have hardly said a word so far, and I should not like to be left with a scruple that gnaws and scratches at my conscience, arising from what Señor Don Quixote has said here."
"For greater things than that," answered Don Quixote, "master curate has leave; and so he may say his scruple, because it is no pleasure to go about with a scrupulous conscience."
"Then with that permission," answered the curate, "I say that my scruple is that I cannot on any account persuade myself that the whole crowd of knights errant your worship has mentioned, Señor Don Quixote, were really and truly people of flesh and blood in the world; on the contrary, I imagine that the whole of it is fiction, fable and lies, and dreams told by men who are awake — or rather half asleep."
"That is another error," answered Don Quixote, "that many people have fallen into, who do not believe there were ever such knights in the world; and many times, with different people and on different occasions, I have tried to bring this almost universal delusion into the light of truth. Sometimes I have not succeeded in my purpose and other times I have, supporting it on the shoulders of truth — which truth is so certain that I am ready to say that with my own eyes I saw Amadis of Gaul, who was a tall man, white in the face, with a well-set beard, though a black one, with a look between mild and severe, short in speech, slow to anger and quick to put anger aside.
"And in the way I have outlined Amadis I could, in my opinion, paint and describe every knight errant who goes about the histories in the world; for from the notion I have that they were as their histories relate, and from the exploits they performed and the dispositions they had, their features, colouring and heights can be worked out by good philosophy."
"How big does your worship think, my dear Señor Don Quixote," asked the barber, "the giant Morgante must have been?"
"On this matter of giants," answered Don Quixote, "there are different opinions as to whether there have been any in the world or not; but Holy Scripture, which cannot fail by an atom in the truth, shows us that there were, telling us the history of that great Philistine Goliath, who was seven and a half cubits high, which is an outrageous size. Also in the island of Sicily leg-bones and shoulder-blades have been found so large that their size shows that their owners were giants, and as big as great towers; geometry puts this truth beyond doubt.
"But for all that, I could not say with certainty what size Morgante was, although I imagine he cannot have been very tall. And what moves me to be of this opinion is finding in the history where his exploits are particularly mentioned that he often slept under a roof; and since he found a house he could fit into, it is clear that his size was not outrageous."
"That is so," said the curate.
And, enjoying hearing him say such great absurdities, he asked him what he thought about the faces of Rinaldo of Montalban and of Roland and of the other Twelve Peers of France, since they had all been knights errant.
"Of Rinaldo," answered Don Quixote, "I dare to say that he was broad in the face, ruddy in colour, with dancing and somewhat prominent eyes, touchy and excessively hot-tempered, a friend of thieves and of lost characters. Of Roland — or Rotolando, or Orlando, for the histories call him by all these names — I am of the opinion, and I maintain, that he was of middling height, broad-shouldered, somewhat bow-legged, dark in the face and red-bearded, hairy in the body and threatening in his look; short of speech, but very polite and well-bred."
"If Roland was no more of a gentleman than your worship has said," replied the curate, "it is no wonder that the lady Angelica the Fair scorned him and left him for the elegance, spirit and charm the downy-bearded young Moor must have had that she gave herself to; and she was judicious in loving Medoro's softness rather than Roland's roughness."
"That Angelica, master curate," answered Don Quixote, "was a girl who went astray, a wanderer and something of a capricious creature, and she left the world as full of her improprieties as of the fame of her beauty. She despised a thousand lords, a thousand brave men and a thousand men of sense, and was satisfied with a smooth-faced little page with no property or name except what the friendship he kept for his friend could give him as a grateful man.
"The great singer of her beauty, the famous Ariosto, either not daring or not wanting to sing what happened to that lady after her base surrender — which cannot have been things overly virtuous — left her where he said:
And how she received the sceptre of Cathay, perhaps another will sing with a better plectrum.
"And no doubt this was like a prophecy; for poets are also called vates, which means prophets. This truth is seen clearly, because since then a famous Andalusian poet has wept and sung her tears, and another famous and unique Castilian poet has sung her beauty."
"Tell me, Señor Don Quixote," said the barber at this point, "has there been no poet who has written a satire on that lady Angelica, among so many as have praised her?"
"I well believe," answered Don Quixote, "that if Sacripante or Roland had been poets, they would have given the girl a soaping by now; because it is proper and natural to poets who are scorned and not accepted by their ladies — invented ladies, or ladies invented after all by the men who chose them as the mistresses of their thoughts — to revenge themselves with satires and libels: a revenge, certainly, unworthy of generous hearts. But up to now no defamatory verse against the lady Angelica, who turned the world upside down, has come to my notice."
"A miracle!" said the curate.
And at this they heard the housekeeper and the niece, who had left the conversation by now, giving great shouts in the yard, and they all hurried to the noise.
The history relates that the shouts Don Quixote, the curate and the barber heard came from the niece and the housekeeper, who were making them at Sancho Panza, who was struggling to get in and see Don Quixote while they blocked the door against him:
"What does this stray creature want in this house? Get off to your own, brother; for it is you and nobody else who leads my master astray and coaxes him away and takes him off along those byways."
To which Sancho answered:
"You housekeeper of Satan's, the man who is coaxed away and led astray and taken off along those byways is me, not your master. He took me off round the world, and you are cheating yourselves by half the just price: he got me out of my house with tricks, promising me an isle that I am waiting for to this day."
"May bad isles choke you, you accursed Sancho," answered the niece. "And what are isles? Are they something to eat, you greedy glutton that you are?"
"They are not to eat," replied Sancho, "but to govern and rule — and better than four cities and four magistrates of the court."
"For all that," said the housekeeper, "you shall not come in here, you sack of wickedness and bag of malice. Go and govern your own house and till your own patches of land, and give up trying for isles or islets."
The curate and the barber got great pleasure from hearing the three of them talk; but Don Quixote, afraid that Sancho would come unstitched and blurt out a heap of malicious foolishness and touch on points that would not do his own reputation any good, called him, and made the two women be quiet and let him in.
Sancho came in, and the curate and the barber took their leave of Don Quixote, of whose health they despaired, seeing how fixed he was in his deranged notions and how steeped in the simplicity of his ill-erring chivalries. And so the curate said to the barber:
"You will see, neighbour, how when we least expect it our gentleman will be off again to fly along the riverbank."
"I do not doubt it," answered the barber; "but I am not so much amazed at the knight's madness as at the squire's simplicity, who has that business of the isle so firmly believed in that I do not think all the undeceivings that can be imagined will get it out of his skull."
"God help them," said the curate; "and let us keep watch and see what all this machine of absurdities of such a knight and such a squire comes to — for it seems they were forged, the two of them, in one and the same mould, and that the master's madnesses without the servant's foolishnesses would not be worth a farthing."
"That is so," said the barber, "and I should very much like to know what the two of them will be discussing now."
"I am certain," answered the curate, "that the niece or the housekeeper will tell us afterwards, for they are not of the sort to leave off listening."
Meanwhile, Don Quixote shut himself up with Sancho in his room; and, being alone, he said to him:
"It grieves me a great deal, Sancho, that you have said and go on saying that I was the man who got you out of your own little house — knowing that I did not stay in my own houses either. We came out together, we went together and we wandered together: one and the same fortune and one and the same luck has run for the two of us. If they tossed you in a blanket once, they have pounded me a hundred times, and this is the advantage I have over you."
"That stands to reason," answered Sancho, "because, according to what your worship says, misfortunes belong more properly to knights errant than to their squires."
"You are mistaken, Sancho," said Don Quixote. "Following the maxim, quando caput dolet — and so on."
"I understand no language but my own," answered Sancho.
"I mean," said Don Quixote, "that when the head aches, all the limbs ache; and so, being your master and lord, I am your head and you are a part of me, since you are my servant. And for this reason the harm that touches me, or shall touch me, must hurt you, and yours must hurt me."
"So it ought to have been," said Sancho; "but when they were tossing me as a limb, my head was standing behind the wall watching me fly through the air without feeling any pain at all. And since the limbs are bound to feel the head's pain, the head ought to be bound to feel theirs."
"Do you mean to say now, Sancho," answered Don Quixote, "that I did not feel pain when they were tossing you? And if you do say it, do not say it or think it; for I felt more pain then in my spirit than you did in your body.
"But let us leave this aside for now, for there will be a time when we can weigh it up and set it in its proper place. And tell me, friend Sancho: what do they say about me in the village? What opinion do the common people hold of me, what the gentry and what the gentlemen? What do they say about my courage, what about my exploits and what about my courtesy? What is being said about the task I have taken on of bringing back to life and restoring to the world the now forgotten order of chivalry?
"In short, Sancho, I want you to tell me what has come to your ears about this; and you are to tell me this without adding anything to the good or taking anything from the bad. For it is the part of loyal vassals to tell their lords the truth in its own shape and figure, without flattery's enlarging it or any other empty consideration diminishing it.
"And I want you to know, Sancho, that if the naked truth reached the ears of princes, without the clothes of flattery, other centuries would run and other ages would be counted more of iron than ours — which I take to be, of all the ages now in use, the golden one. Let this warning serve you, Sancho, so that judiciously and with good intentions you may put into my ears the truth of what you know about what I have asked you."
"That I shall do very willingly, my dear sir," answered Sancho, "on condition that your worship is not to be angry at what I say, since you want me to say it naked, without dressing it in any other clothes than the ones it came to my knowledge in."
"On no account shall I be angry," answered Don Quixote. "You may well speak freely, Sancho, and without any beating about the bush."
"Well, the first thing I say," he said, "is that the common people hold your worship for an enormous madman, and me for no less of an idiot. The gentry say that, not keeping himself within the limits of the gentry, your worship has put a 'Don' on himself and rushed into being a gentleman with four vine-stocks and two acres of land and a rag behind and another in front. The gentlemen say they would rather the gentry did not set themselves up against them — especially those squirely gentry who blacken their shoes with smoke and darn the holes in their black stockings with green silk."
"That," said Don Quixote, "has nothing to do with me, since I always go well dressed and never patched. Torn, that may well be — and torn more by my armour than by time."
"As for your worship's courage, courtesy, exploits and undertaking," Sancho went on, "there are different opinions. Some say: 'mad, but amusing'; others, 'brave, but unlucky'; others, 'courteous, but impertinent' — and so they run on through so many things that they leave neither your worship nor me a whole bone."
"Look, Sancho," said Don Quixote: "wherever virtue is at a high degree, it is persecuted. Few or none of the famous men of the past escaped being slandered by malice.
"Julius Caesar, that most spirited, most prudent and most valiant captain, was set down as ambitious and somewhat unclean, both in his dress and in his habits. Alexander, whose exploits earned him the name of the Great, they say of him that he had his certain touch of the drunkard. Of Hercules, the man of the many labours, it is told that he was lascivious and soft. Of Don Galaor, Amadis of Gaul's brother, it is whispered that he was more than excessively lustful; and of his brother, that he was a weeper.
"So that, Sancho, among so many slanders on good men, mine may well pass, so long as they are no more than the ones you have said."
"There's the rub, body of my father!" replied Sancho.
"Why, is there more?" asked Don Quixote.
"The tail is still to be skinned," said Sancho. "Everything so far is cakes and ale; but if your worship wants to know all there is about the calumnies they lay on you, I shall bring you here this very moment somebody who will tell you all of them without a crumb missing.
"Because last night Bartolomé Carrasco's son arrived, who is coming from his studies at Salamanca made a bachelor of arts; and when I went to give him welcome, he told me that your worship's history is going about in books now, under the title of The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha. And he says they mention me in it under my own name of Sancho Panza, and the lady Dulcinea of El Toboso, along with other things that passed between us two when we were alone — so that I crossed myself in fright at how the historian who wrote them could have known them."
"I assure you, Sancho," said Don Quixote, "that the author of our history must be some wise enchanter; for nothing they want to write about is hidden from such men."
"And how could he help being wise and an enchanter," said Sancho, "when — according to Bachelor Sansón Carrasco, for that is the name of the man I have mentioned — the author of the history is called Cide Hamete Aubergine!"
"That name is a Moorish one," answered Don Quixote.
"That will be it," answered Sancho, "because I have generally heard it said that the Moors are fond of aubergines."
"You must be mistaking, Sancho," said Don Quixote, "the surname of this Cide, which in Arabic means lord."
"That may well be," replied Sancho; "but if your worship would like me to bring him here, I shall go for him on wings."
"You will do me a great pleasure, my friend," said Don Quixote; "for what you have told me holds me in suspense, and I shall not eat a mouthful that tastes good to me until I am informed of it all."
"Then I am off for him," answered Sancho.
And leaving his master, he went to look for the bachelor, with whom he came back a little while later; and between the three of them there passed a most amusing conversation.
Don Quixote was left extremely thoughtful, waiting for the bachelor Carrasco, from whom he expected to hear the news of himself put into a book, as Sancho had said. And he could not persuade himself that such a history existed, since the blood of the enemies he had killed was not yet dry on the blade of his sword, and already they wanted his lofty chivalries to be going about in print.
For all that, he imagined that some sage, either friend or enemy, must have put them into print by art of enchantment: if a friend, to magnify them and set them above the most distinguished deeds of any knight errant; if an enemy, to annihilate them and put them below the vilest ever written of any vile squire — although, he said to himself, squires' exploits were never written. And if it were true that such a history existed, it being of a knight errant, it must of necessity be grandiloquent, lofty, distinguished, magnificent and true.
With this he comforted himself somewhat; but he was discomforted by thinking that its author was a Moor, judging by that name of Cide; and from the Moors no truth at all was to be expected, because they are all cheats, forgers and fantasists. He was afraid the man might have treated his love affairs with some indecency that would work to the discredit and injury of his lady Dulcinea of El Toboso's modesty; he wished he had declared his faithfulness and the respect he had always kept for her, scorning queens, empresses and maidens of every quality and holding in check the impulses of natural movements.
And so, wrapped and rewrapped in these and a great many other fancies, Sancho and Carrasco found him, and Don Quixote received them with great courtesy.
The bachelor, although he was called Sansón, was not very big in body, though a very great joker; sallow in colour but of very good understanding. He must have been about twenty-four, round-faced, with a flat nose and a big mouth — all signs of his being of a mischievous disposition and a lover of jokes and fun, as he showed on seeing Don Quixote by putting himself on his knees in front of him and saying:
"Give me your greatness's hands, Señor Don Quixote of La Mancha; for by the habit of St Peter that I wear — although I have taken no orders but the first four — your worship is one of the most famous knights errant that there has been, or ever will be, in the whole round world. A blessing on Cide Hamete Benengeli, who left the history of your great deeds written; and a double blessing on the man of curiosity who took care to have them translated from Arabic into our common Castilian, for the universal entertainment of the people."
Don Quixote made him get up and said:
"So it is true that there is a history of me, and that the man who composed it was a Moor and a sage?"
"It is so true, sir," said Sansón, "that it is my belief that more than twelve thousand copies of this history are in print today. And if not, let Portugal, Barcelona and Valencia say so, where they have been printed; and there is even a report that it is being printed at Antwerp, and I have an inkling that there is not going to be a nation or a language it will not be translated into."
"One of the things," said Don Quixote at this, "that must most content a virtuous and eminent man is to see himself, while still alive, going about on people's tongues with a good name, printed and in type. I said with a good name, because if it were the other way about, no death would come up to it."
"If it is a question of a good reputation and a good name," said the bachelor, "your worship alone carries off the palm from all knights errant; because the Moor in his language and the Christian in his took care to paint us to the life your worship's gallantry, your great spirit in facing dangers, your patience in adversities and your endurance both of misfortunes and of wounds, and the modesty and continence of the so platonic love between your worship and my lady Doña Dulcinea of El Toboso."
"I have never," said Sancho Panza at this point, "heard my lady Dulcinea called Doña, but only the lady Dulcinea of El Toboso; and so the history is already wrong in this."
"That is not an objection of any importance," answered Carrasco.
"Certainly not," answered Don Quixote. "But tell me, master bachelor: which of my exploits are the most valued in this history?"
"On that," answered the bachelor, "there are different opinions, as there are different tastes. Some stick to the adventure of the windmills, which seemed to your worship to be Briareuses and giants; others to the fulling mills; this man to the description of the two armies, which afterwards turned out to be two flocks of sheep; that man makes much of the one about the dead man they were taking to be buried at Segovia; one says that the freeing of the galley slaves is better than all of them; another that none comes up to the one about the two Benedictine giants, along with the quarrel with the valorous Basque."
"Tell me, master bachelor," said Sancho at this point: "does the adventure of the Yangüesans come into it, when our good Rocinante took it into his head to ask for truffles in the middle of the sea?"
"The sage left nothing in the inkwell," answered Sansón. "He says everything and notes everything, down to the capers good Sancho cut in the blanket."
"I cut no capers in the blanket," answered Sancho; "in the air, yes — and more of them than I would have liked."
"As far as I can imagine," said Don Quixote, "there is no human history in the world that does not have its ups and downs, especially those that treat of chivalry, which can never be full of prosperous events."
"For all that," answered the bachelor, "some who have read the history say they would have been glad if the authors of it had forgotten a few of the endless beatings that Señor Don Quixote was given in various encounters."
"That is where the truth of the history comes in," said Sancho.
"They could also have kept quiet about them in fairness," said Don Quixote; "since the actions that neither change nor alter the truth of the history there is no reason to write, if they are bound to work to the contempt of the hero of the history. Upon my word, Aeneas was not as pious as Virgil paints him, nor Ulysses as prudent as Homer describes him."
"That is so," replied Sansón, "but it is one thing to write as a poet and another as a historian: the poet may tell or sing things not as they were but as they ought to have been, and the historian must write them not as they ought to have been but as they were, without adding to the truth or taking anything from it."
"Well, if that Moorish gentleman is going in for telling truths," said Sancho, "then among my master's beatings mine are sure to be found; because they never took the measure of his worship's shoulders without taking mine of my whole body. But there is nothing to wonder at in that, since, as my master himself says, the limbs must share in the head's pain."
"You are a sly one, Sancho," answered Don Quixote. "Upon my word, you are not short of memory when you choose to have it."
"Even if I wanted to forget the blows they have given me," said Sancho, "the bruises would not allow it, and they are still fresh on my ribs."
"Be quiet, Sancho," said Don Quixote, "and do not interrupt master bachelor, whom I beg to go on telling me what is said about me in the history you speak of."
"And about me," said Sancho, "for they say too that I am one of the chief carackters in it."
"Characters, not carackters, friend Sancho," said Sansón.
"Have we got another reprover of vokibles here?" said Sancho. "Well, if they take to that, we shall never finish in our whole lives."
"God give me a bad one, Sancho," answered the bachelor, "if you are not the second person in the history; and there are people who would rather hear you talk than the finest-drawn character in the whole of it — although there are also those who say you were excessively credulous in believing that the government of that isle offered you by Señor Don Quixote, who is here present, could be real."
"There is still sun on the wall," said Don Quixote; "and the further Sancho goes on in years, the fitter and abler he will be to be a governor, with the experience the years bring, than he is now."
"By God, sir," said Sancho, "the isle I would not govern at the age I am now, I shall not govern at the age of Methuselah. The trouble is that the said isle is hanging about somewhere or other, and not that I am short of the wits to govern it."
"Commend it to God, Sancho," said Don Quixote, "and it will all turn out well, and perhaps better than you think; for the leaf does not stir on the tree without God's will."
"That is true," said Sansón; "for if God wills it, Sancho shall not be short of a thousand isles to govern, let alone one."
"I have seen governors about," said Sancho, "who to my mind do not come up to the sole of my shoe, and for all that they are called Your Lordship and are served on silver."
"Those are not governors of isles," replied Sansón, "but of other and easier governments; for those who govern isles must at the very least know grammar."
"I could deal with the gram well enough," said Sancho, "but as for the mar, I neither draw nor pay, because I do not understand it. But leaving this business of the government in God's hands, to send me wherever he can best be served by me, I say, master bachelor Sansón Carrasco, that it has given me endless pleasure that the author of the history has spoken of me in such a way that the things told of me are not annoying. For on the word of a good squire, if he had said things about me that were not very much those of an Old Christian, as I am, the deaf would have heard us."
"That would be working miracles," answered Sansón.
"Miracles or no miracles," said Sancho, "let every man look how he talks or how he writes about persons, and not set down at random the first thing that comes into his head."
"One of the faults they find with this history," said the bachelor, "is that its author put into it a tale called The Reckless Curiosity — not for being bad or badly reasoned, but for not belonging in that place, and having nothing to do with the history of his worship Señor Don Quixote."
"I would bet," replied Sancho, "that the son of a dog has mixed cabbages with baskets."
"Now I say," said Don Quixote, "that the author of my history has not been a sage but some ignorant chatterer who set himself to write it at random and with no reasoning at all, come what may — like Orbaneja, the painter of Úbeda, who, on being asked what he was painting, answered: 'Whatever comes out.' Once he painted a cock in such a fashion and so ill-favoured that it was necessary to write beside it in Gothic letters: 'This is a cock.' And so it must be with my history, which will need a commentary to be understood."
"Not at all," answered Sansón, "because it is so clear that there is nothing in it to puzzle over. Children handle it, young men read it, grown men understand it and old men praise it. And, in short, it is so thumbed and so read and so well known to every kind of person that people have hardly seen a thin hack before they say: 'There goes Rocinante.'
"And those who have taken most to reading it are the pages: there is no lord's antechamber where a Don Quixote is not to be found; some pick it up as others put it down; these pounce on it and those ask for it. In short, this history is the most enjoyable and least harmful entertainment that has been seen up to now, because in the whole of it there is not to be discovered, even by a hint, one immodest word or one thought that is less than Catholic."
"To write in any other way," said Don Quixote, "would not be writing truths but lies; and historians who make use of lies ought to be burnt like men who make counterfeit money. And I do not know what moved the author to make use of other people's tales and stories when there was so much to write about in mine: no doubt he must have gone by the proverb, 'With straw or with hay —' and so on.
"For truly, in setting out my thoughts alone, my sighs, my tears, my good desires and my undertakings, he could have made a volume bigger than, or as big as, all El Tostado's works put together. In fact, what I make out, master bachelor, is that to compose histories and books, of whatever sort they may be, a great judgement and a mature understanding are needed. To say witty things and to write amusing ones is the work of great minds: the most judicious character in a play is the fool, because the man who wants to give people to understand that he is simple must not be so. History is like a sacred thing, because it must be true; and where truth is, God is, in so far as truth goes. But in spite of this there are some who compose and hurl books out of themselves as if they were fritters."
"There is no book so bad," said the bachelor, "that it has not something good in it."
"There is no doubt of that," replied Don Quixote; "but it often happens that men who had deservedly earned and won great fame by their writings lost it altogether, or diminished it somewhat, on giving them to the press."
"The cause of that," said Sansón, "is that as printed works are looked at slowly, their faults are easily seen, and they are scrutinised the more closely the greater the fame of the man who composed them. Men famous for their wits, the great poets, the illustrious historians, are always — or most often — envied by those whose pleasure and particular entertainment is to judge other people's writings without having given any of their own to the light of the world."
"That is nothing to wonder at," said Don Quixote, "because there are many theologians who are no good for the pulpit and are extremely good at seeing the faults or the excesses of those who preach."
"All this is so, Señor Don Quixote," said Carrasco; "but I could wish that such censurers were more merciful and less scrupulous, and did not fix on the specks in the very bright sun of the work they are finding fault with. For if aliquando bonus dormitat Homerus, let them consider how much he was awake, so as to give his work its light with the least shadow he could. And perhaps it might be that what looks bad to them are beauty-spots, which sometimes increase the beauty of the face that has them. And so I say that the risk a man runs who prints a book is enormous, since it is impossible with every impossibility to compose one such that it will satisfy and content everybody who reads it."
"The one that treats of me," said Don Quixote, "must have contented very few."
"On the contrary; since stultorum infinitus est numerus, endless are those who have enjoyed that history. And some have found fault and dishonesty in the author's memory, since he forgets to tell who the thief was who stole Sancho's grey — for it is not stated there, and it is only to be inferred from what is written that he was stolen, and shortly afterwards we see Sancho on horseback on the same donkey, without its having turned up.
"They also say he forgot to put in what Sancho did with those hundred crowns he found in the portmanteau in the Sierra Morena, which are never mentioned again; and there are many who want to know what he did with them, or what he spent them on, which is one of the substantial points missing from the work."
Sancho answered:
"I, Señor Sansón, am in no state at the moment to get into accounts or stories; for I have been taken with a faintness of the stomach which, if I do not repair it with two swallows of the old stuff, will put me on Saint Lucy's thorn. I have it at home; my missus is waiting for me; when I have finished eating I shall come back and satisfy your worship and the whole world about anything they want to ask, both about the loss of the donkey and about the spending of the hundred crowns."
And without waiting for an answer or saying another word, he went off home.
Don Quixote asked and begged the bachelor to stay and take pot luck with him. The bachelor took up the invitation; he stayed, a couple of pigeons were added to the ordinary fare, chivalry was discussed at table, Carrasco fell in with his humour, the banquet ended, they slept through the afternoon heat, Sancho came back and the earlier talk was taken up again.
Sancho came back to Don Quixote's house, and going back to the earlier discussion, said:
"As for what Señor Sansón said about wanting to know who, or how, or when my donkey was stolen from me, in answer I say that the very night when, running away from the Holy Brotherhood, we went into the Sierra Morena — after the luckless adventure of the galley slaves and the one about the dead man they were taking to Segovia — my master and I got into a thicket, where my master, leaning on his lance, and I on my grey, pounded and worn out from the past scuffles, set ourselves to sleep as though it had been on four feather mattresses.
"I especially slept with such a heavy sleep that whoever it was had time to come up and prop me on four stakes he set at the four corners of the pack-saddle, so that he left me sitting on it as though on horseback and got the grey out from under me without my feeling it."
"That is an easy thing, and no new occurrence; for the same thing happened to Sacripante when, at the siege of Albracca, that famous thief called Brunello got his horse out from between his legs by that very same device," said Don Quixote.
"Day came," Sancho went on, "and I had hardly given a shiver when, the stakes going, I came down on the ground with a great fall. I looked for the donkey and did not see him; tears came into my eyes, and I made such a lamentation that if the author of our history did not put it in, he may reckon he put in nothing good. At the end of I do not know how many days, as we were coming along with the lady Princess Micomicona, I recognised my ass, and that riding on him in gypsy dress was that Ginés de Pasamonte, that trickster and enormous scoundrel that my master and I got off the chain."
"That is not where the mistake lies," replied Sansón, "but in the fact that before the donkey had turned up, the author says that Sancho was riding on the same grey."
"To that," said Sancho, "I do not know what to answer, except that the historian was mistaken, or it must have been the printer's carelessness."
"That is certainly it," said Sansón; "but what became of the hundred crowns? Did they melt away?"
Sancho answered:
"I spent them for the good of my own person and my wife's and my children's, and they have been the reason my wife bears patiently with the roads and highways I have gone along serving my master Don Quixote. Because if at the end of all this time I had come home without a farthing and without the donkey, a black fortune would have been waiting for me.
"And if there is anything more to know about me, here I am, and I shall answer the king himself in person; and nobody has any business meddling in whether I brought them or did not bring them, whether I spent them or did not spend them. For if the beatings they gave me on those journeys were to be paid for in money, even if they were only valued at four maravedis apiece, another hundred crowns would not be enough to pay me half of it. And let every man put his hand on his own breast and not set himself to judge white for black and black for white; for every man is as God made him, and often a good deal worse."
"I shall take care," said Carrasco, "to charge the author of the history that if he prints it again he must not forget this that good Sancho has said, which will raise it a good span higher than it stands."
"Is there anything else to correct in this book, master bachelor?" asked Don Quixote.
"There must be," he answered, "but none of it can be of the importance of the ones already mentioned."
"And by any chance," said Don Quixote, "does the author promise a second part?"
"He does promise one," answered Sansón; "but he says he has not found it and does not know who has it, and so we are in doubt whether it will come out or not. And both for this reason and because some say, 'Second parts were never any good,' and others, 'What is written about Don Quixote's affairs is enough,' it is doubted that there is to be a second part — although some who are more jovial than saturnine say: 'Let us have more Quixotries: let Don Quixote charge and Sancho Panza talk, and be it what it may, we shall be satisfied with that.'"
"And what is the author's intention?"
"That," answered Sansón, "as soon as he finds the history he is looking for with extraordinary diligence, he will put it in print at once, moved more by the profit that will come to him from giving it out than by any other praise."
To which Sancho said:
"Money and profit is what the author has his eye on? It will be a marvel if he gets it right, because he will do nothing but botch and botch, like a tailor on the eve of Easter; and works that are done in a hurry are never finished with the perfection they require. Let that Moorish gentleman, or whatever he is, mind what he is doing; for my master and I will give him so much rubble to hand in the matter of adventures and different happenings that he will be able to put together not only a second part but a hundred.
"The good man must think, no doubt, that we are asleep here on the straw; but let him hold our foot while he shoes us and he will see which one we limp on. What I can say is that if my master would take my advice, we should be out in those fields by now undoing injuries and putting wrongs right, as is the use and custom of good knights errant."
Sancho had hardly finished saying this when there came to their ears the neighing of Rocinante; which neighing Don Quixote took for a most fortunate omen, and he decided to make another sally three or four days from then. And declaring his intention to the bachelor, he asked his advice as to which quarter he should begin his journey in.
The bachelor answered that it was his opinion he should go to the kingdom of Aragon and to the city of Saragossa, where in a few days' time some most solemn jousts were to be held for the feast of St George, in which he could win fame above all the knights of Aragon — which would be to win it above all the knights in the world. He praised his decision as most honourable and most valiant, and warned him to go more cautiously in facing dangers, on the grounds that his life was not his own but belonged to all those who needed him to protect them and rescue them in their misfortunes.
"That is the very thing I complain about, Señor Sansón," said Sancho at this point; "for my master goes at a hundred armed men the way a greedy boy goes at half a dozen melons. Body of the world, master bachelor! Surely there are times to attack and times to retreat; surely it cannot all be 'St James, and at them, Spain!'
"And what is more, I have heard it said — and I believe by my master himself, if I remember rightly — that between the extremes of cowardice and rashness lies the middle point of courage. And if this is so, I do not want him to run away when there is no reason to, or to attack when going too far calls for something else.
"But above all, I warn my master that if he is to take me with him, it must be on condition that he does all the fighting himself, and that I am not to be obliged to anything except looking after his person in what concerns his cleanness and his comfort. In that I shall dance attendance on him; but to suppose that I am going to put a hand to my sword, even against low scoundrels with axe and helmet, is to think of what will not happen.
"I, Señor Sansón, do not mean to win a reputation for bravery, but for being the best and most loyal squire that ever served a knight errant. And if my master Don Quixote, obliged by my many good services, should want to give me some isle out of the many his worship says he is bound to come across, I shall receive a great favour in it; and if he does not give me one, I was born anyway, and a man must not live in dependence on anybody but God. And what is more, bread will taste as good to me, and perhaps better, out of a government as in it.
"And how do I know but that in these governments the devil has got some trip-up prepared for me, where I may stumble and fall and knock my teeth out? Sancho I was born and Sancho I mean to die. But if for all that, quietly and easily, without much trouble and without much risk, heaven should send me some isle or something of the sort, I am not such a fool as to throw it away; for they also say: 'When they give you the heifer, run with the halter'; and 'When good fortune comes, get it into your house.'"
"Brother Sancho," said Carrasco, "you have spoken like a professor; but for all that, trust in God and in Señor Don Quixote, who is bound to give you a kingdom, let alone an isle."
"The more is the same as the less," answered Sancho; "although I can tell Señor Carrasco that my master would not be throwing the kingdom he gave me into a torn sack, for I have taken my own pulse and I find myself in health to rule kingdoms and govern isles; and I have told my master this other times already."
"Take care, Sancho," said Sansón, "for office changes manners, and it might be that on seeing yourself a governor you would not know the mother that bore you."
"That is to be understood," answered Sancho, "of those who were born in the mallows, and not of those who have four fingers of Old Christian fat on their souls, as I have. Just come and try my disposition, and see whether it will use ingratitude to anybody!"
"God grant it," said Don Quixote, "and it will show itself when the government comes; for I fancy I have it in front of my eyes already."
This said, he begged the bachelor that if he were a poet he would do him the kindness of composing him some verses that should treat of the leave-taking he meant to make of his lady Dulcinea of El Toboso; and that he should note that at the beginning of each line he was to put a letter of her name, so that at the end of the verses, putting the first letters together, one should read: Dulcinea of El Toboso.
The bachelor answered that although he was not one of the famous poets of Spain — of whom, they said, there were no more than three and a half — he would not fail to compose such verses, although he found a great difficulty in composing them, because the letters that made up the name were seventeen. And that if he made four Castilian stanzas of four lines each, there would be one letter left over; and if of five lines each, which they call ten-liners or roundels, three letters would be missing. But that for all that he would try to swallow one letter as best he could, so that in the four Castilian stanzas the name of Dulcinea of El Toboso should be included.
"It must be so in any case," said Don Quixote; "for if the name is not there plain and manifest, there is no woman who would believe that the verses were made for her."
They settled on this, and that the departure should be a week from then. Don Quixote charged the bachelor to keep it secret, especially from the curate and from Master Nicolás, and from his niece and the housekeeper, so that they should not hinder his honourable and valorous decision. Carrasco promised it all.
With this he took his leave, charging Don Quixote to let him know of all his good or bad fortunes when there was an opportunity. And so they parted, and Sancho went to put in order what was needed for their journey.
(On coming to write this fifth chapter, the translator of this history says that he holds it to be apocryphal, because in it Sancho Panza talks in a different style from the one that could be expected of his short wit, and says things so subtle that he does not think it possible he could have known them. But that he did not want to leave off translating it, so as to fulfil what he owed to his office; and so he went on, saying:)
Sancho reached his house so delighted and cheerful that his wife saw his cheerfulness a crossbow shot away — so much so that it obliged her to ask him:
"What have you got, Sancho my friend, that you come so cheerful?"
To which he answered:
"Wife, if God had willed it, I should be very glad not to be as pleased as I look."
"I do not understand you, husband," she replied, "and I do not know what you mean by that about your being glad, if God had willed it, not to be pleased; for silly as I am, I do not know who takes pleasure in not having any."
"Look, Teresa," answered Sancho, "I am cheerful because I have decided to go back to serving my master Don Quixote, who means to go out for the third time to look for adventures; and I am going out with him again, because my need requires it, along with the hope — which cheers me — of thinking that I may find another hundred crowns like the ones already spent. Although it makes me sad to have to part from you and my children.
"And if God would give me my food dry-shod and at home, without dragging me over rough ground and crossroads — for he could do it at little cost and by no more than wanting to — it is clear that my cheerfulness would be firmer and sounder, since the cheerfulness I have goes mixed with the sadness of leaving you. So I was right to say I would be glad, if God had willed it, not to be pleased."
"Look, Sancho," replied Teresa, "ever since you made yourself a limb of a knight errant you talk in such a roundabout way that nobody can understand you."
"It is enough that God understands me, wife," answered Sancho, "for He is the understander of all things; and let this stop here. And note, my dear, that you must take care over these three days with the grey, so that he is fit to take up arms: double his feed, see to the pack-saddle and the rest of the tackle, because we are not going to a wedding but to go round the world and to have givings and takings with giants, with dragons and with monsters, and to hear hissings, roarings, bellowings and howlings — and even all this would be lavender-water if we did not have to deal with Yangüesans and enchanted Moors."
"I well believe, husband," replied Teresa, "that squires errant do not eat their bread for nothing; and so I shall stay behind praying to Our Lord to get you out of so much bad fortune soon."
"I tell you, wife," answered Sancho, "that if I did not expect before very long to see myself governor of an isle, I should drop down dead here."
"Not that, my husband," said Teresa; "let the hen live, even with her pip. Live you, and let the devil take all the governments there are in the world. Without a government you came out of your mother's belly, without a government you have lived till now, and without a government you will go — or they will carry you — to the grave when God is pleased. There are plenty of people in the world like that who live without a government, and they do not for that stop living and being counted in the number of the people. The best sauce in the world is hunger; and as the poor are never short of that, they always eat with pleasure.
"But look, Sancho: if by any chance you find yourself with some government, do not forget me and your children. Note that Sanchico is a full fifteen now, and it is right that he should go to school, if his uncle the abbot is to make a churchman of him. Note too that Mari Sancha your daughter will not die if we marry her off; for she is giving me hints that she wants a husband as much as you want to find yourself with a government. And after all, a badly married daughter looks better than a well-kept mistress."
"Upon my word," answered Sancho, "if God brings me to have anything in the way of a government, I mean to marry Mari Sancha off so high, wife, that they will not be able to reach her without calling her My Lady."
"Not that, Sancho," answered Teresa. "Marry her to her equal, which is the soundest thing; because if you take her out of clogs and into high shoes, and out of a brown fourteen-thread skirt into a hooped one and silk gowns, and out of a 'Marica' and a plain 'you' into a 'Doña So-and-so' and a 'Your Ladyship', the girl will not know herself, and at every turn she will fall into a thousand blunders, showing the yarn of her coarse, common cloth."
"Be quiet, you fool," said Sancho; "it will only be a matter of getting used to it for two or three years, and after that the ladyship and the dignity will fit her as though they were moulded. And if not, what does it matter? Let her be Your Ladyship, and come what may."
"Measure yourself by your own condition, Sancho," answered Teresa; "do not try to raise yourself higher, and note the proverb that says: 'Wipe your neighbour's son's nose and take him into your house.' Certainly it would be a fine thing to marry our María to some great count or lordly gentleman who, whenever the fancy took him, would give her a fresh coat of paint, calling her a peasant girl, the daughter of a clod-splitter and a distaff-scraper! Not in my lifetime, husband! Is that, indeed, what I have brought up my daughter for?
"You bring the money, Sancho, and leave the marrying of her to me. For there is Lope Tocho, Juan Tocho's son, a plump, healthy lad, and we know him, and I know he does not look on the girl with a bad eye. And with him, who is our equal, she will be well married, and we shall always have her under our eyes, and we shall all be one — parents and children, grandchildren and sons-in-law — and God's peace and blessing will go about among us all. And do not you go marrying her off now in those courts and those great palaces, where they will neither understand her nor she understand herself."
"Come here, you beast and wife of Barabbas," replied Sancho. "Why do you want now, without rhyme or reason, to stop me marrying my daughter to somebody who will give me grandchildren that are called Your Lordship? Look, Teresa: I have always heard my elders say that the man who does not know how to enjoy good luck when it comes to him ought not to complain when it passes him by. And it would not be right that now, when it is knocking at our door, we should shut it in its face. Let us let ourselves be carried by this favourable wind that is blowing for us."
(It is by this way of talking, and by what Sancho says further on, that the translator of this history said he held this chapter to be apocryphal.)
"Does it not seem to you, you animal," Sancho went on, "that it will be a good thing to drop my body into some profitable government that will get our foot out of the mud? And let Mari Sancha be married to whoever I like, and you will see how they call you Doña Teresa Panza, and how you sit in church on a carpet and cushions and hangings, in spite and to the annoyance of the gentlewomen of the village! And if not, stay always in the same state, without growing or shrinking, like a figure in a tapestry! And let us say no more about this, for Sanchica is to be a countess whatever you may say to me."
"Do you see all you are saying, husband?" answered Teresa. "Well, for all that, I am afraid that this earldom of my daughter's is going to be her ruin. You do what you like, whether you make her a duchess or a princess, but I can tell you that it will not be with my will or my consent.
"I was always a friend to equality, brother, and I cannot bear to see people give themselves airs with no grounds for it. Teresa they put on me at my baptism, a plain, bare name, with no additions or trimmings or the fringes of Dons and Doñas. Cascajo my father was called; and me, for being your wife, they call Teresa Panza, when by good reason they ought to call me Teresa Cascajo. But there, laws go where kings will; and I am content with this name without their putting a Don on top of it that weighs so much I cannot carry it.
"And I do not want to give people anything to talk about when they see me go about dressed like a countess or a governor's wife, for they will say at once: 'Just look how airily the slattern goes! Yesterday she could not get her fill of pulling at a tuft of tow, and went to Mass with her head covered by the tail of her skirt instead of a mantle, and today she goes with a hooped skirt and brooches and airs, as though we did not know her.'
"If God keeps me my seven — or my five — senses, or whichever ones I have, I do not mean to give anybody the chance to see me in such a fix. You go off, brother, and be a government or an isle, and give yourself airs to your heart's content; but my daughter and I, by my mother's memory, are not going to move a step out of our village. The honourable woman has a broken leg and stays at home; and for the modest girl, doing something is her holiday.
"Go off with your Don Quixote to your adventures, and leave us to our misfortunes, for God will improve them for us if we are good. And I certainly do not know who put a Don on him, when neither his parents nor his grandparents had one."
"Now I say," replied Sancho, "that you have some familiar spirit in that body of yours. God help you, woman, and what a lot of things you have strung together, one on another, with neither head nor tail! What have Cascajo and the brooches and the proverbs and the airs to do with what I am saying?
"Come here, you idiot and ignorant woman — for I can call you that, since you do not understand my arguments and go running away from good luck. If I were saying that my daughter should throw herself down from a tower, or go wandering about the world as the princess Doña Urraca wanted to do, you would be right not to fall in with my wishes. But if in two shakes, and in less than the opening and shutting of an eye, I clap a Don and a Ladyship on her back, and take her out of the stubble and put her under a canopy and on a dais, on a platform with more velvet cushions on it than the Almohads of Morocco had Moors in their line — why should you not consent and want what I want?"
"Do you know why, husband?" answered Teresa. "Because of the proverb that says: 'The man who covers you uncovers you.' People run their eyes over the poor man as though in passing, and rest them on the rich one; and if that rich man was once poor, that is where the muttering and the ill-speaking begins, and worse still the persevering of the ill-speakers, who are about these streets in heaps, like swarms of bees."
"Look, Teresa," answered Sancho, "and listen to what I want to tell you now; perhaps you will never have heard it in all the days of your life, and I am not now speaking off my own bat, for everything I mean to say is maxims from the preaching father who preached in this village last Lent — who, if I remember rightly, said that all present things the eyes are looking at present themselves and stand and remain in our memory far better and with more force than things past."
(All these arguments that Sancho goes on making here are the second reason the translator gives for holding this chapter to be apocryphal, since they go beyond Sancho's capacity. And he went on to say:)
"From which it comes about that when we see some person well turned out and dressed in rich clothes and with a train of servants, it seems that it forces us and invites us to have respect for that person, even though our memory at that instant may present to us some low condition we once saw that same person in. Which shame, whether it was of poverty or of birth, since it has passed, is not; and only what we see before us is.
"And if this man, whom fortune has taken out of the rough draft of his low condition — for it was in these very words that the father said it — to the height of his prosperity, is well-bred, generous and courteous with everybody, and does not set himself up in competition with those who are noble by long descent, take it as certain, Teresa, that there will be nobody who remembers what he was, but they will reverence what he is — unless it is the envious, from whom no prosperous fortune is safe."
"I do not understand you, husband," replied Teresa. "Do what you like, and do not break my head any more with your harangues and rhetorics. And if you are revolved on doing what you say —"
"Resolved you should say, wife," said Sancho, "and not revolved."
"Do not set yourself to argue with me, husband," answered Teresa. "I speak as God is pleased to have me, and I do not go into any finer drawing. And I say that if you are persisting in having a government, take your son Sancho with you, so that you may teach him from now on how to have a government; for it is right that children should inherit and learn their fathers' trades."
"As soon as I have a government," said Sancho, "I shall send for him by the post, and I shall send you money, which I shall not be short of; for there is never any lack of people to lend it to governors when they have none. And dress him so as to hide what he is and make him look like what he is going to be."
"You send the money," said Teresa, "and I shall dress him up like a palm-shoot."
"So we are agreed, then," said Sancho, "that our daughter is to be a countess."
"The day I see her a countess," answered Teresa, "that is the day I shall reckon I am burying her. But I tell you again to do what pleases you, for we women are born with this burden of being obedient to our husbands, even if they are blockheads."
And at this she began to weep as truly as though she already saw Sanchica dead and buried. Sancho comforted her by telling her that although he would have to make her a countess, he would make her one as late as he possibly could. With this their talk came to an end, and Sancho went back to see Don Quixote to make arrangements for their departure.
While Sancho Panza and his wife Teresa Cascajo were having the irrelevant conversation just related, Don Quixote's niece and housekeeper were not idle; for by a thousand signs they were gathering that their uncle and master meant to break out for the third time and go back to the practice of his — as they saw it — ill-erring chivalry. They tried by every possible means to turn him away from so bad an idea, but it was all preaching in the desert and hammering cold iron.
For all that, among many other things they said to him, the housekeeper said:
"Truly, my dear sir, if your worship does not plant your feet flat and stay quietly at home, and leave off going about the mountains and the valleys like a soul in torment looking for those things they call adventures — which I call disasters — I shall have to complain aloud and at the top of my voice to God and to the king, so that they may put a stop to it."
To which Don Quixote answered:
"Housekeeper, what God will answer to your complaints I do not know, nor what His Majesty will answer either. I only know that if I were king I would excuse myself from answering the endless infinity of impertinent petitions that are given him every day; for one of the greatest labours kings have, among many others, is being obliged to listen to everybody and answer everybody. And so I would not want affairs of mine to give him any trouble."
To which the housekeeper said:
"Tell us, sir: are there no knights at His Majesty's court?"
"Yes," answered Don Quixote, "and a great many; and it is right that there should be, to adorn the greatness of princes and to display the royal majesty."
"Then would your worship not be one of those," she replied, "who serve their king and lord standing still, staying at court?"
"Look, my friend," answered Don Quixote: "not all knights can be courtiers, nor can or should all courtiers be knights errant. There have to be all kinds in the world; and although we are all knights, there is a great deal of difference between the one sort and the other. Because courtiers, without going out of their rooms or over the threshold of the court, travel all over the world by looking at a map, without its costing them a farthing or their suffering heat or cold, hunger or thirst.
"But we, the true knights errant, in the sun, in the cold, in the wind, in the inclemencies of the sky, by night and by day, on foot and on horseback, measure the whole earth with our own feet. And we know our enemies not only in paintings but in their own being, and we attack them at every pass and on every occasion, without looking at trifles or at the laws of duelling: whether or not the other man's lance or sword is shorter; whether he carries relics on him, or some hidden trick; whether or not the sun is to be divided and shared out, along with other ceremonies of that stamp that are used in private duels between one man and another, which you do not know about and I do.
"And you must know something more: that the good knight errant, even if he sees ten giants whose heads not only touch but go past the clouds, and each of whom has two enormous towers for legs, and whose arms are like the masts of great, powerful ships, and each eye like a great millwheel and burning hotter than a glass furnace, must not be frightened by them in any way at all. On the contrary, with a fine bearing and an intrepid heart he must go at them and charge them, and if it is possible defeat and rout them in a small instant, even if they came armed in the shells of a certain fish which they say are harder than if they were of diamond, and carried instead of swords sharp knives of Damascus steel, or iron-shod clubs with points of steel on them too, as I have seen more than twice.
"All this I have said, my good housekeeper, so that you may see the difference there is between one kind of knight and another. And it would be reasonable that there should be no prince who did not value more highly this second — or rather this first — species of knights errant; for, as we read in their histories, there have been men among them who have been the salvation not of one kingdom only but of many."
"Ah, my dear sir!" said the niece at this point. "Let your worship note that everything you say about knights errant is fable and lies, and their histories, if they were not to be burnt, deserve to have a penitent's smock put on each of them, or some mark by which it would be known as infamous and as a destroyer of good morals."
"By the God who sustains me," said Don Quixote, "if you were not directly my niece, as my own sister's daughter, I would inflict such a punishment on you for the blasphemy you have spoken that it would ring through the whole world. How is it possible that a chit of a girl who hardly knows how to work a dozen lace bobbins should dare to set her tongue to censuring the histories of knights errant?
"What would Señor Amadis say if he heard such a thing? But I am quite sure he would forgive you, because he was the humblest and most courteous knight of his time, and moreover a great protector of maidens. But somebody else might have heard you who would have done you no good by it; for they are not all courteous or well-mannered: there are some villains and boors among them.
"Nor are all those who call themselves knights knights through and through: some are of gold and others of alchemy, and they all look like knights, but not all of them can stand the touchstone of truth. There are low men who burst themselves trying to look like knights, and there are lofty knights who seem to be dying on purpose to look like low men; the first raise themselves either by ambition or by virtue, the second lower themselves either by slackness or by vice. And we need to make use of a discerning judgement to tell apart these two kinds of knights, so alike in their names and so far apart in their actions."
"God help me!" said the niece. "That your worship should know so much, uncle, that if it were needed at a pinch you could get up in a pulpit and go and preach in the streets — and that with all this you should fall into so great a blindness and so plain a foolishness that you give yourself to understand that you are brave when you are old, that you have strength when you are ill, and that you set wrongs right when you are bowed down by age; and, above all, that you are a knight when you are not — because although gentlefolk may be knights, poor men are not!"
"You are quite right, niece, in what you say," answered Don Quixote, "and I could tell you things about lineages that would astonish you; but so as not to mix the divine with the human, I shall not say them.
"Look, my friends: all the lineages there are in the world — and listen to me carefully — can be reduced to four kinds, which are these. Some had humble beginnings and went on spreading and extending until they reached the greatest greatness. Others had great beginnings and went on preserving them, and preserve and maintain them in the condition they began in. Others, although they had great beginnings, ended in a point like a pyramid, having diminished and annihilated their beginning until it stopped at nothing at all — as the point of a pyramid is, which compared with its base or foundation is nothing. And there are others, and these are the most numerous, who neither had a good beginning nor a reasonable middle, and so will have an end without a name, like the lineage of the common and ordinary people.
"Of the first, who had a humble beginning and rose to the greatness they now preserve, let the Ottoman house serve you as an example, which from a humble and lowly shepherd who gave it its beginning stands at the height where we see it. Of the second lineage, which had its beginning in greatness and preserves it without increasing it, many princes will be an example who are princes by inheritance and keep themselves so without increasing or diminishing it, holding themselves peacefully within the limits of their states.
"Of those who began great and ended in a point there are thousands of examples; for all the Pharaohs and Ptolemies of Egypt, the Caesars of Rome, along with the whole crowd — if one may give them that name — of endless princes, monarchs and lords, Medes, Assyrians, Persians, Greeks and barbarians, all these lineages and lordships have ended in a point and in nothing at all, both they and those who gave them their beginning; since it would not be possible now to find any of their descendants, and if we did find one, it would be in a low and humble condition.
"Of the plebeian lineage I have nothing to say, except that it serves only to increase the number of those who are alive, without their greatness deserving any other fame or any other praise.
"From all I have said I want you to gather, my silly girls, that there is great confusion among lineages, and that only those seem great and illustrious that show it in the virtue and in the riches and generosity of their owners. I said virtues, riches and generosity, because the great man who is vicious will be a great vicious man, and the rich man who is not generous will be a miserly beggar; for it is not the having of riches that makes their owner happy but the spending of them — and not the spending of them anyhow, but knowing how to spend them well.
"To the poor knight no other road is left for showing that he is a knight but the road of virtue: being affable, well-bred, courteous, polite and obliging; not proud, not arrogant, not a back-biter, and above all charitable. For with two maravedis that he gives a poor man with a cheerful heart he will show himself as generous as the man who gives alms to the ringing of a bell; and there will be nobody who sees him adorned with the virtues I have mentioned who, even without knowing him, will not judge him and hold him to be of good stock — and his not being so would be a miracle. And praise was always the reward of virtue, and the virtuous cannot fail to be praised.
"There are two roads, my daughters, by which men can go to come to be rich and honoured: one is that of letters, the other that of arms. I have more of arms than of letters, and I was born, judging by my inclination to arms, under the influence of the planet Mars; so that I am almost forced to follow its road, and along it I must go in spite of the whole world. And it will be useless to weary yourselves in persuading me not to want what the heavens want, fortune ordains, reason requires and, above all, my own will desires.
"For knowing as I do the countless labours that go with knight-errantry, I also know the endless goods that are attained by it; and I know that the path of virtue is very narrow and the road of vice broad and spacious; and I know that their ends and destinations are different, because the road of vice, wide and spacious, ends in death, and the road of virtue, narrow and laborious, ends in life — and not in a life that comes to an end but in the one that will have no end. And I know, as our great Castilian poet says, that
It is along these rough places that the road runs to the high seat of immortality, which nobody reaches who turns aside from it."
"Oh, unlucky me!" said the niece. "So my master is a poet as well! He knows everything, he can do everything: I would bet that if he wanted to be a bricklayer he would know how to build a house as well as he would build a cage."
"I promise you, niece," answered Don Quixote, "that if these chivalric thoughts did not carry all my senses along with them, there would be nothing I could not do, and no piece of craftsmanship that would not come out of my hands — especially cages and toothpicks."
At this moment there was a knock at the door; and on their asking who was knocking, Sancho Panza answered that it was he. And the housekeeper had hardly recognised him when she ran off to hide so as not to see him, so much did she loathe him. The niece opened the door, his master Don Quixote came out to receive him with open arms, and the two of them shut themselves up in his room, where they had another conversation that the last one does not surpass.
The housekeeper had hardly seen Sancho Panza shutting himself up with her master when she realised what they were up to; and imagining that out of that consultation would come the decision on his third sally, she took her cloak and, full of distress and grief, went to look for the bachelor Sansón Carrasco, thinking that as he was well spoken and a new friend of her master's he might persuade him to give up so deranged a plan.
She found him walking about the courtyard of his house; and on seeing him she let herself drop at his feet, sweating and distressed. When Carrasco saw her with such signs of grief and alarm, he said to her:
"What is this, mistress housekeeper? What has happened to you, that it looks as though your soul were being torn out of you?"
"It is nothing, my dear Señor Sansón, except that my master is coming out — he is coming out, and no doubt about it!"
"And where is he coming out at, madam?" asked Sansón. "Has some part of his body burst?"
"He is not coming out anywhere," she answered, "except at the door of his madness. I mean, master bachelor of my soul, that he wants to go out again — and with this it will be the third time — to look about the world for what he calls good fortunes, when I cannot understand how he gives them that name.
"The first time they brought him back to us slung across a donkey, pounded with blows. The second he came on an ox-cart, put away and shut up in a cage, where he gave himself to understand that he was enchanted; and the poor creature came in such a state that the mother who bore him would not have known him: thin, yellow, his eyes sunk into the topmost garrets of his brain — so that to bring him round somewhat I got through more than six hundred eggs, as God knows and everybody knows, and my hens, who will not let me lie."
"That I well believe," answered the bachelor; "for they are so good, so fat and so well brought up that they would not say one thing for another if they burst. In fact, mistress housekeeper: is there nothing else, and has no other mishap happened, but this that is feared Señor Don Quixote wants to do?"
"No, sir," she answered.
"Then do not distress yourself," answered the bachelor; "but go home and good luck to you, and have something hot ready for my breakfast, and on the way go and say the prayer of St Apollonia, if you know it; for I shall come along presently and you shall see marvels."
"Wretched me!" replied the housekeeper. "Your worship says I am to say the prayer of St Apollonia? That would be if my master had it in his teeth, but he has it in nothing but his skull."
"I know what I am saying, mistress housekeeper. Go, and do not set yourself to argue with me; for you know I am a bachelor of Salamanca, and there is no more bachelling to be done," answered Carrasco.
And with this the housekeeper went off, and the bachelor went straight away to look for the curate, to discuss with him what will be told in its own time.
During the time Don Quixote and Sancho were shut up together, there passed the words that the history relates with great exactness and truthful report.
Sancho said to his master:
"Sir, I have got my wife reclined to letting me go with your worship wherever you like to take me."
"Reconciled you should say, Sancho," said Don Quixote, "not reclined."
"Once or twice," answered Sancho, "if I remember rightly, I have begged your worship not to correct my words, so long as you understand what I mean by them; and that when you do not understand them you should say, 'Sancho, or devil, I do not understand you'; and if I do not make myself clear, then you may correct me. For I am so fossil —"
"I do not understand you, Sancho," said Don Quixote at once, "since I do not know what 'I am so fossil' means."
"'So fossil' means," answered Sancho, "I am so like that."
"I understand you less than ever now," replied Don Quixote.
"Well, if you cannot understand me," answered Sancho, "I do not know how to put it: I know no more, and God be with me."
"Ah, now, now I see it," answered Don Quixote: "you mean to say that you are so docile, mild and manageable that you will take whatever I tell you and go along with whatever I teach you."
"I would bet," said Sancho, "that from the very beginning you fathomed me and understood me, and only wanted to muddle me so as to hear me say another two hundred blunders."
"That may be," replied Don Quixote. "And in fact, what does Teresa say?"
"Teresa says," said Sancho, "that I should tie my finger tight to your worship, and that papers should speak and beards keep quiet; because whoever cuts does not shuffle, and one 'take this' is worth more than two 'I'll give you'. And I say that a woman's advice is little, and the man who does not take it is mad."
"And I say so too," answered Don Quixote. "Speak on, friend Sancho; go ahead, for you are talking pearls today."
"The case is," replied Sancho, "that, as your worship knows better than I do, we are all subject to death, and today we are and tomorrow we are not, and the lamb goes as quickly as the sheep, and nobody can promise himself in this world more hours of life than God chooses to give him — because death is deaf, and when she comes to knock at the doors of our life she is always in a hurry, and neither prayers nor force nor sceptres nor mitres will make her stop, according to common report and fame and according to what they tell us from those pulpits."
"All that is true," said Don Quixote, "but I do not know where you are getting to."
"I am getting to this," said Sancho: "that your worship should fix me a set wage of what you are to give me each month for the time I serve you, and that the said wage should be paid me out of your property. For I do not want to be at the mercy of favours, which come late, or badly, or never; God help me with what is my own.
"In short, I want to know what I am earning, be it little or much; for the hen lays on one egg, and many littles make a much, and while something is being earned nothing is being lost. It is true that if it should happen — which I neither believe nor expect — that your worship gave me the isle you have promised me, I am not so ungrateful, nor do I take things so to the last hair, as not to want the income of that isle to be valued and deducted from my wages pro cat-a."
"Friend Sancho," answered Don Quixote, "sometimes a cat may serve as well as a rat."
"I understand," said Sancho: "I would bet you were going to say rata and not cata; but it does not matter at all, since your worship has understood me."
"And so well understood," answered Don Quixote, "that I have penetrated to the bottom of your thoughts, and I know the target you are shooting at with the innumerable arrows of your proverbs.
"Look, Sancho: I would readily fix you a wage if I had found in any of the histories of the knights errant an example that revealed and showed me, through some small chink, what they used to earn each month or each year. But I have read all, or most, of their histories, and I do not remember having read that any knight errant ever fixed a set wage for his squire. I only know that they all served on favour, and that when they least expected it, if their lords' luck had run well, they found themselves rewarded with an isle or with something equivalent, and at the very least were left with a title and a lordship.
"If on these hopes and terms you, Sancho, care to come back and serve me, so be it and good luck to you; for to think that I am going to take the ancient usage of knight-errantry off its hinges and out of its bounds is to think of what will not happen. So, my Sancho, go back to your house and declare my intention to your Teresa; and if she is willing and you are willing to be on favour with me, bene quidem; and if not, we are as good friends as before. For if the dovecote is not short of food, it will not be short of doves.
"And note, my son, that a good hope is worth more than a poor possession, and a good grievance than a bad payment. I speak in this way, Sancho, to give you to understand that I too, like you, know how to hurl proverbs as though they rained.
"And, in short, I mean to say, and I do say, that if you do not want to come on favour with me and run the same luck as I run, God be with you and make a saint of you; for I shall not be short of squires who are more obedient, more attentive and not as awkward or as talkative as you."
When Sancho heard his master's firm resolution, the sky clouded over for him and the wings fell off his heart, because he had believed that his master would not go without him for all the wealth in the world. And so, while he was standing there in suspense and thoughtful, Sansón Carrasco came in with the niece, eager to hear with what arguments he would persuade his master not to go back to looking for adventures.
Sansón came up, that famous joker; and embracing him as he had the first time, he said to him in a raised voice:
"O flower of knight-errantry! O shining light of arms! O honour and mirror of the Spanish nation! May it please God Almighty, where it is more fully set down, that whatever person or persons put an obstacle in the way of and hinder your third sally may never find their way out of the labyrinth of their own desires, and may never have their wicked wishes fulfilled."
And turning to the housekeeper, he said:
"Mistress housekeeper may perfectly well leave off saying the prayer of St Apollonia; for I know that it is a settled decision of the spheres that Señor Don Quixote should go back to carrying out his lofty new intentions. And I should be greatly burdening my own conscience if I did not urge and persuade this knight not to keep the strength of his valorous arm and the goodness of his most valiant spirit any longer shrunk up and held back — because by his delay he is cheating the righting of wrongs, the protection of orphans, the honour of maidens, the support of widows and the prop of married women, along with other things of that stamp that touch, concern, depend on and belong to the order of knight-errantry.
"Come, my dear Señor Don Quixote, handsome and brave: let your worship and your greatness set out today rather than tomorrow; and if anything is lacking for putting it into effect, here am I to supply it with my person and my property. And if it should be necessary to serve your magnificence as a squire, I shall count it the greatest good fortune!"
At this Don Quixote said, turning to Sancho:
"Did I not tell you, Sancho, that I should have squires to spare? See who offers himself to be one: none other than the unheard-of bachelor Sansón Carrasco, perpetual jester and merrymaker of the courtyards of the Salamanca schools, sound in his person, agile in his limbs, silent, an endurer of heat as well as of cold, of hunger as well as of thirst, with all those qualities that are required for being a knight errant's squire.
"But heaven forbid that, to follow my own pleasure, I should hamstring and break the pillar of letters and the vessel of the sciences, and cut down the eminent palm of the good and liberal arts. Let the new Samson stay in his own country and, honouring it, honour along with it the grey hairs of his aged parents; for I shall be content with any squire at all, since Sancho does not deign to come with me."
"I do deign," answered Sancho, softened and with his eyes full of tears; and he went on: "It shall not be said of me, my dear sir, 'the bread eaten and the company broken up.' No, I do not come of any ungrateful stock; for the whole world knows, and especially my village, who the Panzas were that I descend from. And what is more, I have recognised and fathomed by many good deeds, and by more good words, the wish your worship has to do me favours.
"And if I have got into reckonings of so much more and so much less about my wages, it has been to please my wife; who, when she takes it into her head to press for a thing, there is no mallet that tightens the hoops of a cask as hard as she presses for what she wants to be done. But in the end a man must be a man and a woman a woman; and since I am a man wherever I am, which I cannot deny, I mean to be one in my own house too, whoever it may displease.
"And so there is nothing more to do but for your worship to draw up your will with its codicil, in such a way that it cannot be revolted, and let us set off at once, so that Señor Sansón's soul may not suffer, since he says his conscience diktates him to persuade your worship to go out into the world a third time. And I offer myself afresh to serve your worship faithfully and loyally, as well as and better than all the squires who have served knights errant in past and present times."
The bachelor was astonished to hear Sancho Panza's manner and way of talking; for although he had read the first history of his master, he had never believed he was as amusing as they paint him there. But hearing him now say "a will and codicil that cannot be revolted", instead of "a will and codicil that cannot be revoked", he believed everything he had read about him, and confirmed him as one of the most solemn idiots of our times; and he said to himself that two such madmen as master and man had never been seen in the world.
Finally Don Quixote and Sancho embraced and stayed friends; and with the advice and approval of the great Carrasco, who was for the time being their oracle, it was arranged that their departure should be three days from then, in which time there would be room to get ready what was needed for the journey and to look for a close helmet, which Don Quixote said he must in any case take with him. Sansón offered him one, because he knew a friend of his who had one would not refuse it him — although it was darker with rust and mould than it was bright and clean with polished steel.
The curses the two women, housekeeper and niece, hurled at the bachelor were beyond counting: they tore their hair, they scratched their faces, and in the manner of the hired mourners of those days they lamented the departure as though it were their master's death. The design Sansón had in persuading him to go out again was to do what the history relates further on, all on the advice of the curate and the barber, with whom he had discussed it beforehand.
In short, in those three days Don Quixote and Sancho provided themselves with what they thought suited them; and Sancho having pacified his wife and Don Quixote his niece and his housekeeper, at nightfall, without anybody's seeing them except the bachelor, who wanted to go half a league out of the village with them, they set out on the road to El Toboso: Don Quixote on his good Rocinante and Sancho on his old grey, his saddlebags provided with things belonging to the commissariat and his purse with money that Don Quixote gave him for whatever might come up.
Sansón embraced him and begged him to send him news of his good or bad luck, so as to be glad at the one or sorry at the other, as the laws of their friendship required. Don Quixote promised it him, Sansón turned back to his village, and the two of them took the road to the great city of El Toboso.
"Blessed be the mighty Allah!" says Hamete Benengeli at the beginning of this eighth chapter. "Blessed be Allah!" he repeats three times; and he says that he gives these blessings because he sees that he now has Don Quixote and Sancho out in the field, and that the readers of his agreeable history may reckon that from this point Don Quixote's exploits and pleasantries and his squire's begin.
He urges them to forget the ingenious gentleman's past chivalries and set their eyes on the ones that are to come, which now begin on the road to El Toboso as the others began on the plains of Montiel; and it is not much that he asks for so much as he promises. And so he goes on, saying:
Don Quixote and Sancho were left alone; and Sansón had hardly gone off when Rocinante began to neigh and the grey to sigh, which was taken by both of them, knight and squire, for a good sign and a most fortunate omen — although, if the truth is to be told, the grey's sighs and brayings were more numerous than the hack's neighing, from which Sancho gathered that his own fortune was bound to overtop his master's and set itself above it. He founded this on I do not know what judicial astrology he happened to know, although the history does not explain it; they only heard him say that when he stumbled or fell he was glad he had not come out of the house, because from stumbling or falling nothing came but a torn shoe or broken ribs. And, fool though he was, he was not very far off the road in this.
Don Quixote said to him:
"Friend Sancho, night is coming down on us fast, and with more darkness than we needed to be able to see El Toboso by daylight — where I have decided to go before I put myself into any other adventure; and there I shall receive the blessing and the kind leave of the peerless Dulcinea, with which leave I expect and hold it certain that I shall finish and bring to a happy end every dangerous adventure. Because nothing in this life makes knights errant braver than seeing themselves favoured by their ladies."
"So I believe," answered Sancho; "but I think it will be difficult for your worship to speak to her or be with her in any place, at least, where you can receive her blessing — unless she throws it down to you from the wall of the yard, which is where I saw her the first time, when I took her the letter with the news of the follies and mad things your worship was doing in the heart of the Sierra Morena."
"Was it the wall of a yard that you took that for, Sancho," said Don Quixote, "where or through which you saw that never sufficiently praised gentility and beauty? It cannot have been anything but the galleries or corridors, or the arcades, or whatever they call them, of rich and royal palaces."
"It might all have been so," answered Sancho, "but it looked like a wall to me — unless I am short of memory."
"For all that, let us go there, Sancho," replied Don Quixote; "for so long as I see her, it makes no difference to me whether it is over a wall or through windows, or through chinks or garden railings; for any ray from the sun of her beauty that reaches my eyes will light my understanding and strengthen my heart, so that I shall be left unique and unequalled in good sense and in courage."
"Well, truly, sir," answered Sancho, "when I saw that sun of the lady Dulcinea of El Toboso, it was not so bright that it could throw off any rays at all; and it must have been that, as her worship was winnowing that wheat I mentioned, the great deal of dust she was raising settled like a cloud in front of her face and darkened it."
"Do you still persist, Sancho," said Don Quixote, "in saying, in thinking, in believing and in insisting that my lady Dulcinea was winnowing wheat — when that is a task and an occupation far removed from everything that people of standing do and ought to do, who are set up and kept for other occupations and pastimes that show their standing from a crossbow shot away?
"How badly you remember, Sancho, those verses of our poet where he paints for us the work those four nymphs were doing in their dwellings of crystal, who put their heads out of the beloved Tagus and sat down in the green meadow to work those rich webs the ingenious poet describes to us there, which were all of gold and silk and pearls woven and worked in together. And in this way my lady's work must have been when you saw her; except that the envy some wicked enchanter must have for my affairs changes and turns everything that is to give me pleasure into shapes different from their own.
"And so I am afraid that in that history of my exploits they say is going about in print, if by any chance its author has been some sage who is an enemy of mine, he will have put one thing for another, mixing a thousand lies with one truth and amusing himself with telling other actions outside what the continuity of a true history requires. Oh envy, root of endless evils and canker of the virtues! All the other vices, Sancho, bring a certain something of pleasure with them, but envy brings nothing but disgusts, bitternesses and rages."
"That is what I say too," answered Sancho; "and I think that in that book or history the bachelor Carrasco told us he had seen about us, my honour must be going about dragged this way and that, all over the place, sweeping the streets. Well, on the word of a good man, I have never spoken ill of any enchanter, nor have I so many good things that I could be envied.
"It is quite true that I am somewhat malicious and that I have my certain hints of a rogue about me; but it is all covered and hidden by the great cloak of my simplicity, which is always natural and never contrived. And even if I had nothing else but believing, as I always do believe, firmly and truly in God and in everything the Holy Roman Catholic Church holds and believes, and being, as I am, a mortal enemy of the Jews, the historians ought to have mercy on me and treat me well in their writings. But let them say what they like; for naked I was born and naked I find myself: I neither lose nor gain. Though, seeing myself put into books and going about the world from hand to hand, I do not care a fig what they say about me."
"That seems to me, Sancho," said Don Quixote, "like what happened to a famous poet of these times, who, having written a malicious satire against all the ladies of the court, did not put in or name one lady about whom it might be doubted whether she was one or not. And she, seeing that she was not on the list with the rest, complained to the poet, asking him what he had seen in her that he had not put her in the number of the others, and telling him to lengthen the satire and put her in the enlargement — and if not, to look out for what he was born for. The poet did it, and put her in in terms not fit for duennas to repeat; and she was satisfied at finding herself with a reputation, even an infamous one.
"With this too goes what they tell of that shepherd who set fire to and burnt down the famous temple of Diana, counted one of the seven wonders of the world, only so that his name should stay alive in the ages to come. And although it was ordered that nobody should name him or make mention of his name by word or in writing, so that he should not achieve the end of his desire, still it came to be known that his name was Herostratus.
"To this also belongs what happened to the great Emperor Charles the Fifth with a gentleman in Rome. The emperor wanted to see that famous temple of the Rotunda, which in ancient times was called the temple of all the gods and now, with a better dedication, is called the temple of all the saints; and it is the building that has been left most entire of those the heathen raised in Rome, and the one that best preserves the fame of the grandeur and magnificence of its founders. It is made in the shape of half an orange, enormously great, and is very light, with no other light coming into it than what is allowed by one window — or rather a round skylight — that stands at its top.
"And the emperor was looking at the building from there, and with him and at his side was a Roman gentleman, explaining to him the beauties and subtleties of that great machine and memorable architecture. And when they had come away from the skylight, he said to the emperor: 'A thousand times, Sacred Majesty, the wish came to me to take hold of your Majesty and throw myself down from that skylight, so as to leave an eternal fame of myself in the world.'
"'I thank you,' answered the emperor, 'for not having put so wicked a thought into effect; and from now on I shall not put you in the way of testing your loyalty again. And so I order you never to speak to me, or to be anywhere where I am.' And after these words he did him a great favour.
"I mean, Sancho, that the desire to attain fame is extremely active. Who do you suppose it was that threw Horatius down from the bridge, armed at all points, into the depths of the Tiber? Who burnt Mucius's arm and hand? Who drove Curtius to hurl himself into the deep burning chasm that opened in the middle of Rome? Who, against all the omens that had been shown against it, made Caesar cross the Rubicon? And, with more modern examples, who scuttled the ships and left high and dry and cut off the valorous Spaniards led by that most courteous Cortés in the New World?
"All these and other great and various exploits are, were and shall be the works of fame, which mortals desire as rewards and as part of the immortality their famous deeds deserve — although we Christians, Catholics and knights errant must attend more to the glory of the ages to come, which is everlasting in the ethereal and heavenly regions, than to the vanity of the fame that is won in this present and perishable age; which fame, however long it lasts, must in the end come to an end with the world itself, which has its own appointed end.
"So, Sancho, our works must not go outside the limit the Christian religion we profess has set for us. We have to kill pride in the giants; envy, by generosity and a good heart; anger, by a calm bearing and quietness of mind; gluttony and sleep, by the little we eat and the long watches we keep; lust and lasciviousness, by the loyalty we keep to those we have made the ladies of our thoughts; sloth, by going about all the parts of the world looking for the occasions that may make us, and do make us, famous knights as well as Christians. See here, Sancho, the means by which are reached the highest praises that a good name brings with it."
"Everything your worship has told me up to now," said Sancho, "I have understood very well; but for all that, I should like your worship to absorb me a doubt that has just come into my memory at this moment."
"Absolve, you mean, Sancho," said Don Quixote. "Say on and welcome, and I shall answer what I know."
"Tell me, sir," Sancho went on: "those Julys or Augusts, and all those valiant knights you have mentioned, who are dead by now — where are they now?"
"The heathen," answered Don Quixote, "are without doubt in hell; the Christians, if they were good Christians, are either in purgatory or in heaven."
"Very good," said Sancho; "but let us know now: those graves where the bodies of those great gentlemen lie — have they silver lamps in front of them, or are the walls of their chapels hung with crutches, with shrouds, with wigs, with legs and eyes of wax? And if not with that, what are they hung with?"
To which Don Quixote answered:
"The tombs of the heathen were for the most part sumptuous temples: the ashes of Julius Caesar's body were set on a stone pyramid of outrageous size, which today in Rome they call St Peter's Needle. The emperor Hadrian had for his tomb a castle as big as a good-sized village, which they called Moles Hadriani, and which is now the castle of Sant' Angelo in Rome. Queen Artemisia buried her husband Mausolus in a tomb that was held to be one of the seven wonders of the world. But none of these tombs, nor many others the heathen had, was hung with shrouds or with other offerings and signs that showed those buried in them to be saints."
"That is what I am coming to," replied Sancho. "And tell me now: which is more — to raise a dead man, or to kill a giant?"
"The answer is at hand," answered Don Quixote: "raising a dead man is more."
"I have you now," said Sancho. "Then the fame of the man who raises the dead, gives sight to the blind, straightens the lame and gives health to the sick — and in front of whose tombs lamps burn, and whose chapels are full of devout people who kneel and worship his relics — will be a better fame, for this world and for the next, than the fame all the heathen emperors and knights errant there have ever been in the world left or ever shall leave."
"I confess that truth too," answered Don Quixote.
"Well, this fame, these graces, these prerogatives — as they call this," answered Sancho, "belong to the bodies and the relics of the saints, who, with the approval and licence of our holy mother the Church, have lamps, candles, shrouds, crutches, paintings, wigs, eyes and legs, by which they increase devotion and enlarge their Christian fame. Kings carry the bodies of the saints, or their relics, on their own shoulders; they kiss the pieces of their bones; they adorn and enrich their oratories and their most treasured altars with them —"
"What do you want me to infer, Sancho, from all you have said?" said Don Quixote.
"I mean," said Sancho, "that we should set about being saints, and we shall get the good fame we are after a great deal sooner. And note, sir, that yesterday or the day before — for one may put it that way, it is so short a time ago — they canonised or beatified two little barefoot friars, whose iron chains that they used to gird and torment their bodies with people now count it a great piece of luck to kiss and touch; and they are held in more veneration than, as I said, Roland's sword in the armoury of the king our lord, whom God keep.
"So, my dear sir, it is better to be a humble little friar of whatever order it may be than a valiant knight errant; two dozen scourgings do more with God than two thousand lance-thrusts, whether they give them to giants or to monsters or to drakins."
"All that is so," answered Don Quixote, "but we cannot all be friars, and many are the roads by which God takes his own to heaven: chivalry is a religion, and there are knights who are saints in glory."
"Yes," answered Sancho, "but I have heard it said that there are more friars in heaven than knights errant."
"That is," answered Don Quixote, "because the number of religious is greater than that of knights."
"There are many knights errant," said Sancho.
"Many," answered Don Quixote, "but few who deserve the name of knights."
In these and other such talk that night and the following day went by for them, without anything happening to them worth telling, which grieved Don Quixote not a little.
At last, the next day at nightfall, they made out the great city of El Toboso, at whose sight Don Quixote's spirits were gladdened and Sancho's saddened — because he did not know Dulcinea's house, nor had he ever in his life seen her, any more than his master had seen her. So that the one because he wanted to see her, and the other because he had never seen her, were both agitated; and Sancho could not imagine what he was to do when his master sent him to El Toboso.
Finally Don Quixote arranged to go into the city after nightfall; and while the hour was coming on they stayed among some oak trees that stood near El Toboso. And when the appointed moment came they went into the city, where things happened to them that come to something indeed.
It was exactly midnight, more or less, when Don Quixote and Sancho left the hill and went into El Toboso. The town was in a peaceful silence, because all its inhabitants were asleep and resting with their legs stretched out, as they say. The night was half clear, although Sancho would have liked it to be altogether dark, so as to find in its darkness an excuse for his own foolishness.
Nothing was to be heard in the whole place but the barking of dogs, which thundered in Don Quixote's ears and troubled Sancho's heart. From time to time a donkey brayed, pigs grunted, cats miaowed; and these voices of different sounds were made louder by the silence of the night — all of which the enamoured knight took for a bad omen. But for all that, he said to Sancho:
"Sancho my son, lead the way to Dulcinea's palace: it might be that we shall find her awake."
"To what palace am I to lead the way, body of the sun," answered Sancho, "when the one I saw her greatness in was nothing but a very small house?"
"She must have withdrawn at the time," answered Don Quixote, "into some small apartment of her castle, taking her pleasure alone with her maidens, as is the use and custom of great ladies and princesses."
"Sir," said Sancho, "since your worship insists, in spite of me, that my lady Dulcinea's house is a castle, is this by any chance an hour to find the door open? And will it be right for us to give great knocks so that they may hear us and open to us, throwing all the people into an uproar and a commotion? Are we by any chance going to knock at the door of our kept women, as men do who keep mistresses, who come and knock and go in at whatever hour it may be, however late?"
"Let us first of all find the castle once and for all," replied Don Quixote, "and then I shall tell you, Sancho, what it will be well for us to do. And note, Sancho, that either I see badly or that great bulk and shadow that shows from here must be Dulcinea's palace."
"Then let your worship lead the way," answered Sancho: "perhaps it is so — although I shall see it with my eyes and touch it with my hands, and then I shall believe it as much as I believe it is now daylight."
Don Quixote led the way; and having gone about two hundred paces, he came upon the bulk that was casting the shadow, and saw a great tower, and then recognised that this building was no castle but the chief church of the town. And he said:
"We have come upon the church, Sancho."
"So I see," answered Sancho; "and please God we do not come upon our own graves, for it is no good sign to be going about among cemeteries at such hours — and the more so as I told your worship, if I remember rightly, that this lady's house must be up a little blind alley."
"God's curse on you, you idiot!" said Don Quixote. "Where have you found it laid down that castles and royal palaces are built up blind alleys?"
"Sir," answered Sancho, "every country has its own custom: perhaps here in El Toboso it is the custom to build palaces and great buildings up alleys. And so I beg your worship to let me look about these streets or alleys that offer themselves: it might be that in some corner I should come across this castle — and may I see it eaten by dogs, for it has us running about and worn out like this."
"Speak with respect, Sancho, of my lady's affairs," said Don Quixote; "and let us keep the peace and not throw the rope after the bucket."
"I shall restrain myself," answered Sancho; "but with what patience can I bear it that your worship should expect me, from one single time when I saw our mistress's house, to know it for ever and to find it at midnight — when your worship cannot find it, and must have seen it thousands of times?"
"You will drive me to despair, Sancho," said Don Quixote. "Come here, you heretic: have I not told you a thousand times that in all the days of my life I have never seen the peerless Dulcinea, nor ever crossed the threshold of her palace, and that I am in love only by hearsay and by the great reputation she has for beauty and good sense?"
"Now I hear it," answered Sancho; "and I say that since your worship has never seen her, neither have I —"
"That cannot be," replied Don Quixote; "for at the very least you have told me yourself that you saw her winnowing wheat, when you brought me the answer to the letter I sent her by you."
"Do not go by that, sir," answered Sancho, "for I would have you know that the sight of her and the answer I brought you were by hearsay too; because I know who the lady Dulcinea is about as well as I could hit the sky with my fist."
"Sancho, Sancho," answered Don Quixote, "there are times for joking and times when jokes fall flat and look bad. Just because I say that I have neither seen nor spoken to the lady of my soul, you are not to say too that you have neither spoken to her nor seen her, when it is quite the other way about, as you know."
While the two of them were in this conversation, they saw a man coming past where they were with two mules; and from the noise the plough made as it dragged along the ground they judged he must be a labourer who had got up before daylight to go to his ploughing — and so it turned out. The labourer came along singing that ballad that goes:
It went ill with you, Frenchmen, in that hunt at Roncesvalles.
"May they kill me, Sancho," said Don Quixote on hearing it, "if anything good is going to happen to us tonight. Do you not hear what that countryman is singing?"
"I do hear it," answered Sancho; "but what has the hunt at Roncesvalles to do with our business? He might just as well have been singing the ballad of Calaínos, for all the difference it would make to whether things go well or badly for us in our affair."
At this the labourer came up, and Don Quixote asked him:
"Could you tell me, my good friend — and may God give you good fortune — whereabouts here are the palaces of the peerless princess Doña Dulcinea of El Toboso?"
"Sir," answered the lad, "I am a stranger here and have only been a few days in this town, working for a rich farmer at the field labour. In that house opposite live the curate and the sacristan of the place; either of them, or both, will be able to give your worship an account of this lady princess, because they have the list of all the inhabitants of El Toboso — although it is my belief that there is no princess at all living in the whole of it. A great many ladies of standing, yes; and each of them may be a princess in her own house."
"Then among those, my friend," said Don Quixote, "must be the one I am asking you about."
"That may be," answered the lad; "and goodbye, for the dawn is coming."
And whipping up his mules, he waited for no more questions.
Sancho, who saw his master in suspense and thoroughly discontented, said to him:
"Sir, the day is coming on fast, and it would not be sensible to let the sun find us in the street. It will be better for us to get outside the city, and for your worship to hide in some wood near here; and I shall come back by day, and shall not leave a nook in this whole place where I do not look for my lady's house, castle or palace — and I should be unlucky indeed if I did not find it. And when I have found it, I shall speak to her worship and tell her where and how your worship is left waiting for her to give you an arrangement and a plan for seeing her, without any damage to her honour and reputation."
"You have spoken, Sancho," said Don Quixote, "a thousand maxims shut up in the circle of a few words: the advice you have now given me I like and receive most willingly. Come, my son, and let us go and look for somewhere for me to hide; and you shall come back, as you say, to look for, to see and to speak to my lady, from whose good sense and courtesy I expect more than miraculous favours."
Sancho was frantic to get his master out of the town, so that he should not find out the lie about the answer he had taken him from Dulcinea in the Sierra Morena; and so he hurried their going, which took place at once. And two miles from the place they found a wood or grove, where Don Quixote hid himself while Sancho went back to the city to speak to Dulcinea — on which embassy things happened to him that call for fresh attention and fresh belief.
On coming to relate what he relates in this chapter, the author of this great history says that he would have liked to pass it over in silence, for fear it would not be believed; because Don Quixote's mad acts here reached the limit and boundary of the greatest that can be imagined, and even went two crossbow shots beyond the greatest. Finally, although with this fear and misgiving, he wrote them exactly as Don Quixote did them, without adding to the history or taking from it one atom of the truth, and without caring at all about the objections that might be raised against him as a liar. And he was right, because truth may be worn thin but does not break, and always floats on top of lies as oil does on water.
And so, going on with his history, he says that as soon as Don Quixote had hidden himself in the grove, oak wood or forest beside the great El Toboso, he ordered Sancho to go back to the city, and not to come back into his presence without having first spoken to his lady on his behalf, begging her that she would be pleased to let herself be seen by her captive knight and would deign to give him her blessing, so that he might hope through it for the most fortunate outcomes to all his undertakings and difficult enterprises. Sancho undertook to do it exactly as he was ordered and to bring him back as good an answer as he had brought him the first time.
"Go, my son," replied Don Quixote, "and do not be alarmed when you find yourself before the light of the sun of beauty you are going to look for. Happy you, above all the squires in the world!
"Have your memory ready, and do not let it slip how she receives you: whether she changes colour while you are giving her my message; whether she becomes uneasy and agitated on hearing my name; whether she cannot keep still on her cushion, if you happen to find her seated on the rich dais of her authority. And if she is standing, watch whether she shifts now onto one foot and now onto the other; whether she repeats the answer she gives you two or three times; whether she changes it from mild to harsh, from sour to loving; whether she raises a hand to her hair to tidy it even when it is not untidy.
"In short, my son, watch all her actions and movements; because if you report them to me as they were, I shall work out what she has hidden in the secret of her heart about the matter of my love. For you must know, Sancho, if you do not know it, that among lovers the outward actions and movements they show, when their love affairs are in question, are the most certain couriers, bringing the news of what is going on inside the soul. Go, my friend, and may a better fortune than mine guide you, and may a better outcome bring you back than the one I am left fearing and hoping for in this bitter solitude where you leave me."
"I shall go and come back quickly," said Sancho; "and let your worship widen out that little heart of yours, my dear sir, for it must be no bigger than a hazelnut just now. And consider that they say a stout heart breaks bad luck, and that where there is no bacon there are no hooks; and they also say: the hare jumps up where nobody expects it. I say this because if we did not find my lady's palaces or castles last night, now that it is daylight I mean to find them when I least expect it — and once they are found, leave me alone with her."
"Truly, Sancho," said Don Quixote, "you always bring in your proverbs as much to the point of what we are discussing as God may give me better luck in what I want."
This said, Sancho turned his back and switched up his grey; and Don Quixote stayed on horseback, resting on his stirrups and on the support of his lance, full of sad and confused fancies. And there we shall leave him and go with Sancho Panza, who left his master no less confused and thoughtful than his master was left — so much so that he had hardly got out of the wood when, turning his head and seeing that Don Quixote was out of sight, he got down off the donkey and, sitting at the foot of a tree, began to talk to himself and to say:
"Now let us know, brother Sancho, where your worship is going. Are you going to look for some donkey that has got lost? 'Certainly not.' Then what are you going to look for? 'I am going to look for — as though it were nothing at all — a princess, and in her the sun of beauty and the whole sky put together.' And where do you expect to find this thing you speak of, Sancho? 'Where? In the great city of El Toboso.'
"Very well: and on whose behalf are you going to look for her? 'On behalf of the famous knight Don Quixote of La Mancha, who rights wrongs, and gives food to the man who is thirsty and drink to the man who is hungry.' All that is very well. And do you know her house, Sancho? 'My master says it must be royal palaces or splendid castles.' And have you by any chance ever seen it? 'Neither I nor my master have ever seen it.'
"And does it seem to you that it would be sensible and well done if the people of El Toboso, learning that you were here meaning to coax their princesses away and unsettle their ladies, were to come and pound your ribs with sticks and not leave a whole bone in you? 'Truly they would be quite right, unless they considered that I am under orders, and that "a messenger you are, my friend, no blame belongs to you, not you."'
"Do not rely on that, Sancho, because the people of La Mancha are as hot-tempered as they are honourable, and they will not stand being tickled by anybody. By the living God, if they get wind of you I promise you bad luck. 'Get away, you rogue! Strike somewhere else, lightning! No, indeed — am I to go looking for three feet on a cat for somebody else's pleasure? And what is more, looking for Dulcinea in El Toboso will be like looking for Marica in Ravenna, or for the bachelor in Salamanca. The devil, the devil has got me into this, and nobody else!'"
This soliloquy Sancho had with himself, and what he got out of it was that he went on to say to himself:
"Very well: everything has a remedy except death, under whose yoke we must all pass, however it displeases us, at the end of our lives. This master of mine, by a thousand signs, I have seen is a madman fit to be tied — and I am not far behind him either, since I am more of an idiot than he is, seeing that I follow him and serve him, if the proverb is true that says: 'Tell me who you go about with and I shall tell you who you are,' and the other one: 'Not who you are born with but who you graze with.'
"Well, he being mad as he is, and with a madness that most often takes one thing for another and judges white for black and black for white — as appeared when he said the windmills were giants, and the friars' mules dromedaries, and the flocks of sheep armies of enemies, and a great many other things in the same key — it will not be very difficult to make him believe that a country girl, the first I come across here, is the lady Dulcinea. And if he does not believe it, I shall swear to it; and if he swears, I shall swear back; and if he insists, I shall insist harder, in such a way that I shall always have my end of the plank on top, come what may.
"Perhaps with this insisting I shall get him to stop sending me on such errands again, seeing how badly I come back from them; or perhaps he will think, as I imagine, that some wicked enchanter of the ones he says wish him harm will have changed her shape so as to do him harm and injury."
With this thought Sancho Panza's spirit was calmed, and he counted his business well finished; and he stayed there until the afternoon, so as to give Don Quixote time to think he had taken it to go to El Toboso and back. And it all turned out so well for him that when he got up to mount the grey, he saw three country girls coming from El Toboso towards where he was, on three young asses — or she-asses, for the author does not state it, although it is more to be believed that they were she-asses, that being the usual mount of village women. But as not much depends on it, there is no need for us to stop and settle it.
In short: as soon as Sancho saw the country girls, he went off at a smart pace to look for his master Don Quixote, and found him sighing and making a thousand loving laments. As soon as Don Quixote saw him, he said:
"What is it, friend Sancho? Am I to mark this day with a white stone or a black one?"
"It will be better," answered Sancho, "for your worship to mark it with red ochre, like the notices on professors' chairs, so that people who see it may see it plainly."
"In that case," replied Don Quixote, "you bring good news."
"So good," answered Sancho, "that your worship has nothing more to do than to spur Rocinante and come out into the open to see the lady Dulcinea of El Toboso, who with two other maidens of hers is coming to see your worship."
"Holy God! What is this you are saying, friend Sancho?" said Don Quixote. "Take care not to deceive me, and do not try with false joys to cheer my genuine sorrows."
"What should I get out of deceiving your worship," answered Sancho, "especially when you are so near discovering my truth? Spur on, sir, and come, and you will see our mistress the princess coming, dressed and adorned — in short, as befits who she is. Her maidens and she are all one blaze of gold, all clusters of pearls, all diamonds, all rubies, all cloth of brocade more than ten thicknesses deep; their hair loose over their shoulders, which are so many rays of the sun playing with the wind; and, above all, they come riding on three dappled canaanies, which are a thing to see."
"Hackneys you mean, Sancho."
"There is little difference," answered Sancho, "between canaanies and hackneys; but let them come on what they may, they come the most splendid ladies anybody could wish for — especially the princess Dulcinea, my lady, who stuns the senses."
"Let us go, Sancho my son," answered Don Quixote; "and as a reward for this news, as unexpected as it is good, I give you the best spoils I win in the first adventure I have. And if this does not satisfy you, I give you the foals my three mares are to give me this year, which as you know are out in the common meadow of our village waiting to foal."
"I shall stick to the foals," answered Sancho, "because it is not very certain that the spoils of the first adventure will be good ones."
By this time they came out of the wood and made out the three village women close by. Don Quixote ran his eyes all along the road to El Toboso, and as he saw nothing but the three country girls, he was thoroughly upset and asked Sancho whether he had left them outside the city.
"Outside the city?" he answered. "Has your worship got eyes in the back of your head, that you do not see that these women coming here are the ones, shining like the sun itself at midday?"
"I see nothing, Sancho," said Don Quixote, "but three country girls on three donkeys."
"Now God deliver me from the devil!" answered Sancho. "And is it possible that three hackneys — or whatever they are called — as white as driven snow should look like donkeys to your worship? By the living Lord, may they pull this beard off me if that were true!"
"Well, I tell you, friend Sancho," said Don Quixote, "that it is as true that they are donkeys, or she-donkeys, as that I am Don Quixote and you Sancho Panza — at least, they look so to me."
"Be quiet, sir," said Sancho; "do not say such a thing, but wipe those eyes of yours and come and pay your respects to the lady of your thoughts, who is coming close now."
And saying this, he went forward to receive the three village women; and getting down off the grey, he took the halter of one of the three country girls' donkeys, and, going down on both knees, said:
"Queen and princess and duchess of beauty, may your loftiness and greatness be pleased to receive into your favour and good graces your captive knight, who stands there turned to marble, thoroughly disturbed and pulseless at finding himself in your magnificent presence. I am Sancho Panza, his squire, and he is the much-harried knight Don Quixote of La Mancha, called by another name the Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance."
By this time Don Quixote had gone down on his knees beside Sancho, and was looking with starting eyes and a troubled gaze at the woman Sancho was calling queen and lady. And as he could make out nothing in her but a village girl, and not one with a very good face — because she was round-faced and flat-nosed — he was taken aback and astonished, and did not dare to unstitch his lips.
The country women were likewise astonished at seeing those two men, so different from each other, kneeling down and not letting their companion go past. But the one who was being held up broke the silence, and, thoroughly graceless and cross, said:
"Get out of the way, bad luck to you, and let us pass; we are in a hurry."
To which Sancho answered:
"O princess and universal lady of El Toboso! How is it that your magnanimous heart is not softened at seeing kneeling before your exalted presence the pillar and support of knight-errantry?"
Hearing which, another of the two said:
"Whoa there, I'm currying you down, my father-in-law's donkey! Just look at these young gentlemen coming to make fun of village girls, as though we didn't know how to fling taunts as well as they do! Go your way, and let us go ours, and it will be healthier for you."
"Get up, Sancho," said Don Quixote at this point; "for I see now that Fortune, not satisfied with the harm she has done me, has taken possession of all the roads by which any contentment might come to this wretched soul I have in my flesh.
"And you, O highest worth that can be desired, limit of human gentility, sole remedy of this afflicted heart that adores you: now that the malignant enchanter persecutes me and has put clouds and cataracts on my eyes, and for them alone and for no others has changed and transformed your unequalled beauty and face into that of a poor country girl — if he has not also changed mine into that of some monster, so as to make it loathsome in your eyes — do not fail to look at me mildly and lovingly, seeing in this submission and kneeling that I make to your counterfeited beauty the humility with which my soul adores you."
"Take that, grandad!" answered the village girl. "I'm a fine one for listening to flatterations! Get out of the way and let us go, and we shall be grateful to you."
Sancho got out of the way and let her go, extremely pleased at having come well out of his entanglement.
The village girl who had played the part of Dulcinea had hardly found herself free when, spurring her canaany with a goad she carried on a stick, she set off at a run across the meadow. And as the she-ass felt the point of the goad, which hurt her more than usual, she began to buck, so that she brought the lady Dulcinea to the ground. Which Don Quixote seeing, he ran to lift her up, and Sancho to straighten and tighten the pack-saddle, which had also slipped under the donkey's belly.
The pack-saddle being settled, then, and Don Quixote wanting to lift his enchanted lady in his arms onto the she-ass, the lady got up off the ground and saved him the trouble; because, drawing back a little, she took a short run and, putting both hands on the she-ass's hindquarters, dropped her body, lighter than a falcon, onto the pack-saddle and sat astride like a man. And then Sancho said:
"By St Roque, our mistress is lighter than a hobby-hawk, and she could teach the most skilful Cordoban or Mexican rider how to mount short-stirruped! She cleared the back of the saddle in one jump, and without spurs she makes the hackney run like a zebra. And her maidens are not far behind her: they all run like the wind."
And it was the truth, because as soon as Dulcinea was on horseback they all whipped up after her and set off at a run, without turning their heads back for more than half a league. Don Quixote followed them with his eyes; and when he saw they were out of sight, he turned to Sancho and said:
"Sancho, what do you think — how much am I hated by enchanters? And see how far their malice goes and the grudge they have against me, since they have wanted to deprive me of the pleasure it would have given me to see my lady in her own being. In fact I was born to be an example of the unfortunate, and to be the target and the butt at which the arrows of bad fortune take aim and are levelled.
"And you must also note, Sancho, that these traitors were not content with having turned and transformed my Dulcinea, but they transformed and turned her into a shape as low and as ugly as that village girl's; and along with it they took from her what is so much a mark of great ladies, which is a good smell, since they go about always among ambergris and among flowers. Because I would have you know, Sancho, that when I came to help Dulcinea up onto her hackney — as you say it was, though it seemed a she-ass to me — she gave off a smell of raw garlic that turned my head and poisoned my soul."
"Oh, the rabble!" shouted Sancho at this. "Oh, you ill-starred and ill-meaning enchanters, and if only somebody could see the lot of you strung up by the gills like sardines on a string! You know a great deal, you can do a great deal and you do a great deal more.
"It should have been enough for you, you scoundrels, to have changed the pearls of my lady's eyes into cork-oak galls and her hair of the purest gold into the bristles of a red ox's tail, and, in short, all her features from good to bad, without touching her smell; for by that at least we might have made out what was hidden under that ugly rind — although, to tell the truth, I never saw her ugliness but her beauty, which was raised to a higher point and a higher carat by a mole she had over her right lip, in the manner of a moustache, with seven or eight fair hairs like threads of gold and more than a hand's breadth long."
"As for that mole," said Don Quixote, "considering the correspondence there is between the moles of the face and those of the body, Dulcinea must have another on the flat of the thigh on the side that corresponds to where she has the one on her face. But hairs of the size you have described are very long for moles."
"Well, I can tell your worship," answered Sancho, "that they looked as though they had been born there."
"I believe it, my friend," replied Don Quixote, "because nature put nothing in Dulcinea that was not perfect and well finished; and so, if she had a hundred moles like the one you speak of, in her they would not be moles but shining moons and stars. But tell me, Sancho: that thing that looked to me like a pack-saddle, which you were straightening — was it a plain saddle or a lady's saddle?"
"It was neither," answered Sancho, "but a short-stirruped saddle, with a field-covering worth half a kingdom, so rich is it."
"And that I should not have seen all that, Sancho!" said Don Quixote. "Now I say again, and I shall say it a thousand times, that I am the unluckiest of men."
That sly fellow Sancho had all he could do to hide his laughter, hearing the foolish things his master said, so delicately deceived. Finally, after many other things had passed between the two of them, they got back on their beasts and followed the road to Saragossa, where they expected to arrive in time to be present at some solemn festivals that are held every year in that distinguished city. But before they got there, things happened to them which, for being many, great and new, deserve to be written and read, as will be seen further on.
Don Quixote went along the road extremely thoughtful, considering the wicked trick the enchanters had played on him in turning his lady Dulcinea into the bad shape of the village girl, and he could not imagine what remedy he could find for turning her back into her first being. And these thoughts carried him so far out of himself that without noticing it he let go of Rocinante's reins; who, feeling the freedom he was given, stopped at every step to graze the green grass those fields were full of. Sancho Panza brought him back from his trance, saying to him:
"Sir, sorrows were not made for beasts but for men; but if men feel them too much they turn into beasts. Let your worship pull yourself together and come to yourself, and take up Rocinante's reins, and liven up and wake up, and show that gallantry that it is proper for knights errant to have. What the devil is this? What kind of collapse is this? Are we here, or in France? May Satan carry off all the Dulcineas there are in the world, for the health of one single knight errant is worth more than all the enchantments and transformations on earth."
"Be quiet, Sancho," answered Don Quixote in a voice that was not very faint; "be quiet, I say, and do not speak blasphemies against that enchanted lady, for I alone am to blame for her misfortune and ill luck: her bad fortune has been born of the envy the wicked have for me."
"That is what I say," answered Sancho: "whoever saw her then and sees her now — what heart would not weep?"
"You may well say that, Sancho," replied Don Quixote, "since you saw her in the whole entirety of her beauty; for the enchantment did not go so far as to disturb your sight or to hide her beauty from you: it is against me alone and against my eyes that the force of its poison is aimed.
"But for all that, Sancho, I have noticed one thing, which is that you described her beauty badly to me; because, if I remember rightly, you said she had eyes like pearls, and eyes that look like pearls belong more to a sea-bream than to a lady. And to my belief Dulcinea's must be of green emeralds, wide-set, with two heavenly arches serving them as eyebrows. And take those pearls away from her eyes and move them to her teeth; for you certainly got it the wrong way about, Sancho, taking the eyes for the teeth."
"It might all be so," answered Sancho, "because her beauty confused me as much as her ugliness did your worship. But let us commend it all to God, who is the knower of the things that are to happen in this valley of tears, in this wicked world of ours, where hardly anything is to be found that is without a mixture of wickedness, trickery and knavery.
"One thing grieves me, my dear sir, more than others, and that is thinking what plan is to be adopted when your worship defeats some giant or some other knight and orders him to go and present himself before the beauty of the lady Dulcinea: where is this poor giant, or this poor wretched defeated knight, to find her? I fancy I can see them going about El Toboso like a lot of dummies looking for my lady Dulcinea; and even if they meet her in the middle of the street they will know her no better than they know my father."
"Perhaps, Sancho," answered Don Quixote, "the enchantment will not go so far as to take away the recognition of Dulcinea from the defeated giants and knights I send to present themselves. And with one or two of the first I defeat and send to her we shall make the experiment of whether they see her or not, ordering them to come back and give me an account of what has happened to them about it."
"I say, sir," replied Sancho, "that what your worship has said seems good to me, and that by this device we shall come to know what we want to know. And if it is the case that she is hidden from your worship alone, the misfortune will be your worship's rather than hers. But so long as the lady Dulcinea has health and contentment, we shall manage here and get through it as best we can, looking for our adventures and leaving time to do its own work; for time is the best doctor for these and for greater illnesses."
Don Quixote was about to answer Sancho Panza, but he was prevented by a cart that came out across the road, loaded with the most various and strange characters and figures that could be imagined. The man who was driving the mules and serving as carter was an ugly devil. The cart came uncovered to the open sky, without any awning or hurdle.
The first figure that offered itself to Don Quixote's eyes was that of Death herself, with a human face; next to her came an angel with great painted wings; on one side there was an emperor with a crown, apparently of gold, on his head; at Death's feet was the god they call Cupid, without a bandage over his eyes but with his bow, quiver and arrows. There came too a knight armed at all points, except that he wore no morion or close helmet but a hat full of feathers of various colours; and with these came other people in different dress and with different faces.
All of which, seen suddenly, somewhat startled Don Quixote and put fear into Sancho's heart. But Don Quixote was soon delighted, believing that some new and dangerous adventure was offering itself; and with this thought, and with a mind prepared to face any danger, he placed himself in front of the cart and said in a loud, threatening voice:
"Carter, coachman, or devil, or whatever you are, do not delay in telling me who you are, where you are going and who the people are you are carrying in your wagon, which looks more like Charon's boat than the carts that are in use."
To which the Devil answered mildly, stopping the cart:
"Sir, we are players of Angulo the Bad's company. This morning, which is the octave of Corpus Christi, we performed in a village behind that hill the mystery play of The Parliament of Death, and we are to perform it this afternoon in that village you can see from here. And as it is so close, and to save ourselves the trouble of undressing and dressing again, we are travelling in the very clothes we perform in.
"That lad goes as Death; the other as the Angel; that woman, who is the manager's wife, goes as the Queen; the other as the Soldier; that one as the Emperor; and I as the Devil, and I am one of the chief figures in the play, because in this company I take the leading parts. If your worship wants to know anything else about us, ask me and I shall be able to answer you with complete exactness; for, being a devil, I know everything."
"On the faith of a knight errant," answered Don Quixote, "as soon as I saw this cart I imagined that some great adventure was offering itself to me; and now I say that one must touch appearances with the hand to give room for undeceiving. Go with God, good people, and put on your festival; and see whether you have any commands in which I can be of use to you, for I shall carry them out with a good will and a good heart, because from a boy I was fond of the mask, and in my youth my eyes ran after the strolling players."
While they were in this talk, luck willed that one of the company should come up who was dressed as a mummer, with a great many little bells, and who carried on the end of a stick three inflated cow-bladders. This clown, coming up to Don Quixote, began to fence with the stick and to beat the ground with the bladders and to take great leaps, ringing his bells; whose ugly appearance so startled Rocinante that, without Don Quixote's being able to hold him in, he took the bit between his teeth and set off running across the field with more lightness than the bones of his skeleton had ever promised.
Sancho, who considered the danger his master was in of being thrown, jumped off the grey and hurried at full speed to help him; but when he got to him he was already on the ground, and beside him Rocinante, who had come down with his master — the usual end and finish of Rocinante's high spirits and his boldness.
But Sancho had hardly left his own mount to go to Don Quixote when the dancing devil with the bladders jumped onto the grey and thumped him with them; and the fear and the noise, more than the pain of the blows, made him fly across the country towards the village where they were going to hold the festival.
Sancho watched his grey's flight and his master's fall, and did not know which of the two needs to attend to first. But in fact, as a good squire and a good servant, love for his master weighed more with him than fondness for his donkey — although every time he saw the bladders rise in the air and come down on his grey's hindquarters they were agonies and mortal frights to him, and he would sooner have had those blows given him on the apples of his eyes than on the smallest hair of his ass's tail.
In this perplexed distress he came to where Don Quixote was, a great deal more knocked about than he would have liked; and helping him up onto Rocinante, he said to him:
"Sir, the Devil has carried off the grey."
"What devil?" asked Don Quixote.
"The one with the bladders," answered Sancho.
"Then I shall get him back," replied Don Quixote, "even if he shuts himself up with him in the deepest and darkest dungeons of hell. Follow me, Sancho, for the cart goes slowly, and with its mules I shall make good the loss of the grey."
"There is no need to take that trouble, sir," answered Sancho. "Let your worship cool your anger, for by the look of it the Devil has left the grey already and is coming back to his home ground."
And so it was; because the Devil had come down with the grey, in imitation of Don Quixote and Rocinante, and had gone off to the village on foot, while the donkey came back to his master.
"For all that," said Don Quixote, "it will be as well to punish that devil's rudeness on one of the people in the cart, even if it is the emperor himself."
"Let your worship get that out of your head," replied Sancho, "and take my advice, which is never to meddle with players, for they are a favoured sort of people. I have seen a player in prison for two murders and come out free and without costs. Let your worship know that as they are cheerful people who give pleasure, everybody favours them, everybody protects them, helps them and thinks well of them — and the more so if they belong to one of the royal or licensed companies, all or most of whom, in their dress and get-up, look like princes."
"For all that," answered Don Quixote, "that play-acting devil shall not get away boasting, even if the whole human race favours him."
And saying this he turned back to the cart, which by now was close to the village. He went along shouting:
"Stop, wait, you merry and rejoicing crowd; for I want to give you to understand how the donkeys and beasts that serve as mounts for the squires of knights errant are to be treated."
So loud were Don Quixote's shouts that the people in the cart heard and understood them; and judging by his words the intention of the man who was saying them, in an instant Death jumped down out of the cart, and after her the Emperor, the Devil-carter and the Angel — nor did the Queen or the god Cupid stay behind. And they all loaded themselves with stones and drew up in a line, waiting to receive Don Quixote on the points of their pebbles.
Don Quixote, seeing them drawn up in so gallant a squadron with their arms raised in the attitude of letting fly their stones with force, reined in Rocinante and set himself to think in what way he could attack them with least danger to his person. While he was pausing, Sancho came up; and seeing him in the posture of attacking that well-formed squadron, said to him:
"It would be plain madness to attempt such an enterprise. Consider, my dear sir, that against brook-soup and hold-your-hat there is no defensive armour in the world, unless it is to stuff yourself and shut yourself into a bronze bell.
"And it must also be considered that it is more rashness than courage for one man alone to attack an army where Death is, and where emperors fight in person, and which is helped by the good angels and the bad. And if this consideration does not move you to keep still, let it move you to know for certain that among all those people standing there, although they look like kings, princes and emperors, there is not one knight errant."
"Now indeed," said Don Quixote, "you have hit, Sancho, on the point that can and ought to change me from my settled intention. I neither can nor ought to draw my sword, as I have told you many other times, against anybody who is not a dubbed knight. It is for you, Sancho, if you want to take vengeance for the injury done to your grey; and I shall help you from here with shouts and salutary advice."
"There is no need, sir," answered Sancho, "to take vengeance on anybody, since it is not the part of good Christians to take it for injuries. What is more, I shall settle it with my ass to put his grievance in the hands of my will, which is to live peacefully the days heaven may give me of life."
"Since that is your decision," replied Don Quixote, "good Sancho, judicious Sancho, Christian Sancho and sincere Sancho, let us leave these phantoms and go back to looking for better and more distinguished adventures; for I see this country is of a sort where there cannot fail to be many, and very miraculous ones."
He turned his reins at once, Sancho went to get his grey, Death with her whole flying squadron went back to their cart and went on with their journey; and this was the happy end of the fearful adventure of the Cart of Death, thanks be given to the salutary advice Sancho Panza gave his master — to whom, the next day, another adventure happened with a lovesick knight errant, of no less suspense than the last.
Don Quixote and his squire spent the night that followed the day of their encounter with Death under some tall, shady trees, Don Quixote having eaten, at Sancho's urging, some of what was carried in the grey's store. And in the middle of supper Sancho said to his master:
"Sir, what a fool I should have looked if I had chosen as my reward the spoils of the first adventure your worship finished, instead of the foals of the three mares! In fact, in fact, a bird in the hand is worth more than a vulture on the wing."
"All the same," answered Don Quixote, "if you, Sancho, had let me attack as I wanted, there would have fallen to you as spoils at the very least the Empress's gold crown and Cupid's painted wings; for I would have pulled them off against the grain and put them into your hands."
"The sceptres and crowns of play-acting emperors," answered Sancho Panza, "were never of pure gold but of tinsel or tinplate."
"That is true," replied Don Quixote, "because it would not be right that the trappings of a play should be genuine rather than pretended and merely apparent, as the play itself is — with which I want you to be on good terms, Sancho, keeping it in your favour, and by the same token those who act plays and those who compose them, because they are all instruments of doing a great good to the state, holding a mirror up before us at every step in which the actions of human life are seen to the life. And there is no comparison that shows us more to the life what we are and what we must be than plays and players.
"If not, tell me: have you never seen a play acted where kings, emperors and pontiffs are brought in, and knights and ladies and various other characters? One plays the ruffian, another the trickster, this one the merchant, that one the soldier, another the wise fool, another the foolish lover; and when the play is over and they take off the clothes belonging to it, all the players are left equal."
"Yes, I have seen it," answered Sancho.
"Well, the same thing," said Don Quixote, "happens in the comedy and business of this world, where some play emperors, others pontiffs, and, in short, all the characters that can be brought into a play; but on coming to the end, which is when life is over, death takes off them all the clothes that made them different, and they are left equal in the grave."
"A brave comparison!" said Sancho, "although not so new that I have not heard it many and various times — like the one about the game of chess, where, while the game lasts, each piece has its own particular office; and when the game is over they are all mixed and put together and shuffled, and thrown into a bag, which is like throwing a life into the grave."
"Every day, Sancho," said Don Quixote, "you are becoming less simple and more judicious."
"Yes, some of your worship's good sense is bound to rub off on me," answered Sancho; "for lands that are barren and dry in themselves come to give good fruit when they are manured and cultivated. I mean that your worship's conversation has been the manure that has fallen on the barren land of my dry wits, and the cultivating has been the time I have served you and dealt with you; and with this I hope to give fruits of myself that shall be a blessing, such that they will not fall away or slip from the paths of the good breeding your worship has worked into my parched understanding."
Don Quixote laughed at Sancho's affected speech, and it seemed to him that what he said about his improvement was true; because from time to time he talked in a way that astonished him — although all or most of the times Sancho tried to talk in the formal, courtly manner he ended his speech by hurling himself down from the mountain of his simplicity into the depths of his ignorance. And where he showed himself most elegant and most retentive was in bringing in proverbs, whether or not they came to the point of what he was discussing, as will have been seen and noticed in the course of this history.
In this and other talk a great part of the night went by for them, and Sancho took it into his head to let the floodgates of his eyes fall, as he used to put it when he wanted to sleep; and, unharnessing the grey, he gave him plentiful and free pasture. He did not take the saddle off Rocinante, because it was his master's express command that during the time they were in the field, or were not sleeping under a roof, he should not unharness Rocinante: an ancient usage established and kept by knights errant, to take the bridle off and hang it from the saddlebow — but take the saddle off the horse? Look out for that!
And so Sancho did it, and gave him the same freedom as the grey; whose friendship with Rocinante was so unique and so close that there is a report, by tradition from fathers to sons, that the author of this true history wrote particular chapters about it, but that, to keep the decency and decorum owing to so heroic a history, he did not put them into it — although sometimes he forgets this resolution of his and writes that as soon as the two beasts came together they set to scratching each other; and that afterwards, tired and satisfied, Rocinante would lay his neck across the grey's — with more than half a yard of it left over on the other side — and the two of them, looking attentively at the ground, would generally stay like that for three days, or at least all the time they were left alone and hunger did not compel them to look for food.
I say that they say the author left it written that he had compared them in friendship to the friendship of Nisus and Euryalus, and of Pylades and Orestes; and if this is so, one may see, to universal astonishment, how firm the friendship of these two peaceable animals must have been — and to the confusion of men, who know so badly how to keep friendship with one another. For this reason it was said:
There is no friend for a friend: the reeds turn into lances;
and by the other man who sang:
Between friend and friend, the bug — and so on.
And let nobody think the author went somewhat off the road in having compared the friendship of these animals to that of men; for men have received many hints from beasts and learnt many important things from them — such as, from the storks, the clyster; from dogs, vomiting and gratitude; from cranes, watchfulness; from ants, foresight; from elephants, modesty; and from the horse, loyalty.
Finally Sancho fell asleep at the foot of a cork tree, and Don Quixote dozed at the foot of a sturdy oak. But a very short space of time had gone by when he was woken by a noise he heard behind him; and getting up with a start, he set himself to look and listen for where the noise was coming from, and saw that it was two men on horseback, and that one of them, letting himself drop out of the saddle, said to the other:
"Get down, my friend, and take the bridles off the horses; for to my mind this place is well provided with grass for them, and with the silence and solitude my loving thoughts need."
To say this and to stretch himself out on the ground were all one moment; and as he threw himself down, the armour he was wearing rang, a plain sign by which Don Quixote knew he must be a knight errant. And going up to Sancho, who was asleep, he took him by the arm, and with no small trouble brought him round to his senses, and said to him in a low voice:
"Brother Sancho, we have an adventure."
"God send us a good one," answered Sancho; "and where is her worship this lady adventure, my dear sir?"
"Where, Sancho?" replied Don Quixote. "Turn your eyes and look, and you will see stretched out there a knight errant who, as far as I can make out, cannot be excessively cheerful; because I saw him throw himself off his horse and stretch out on the ground with certain signs of vexation, and as he fell his armour rang."
"Then how does your worship find," said Sancho, "that this is an adventure?"
"I do not mean to say," answered Don Quixote, "that this is a whole adventure, but the beginning of one; for this is how adventures begin. But listen; for by the sound of it he is tuning a lute or a guitar, and, judging by the way he spits and clears his chest, he must be getting ready to sing something."
"Upon my word it is so," answered Sancho, "and he must be a knight in love."
"There is not one of the knights errant who is not," said Don Quixote. "And let us listen to him, for by the thread we shall get at the ball of his thoughts, if he does sing; because out of the abundance of the heart the tongue speaks."
Sancho was about to answer his master, but he was prevented by the voice of the Knight of the Wood, which was neither very bad nor very good. And while the two of them stood astonished, they heard that what he sang was this sonnet:
Give me, my lady, some rule that I may follow, cut to the pattern of your own will; for it will be so valued by mine that I shall never depart a point from it.
If it is your pleasure that I should die keeping my suffering silent, count me finished already; if you want me to tell it you in some unusual way, I shall make love himself tell it.
I am made proof against opposites, of soft wax and of hard diamond, and I fit my soul to the laws of love.
Soft as it is, or strong, I offer you my breast: carve on it or stamp on it whatever pleases you, for I swear to keep it there for ever.
With an "Ah!" that seemed to be torn from the depths of his heart, the Knight of the Wood made an end of his song; and a little later, in a sorrowful, grieving voice, he said:
"O most beautiful and most ungrateful woman in the world! How can it be possible, most serene Casildea de Vandalia, that you should allow this captive knight of yours to wear himself out and finish in continual wanderings and in rough, hard labours? Is it not enough by now that I have made all the knights of Navarre, all those of León, all those of Tartessus, all the Castilians and, in short, all the knights of La Mancha confess you to be the most beautiful woman in the world?"
"Not that," said Don Quixote at this point; "for I am of La Mancha and I have never confessed any such thing, nor could I nor ought I to confess a thing so damaging to my lady's beauty. And you see for yourself, Sancho, that this knight is raving. But let us listen: perhaps he will explain himself further."
"He will, indeed," replied Sancho; "for he looks like going on complaining for a month at a stretch."
But it was not so, because the Knight of the Wood, having half heard that there were people talking near him, without going any further with his lament, got to his feet and said in a sonorous, well-bred voice:
"Who goes there? What sort of people? Are you by any chance of the number of the contented, or of the afflicted?"
"Of the afflicted," answered Don Quixote.
"Then come to me," answered the Knight of the Wood, "and you may reckon that you are coming to sadness itself and to affliction itself."
Don Quixote, finding himself answered so tenderly and so courteously, went up to him, and Sancho neither more nor less.
The lamenting knight took Don Quixote by the arm, saying:
"Sit down here, sir knight; for to understand that you are one, and one of those who profess knight-errantry, it is enough for me to have found you in this place, where solitude and the night air keep you company — the natural beds and proper dwellings of knights errant."
To which Don Quixote answered:
"A knight I am, and of the profession you name; and although sadnesses, misfortunes and disasters have their own seat in my soul, that has not driven out of it the compassion I feel for other men's troubles. From what you were saying a little while ago I gathered that yours are the troubles of love — I mean of the love you bear that beautiful ingrate you named in your laments."
By the time this was going on they were seated together on the hard ground, in good peace and fellowship, as though at daybreak they were not going to break each other's heads.
"By any chance, sir knight," the Knight of the Wood asked Don Quixote, "are you in love?"
"By misfortune I am," answered Don Quixote; "although the harms that are born of well-placed affections ought to be counted graces rather than misfortunes."
"That is true," replied the Knight of the Wood, "if disdains did not disturb our reason and our understanding — disdains which, when they are many, look like acts of revenge."
"I have never been disdained by my lady," answered Don Quixote.
"Certainly not," said Sancho, who was standing right there; "because my lady is like a tame ewe: she is softer than butter."
"Is this your squire?" asked the Knight of the Wood.
"He is," answered Don Quixote.
"I have never seen a squire," replied the Knight of the Wood, "who dares to speak where his master is speaking. At least there is that one of mine, who is as big as his father, and it will not be proved that he has ever unstitched his lips where I am talking."
"Well, upon my word," said Sancho, "I have talked and I can talk in front of somebody as — but let it stay there, for stirring it only makes it worse."
The Knight of the Wood's squire took Sancho by the arm, saying to him:
"Let the two of us go off where we can talk squire-fashion as much as we like, and leave these gentlemen our masters to lock horns telling each other the histories of their loves; for it is a safe bet that daylight will catch them at it and they will not have finished."
"So be it and welcome," said Sancho; "and I shall tell your worship who I am, so that you may see whether I can be counted in the dozen of the most talkative squires."
With this the two squires drew off, and there passed between them a conversation as amusing as the one that passed between their masters was grave.
Knights and squires were divided, the latter telling each other their lives and the former their loves; but the history relates first the conversation of the men and then goes on with that of the masters. And so it says that, drawing off a little from them, the Knight of the Wood's squire said to Sancho:
"It is a laborious life we lead and live, my dear sir, we who are squires to knights errant: truly we eat our bread in the sweat of our faces, which is one of the curses God laid on our first parents."
"One might also say," added Sancho, "that we eat it in the frost of our bodies; for who has more heat and more cold than the wretched squires of knight-errantry? And it would be less bad if we did eat, since with bread sorrows are less; but sometimes a day or two goes by without our breakfasting on anything but the wind that blows."
"All this can be borne and put up with," said the Knight of the Wood's squire, "for the hope we have of the reward; because unless the knight errant a squire serves is excessively unlucky, at the very least after a few passes he will find himself rewarded with a handsome government of some isle or other, or with a good-looking earldom."
"I," replied Sancho, "have already told my master that I shall be satisfied with the government of some isle; and he is so noble and so generous that he has promised it me many and various times."
"I," said the other, "shall be satisfied for my services with a canonry, and my master has already made it over to me — and such a one!"
"Your worship's master," said Sancho, "must be a knight of the ecclesiastical sort, and can do such favours for his good squires; but mine is merely a layman — although I remember when discerning people, though ill-intentioned to my mind, wanted to advise him to try to be an archbishop. But he would have nothing but being an emperor, and I was trembling all that time in case it came into his head to go into the Church, because I did not find myself fit to hold benefices in it; for I would have your worship know that although I look like a man, I am a beast where the Church is concerned."
"Well, truly your worship is mistaken," said the Knight of the Wood's squire, "on the grounds that island governments are not all of good quality. Some are crooked, some are poor, some are gloomy; and finally the most upright and best appointed of them brings with it a heavy load of anxieties and discomforts, which the unlucky man whose lot it falls to puts on his own shoulders.
"It would be a great deal better if we who profess this accursed servitude withdrew to our own homes and entertained ourselves there with gentler occupations — such as, let us say, hunting or fishing; for what squire is there so poor in the world who is short of a hack and a couple of greyhounds and a fishing rod to entertain himself with in his village?"
"I am short of none of that," answered Sancho. "It is true that I have no hack, but I have an ass that is worth twice as much as my master's horse. May God give me a bad Easter, and let it be the very next one that comes, if I would swap him for it, even if they gave me four bushels of barley on top. Your worship will take it for a joke, the value of my grey — for grey is the colour of my donkey. And I should not be short of greyhounds either, since there are plenty to spare in my village; and what is more, hunting is most enjoyable when it is done at somebody else's cost."
"Really and truly, master squire," answered the other, "I have proposed and determined to give up these drunken follies of these knights and to withdraw to my village and bring up my little children, for I have three like three oriental pearls."
"I have two," said Sancho, "who could be presented to the Pope in person — especially a girl I am bringing up to be a countess, if God is pleased, though in spite of her mother."
"And what age is this lady who is being brought up to be a countess?" asked the Knight of the Wood's squire.
"Fifteen, two more or less," answered Sancho; "but she is as tall as a lance, and as fresh as an April morning, and she has the strength of a porter."
"Those are qualities," answered the other, "not only for being a countess but for being a nymph of the green wood. Oh, the whoreson little whore, what a pair of loins the hussy must have!"
To which Sancho answered, somewhat put out:
"She is no whore, nor was her mother one, nor will either of the two of them be one, God willing, as long as I live. And speak more decently; for considering that your worship has been brought up among knights errant, who are courtesy itself, those words do not strike me as very well arranged."
"Oh, how little your worship understands about the business of praise, master squire!" replied the other. "How is it you do not know that when some knight gives the bull a good lance-thrust in the ring, or when somebody does something well done, the common people generally say: 'Oh, the whoreson rogue, how well he has done it!'? And what looks like abuse is, on those terms, notable praise. And you may disown, sir, the sons and daughters who do not do things that deserve their parents' being given such praises."
"I do disown them," answered Sancho; "and in that way and by that same reasoning your worship might throw a whole whoredom over me and my children and my wife, because everything they do and say is extreme enough to deserve such praises. And to see them again I pray God to get me out of mortal sin — which will be the same thing as getting me out of this dangerous office of squire, which I have fallen into for the second time, baited and taken in by a purse with a hundred ducats in it that I found one day in the heart of the Sierra Morena.
"And the devil sets before my eyes here, there, no, not here but over yonder, a bag full of doubloons, so that I fancy at every step I am touching it with my hand and hugging it and carrying it home and taking out mortgages and setting up rents and living like a prince. And while I am thinking of this, all the labours I suffer with this idiot of a master of mine become easy and bearable — and I know he has more of the madman about him than of the knight."
"That is why they say," answered the other, "that greed bursts the sack; and if we are to talk of madmen, there is no greater one in the world than my master, because he is one of those they mean when they say, 'Other men's cares kill the ass.' For to get another knight to recover the wits he has lost, he plays the madman himself, and goes about looking for something which, once found, may blow up in his face — I do not know."
"And is he in love, by any chance?"
"He is," said the Knight of the Wood's squire: "with a certain Casildea de Vandalia, the rawest and the most roasted lady to be found in the whole world. But it is not on the foot of rawness that he limps; other and greater tricks are rumbling in his belly, and it will show before many hours are out."
"There is no road so smooth," replied Sancho, "that it has not some stumble or ditch in it. In other houses they cook beans, and in mine by the cauldron. Madness must have more companions and hangers-on than good sense has. But if it is true, as people commonly say, that having companions in one's troubles serves as a relief in them, I may console myself with your worship, since you serve another master as foolish as mine."
"Foolish, but brave," answered the other; "and more of a rogue than of a fool or a brave man."
"Mine is not that," answered Sancho: "I mean he has nothing of the rogue about him. On the contrary, he has a soul like a pitcher; he does not know how to do harm to anybody, but good to everybody, nor has he any malice: a child could make him believe it was night in the middle of the day. And for this simplicity I love him like the strings of my heart, and I cannot bring myself to leave him, whatever absurdities he commits."
"For all that, brother and sir," said the Knight of the Wood's squire, "if the blind man leads the blind, they are both in danger of falling into the ditch. It is better for us to retire in good order and go back to our own home ground; for those who look for adventures do not always find good ones."
Sancho was spitting often, apparently a certain kind of sticky and rather dry saliva; which the charitable woodland squire seeing and noticing, he said:
"It seems to me that with all this talking our tongues are sticking to our palates; but I have an unsticker hanging from my horse's saddlebow which is as good as they come."
And getting up, he came back a little later with a great wineskin and a pie half a yard long — and this is no exaggeration, because it was made of a white rabbit so big that Sancho, on touching it, took it to be made of a full-grown goat, not a kid. Which Sancho seeing, he said:
"And your worship carries this about with you, sir?"
"Well, what did you suppose?" answered the other. "Am I by any chance some squire of water and wool? I carry better stores on my horse's hindquarters than a general takes with him when he goes on the march."
Sancho ate without needing to be begged, and in the dark swallowed mouthfuls the size of the knots in a hobble-rope. And he said:
"Your worship is indeed a faithful and lawful squire, running and grinding, magnificent and great, as this banquet shows — which, if it has not come here by art of enchantment, at least looks as if it had. And not like me, poor wretched creature, who carry in my saddlebags nothing but a little cheese so hard that a giant's head could be broken with it, along with four dozen carob beans and as many hazelnuts and walnuts, thanks to my master's stinginess and to the opinion he holds and the rule he keeps that knights errant must keep themselves and live on nothing but dried fruit and the herbs of the field."
"Upon my word, brother," replied the other, "my stomach is not made for golden thistles or wild pears or mountain roots. Let our masters settle it with their opinions and their chivalric laws, and eat whatever they order. I carry cold pies and this wineskin hanging from my saddlebow, just in case; and it is so devoted to me and I love it so much that few moments go by without my giving it a thousand kisses and a thousand embraces."
And saying this, he put it into Sancho's hands; and Sancho, tipping it up and setting it to his mouth, stood looking at the stars for a quarter of an hour; and on finishing his drink he let his head fall to one side, and, giving a great sigh, said:
"Oh, the whoreson rogue, and what a good Catholic it is!"
"There, you see," said the Knight of the Wood's squire, hearing Sancho's "whoreson", "how you have praised this wine by calling it a whoreson?"
"I say," answered Sancho, "that I confess I recognise it is no dishonour to call anybody a son of a whore when it comes under the head of praising him. But tell me, sir, by the memory of what you love most: is this wine from Ciudad Real?"
"A fine taster!" answered the other. "Truly it is from nowhere else, and it has some years of age on it."
"Tell me another!" said Sancho. "Do not think otherwise than that it would be beyond me to hit on knowing it. Is it not a fine thing, master squire, that I have so great and so natural an instinct in this matter of knowing wines that, if you give me any at all to smell, I can hit on its country, its family, its flavour and how long it will keep and the changes it will go through, with every circumstance belonging to the wine?
"But there is nothing to wonder at in it, since I had in my family on my father's side the two most excellent wine-tasters La Mancha has known for many years past. As a proof of which, this is what happened to them.
"They were both given some wine out of a cask to try, and were asked their opinion on the condition, quality, goodness or badness of the wine. One of them tried it with the tip of his tongue; the other did no more than put it to his nose. The first said the wine tasted of iron; the second said it tasted more of Cordovan leather. The owner said the cask was clean and that the wine had had nothing put in it that could have given it a taste of iron or of leather. For all that, the two famous tasters stood by what they had said. Time went on, the wine was sold, and on cleaning out the cask they found in it a small key hanging from a strap of Cordovan leather.
"So your worship may see whether a man who comes of this stock can give his opinion in such cases."
"That is why I say," said the Knight of the Wood's squire, "that we should give up going about looking for adventures; and since we have loaves, let us not go looking for cakes, and let us get back to our huts, for God will find us there if he chooses."
"I shall serve my master until he gets to Saragossa; and after that we shall all come to an understanding."
Finally the two good squires talked so much and drank so much that sleep had to tie up their tongues and take the edge off their thirst — for to quench it would have been impossible. And so, both of them clutching the now almost empty wineskin, with their mouthfuls half chewed in their mouths, they fell asleep; where we shall leave them for the present, to tell what passed between the Knight of the Wood and the Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance.
Among many things that passed between Don Quixote and the Knight of the Wood, the history says that the Knight of the Wood said to Don Quixote:
"In short, sir knight, I want you to know that my destiny — or rather my own choice — brought me to fall in love with the peerless Casildea de Vandalia. I call her peerless because she has no peer, either in the size of her body or in the height of her rank and her beauty.
"This Casildea, then, that I am telling you about, repaid my honourable thoughts and respectful desires by making me busy myself, as Hercules's stepmother made him, in many and various dangers, promising me at the end of each one that at the end of the next the end of my hopes would come. But my labours have gone on linking themselves together in such a way that they are beyond counting, and I do not know which is to be the last one that will make a beginning to the fulfilling of my good desires.
"Once she ordered me to go and challenge that famous giantess of Seville called the Giralda, who is as strong and valiant as though she were made of bronze, and who, without moving from one place, is the most movable and changeable woman in the world. I went, I saw her and I conquered her, and I made her stand still and keep in her place — because for more than a week nothing blew but north winds.
"There was also a time when she ordered me to go and weigh in my hands the ancient stones of the mighty Bulls of Guisando, an enterprise fitter to be entrusted to porters than to knights. Another time she ordered me to hurl myself down and sink into the chasm of Cabra — an unheard-of and fearful danger — and to bring her a particular account of what is shut up in that dark depth.
"I stopped the Giralda's movement, I weighed the Bulls of Guisando, I threw myself into the chasm and brought to light what was hidden in its abyss; and my hopes were as dead as dead, and her commands and her disdains as alive as alive.
"In short, she has now finally ordered me to travel through all the provinces of Spain and to make all the knights errant who wander through them confess that she alone is the most excellent in beauty of all the women alive today, and that I am the bravest and most truly enamoured knight in the world. On which demand I have now travelled the greater part of Spain, and in it I have defeated many knights who have dared to contradict me.
"But what I most pride and plume myself on is having defeated in single combat that so famous knight Don Quixote of La Mancha, and having made him confess that my Casildea is more beautiful than his Dulcinea; and in this one victory alone I reckon I have defeated all the knights in the world, because this Don Quixote I speak of has defeated them all — and, having defeated him, his glory, his fame and his honour have been transferred and passed over to my person;
and the conqueror is honoured the more, the more the conquered man is esteemed.
"So that the innumerable exploits of the said Don Quixote now stand to my account and are mine."
Don Quixote was astonished to hear the Knight of the Wood, and a thousand times he was on the point of telling him he lied, and he already had the "you lie" on the tip of his tongue; but he restrained himself as best he could, so as to make him confess his lie out of his own mouth. And so he said to him calmly:
"That your worship, sir knight, may have defeated most of the knights errant in Spain, and even in the whole world, I say nothing about; but that you should have defeated Don Quixote of La Mancha, I put in doubt. It might have been some other man who looked like him — although there are few who look like him."
"How, not?" replied the Knight of the Wood. "By the sky that covers us, I fought with Don Quixote and I beat him and overcame him; and he is a tall man, dry in the face, with long, lean, wiry limbs, going grey, with an aquiline and somewhat hooked nose, and with big black drooping moustaches. He campaigns under the name of the Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance, and has for a squire a farmer called Sancho Panza; he presses the back and rules the bridle of a famous horse called Rocinante; and, in short, he has for the lady of his affections a certain Dulcinea of El Toboso, at one time called Aldonza Lorenzo — as mine, being called Casilda and being from Andalusia, I call Casildea de Vandalia. If all these details are not enough to prove my truth, here is my sword, which will make incredulity itself believe it."
"Calm yourself, sir knight," said Don Quixote, "and listen to what I want to say to you. You must know that this Don Quixote you speak of is the greatest friend I have in this world — so much so that I could say I hold him in the place of my own person; and by the details you have given me of him, so exact and so certain, I cannot think anything but that he is the very man you defeated.
"On the other hand, I see with my eyes and touch with my hands that it is not possible that he should be the same man — unless it were that, as he has many enchanters for enemies, and one in particular who ordinarily persecutes him, one of them may have taken his shape and let himself be beaten, so as to cheat him of the fame his lofty chivalries have won and earned him throughout the whole of the discovered earth.
"And in confirmation of this I want you to know too that these enchanters who are his enemies not two days ago transformed the shape and person of the beautiful Dulcinea of El Toboso into a low and coarse country girl; and in this same way they must have transformed Don Quixote. And if all this is not enough to satisfy you of this truth I am telling, here is Don Quixote himself, who will maintain it with his arms on foot, or on horseback, or in whatever way pleases you."
And saying this he got to his feet and gripped his sword, waiting to see what decision the Knight of the Wood would take; who, in a voice equally calm, answered and said:
"A good payer does not mind giving pledges: the man who was once able to defeat you transformed, Señor Don Quixote, may well hope to overcome you in your own being. But since it is not right that knights should do their feats of arms in the dark, like highwaymen and ruffians, let us wait for daylight, so that the sun may see our deeds. And it must be a condition of our battle that the loser is to remain at the winner's will, so that he may do with him whatever he likes, provided that what is laid on him is fitting for a knight."
"I am more than content with that condition and agreement," answered Don Quixote.
And on saying this, they went to where their squires were and found them snoring, and in the same posture they had been in when sleep took them by surprise. They woke them and ordered them to have the horses ready, because at sunrise the two of them were to fight a bloody, single and unequal battle. At which news Sancho was appalled and thunderstruck, fearing for his master's safety on account of the brave deeds he had heard the Knight of the Wood's squire tell of his own master. But without saying a word, the two squires went off to look for their beasts, for by now all three horses and the grey had smelt one another and were all standing together.
On the way the Knight of the Wood's squire said to Sancho:
"You must know, brother, that the fighting men of Andalusia have a custom, when they are seconds in some quarrel, of not standing idle with their hands folded while their principals fight it out. I say this so that you may be warned that while our masters fight, we too are to fight and knock each other to splinters."
"That custom, master squire," answered Sancho, "may hold and pass among the ruffians and fighting men you speak of, but among the squires of knights errant, not in a hundred years. At least I have never heard my master speak of any such custom, and he knows by heart all the ordinances of knight-errantry.
"What is more, I am willing to grant that it is true and an express ordinance that squires must fight while their masters fight; but I do not want to keep it — I would rather pay the penalty laid down for such peaceable squires, which I am sure comes to no more than two pounds of wax. And I would rather pay those two pounds, which I know will cost me less than the lint I might spend on doctoring my head, which I already count as split and divided into two parts. And there is more: that I am made incapable of fighting by having no sword, since I have never worn one in my life."
"For that I know a good remedy," said the Knight of the Wood's squire. "I have here two linen sacks of the same size: you shall take one and I the other, and we shall fight with sack-blows, with equal arms."
"In that way, so be it and welcome," answered Sancho, "because such a fight will serve rather to dust us down than to wound us."
"It must not be like that," replied the other; "because we must put inside the sacks, so that the wind does not carry them off, half a dozen nice smooth pebbles, weighing the same on both sides; and in this way we shall be able to sack each other without doing ourselves any harm or damage."
"Just look, body of my father," answered Sancho, "what onion-sables, or what flakes of carded cotton he is putting in the sacks so that our skulls should not be pounded and our bones ground to powder! But even if they were filled with silk cocoons, let me tell you, my dear sir, that I am not going to fight. Let our masters fight and let them settle it, and let us drink and live; for time takes care to take our lives away without our going about looking for appetisers to make them end before their proper season and term and before they fall ripe of themselves."
"For all that," replied the Knight of the Wood's squire, "we must fight for half an hour at least."
"Not that," answered Sancho. "I shall not be so discourteous or so ungrateful as to pick any quarrel at all, however small, with a man I have eaten and drunk with. What is more, being without anger or annoyance, who the devil is going to bring himself to fight cold?"
"For that," said the Knight of the Wood's squire, "I shall provide a sufficient remedy: which is that before we begin the fight I shall come up quietly to your worship and give you three or four slaps that will lay you at my feet; with which I shall wake up your anger even if you are sleepier than a dormouse."
"Against that stroke I know another," answered Sancho, "which is not a whit behind it: I shall pick up a cudgel, and before your worship comes to wake up my anger I shall put yours to sleep with such blows that it will not wake up except in the other world — where it is known that I am not a man who lets anybody handle his face.
"And let every man look to his own arrow, although the soundest thing would be for each man to let his own anger sleep, for nobody knows anybody else's soul; and many a man goes for wool and comes back shorn. And God blessed peace and cursed quarrels; because if a cat, hunted and shut in and squeezed, turns into a lion, God knows what I, who am a man, might turn into. And so from now on I give your worship notice, master squire, that all the harm and damage that comes of our quarrel is to be on your account."
"Very well," replied the Knight of the Wood's squire. "God will send the morning and we shall get on."
At this a thousand kinds of painted little birds were beginning to warble in the trees, and in their various cheerful songs they seemed to be greeting and welcoming the fresh dawn, who was already showing the beauty of her face at the doors and balconies of the east, shaking from her hair an endless number of liquid pearls; in whose sweet liquor the grasses bathed themselves and seemed likewise to be sprouting and raining fine white seed-pearl. The willows dripped a savoury manna, the springs laughed, the streams murmured, the woods grew glad and the meadows grew rich at her coming.
But the light of day had hardly given room to see and tell things apart when the first thing that offered itself to Sancho Panza's eyes was the nose of the Knight of the Wood's squire, which was so big that it almost cast a shadow over his whole body. It is related, in fact, that it was of excessive size, hooked in the middle and all covered with warts, of a purplish colour like an aubergine; it came down two fingers below his mouth; and its size, colour, warts and hooking so disfigured his face that on seeing him Sancho began to kick with his feet and beat with his hands, like a child in a fit, and resolved in his heart to let himself be given two hundred slaps rather than wake his anger to fight with that monster.
Don Quixote looked at his opponent and found that he had already put on his helmet and closed it, so that he could not see his face; but he noticed that he was a well-built man and not very tall. Over his armour he wore a surcoat or tunic of a stuff apparently of the finest gold, sown all over with a great many little moons of shining mirrors, which made him extremely elegant and showy. Over his helmet there floated a great quantity of green, yellow and white plumes; the lance, which he had leaning against a tree, was enormous and thick, with a steel head more than a hand's breadth long.
Don Quixote looked at it all and noted it all, and judged from what he had seen and looked at that this knight must be a man of great strength. But he was not for that afraid, as Sancho Panza was; on the contrary, with a fine boldness he said to the Knight of the Mirrors:
"If your great eagerness to fight, sir knight, has not used up your courtesy, by that courtesy I beg you to raise your visor a little, so that I may see whether the gallantry of your face answers to that of your build."
"Whether you come out of this enterprise beaten or victorious, sir knight," answered the Knight of the Mirrors, "you will have time and room enough to see me; and if I do not satisfy your wish now, it is because I think I am doing a notable wrong to the beautiful Casildea de Vandalia in wasting the time it would take me to raise my visor without making you confess what you know already I am after."
"Well, while we are mounting," said Don Quixote, "you may perfectly well tell me whether I am that Don Quixote you said you had defeated."
"To that we answer you," said the Knight of the Mirrors, "that you look like the very knight I defeated as one egg looks like another; but since you say he is persecuted by enchanters, I shall not dare to state whether you are the man in question or not."
"That is enough for me," answered Don Quixote, "to make me believe you are deceived. But to get you out of it altogether, let our horses be brought; for in less time than it would have taken you to raise your visor, if God and my lady and my arm stand by me, I shall see your face, and you will see that I am not the beaten Don Quixote you suppose."
With this, cutting short their words, they mounted; and Don Quixote turned Rocinante's reins to take the necessary ground for coming back and meeting his opponent, and the Knight of the Mirrors did the same. But Don Quixote had not gone twenty paces when he heard the Knight of the Mirrors calling him; and the two of them dividing the distance, the Knight of the Mirrors said to him:
"Note, sir knight, that the condition of our battle is that the loser, as I have said before, is to be at the winner's discretion."
"I know it already," answered Don Quixote, "provided that what is laid on and ordered the loser is something that does not go outside the limits of chivalry."
"That is understood," answered the Knight of the Mirrors.
At this the squire's strange nose came into Don Quixote's view, and he was no less astonished at seeing it than Sancho had been — so much so that he judged him to be some monster, or a new kind of man of a sort not in use in the world.
Sancho, who saw his master ride off to take his run, would not stay alone with the man with the nose, being afraid that with one single flick of that nose against his own his quarrel would be finished, and he would be left stretched on the ground either by the blow or by the fright. And he went after his master, hanging on to one of Rocinante's stirrup-leathers; and when it seemed to him that it was time for his master to turn back, he said to him:
"I beg your worship, my dear sir, that before you go back to meet him you will help me up onto that cork tree, from where I shall be able to see the gallant encounter your worship is going to have with this knight more to my liking and better than from the ground."
"I rather think, Sancho," said Don Quixote, "that you want to perch and climb onto a scaffold to watch the bulls without danger."
"To tell the truth," answered Sancho, "that squire's outrageous nose has me appalled and full of terror, and I do not dare to stay near him."
"It is such," said Don Quixote, "that if I were not who I am, it would appal me too. So come: I shall help you up where you say."
While Don Quixote was delayed getting Sancho up the cork tree, the Knight of the Mirrors took as much ground as he thought necessary; and believing Don Quixote had done the same, without waiting for the sound of a trumpet or any other signal to warn them, he turned his horse's reins — which was no lighter or better-looking than Rocinante — and at his full gallop, which was a middling trot, went to meet his enemy.
But seeing him busy getting Sancho up, he pulled up his reins and stopped in the middle of his run — at which his horse was extremely grateful, on the grounds that it could not move any longer. Don Quixote, who thought his enemy was coming at him on wings, dug his spurs hard into Rocinante's shrunken flanks and made him get on in such a way that the history relates this was the only time he was known to have run at all, because all the rest of the time it was always plain trotting. And with this unheard-of fury he came to where the Knight of the Mirrors was digging his spurs into his horse up to the rowel-buttons, without being able to move him a single finger's breadth from the place where he had brought his charge to a standstill.
At this good moment and juncture Don Quixote found his opponent hampered with his horse and busy with his lance, which he either never managed or never had time to set in its rest. Don Quixote, who was not looking at these difficulties, safely and without any danger at all met the Knight of the Mirrors with such force that, much against his will, he brought him down to the ground over his horse's hindquarters, with such a fall that, without stirring hand or foot, he gave signs of being dead.
Sancho had hardly seen him fall when he slid down from the cork tree and came in all haste to where his master was; who, dismounting from Rocinante, went over to the Knight of the Mirrors and undid the laces of his helmet to see whether he was dead and to let the air get to him if he happened to be alive.
And he saw — who could tell what he saw without causing astonishment, wonder and dread in those who hear it? He saw, says the history, the very face, the very figure, the very aspect, the very physiognomy, the very effigy, the very perspecktive of the bachelor Sansón Carrasco. And as soon as he saw it he said in a loud voice:
"Come here, Sancho, and see what you are to see and not to believe! Hurry, my son, and mark what magic can do, what wizards and enchanters can do!"
Sancho came; and when he saw the bachelor Carrasco's face, he began to cross himself a thousand times and to bless himself as many. In all this the fallen knight gave no signs of being alive, and Sancho said to Don Quixote:
"I am of the opinion, my dear sir, that just in case, your worship should stick and drive your sword into the mouth of this man who looks like the bachelor Sansón Carrasco: perhaps in him you will kill one of your enemies the enchanters."
"You do not speak badly," said Don Quixote, "because of enemies, the fewer the better."
And drawing his sword to put Sancho's advice into effect, up came the Knight of the Mirrors' squire, without the nose that had made him so ugly, and said in a loud voice:
"Look what you are doing, Señor Don Quixote; for that man you have at your feet is the bachelor Sansón Carrasco, your friend, and I am his squire."
And Sancho, seeing him without that first ugliness, said to him:
"And the nose?"
To which he answered:
"I have it here, in my pocket."
And putting his hand to the right one, he pulled out a nose of pasteboard and varnish, of the masquerade kind, of the make already described. And Sancho, looking at him more and more, said in a loud, wondering voice:
"Holy Mary help me! Is this not Tomé Cecial, my neighbour and my gossip?"
"That I am indeed!" answered the now unnosed squire. "Tomé Cecial I am, gossip and friend Sancho Panza; and presently I shall tell you the channels, tricks and tangles by which I have come here. And meanwhile, ask and beg your master not to touch, ill-treat, wound or kill the Knight of the Mirrors he has at his feet; because beyond any doubt he is that rash and ill-advised bachelor Sansón Carrasco, our fellow-countryman."
At this the Knight of the Mirrors came to himself; which Don Quixote seeing, he put the naked point of his sword over his face and said to him:
"You are a dead man, knight, unless you confess that the peerless Dulcinea of El Toboso excels your Casildea de Vandalia in beauty. And besides this you must promise, if you come alive out of this contest and fall, to go to the city of El Toboso and present yourself before her on my behalf, so that she may do with you whatever she pleases; and if she leaves you at your own disposal, you must likewise come back and look for me — the trail of my exploits will serve you as a guide to bring you where I am — and tell me what has passed between you and her: conditions which, in accordance with those we laid down before our battle, do not go outside the terms of knight-errantry."
"I confess," said the fallen knight, "that the lady Dulcinea of El Toboso's unstitched and dirty shoe is worth more than Casildea's badly combed, though clean, beard; and I promise to go and to come back from her presence to yours, and to give you a full and particular account of what you ask me."
"You must also confess and believe," added Don Quixote, "that the knight you defeated was not and could not have been Don Quixote of La Mancha, but some other man who looked like him — as I confess and believe that you, although you look like the bachelor Sansón Carrasco, are not he but another man who looks like him, and that my enemies have put him here in front of me in his shape, so as to hold back and cool the force of my anger and so that I may use the glory of my victory mildly."
"I confess, judge and feel it all as you believe, judge and feel it," answered the battered knight. "Let me get up, I beg you, if the blow of my fall allows it, for it has left me in a bad enough state."
Don Quixote helped him up, along with Tomé Cecial, his squire, from whom Sancho never took his eyes, asking him things whose answers gave him plain signs that he really was the Tomé Cecial he said he was. But the notion his master's words had put into Sancho — that the enchanters had changed the shape of the Knight of the Mirrors into that of the bachelor Carrasco — did not let him give credit to the truth he was looking at with his own eyes.
Finally master and man stayed with this delusion; and the Knight of the Mirrors and his squire, downcast and out of luck, went off away from Don Quixote and Sancho, meaning to look for some place where they could plaster and splint his ribs. Don Quixote and Sancho went back to their road to Saragossa, where the history leaves them, so as to give an account of who the Knight of the Mirrors and his big-nosed squire were.
Don Quixote went along extremely contented, proud and boastful at having won a victory over so valiant a knight as he imagined the Knight of the Mirrors to be — from whose knightly word he expected to learn whether his lady's enchantment was still going on, since that defeated knight was obliged, on pain of not being one, to come back and give him an account of what had happened to him with her. But Don Quixote was thinking one thing and the Knight of the Mirrors another, since for the moment his only thought was to look for somewhere to be plastered, as has been said.
The history says, then, that when the bachelor Sansón Carrasco advised Don Quixote to go back to his abandoned chivalries, it was because he had first gone into council with the curate and the barber about what means might be taken to bring Don Quixote round to staying quietly and peacefully at home, without his badly sought adventures upsetting him.
Out of which consultation there came, by the common vote of them all and the particular opinion of Carrasco, that they should let Don Quixote go out, since holding him back seemed impossible; and that Sansón should come out on the road as a knight errant and pick a fight with him — there would be no lack of grounds — and defeat him, holding this to be an easy matter; and that it should be an agreed compact that the loser should stay at the winner's mercy.
And so, Don Quixote being defeated, the bachelor knight was to order him to go back to his village and his house and not to leave it for two years, or until such time as he should be ordered otherwise by him; which it was clear that Don Quixote, once defeated, would undoubtedly carry out, so as not to go against and fail the laws of chivalry. And it might be that in the time of his confinement he would forget his vain notions, or there would be room to look for some suitable remedy for his madness.
Carrasco accepted it, and Tomé Cecial, Sancho Panza's gossip and neighbour, offered himself as his squire — a cheerful man with a slippery skull. Sansón armed himself as has been related, and Tomé Cecial fitted over his own natural nose the false masquerade one already described, so that he should not be recognised by his gossip when they met.
And so they followed the same road Don Quixote was taking, and came near to being present at the adventure of the Cart of Death. And finally they came upon them in the wood, where everything happened to them that the prudent reader has read. And if it had not been for Don Quixote's extraordinary notions, in giving himself to understand that the bachelor was not the bachelor, the master bachelor would have been made incapable for ever of taking his licentiate's degree, for having found no nests where he thought he would find birds.
Tomé Cecial, seeing how badly he had achieved what he wanted and what a bad end his journey had come to, said to the bachelor:
"Certainly, Señor Sansón Carrasco, we have got what we deserved: an enterprise is thought of and undertaken easily, but most often a man gets out of it with difficulty. Don Quixote mad, we sane: he goes off sound and laughing, your worship is left pounded and sad. Now let us know which is the greater madman: the man who is mad because he cannot help it, or the man who is mad by his own choice?"
To which Sansón answered:
"The difference between those two madmen is that the one who is mad by necessity will always be so, and the one who is mad of his own accord will leave off being so whenever he likes."
"Then since that is so," said Tomé Cecial, "I was mad of my own accord when I chose to make myself your worship's squire, and by the same accord I choose to leave off being one and to go back home."
"That is your affair," answered Sansón; "but to think that I am going back to mine before I have pounded Don Quixote with a stick is to think of what will not happen. And what will take me to look for him now is not the wish that he should recover his wits but the wish for revenge; for the great pain in my ribs does not let me make any more merciful reflections."
In this talk the two of them went along until they came to a village where they had the good luck to find a bone-setter, who treated the unfortunate Sansón. Tomé Cecial went back and left him, and he was left planning his revenge; and the history will speak of him again in its own time, so as not to leave off making merry now with Don Quixote.
Don Quixote went on his journey with the gladness, contentment and pride that has been described, imagining himself, on account of his late victory, to be the bravest knight errant the world had in that age. He counted as finished and brought to a happy end all the adventures that might happen to him from then on; he thought little of enchantments and enchanters; he did not remember the innumerable beatings he had been given in the course of his chivalries, or the stone that knocked out half his teeth, or the ingratitude of the galley slaves, or the boldness and hail of staves of the Yangüesans.
In short, he said to himself that if he could only find the art, the way or the means of disenchanting his lady Dulcinea, he would not envy the greatest good fortune the most fortunate knight errant of past ages ever attained or could have attained. He was wholly taken up with these fancies when Sancho said to him:
"Is it not a fine thing, sir, that I still have in front of my eyes the outrageous nose, and above regulation size, of my gossip Tomé Cecial?"
"And do you believe, Sancho, by any chance, that the Knight of the Mirrors was the bachelor Carrasco, and his squire Tomé Cecial your gossip?"
"I do not know what to say to that," answered Sancho; "I only know that the details he gave me about my house and my wife and children nobody but he himself could have given me. And his face, once the nose was off, was the very face of Tomé Cecial, as I have seen it many times in my village and with one wall between our two houses; and the tone of his voice was all one."
"Let us be reasonable, Sancho," replied Don Quixote. "Come here: on what consideration can it be supposed that the bachelor Sansón Carrasco should come as a knight errant, armed with offensive and defensive arms, to fight with me? Have I by any chance been his enemy? Have I ever given him occasion to bear me a grudge? Am I his rival, or does he profess arms, so as to be envious of the fame I have won by them?"
"Well, what are we to say, sir," answered Sancho, "about that knight's being so like the bachelor Carrasco, whoever he may be, and his squire like Tomé Cecial my gossip? And if it is enchantment, as your worship has said, were there no other two men in the world for them to look like?"
"It is all contrivance and design," answered Don Quixote, "of the malignant magicians who persecute me; who, foreseeing that I was going to come out the winner of the contest, provided that the defeated knight should show the face of my friend the bachelor, so that the friendship I bear him should set itself between the edge of my sword and the force of my arm and should cool the just anger of my heart, and in this way the man who by tricks and falsehoods was trying to take my life should be left alive.
"As a proof of which you know already, Sancho, by an experience that will not let you lie or be deceived, how easy it is for enchanters to change one face into another, making the beautiful ugly and the ugly beautiful; since not two days ago you saw with your own eyes the beauty and gallantry of the peerless Dulcinea in her whole entirety and natural form, and I saw her in the ugliness and lowness of a coarse country girl, with cataracts on her eyes and a bad smell in her mouth.
"And what is more, since the perverse enchanter dared to work so wicked a transformation, it is no great matter that he should have worked that of Sansón Carrasco and that of your gossip, so as to take the glory of the victory out of my hands. But for all that, I comfort myself; because in the end, in whatever shape it was, I have come out the winner over my enemy."
"God knows the truth of it all," answered Sancho.
And as he knew that Dulcinea's transformation had been his own contrivance and trick, his master's chimeras did not satisfy him; but he did not want to argue back, in case he should say some word that would reveal his deception.
They were in this talk when they were overtaken by a man who was coming behind them along the same road on a very handsome dapple-grey mare, dressed in a coat of fine green cloth panelled with tawny velvet, with a cap of the same velvet. The mare's harness was of the field sort and short-stirruped, likewise in purple and green. He wore a Moorish scimitar hanging from a broad baldric of green and gold, and his buskins were of the same work as the baldric. His spurs were not gilded but coated with a green varnish, so smooth and burnished that, matching the whole of the rest of his dress, they looked better than if they had been of pure gold.
When he came up to them the traveller greeted them courteously, and, spurring his mare, was going on past; but Don Quixote said to him:
"Fine sir, if your worship is going our road and is not in a hurry, I should take it as a kindness if we might travel together."
"Truly," answered the man on the mare, "I would not go past like this if it were not for fear that the company of my mare might excite that horse."
"You may perfectly well, sir," answered Sancho at this, "you may perfectly well hold in your mare, because our horse is the most virtuous and best-behaved in the world: he has never done anything base on such occasions, and the one time he broke out to do it my master and I paid for it sevenfold. I say again that your worship may stop if you like; for even if they served her to him between two plates, it is a safe bet that the horse would not face her."
The traveller reined in, marvelling at Don Quixote's bearing and face — for he was riding without his helmet, which Sancho was carrying like a bag on the front of the grey's pack-saddle. And if the man in green looked hard at Don Quixote, Don Quixote looked far harder at the man in green, thinking him a man of substance. He seemed to be about fifty years old; his grey hairs were few and his face aquiline; his look was between cheerful and grave; in short, in his dress and bearing he gave one to understand that he was a man of good qualities.
What the man in green judged of Don Quixote of La Mancha was that he had never seen such a manner or such an appearance of a man. He marvelled at the length of his horse, the size of his body, the thinness and yellowness of his face, his armour, his bearing and his composure: a figure and portrait not seen in that country for long ages past.
Don Quixote noticed clearly the attention with which the traveller was looking at him, and read his wish in his suspense; and, being so courteous and so fond of pleasing everybody, before he could ask him anything he met him halfway, saying:
"This figure your worship has seen in me, being so new and so far outside the ones that are commonly in use, I should not be surprised if it had surprised you. But your worship will stop being surprised when I tell you, as I do tell you, that I am a knight —
the sort of men that people say go riding to their adventures.
"I left my own country, mortgaged my estate, gave up my comforts and threw myself into Fortune's arms to carry me wherever she was best pleased. I chose to bring back to life the now dead order of knight-errantry, and for many days now, stumbling here, falling there, hurling myself down in this place and getting up in that, I have carried out a great part of my wish, helping widows, protecting maidens and favouring married women, orphans and wards — the proper and natural office of knights errant.
"And so, by my valorous, many and Christian exploits I have deserved to go about in print by now in almost all, or most, of the nations of the world. Thirty thousand copies of my history have been printed, and it is on the way to being printed thirty thousand thousand times, if heaven does not put a stop to it.
"In short, to shut it all up in a few words, or in one: I say that I am Don Quixote of La Mancha, otherwise called the Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance. And although self-praise debases, I am sometimes forced to speak my own — and this is to be understood as when nobody is present to speak it for me. So that, sir gentleman, neither this horse, nor this lance, nor this shield, nor my squire, nor all these arms together, nor the yellowness of my face, nor my wasted thinness can astonish you from now on, since you know now who I am and the profession I follow."
Having said this, Don Quixote fell silent; and the man in green, by the time he took to answer him, seemed unable to manage it. But after a good while he said to him:
"You hit rightly, sir knight, on knowing my wish from my suspense; but you have not hit on taking away the wonder that having seen you causes in me. For although, as you say, sir, my knowing who you are might take it away, it has not been so; on the contrary, now that I know it, I am left more taken aback and more full of wonder.
"How is it possible that there are knights errant in the world today, and that there are printed histories of genuine chivalries? I cannot persuade myself that there is anybody on earth today who favours widows, protects maidens, honours married women or helps orphans; and I would not have believed it if I had not seen it with my own eyes in your worship.
"Blessed be heaven! For by that history your worship says is in print of your lofty and truthful chivalries, the innumerable ones of the invented knights errant that the world was full of will have been consigned to oblivion — so harmful to good morals and so much to the prejudice and discredit of good histories."
"There is a great deal to say," answered Don Quixote, "on the question of whether the histories of knights errant are invented or not."
"Why, is there anybody who doubts," answered the man in green, "that such histories are false?"
"I doubt it," answered Don Quixote, "and let it stay there; for if our journey lasts, I hope in God to give your worship to understand that you have done wrong to go with the current of those who hold it certain that they are not true."
From this last speech of Don Quixote's the traveller got an inkling that Don Quixote must be some sort of idiot, and waited for him to confirm it with more of the same. But before they got on to other conversation, Don Quixote begged him to tell him who he was, since he had told him about his own condition and his life. To which the man in the Green Coat answered:
"I, Sir Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance, am a gentleman, a native of a village where we shall go and dine today, if God is pleased. I am more than moderately rich and my name is Don Diego de Miranda. I pass my life with my wife and my children and my friends; my pastimes are hunting and fishing, but I keep neither hawk nor greyhounds, only a tame decoy-partridge or a bold ferret.
"I have some six dozen books, some in Spanish and some in Latin, some of history and others of devotion; books of chivalry have not yet come over the thresholds of my doors. I look through the secular ones more than the devotional, so long as they are decent entertainment, delighting with their language and astonishing and holding one with their invention — although there are very few of these in Spain.
"Sometimes I eat with my neighbours and friends, and often I invite them; my invitations are clean and neat and not at all mean. I have no taste for backbiting, nor do I allow backbiting in front of me; I do not pry into other men's lives, nor am I a lynx for other people's doings; I hear Mass every day; I share my goods with the poor, without making a display of my good works, so as not to give hypocrisy and vainglory an entry into my heart — enemies that gently take possession of the most guarded heart. I try to make peace between those I know are at odds; I am devoted to Our Lady; and I always trust in the infinite mercy of God our Lord."
Sancho was most attentive to the account of the gentleman's life and pastimes; and thinking it good and holy, and that the man who led it must work miracles, he threw himself off the grey and in great haste went and seized his right stirrup, and with a devout heart and almost in tears kissed his feet again and again. Which the gentleman seeing, he asked him:
"What are you doing, brother? What kisses are these?"
"Let me kiss," answered Sancho, "because your worship seems to me the first saint in the saddle I have seen in all the days of my life."
"I am no saint," answered the gentleman, "but a great sinner. You are the one, brother, who must be good, as your simplicity shows."
Sancho went back to his pack-saddle, having brought his master's deep melancholy out into laughter and caused fresh astonishment in Don Diego. Don Quixote asked him how many children he had, and told him that one of the things in which the ancient philosophers, who lacked the true knowledge of God, placed the highest good was in the goods of nature, in those of fortune, in having many friends and in having many good children.
"I, Señor Don Quixote," answered the gentleman, "have one son who, if I did not have him, would perhaps make me judge myself happier than I am — and not because he is bad, but because he is not as good as I would like.
"He must be about eighteen; six of those years he has been at Salamanca learning the Latin and Greek languages. And when I wanted him to go on to study other sciences, I found him so steeped in that of poetry — if that can be called a science — that it is not possible to make him face the science of law, which I would have liked him to study, or the queen of them all, theology.
"I would have liked him to be the crown of his family, since we live in an age when our kings highly reward virtuous and good letters; for letters without virtue are pearls on a dunghill. He spends the whole day settling whether Homer said well or badly in such a line of the Iliad; whether Martial was indecent or not in such an epigram; whether such and such lines of Virgil are to be understood in one way or another. In short, all his conversation is with the books of the poets I have mentioned, and with those of Horace, Persius, Juvenal and Tibullus; for of the modern writers in Spanish he takes little account.
"And with all the ill will he shows towards poetry in Spanish, his mind is now taken up with making a gloss on four lines that have been sent him from Salamanca, and I think they are for a literary competition."
To all which Don Quixote answered:
"Children, sir, are pieces of their parents' entrails, and so they must be loved, good or bad as they may be, as we love the souls that give us life. It is for parents to guide them from small children along the steps of virtue, of good breeding and of good Christian habits, so that when they are grown they may be the staff of their parents' old age and the glory of their posterity.
"And as for forcing them to study this or that science, I do not hold it sound — although persuading them will do no harm. And when a man does not have to study pane lucrando, the student being fortunate enough that heaven gave him parents who can leave him something, I should be of the opinion that they should let him follow whatever science they see him most inclined to. And although poetry is less useful than delightful, it is not one of those that generally dishonour the man who possesses them.
"Poetry, sir gentleman, is in my opinion like a tender young girl, extremely beautiful, whom a great many other girls take care to enrich, polish and adorn — and these are all the other sciences; and she must make use of them all, and they must all get their authority from her. But this girl does not want to be handled, or dragged through the streets, or published at the street corners of the squares or in the corners of palaces.
"She is made of an alchemy of such virtue that whoever knows how to treat her will turn her into the purest gold of inestimable price. Whoever has her must keep her within bounds, not letting her run into filthy satires or soulless sonnets; she must not be for sale in any way at all, unless it is in heroic poems, in lamentable tragedies or in cheerful, skilfully made comedies; she must not let herself be handled by clowns or by the ignorant crowd, incapable of knowing or valuing the treasures shut up in her.
"And do not think, sir, that I am calling only the low and humble people the crowd here; for everybody who does not know, even if he is a lord and a prince, may and must be counted in the number of the crowd. And so the man who handles and keeps poetry with the requirements I have described will be famous, and his name esteemed in all the civilised nations of the world.
"And as for what you say, sir, that your son does not think much of poetry in Spanish, I give myself to understand that he is not very sound in it, and the reason is this: the great Homer did not write in Latin, because he was a Greek, nor did Virgil write in Greek, because he was a Latin. In short, all the ancient poets wrote in the language they sucked in with their milk, and did not go looking for foreign ones to declare the loftiness of their ideas.
"And this being so, it would be reasonable that this custom should spread through all the nations, and that the German poet should not be undervalued because he writes in his own language, nor the Castilian, nor even the Basque who writes in his.
"But your son, as I imagine, sir, must be out of temper not with poetry in Spanish but with poets who are mere Spanish versifiers, without knowing other languages or other sciences to adorn and rouse and help their natural impulse. And even in this there may be a mistake; because, according to true opinion, the poet is born — meaning that the natural poet comes out of his mother's womb a poet, and with that inclination heaven gave him, without any more study or contrivance, composes things that make the man true who said: est Deus in nobis, and so on.
"I say too that the natural poet who helps himself with art will be far better and will have the advantage over the poet who wants to be one merely by knowing the art. The reason is that art does not go beyond nature but perfects it; so that, nature and art being mixed together, and art with nature, they will produce a most perfect poet.
"Let this, then, be the conclusion of my talk, sir gentleman: that your worship should let your son travel where his star calls him. For being as good a student as he must be, and having already happily climbed the first step of the sciences, which is that of the languages, with them he will by himself climb to the summit of humane letters — which look as well in a gentleman of cloak and sword, and adorn, honour and dignify him as much, as mitres do bishops or robes do learned lawyers.
"Let your worship scold your son if he writes satires that damage other people's honour, and punish him and tear them up; but if he writes discourses in the manner of Horace, where he reproves the vices in general, as he did it so elegantly, then praise him. Because it is lawful for a poet to write against envy and to speak ill of the envious in his verses, and so of the other vices, provided he does not point at any particular person. But there are poets who, for the sake of saying one malicious thing, will risk being banished to the islands of Pontus.
"If the poet is chaste in his habits, he will be chaste in his verses too: the pen is the tongue of the soul; as the ideas are that are conceived in it, so will his writings be. And when kings and princes see the miraculous science of poetry in prudent, virtuous and grave subjects, they honour them, esteem them and enrich them, and even crown them with the leaves of the tree that lightning does not harm — as a sign that those whose brows they see honoured and adorned with such crowns are not to be harmed by anybody."
The man in the Green Coat was astonished at Don Quixote's discourse — so much so that he began to lose the opinion he had of him as an idiot. But halfway through this talk Sancho, as it was not much to his taste, had turned off the road to ask for a little milk from some shepherds who were milking sheep nearby.
And at this the gentleman was going to take up the conversation again, extremely satisfied with Don Quixote's good sense and good reasoning, when Don Quixote, raising his head, saw coming along the road they were travelling a cart full of royal flags. And believing that it must be some new adventure, he called Sancho at the top of his voice to come and give him his helmet. And Sancho, hearing himself called, left the shepherds and in all haste whipped up the grey and came to where his master was — to whom there happened a terrifying and preposterous adventure.
The history tells that when Don Quixote was shouting to Sancho to bring him his helmet, Sancho was buying some curds that the shepherds were selling him; and, harried by his master's great haste, he did not know what to do with them or what to carry them in, and, so as not to lose them, since he had already paid for them, he decided to throw them into his master's helmet. And with this good provision made, he came back to see what was wanted of him; and when he arrived his master said to him:
"Give me that helmet, my friend; for either I know little about adventures, or what I make out over there is one that will oblige me — and does oblige me — to take up my arms."
The man in the Green Coat, hearing this, cast his eyes all around, and made out nothing but a cart coming towards them with two or three little flags on it, which gave him to understand that the cart must be carrying money belonging to His Majesty; and he said so to Don Quixote. But Don Quixote gave him no credit, always believing and thinking that whatever happened to him must be adventures and more adventures; and so he answered the gentleman:
"A man forewarned is half the battle fought: nothing is lost by my arming myself, for I know by experience that I have visible and invisible enemies, and I do not know when, or where, or at what time, or in what shapes they will attack me."
And turning to Sancho, he asked him for the helmet; and Sancho, as he had had no chance to get the curds out, was forced to hand it over as it was. Don Quixote took it, and, without noticing what was inside, jammed it on his head in all haste. And as the curds were squeezed and pressed, the whey began to run down all over Don Quixote's face and beard; at which he took such a fright that he said to Sancho:
"What can this be, Sancho? It seems as if my skull were going soft, or my brains were melting, or as if I were sweating from my feet to my head. And if I am sweating, it is truly not from fear; no doubt I believe the adventure that is about to happen to me now is a terrible one. Give me something to wipe myself with, if you have it, for this copious sweat is blinding my eyes."
Sancho said nothing and gave him a cloth, and along with it gave thanks to God that his master had not tumbled to the case. Don Quixote wiped himself and took off his helmet to see what the thing was that, as it seemed to him, was making his head cold; and, seeing that white porridge inside the helmet, he put it to his nose, and, smelling it, said:
"By the life of my lady Dulcinea of El Toboso, those are curds you have put in here, you traitor, you rascal, you ill-mannered squire!"
To which, with great coolness and dissimulation, Sancho answered:
"If they are curds, let your worship give them to me and I shall eat them... But no, let the devil eat them, for it must have been he who put them there. Was I likely to have the impudence to dirty your worship's helmet? You have hit on the impudent man, haven't you! Upon my word, sir, by what God gives me to understand, I too must have enchanters persecuting me as a creature and a limb of your worship, and they will have put that filth there to move your patience to anger and to make you grind my ribs as you generally do. Well, truly this time they have jumped short, because I trust the good sense of my master, who will have considered that I have no curds, nor milk, nor anything else worth as much; and that if I had, I should have put it in my stomach sooner than in the helmet."
"It may all be," said Don Quixote.
The gentleman watched it all and marvelled at it all — especially when, after Don Quixote had cleaned his head, face, beard and helmet, he jammed it on again; and, settling himself firmly in the stirrups, feeling for his sword and gripping his lance, said:
"Now, let come what may come; for here I stand with a mind to take on Satan himself in person."
At this the cart with the flags came up, in which there were no people but the carter, on the mules, and a man sitting on the front. Don Quixote placed himself in front of it and said:
"Where are you going, brothers? What cart is this, what are you carrying in it, and what flags are these?"
To which the carter answered:
"The cart is mine; what is going in it is two brave caged lions that the governor of Oran is sending to court as a present to His Majesty; the flags are the king our lord's, as a sign that something of his is travelling here."
"And are the lions big?" asked Don Quixote.
"So big," answered the man who was riding at the door of the cart, "that bigger ones, or as big, have never crossed from Africa to Spain. I am the lion-keeper, and I have brought over others, but none like these. They are a male and a female; the male is in this first cage and the female in the one behind. And they are hungry at the moment, because they have not eaten today. So your worship had better get out of the way, for we must reach our stage quickly and feed them."
To which Don Quixote said, smiling a little:
"Lion cubs to me? To me, lion cubs, and at such an hour? Well, by God, those gentlemen who are sending them here shall see whether I am a man to be frightened by lions! Get down, my good fellow, and, since you are the lion-keeper, open those cages and throw those beasts out here; for in the middle of this open country I shall let them know who Don Quixote of La Mancha is, in spite and in defiance of the enchanters who are sending them to me."
"Ha, ha!" said the gentleman to himself at this. "Our good knight has given a sign of what he is: the curds have certainly softened his skull and ripened his brains."
At this Sancho came up to him and said:
"Sir, for the love of God, will your worship manage it somehow so that my master Don Quixote does not take on these lions? Because if he does, they will tear us all to pieces here."
"Why, is your master so mad," answered the gentleman, "that you are afraid of it and believe he will take on such savage animals?"
"He is not mad," answered Sancho, "he is reckless."
"I shall see to it that he is not," replied the gentleman.
And going up to Don Quixote, who was urging the lion-keeper to open the cages, he said to him:
"Sir knight, knights errant should undertake the adventures that hold out some hope of coming well out of them, not those that take that hope away altogether; because valour that trespasses into the jurisdiction of rashness has more of madness in it than of fortitude. What is more, these lions are not coming against your worship, nor do they dream of it: they are being carried as a present to His Majesty, and it will not be right to hold them up or hinder them on their journey."
"Let your worship go, sir gentleman," answered Don Quixote, "and see to your tame decoy-partridge and your bold ferret, and let each man do his own office. This is mine, and I know whether these gentlemen the lions are coming at me or not."
And turning to the lion-keeper, he said:
"I swear, you scoundrel, that if you do not open the cages this instant, I shall pin you to the cart with this lance!"
The carter, seeing the determination of that armed apparition, said to him:
"My dear sir, may it please your worship, out of charity, to let me unyoke the mules and get myself to safety with them before the lions are unsheathed; because if they kill them I am ruined for the rest of my life, since I have no other property but this cart and these mules."
"O man of little faith!" answered Don Quixote. "Get down and unyoke and do whatever you like, for you will soon see that you have worked for nothing and might have saved yourself the trouble."
The carter got down and unyoked in great haste, and the lion-keeper said in a loud voice:
"Let all here present be my witnesses that against my will and under compulsion I am opening the cages and letting the lions loose, and that I protest to this gentleman that all the harm and damage these beasts may do will run and go to his account, together with my wages and my dues. Your worships, gentlemen, get yourselves under cover before I open, for I am safe enough that they will do me no harm."
Once more the gentleman urged him not to commit such a folly, for it was tempting God to undertake such an absurdity. To which Don Quixote answered that he knew what he was doing. The gentleman answered him that he should think it over carefully, for he was of the opinion that he was deceiving himself.
"Now, sir," replied Don Quixote, "if your worship does not care to be a spectator of what in your view is going to be a tragedy, spur the dapple mare and get yourself to safety."
Which Sancho hearing, he begged him with tears in his eyes to give up such an enterprise, in comparison with which the windmills, and the fearful business of the fulling-mills, and, in short, all the exploits he had undertaken in the whole course of his life, had been cakes and fancy bread.
"Look, sir," said Sancho, "there is no enchantment here nor anything like it; because I have seen through the bars and chinks of the cage a real lion's claw, and I gather from it that the lion whose claw it must be is bigger than a mountain."
"Fear, at any rate," answered Don Quixote, "will make him look to you bigger than half the world. Withdraw, Sancho, and leave me; and if I die here, you know our old agreement: you will go to Dulcinea, and I say no more to you."
To these he added other arguments, by which he took away any hope that he would leave off pursuing his deranged intention. The man in the Green Coat would have liked to oppose him, but he saw himself unequal in arms, and it did not seem to him good sense to take on a madman, which was what Don Quixote had by now seemed to him at every point. And Don Quixote, going back to urging the lion-keeper and repeating his threats, gave the gentleman occasion to spur his mare, and Sancho his grey, and the carter his mules, all of them trying to get as far away from the cart as they could before the lions were unbasketed.
Sancho was weeping for the death of his master, which this time he undoubtedly believed was coming to him in the lions' claws; he cursed his luck and called it a wretched hour when it came into his head to go back into his service; but for all his weeping and lamenting he did not leave off drubbing the grey to get him away from the cart. The lion-keeper, then, seeing that the runaways were now a good way off, went back to putting to Don Quixote and formally notifying him of what he had already put to him and notified him of; to which he answered that he heard him, and that he need not trouble with any more notifications and formalities, since they would all bear little fruit, and that he should hurry up.
In the space of time the lion-keeper took to open the first cage, Don Quixote was considering whether it would be better to do the battle on foot rather than on horseback; and in the end he decided to do it on foot, fearing that Rocinante would take fright at the sight of the lions. For this reason he leapt off the horse, threw down his lance, gripped his shield and, drawing his sword, step by step, with marvellous boldness and a valiant heart, went and planted himself in front of the cart, commending himself to God with his whole heart and then to his lady Dulcinea.
And it is to be noted that at this point the author of this true history breaks out and says: "O strong and, beyond all extolling, spirited Don Quixote of La Mancha, mirror in which all the brave men of the world may look at themselves, second and new Don Manuel de León, who was the glory and honour of Spanish knights! With what words shall I tell this so astounding exploit, or with what arguments shall I make it credible to the ages to come, or what praises will there be that do not befit and suit you, though they be hyperboles above all hyperboles? You on foot, you alone, you fearless, you great-souled, with only a sword — and not one of the sharp ones with the little dog on the blade — with a shield of no very bright and clean steel, standing there waiting and watching for the two fiercest lions the African forests ever bred. Let your own deeds be the ones to praise you, valiant Manchegan, for I leave them here at their height for want of words to extol them."
Here the author's outburst just quoted stopped, and he went on, knotting up the thread of the history, saying that the lion-keeper, seeing Don Quixote already in position, and that he could not avoid loosing the male lion on pain of falling into the bad graces of the indignant and daring knight, threw the first cage wide open, in which, as has been said, was the lion, who turned out to be of extraordinary size and of a frightful and hideous aspect.
The first thing he did was to roll over in the cage, where he had been lying, and put out his claw and stretch himself all over. Then he opened his mouth and yawned very slowly, and with nearly a foot and a half of tongue that he put out, he dusted his eyes and washed his face. That done, he put his head out of the cage and looked in every direction with eyes like live coals — a sight and a bearing to strike terror into rashness itself. Only Don Quixote was watching him attentively, longing for him to jump down from the cart at last and come to grips with him, between which he expected to tear him to pieces.
Up to this point went the extreme of his never-before-seen madness. But the generous lion, more well-bred than arrogant, taking no notice of childishness or of bravado, after looking one way and the other as has been said, turned his back and showed his hindquarters to Don Quixote, and with great coolness and calm went and lay down again in the cage. Which Don Quixote seeing, he ordered the lion-keeper to beat him with a stick and provoke him to bring him out.
"That I will not do," answered the lion-keeper, "because if I goad him, the first man he will tear to pieces will be myself. Let your worship, sir knight, be satisfied with what has been done — which is everything that can be said in the way of valour — and not try a second fortune. The lion has his door open: it is in his own hands to come out or not to come out; but since he has not come out so far, he will not come out all day. Your worship's greatness of heart is well enough declared: no brave fighter, as far as I understand it, is obliged to more than to challenge his enemy and wait for him in the field; and if his opponent does not turn up, the disgrace stays with him, and the man who waited wins the crown of victory."
"That is true," answered Don Quixote. "Shut the door, my friend, and give me a certificate, in the best form you can, of what you have seen me do here — namely, how you opened to the lion, I waited for him, he did not come out; I waited for him again, he again did not come out and went and lay down. I am obliged to no more; and enchantments be gone, and God help right and truth, and true chivalry. And shut the door, as I have said, while I make signs to the runaways and absentees, so that they may learn of this exploit from your own mouth."
The lion-keeper did so, and Don Quixote, putting on the point of his lance the cloth with which he had wiped his face after the shower of curds, began to call to those who had not stopped running and looking back at every step, all in a body with the gentleman at their head. But Sancho, happening to see the signal of the white cloth, said:
"May they kill me if my master has not beaten the savage beasts, since he is calling us."
They all stopped, and recognised that the man making the signals was Don Quixote; and, losing some part of their fear, little by little they came nearer until they could plainly hear Don Quixote's shouts as he called them. Finally they came back to the cart, and when they arrived Don Quixote said to the carter:
"Go back, brother, to yoking your mules and carrying on with your journey; and you, Sancho, give him two gold crowns, for him and for the lion-keeper, in recompense for the time they have been held up on my account."
"I shall give them very willingly," answered Sancho; "but what has become of the lions? Are they dead or alive?"
Then the lion-keeper, in detail and with his own pauses, told the end of the contest, exaggerating as best he could and knew how the valour of Don Quixote, at the sight of whom the lion, turned coward, would not and dared not come out of the cage, although the cage door had stood open for a good while; and how, because he had told that knight that it was tempting God to provoke the lion into coming out by force, as he wanted him provoked, he had — much against his own grain and against his whole will — allowed the door to be shut.
"What do you think of that, Sancho?" said Don Quixote. "Are there any enchantments that can prevail against true valour? The enchanters may well take my luck away from me, but my strength and my spirit will be impossible."
Sancho handed over the crowns, the carter yoked up, the lion-keeper kissed Don Quixote's hands for the bounty he had received, and promised him to tell that valorous exploit to the king himself when he found himself at court.
"Well, if His Majesty should happen to ask who did it, tell him it was the Knight of the Lions; for from now on I want the name I have had until now, of the Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance, to be traded, changed, turned and altered into this one. And in this I am following the ancient usage of knights errant, who changed their names whenever they liked, or whenever it suited them."
The cart went on its way, and Don Quixote, Sancho and the man in the Green Coat went on theirs.
In all this time Don Diego de Miranda had not spoken a word, being wholly intent on watching and noting Don Quixote's deeds and words, and thinking that he was a sane madman and a madman veering towards sane. The first part of his history had not yet come to his notice; for if he had read it, the astonishment his deeds and words put him into would have ceased, since he would already have known the kind of his madness. But as he did not know it, he took him now for sane and now for mad, because what he said was orderly, elegant and well put, and what he did was preposterous, foolhardy and stupid. And he said to himself:
"What greater madness can there be than putting on a helmet full of curds and giving oneself to understand that the enchanters were softening one's skull? And what greater rashness and absurdity than wanting to fight lions by main force?"
Out of these imaginings and out of this soliloquy he was drawn by Don Quixote, who said to him:
"Who doubts, Señor Don Diego de Miranda, that your worship holds me in your own opinion to be an absurd and mad man? And it would be no great wonder if it were so, because my works can bear witness to nothing else. Well, for all that, I should like your worship to notice that I am not so mad or so wanting as I must have seemed to you.
"A gallant knight makes a fine show in the eyes of his king, in the middle of a great square, driving his lance home with a happy stroke into a brave bull; a knight makes a fine show, armed in glittering arms, passing down the lists in cheerful jousts before the ladies; and all those knights make a fine show who in military exercises, or in what look like them, entertain and gladden and, if one may say so, honour the courts of their princes.
"But better than all these is the show made by a knight errant who, through the deserts, through the solitudes, through the crossroads, through the forests and over the mountains, goes about looking for dangerous adventures, meaning to bring them to a happy and well-fortuned end, and all only to win glorious and lasting fame. Better, I say, is the show made by a knight errant helping a widow in some unpeopled place than by a courtier knight paying compliments to a young lady in the cities.
"All knights have their particular exercises: let the courtier serve the ladies; let him give lustre to his king's court with liveries; let him keep poor knights going with the splendid dishes on his table; let him arrange jousts, hold tournaments and show himself great, generous and magnificent, and a good Christian above all — and in this way he will meet his exact obligations.
"But let the knight errant search out the corners of the world; let him get into the most tangled labyrinths; let him attempt the impossible at every step; let him endure on the unpeopled wastes the burning rays of the sun in the middle of summer, and in winter the hard inclemency of the winds and the frosts; let no lions dismay him, no phantoms frighten him, no monsters terrify him — since to look for these, to attack those and to conquer them all are his chief and truest exercises.
"I, then, since it fell to my lot to be one of the number of knight-errantry, cannot leave off attempting everything that seems to me to fall under the jurisdiction of my exercises; and so, attacking the lions I attacked just now was directly my business, even though I knew it was exorbitant rashness. Because I know very well what valour is: it is a virtue set between two vicious extremes, which are cowardice and rashness; but it will be less bad for the man who is brave to touch and rise to the point of rashness than for him to sink and touch the point of cowardice. For just as it is easier for the spendthrift to become generous than it is for the miser, so it is easier for the rash man to end in true bravery than for the coward to rise to true valour. And in this business of attempting adventures, believe me, your worship, Señor Don Diego: it is better to lose by a card too many than by a card too few, because it sounds better in the ears of those who hear it that 'such and such a knight is rash and daring' than that 'such and such a knight is timid and cowardly'."
"I say, Señor Don Quixote," answered Don Diego, "that everything your worship has said and done is levelled by the pointer of reason itself, and that in my view, if the ordinances and laws of knight-errantry were lost, they would be found in your worship's breast as in their own strongroom and archive. And let us hurry, for it is getting late, and let us reach my village and my house, where your worship will rest from the labour you have been through — which, if it has not been of the body, has been of the spirit, and that sometimes overflows into a weariness of the body."
"I take the offer as a great favour and kindness, Señor Don Diego," answered Don Quixote.
And, spurring on harder than they had until then, it must have been about two in the afternoon when they reached the village and the house of Don Diego, whom Don Quixote called the Knight of the Green Coat.
Don Quixote found Don Diego de Miranda's house to be roomy, in the village way; the coat of arms, though of rough stone, over the street door; the wine-store in the courtyard; the cellar under the entry, and a great many earthenware jars standing round it — which, being from El Toboso, brought back to him the memory of his enchanted and transformed Dulcinea. And sighing, and without looking at what he was saying or at whose presence he was in, he said:
O sweet tokens, found to my sorrow, sweet and joyful when God was willing!
"O Tobosan jars, you have brought back to my memory the sweet token of my greatest bitterness!"
The student poet, Don Diego's son, heard him say this, having come out with his mother to receive him; and mother and son were left astonished at the sight of Don Quixote's strange figure. And Don Quixote, dismounting from Rocinante, went with great courtesy to ask for her hands to kiss them, and Don Diego said:
"Receive, my lady, with your usual graciousness, Señor Don Quixote of La Mancha, who is the man you have before you: a knight errant, and the bravest and the most judicious the world has."
The lady, who was called Doña Cristina, received him with signs of much affection and much courtesy, and Don Quixote offered himself to her service in quite enough judicious and well-turned phrases. Almost the same civilities passed with the student, who, on hearing Don Quixote speak, took him for a judicious and sharp-witted man.
Here the author paints all the circumstances of Don Diego's house, painting for us in them what a rich farming gentleman's house contains; but the translator of this history thought it best to pass over these and other such small details in silence, because they did not fit well with the main purpose of the history, which has more of its force in the truth than in cold digressions.
They brought Don Quixote into a hall, Sancho unarmed him, and he was left in his wide breeches and a chamois doublet, all greasy with the grime of his armour. His collar was a plain student's falling band, without starch and without lace; his buskins were date-coloured and his shoes were waxed. He belted on his good sword, which hung from a baldric of sealskin — for it is held that he was for many years troubled with his kidneys; he threw on a short cloak of good grey cloth. But before all this, with five buckets of water, or six — for on the number of buckets there is some difference of opinion — he washed his head and face, and even so the water was left the colour of whey, thanks to Sancho's greediness and to the buying of those black curds of his that turned his master so white.
With the said finery, and with a graceful, gallant air, Don Quixote went out into another hall, where the student was waiting for him to entertain him while the tables were being laid; for on the coming of so noble a guest the lady Doña Cristina wanted to show that she knew how, and was able, to make much of those who came to her house.
While Don Quixote was being unarmed, Don Lorenzo — for that was the name of Don Diego's son — had the chance to say to his father:
"What are we to say this knight is, sir, that your worship has brought home to us? For his name, his figure and his saying that he is a knight errant have my mother and me astonished."
"I do not know what to tell you, my son," answered Don Diego. "All I shall know how to say to you is that I have seen him do things belonging to the greatest madman in the world, and say things so judicious that they rub out and undo his deeds. Talk to him yourself and feel the pulse of what he knows; and, since you are judicious, judge of his good sense or his silliness whichever seems most reasonable — although, to tell the truth, I take him for mad rather than sane."
With this Don Lorenzo went to entertain Don Quixote, as has been said; and, among other talk that passed between the two of them, Don Quixote said to Don Lorenzo:
"Señor Don Diego de Miranda, your worship's father, has given me notice of the rare ability and subtle intelligence your worship has, and, above all, that your worship is a great poet."
"A poet, that may well be," answered Don Lorenzo, "but great, not by any stretch of thought. It is true that I am somewhat fond of poetry and of reading the good poets, but not in such a way that I can be given the name of great, as my father says."
"That modesty does not strike me badly," answered Don Quixote, "because there is no poet who is not arrogant and does not think of himself that he is the greatest poet in the world."
"There is no rule without an exception," answered Don Lorenzo, "and there will be somebody who is one and does not think so."
"Few," answered Don Quixote. "But tell me, your worship: what verses are these you have in hand at the moment, that your father tells me are making you somewhat restless and thoughtful? And if it is some gloss, I understand something in the matter of glosses, and I should be glad to hear them; and if they are for a literary competition, let your worship try to carry off the second prize, because the first is always carried off by favour or by the great rank of the person, the second is carried off by plain justice, and the third comes to be the second, and the first, on this reckoning, will be the third — after the manner of the degrees they give in the universities. But for all that, the name of first is a great personage."
"So far," Don Lorenzo said to himself, "I shall not be able to judge you a madman. Let us go on."
And he said to him:
"It seems to me that your worship has been through the schools: what sciences have you attended?"
"That of knight-errantry," answered Don Quixote, "which is as good as that of poetry, and a couple of finger-widths better."
"I do not know what science that may be," replied Don Lorenzo, "and up to now it has not come to my notice."
"It is a science," replied Don Quixote, "that shuts up in itself all the sciences in the world, or most of them — on the grounds that the man who professes it has to be a jurist, and know the laws of distributive and commutative justice, so as to give each man what is his and what belongs to him; he has to be a theologian, so as to know how to give an account of the Christian law he professes, clearly and distinctly, wherever he may be asked for it; he has to be a physician, and chiefly a herbalist, so as to recognise in the middle of unpeopled places and deserts the herbs that have the virtue of healing wounds, since the knight errant cannot go looking at every turn for somebody to cure them for him; he has to be an astronomer, so as to know by the stars how many hours of the night have gone by, and in what part and in what climate of the world he finds himself; he has to know mathematics, because at every step he will find himself needing them.
"And, leaving aside that he has to be adorned with all the theological and cardinal virtues and coming down to other small matters, I say that he has to know how to swim as they say the fish Nicholas swam; he has to know how to shoe a horse and to mend a saddle and a bridle. And, coming back to what was said above, he has to keep faith with God and with his lady; he has to be chaste in his thoughts, decent in his words, generous in his works, valiant in his deeds, patient in hardships, charitable to the needy, and, finally, an upholder of the truth, though defending it should cost him his life.
"Of all these great and least parts a good knight errant is made up. So let your worship see, Señor Don Lorenzo, whether it is a snivelling science that the knight learns who studies it and professes it, and whether it can be set level with the loftiest ones taught in the colleges and the schools."
"If that is so," replied Don Lorenzo, "I say that this science has the advantage over all of them."
"What do you mean, if it is so?" answered Don Quixote.
"What I mean to say," said Don Lorenzo, "is that I doubt whether there have been, or whether there are now, knights errant adorned with so many virtues."
"Many times I have said what I say again now," answered Don Quixote: "that the greater part of the people of the world are of the opinion that there have never been knights errant in it. And since it seems to me that unless heaven miraculously gives them to understand the truth that there were such men and that there are such men, any labour a man takes on must be in vain — as experience has shown me many times — I do not want to stop now to draw your worship out of the error you share with the many. What I mean to do is to pray heaven to draw you out of it, and to give you to understand how profitable and how necessary knights errant were to the world in the past ages, and how useful they would be in the present if they were in use. But what triumph now, for the sins of the people, are sloth, idleness, gluttony and self-indulgence."
"Our guest has got away from us," Don Lorenzo said to himself at this. "But for all that, he is a splendid madman, and I should be a slack-witted fool if I did not believe so."
Here they made an end of their talk, because they were called to dinner. Don Diego asked his son what he had got clear about the guest's wits; to which he answered:
"All the doctors and good clerks in the world will not get him out of the rough draft of his madness: he is a streaky madman, full of lucid intervals."
They went in to dinner, and the dinner was such as Don Diego had said on the road that he generally gave his guests: clean, plentiful and tasty. But what most contented Don Quixote was the marvellous silence there was throughout the house, which was like a Carthusian monastery.
The cloth being taken away, then, and thanks given to God and water given for the hands, Don Quixote pressed Don Lorenzo hard to say the verses for the literary competition; to which he answered that, so as not to look like one of those poets who refuse their verses when they are begged for them and vomit them up when nobody asks —
"— I shall say my gloss, for which I expect no prize at all, since I made it only to exercise my wits."
"A judicious friend of mine," answered Don Quixote, "was of the opinion that nobody ought to wear himself out glossing verses; and the reason, he said, was that the gloss could never come up to the text, and that many times, or most times, the gloss went wide of the intention and purpose of what the glossed lines called for; and, what is more, that the laws of the gloss were excessively narrow, since they allow no questions, no 'said he' and no 'shall I say', no turning verbs into nouns, no shifting of the sense, along with other bindings and tightnesses that those who gloss go tied up in — as your worship must know."
"Truly, Señor Don Quixote," said Don Lorenzo, "I keep wanting to catch your worship out in one sustained piece of bad Latin, and I cannot, because you slip out of my hands like an eel."
"I do not understand," answered Don Quixote, "what your worship says or means to say in that about my slipping."
"I shall make myself understood," answered Don Lorenzo; "and for the moment let your worship be attentive to the glossed verses and to the gloss, which go in this way:
If only my "was" turned back into "is," without waiting for more "will be" — or if the time would come already of what is to be hereafter!
In the end, since everything passes, the good that Fortune gave me passed — Fortune, no niggard at that time — and she never gave it back to me, neither in plenty nor by measure. Centuries now you have seen me, Fortune, laid here at your feet; turn me back into a lucky man, for my being will be a happy one if only my "was" turned back into "is."
I want no other pleasure or glory, no other palm or conquest, no other triumph, no other victory, but to go back to that contentment which is a grief in my memory. If you take me back there, Fortune, then all the fierceness of my fire is tempered — and the more so if this good comes at once, without waiting for more "will be."
I am asking for impossible things, since to make time be again after it has once been is a thing no power on earth has ever stretched itself so far as. Time runs, it flies, it goes light-footed, and it will not come back, and he would be wrong who asked either that the time were gone already or that the time would come back already.
I live a perplexed life, now hoping, now fearing: it is a death I know well, and it is far better, by dying, to look for a way out of the pain. It would be to my own advantage to make an end; but it is not, since, by better reasoning, what keeps me alive is the fear of what is to be hereafter.
When Don Lorenzo had finished saying his gloss, Don Quixote stood up, and in a raised voice that was more like a shout, gripping Don Lorenzo's right hand in his own, said:
"By the highest heavens there are, generous young man, you are the best poet in the world, and you deserve to be crowned with laurel, not by Cyprus or by Gaeta, as a certain poet said, God forgive him, but by the academies of Athens, if they were alive today, and by those that are alive today in Paris, Bologna and Salamanca! May it please heaven that the judges who take the first prize from you should be shot through by Phoebus, and that the Muses should never cross the thresholds of their houses. Say me some longer verses, sir, if you will be so good; for I want to take the whole pulse of your admirable wit from end to end."
Is it not a fine thing that they say Don Lorenzo was pleased at hearing himself praised by Don Quixote, even though he took him for mad? O power of flattery, how far you stretch, and how wide are the limits of your agreeable jurisdiction! Don Lorenzo bore this truth out, since he agreed to Don Quixote's request and wish, saying him this sonnet on the fable or history of Pyramus and Thisbe:
The beautiful maiden breaks the wall that opened the gallant breast of Pyramus: Love sets out from Cyprus and goes straight to see the narrow and prodigious crack. Silence speaks there, because the voice does not dare go in by so narrow a narrows; but souls do — for love is used, in fact, to making easy the most difficult thing. Desire went out of all measure, and the step of the imprudent girl solicits, for her own pleasure, her own death: see what a story — that both of them in one instant, oh strange case, are killed, are hidden and are brought back to life by one sword, one tomb, one memory.
"Blessed be God!" said Don Quixote, having heard Don Lorenzo's sonnet, "that among the infinite consumptive poets there are, I have seen one consummate poet, as your worship is, my dear sir; which is what the workmanship of this sonnet gives me to understand."
Four days Don Quixote spent, most royally entertained, in Don Diego's house, at the end of which he asked leave to go, telling him that he thanked him for the kindness and good treatment he had received in his house; but that, since it did not look well for knights errant to give many hours to leisure and comfort, he wanted to go and fulfil his office by looking for the adventures that he was informed that country abounded in, where he hoped to pass the time until the day of the jousts at Saragossa came, which was the straight line of his course. And that first he had to go into the cave of Montesinos, of which so many and such wonderful things were told in those parts, finding out and inquiring at the same time about the birth and true springs of the seven lagoons commonly called the Lagoons of Ruidera.
Don Diego and his son praised his honourable determination, and told him to take from their house and their estate anything that suited him, for they would serve him with all possible good will, since the worth of his person and his honourable profession obliged them to it.
The day of his departure came at last, as glad for Don Quixote as it was sad and ill-starred for Sancho Panza, who found himself very well off with the abundance of Don Diego's house and refused to go back to the hunger that is customary in the woods and the unpeopled places, and to the tightness of his badly provided saddlebags. So he filled them and heaped them up with the most necessary things he could think of; and on taking his leave Don Quixote said to Don Lorenzo:
"I do not know whether I have told your worship before, and if I have told you I say it again: that whenever your worship wants to save roads and labour in reaching the inaccessible summit of the temple of Fame, you have nothing else to do but to leave the path of poetry to one side, which is somewhat narrow, and take the very narrowest one of knight-errantry, which is enough to make you an emperor in the time it takes to say so."
With these arguments Don Quixote finished closing the case for his madness, and still more with the ones he added, saying:
"God knows whether I should like to take Señor Don Lorenzo with me, to teach him how the humble are to be pardoned and the proud trampled and put underfoot — virtues attached to the profession I profess. But since his few years do not call for it, and his praiseworthy exercises will not want to allow it, I content myself only with pointing out to your worship that, being a poet, you will be able to be famous if you are guided more by other people's opinion than by your own; because there is no father or mother to whom their own children look ugly, and in the children of the understanding this deception runs stronger still."
Father and son marvelled afresh at Don Quixote's interlarded speeches, now judicious and now preposterous, and at the theme and the doggedness with which he kept to going out at all costs in search of his unfortunate adventures, which he held to be the end and the target of his desires. The offers and civilities were repeated, and, with the good leave of the lady of the castle, Don Quixote and Sancho set off on Rocinante and the grey.
Don Quixote had gone only a short stretch away from Don Diego's village when he came upon two men who looked like priests or like students, and two farm labourers, all four mounted on donkeys. One of the students was carrying, done up in a piece of green buckram like a portmanteau, what looked like a little white cloth and two pairs of ribbed woollen stockings; the other was carrying nothing but two blunt fencing swords, new, with their buttons on. The labourers were carrying other things which gave a sign and an indication that they were coming from some large town where they had bought them, and were taking them home to their village.
And students and labourers alike fell into the same astonishment that everybody fell into who saw Don Quixote for the first time, and they were dying to know what sort of man this was, so far outside the use of other men.
Don Quixote greeted them, and, after learning the road they were taking, which was the same one he was making, he offered them his company and asked them to hold back their pace, because their she-donkeys walked faster than his horse. And, to oblige them, in a few words he told them who he was, and his office and profession, which was that of a knight errant who went about looking for adventures in all the parts of the world. He told them that his own name was Don Quixote of La Mancha, and his by-name the Knight of the Lions.
All this, for the labourers, was talking to them in Greek or in thieves' cant; but not for the students, who saw at once the weakness of Don Quixote's brain. Even so, they looked at him with wonder and with respect, and one of them said to him:
"If your worship, sir knight, is not taking any settled road — as those who look for adventures generally do not — let your worship come along with us: you will see one of the best and richest weddings that has been celebrated to this day in La Mancha, or for a great many leagues round about it."
Don Quixote asked him whether it was some prince's, that he made so much of it.
"It is not," answered the student, "but a farmer's and a farmer's daughter's: he the richest in all this country, and she the most beautiful that men have seen. The show they are to be made with is out of the ordinary and new, because they are to be celebrated in a meadow next to the bride's village — she is called, by way of eminence, Quiteria the Beautiful, and the bridegroom is called Camacho the Rich. She is eighteen years old and he twenty-two; both a match for each other, although some inquisitive people who have all the world's pedigrees by heart will have it that beautiful Quiteria's family is a step above Camacho's. But nobody looks at that any more, since riches have the power to solder over a great many cracks.
"In fact this Camacho is open-handed, and he has taken a fancy to roofing over the whole meadow with branches, in such a way that the sun will have his work cut out if he wants to come in and visit the green grass the ground is covered with. He has also got up dances, both sword dances and little-bell dances, since there are men in his village who can ring them and shake them out to perfection; of clog-dancers I say nothing, for the crowd of them he has mustered is a judgement. But none of the things I have mentioned, nor a great many others I have left unmentioned, will make this wedding more memorable than what I imagine the despairing Basilio will do at it.
"This Basilio is a young fellow from the same place as Quiteria, whose house stood a wall and a half from the house of Quiteria's parents — from which love took the occasion to make the world over again the by now forgotten loves of Pyramus and Thisbe. Because Basilio fell in love with Quiteria from his tender first years, and she went on answering his desire with a thousand honourable favours, so much so that the loves of the two children Basilio and Quiteria were told as an entertainment in the village.
"Their years went on growing, and Quiteria's father decided to block Basilio's ordinary entry into his house; and, to save himself from going about wary and full of suspicions, he arranged to marry his daughter to the rich Camacho, since it did not seem to him a good thing to marry her to Basilio, who did not have as many of fortune's goods as he had of nature's. For if the truth is to be told without envy, he is the nimblest young man we know: a great thrower of the bar, an outstanding wrestler and a great pelota player; he runs like a fallow deer, jumps better than a goat and knocks down the skittles as if by enchantment; he sings like a lark and plays a guitar until he makes it talk, and, above all, he handles a sword with the best of them."
"For that one accomplishment alone," said Don Quixote at this point, "that young man would deserve to marry not merely the beautiful Quiteria but Queen Guinevere herself, if she were alive today, in spite of Lancelot and of all those who might want to prevent it."
"Try that on my wife!" said Sancho Panza, who up to then had been going along silent and listening. "She will have nothing but that everybody should marry his equal, holding to the proverb that says 'every ewe to her own mate'. What I should like is that this good Basilio, whom I am beginning to take a fancy to, should marry that lady Quiteria; and may they have a good long life and a good rest — I was going to say it the other way round — those who stop the marriage of people who love each other well."
"If all those who love each other well had to marry," said Don Quixote, "the choice and jurisdiction of marrying their children to whom and when they should would be taken away from parents. And if the choosing of husbands were left to the will of daughters, there would be one who would choose her father's servant, and one who would choose a man she saw going past in the street and thought dashing and well set up, even if he were a broken-down swashbuckler. For love and fondness easily blind the eyes of the understanding, which are so necessary for choosing one's state; and the state of matrimony is in great danger of being got wrong, and it needs great care and a particular favour from heaven to get it right.
"A man means to take a long journey, and if he is prudent, before setting out he looks for some safe and agreeable company to travel with. Well then, why should not the same be done by the man who has to travel all his life, right to the stopping-place of death — and the more so if the company is to keep him company in bed, at table and everywhere, as a wife's does her husband's? A man's own wife is not merchandise that, once bought, can be given back or traded or exchanged, because she is an inseparable accident that lasts as long as life lasts: she is a noose that, once you have put it round your neck, turns into the Gordian knot, and unless death's scythe cuts it there is no untying it. A great many more things I could say on this matter, if I were not stopped by my wish to know whether the licentiate has anything more to say about Basilio's history."
To which the bachelor student — or licentiate, as Don Quixote had called him — answered:
"Of the whole business I have nothing more to say except that from the moment Basilio learned that the beautiful Quiteria was marrying Camacho the Rich, nobody has ever seen him laugh again or say a sensible word, and he goes about always thoughtful and sad, talking to himself, by which he gives certain and clear signs that his wits have turned. He eats little and sleeps little, and what he eats is fruit, and where he sleeps, if he sleeps, is out in the fields on the hard ground, like a brute animal. Every now and then he looks at the sky, and other times he fixes his eyes on the ground with such a trance on him that he looks like nothing but a dressed statue whose clothes are moved by the air. In short, he gives such signs of having a heart in torment that all of us who know him are afraid that beautiful Quiteria's saying yes tomorrow will be the sentence of his death."
"God will manage it better," said Sancho. "For God, who gives the wound, gives the medicine. Nobody knows what is to come: between now and tomorrow there are a great many hours, and in one of them, and even in a moment, a house falls down. I have seen it rain and shine at one and the same instant; a man goes to bed healthy at night and cannot move the next day. And tell me: is there by any chance anybody who can boast that he has driven a nail into Fortune's wheel? Certainly not. And between a woman's yes and her no I would not dare to put the point of a pin, because it would not fit. Only give me Quiteria loving Basilio with a good heart and a good will, and I shall give him a sackful of good luck; for love, as I have heard it said, looks through a pair of spectacles that make copper seem gold, poverty riches and gummy eyes pearls."
"Where are you going to end up, Sancho, curse you?" said Don Quixote. "When you start threading proverbs and tales together, there is nobody who can wait for you but Judas himself, and may he carry you off. Tell me, animal, what do you know about nails, or wheels, or anything else at all?"
"Oh! Well, if they do not understand me," answered Sancho, "it is no wonder that my judgements are taken for nonsense. But it does not matter: I understand myself, and I know I have not said many foolish things in what I have said. It is only that your worship, my dear sir, is always the persecutor of my sayings, and even of my doings."
"Prosecutor you should say," said Don Quixote, "and not persecutor, you perverter of good language, and God confound you."
"Do not go setting on me, your worship," answered Sancho, "since you know I was not brought up at Court and have not studied at Salamanca, so as to know whether I am adding or taking away a letter from my words. Why, God bless me, there is no call to oblige a man from the back country to talk like a man of Toledo; and there may be men of Toledo who are no great hands at this business of polished speech either."
"That is so," said the licentiate, "because those who are brought up in the Tanneries and in the Zocodover market cannot speak as well as those who walk up and down almost all day in the cloister of the cathedral, and they are all men of Toledo. Pure language, proper, elegant and clear, is found in judicious men of the court, even though they were born in Majalahonda. I said judicious, because there are many who are not; and judiciousness is the grammar of good language, which goes along with usage. I, gentlemen, for my sins, have studied canon law at Salamanca, and I pride myself a little on saying what I mean in clear, plain, meaningful words."
"If you did not pride yourself more on knowing how to wave about those black swords you are carrying than on your tongue," said the other student, "you would have come out first in your licentiate examinations instead of coming out last."
"Look here, bachelor," answered the licentiate, "you hold the most mistaken opinion in the world about swordsmanship, in taking it for an empty thing."
"For me it is not an opinion but a settled truth," replied Corchuelo. "And if you want me to show you so by experience, you have the swords, there is room, I have wrists and strength, which, backed by my spirit — and that is not small — will make you confess that I am not deceiving myself. Get down and use your footwork and your circles and your angles and your science; for I expect to make you see stars at midday with my modern, clumsy skill, in which, after God, I trust that the man is still to be born who will make me turn my back, and that there is nobody in the world I cannot make give ground."
"As to turning your back or not, I do not go into that," replied the fencer. "Though it might well be that in the very place where you first planted your foot, there they would dig your grave — I mean that you would be left dead there by the swordsmanship you despise."
"We shall see about that now," answered Corchuelo.
And, getting off his donkey with great quickness, he furiously snatched one of the swords the licentiate was carrying on his.
"It must not be like this," said Don Quixote at this instant, "for I mean to be the master of this fencing bout and the judge of this many times unsettled question."
And, dismounting from Rocinante and gripping his lance, he planted himself in the middle of the road, just as the licentiate, with a graceful carriage of his body and neat footwork, was going at Corchuelo, who came at him throwing, as the saying goes, fire out of his eyes. The other two labourers of the party, without getting down off their donkeys, served as spectators of the mortal tragedy.
The slashes, thrusts, downstrokes, backhands and two-handed cuts that Corchuelo let fly were beyond counting: thicker than liver and finer than hail. He charged like an angry lion, but out to meet him would come a shut-your-mouth from the button of the licentiate's sword, which stopped him in the middle of his fury and made him kiss it as if it were a relic — though not with as much devotion as relics ought to be and generally are kissed.
Finally the licentiate counted him out, thrust by thrust, all the buttons of a short cassock he was wearing, making ribbons of its skirts like octopus tails; he knocked his hat off twice, and wore him out to such a degree that out of spite, choler and rage Corchuelo seized the sword by the hilt and flung it through the air with such force that one of the labourers there, who was a notary, went after it and afterwards gave it in his official testimony that he had thrown it nearly three-quarters of a league from himself — which testimony serves and has served to make it known and seen in all truth how force is beaten by art.
Corchuelo sat down, tired out, and Sancho, coming up to him, said:
"Upon my faith, master bachelor, if your worship takes my advice, from now on you should not challenge anybody to fence, but to wrestle or to throw the bar, since you have the years and the strength for it. Because of these men they call fencers, I have heard it said that they will put the point of a sword through the eye of a needle."
"I am content," answered Corchuelo, "to have fallen off my donkey, and to have had experience show me the truth I was so far from."
And, getting up, he embraced the licentiate, and they were left better friends than before; and, not wanting to wait for the notary, who had gone after the sword, since it seemed to them he would be a long time, they decided to go on, so as to get early to Quiteria's village, which was where they all came from.
For what was left of the road, the licentiate went on telling them about the excellences of the sword, with so many demonstrative arguments and so many mathematical figures and demonstrations that they were all convinced of the goodness of the science, and Corchuelo was brought round from his obstinacy.
Night had fallen; but before they arrived it seemed to all of them that there was a sky full of innumerable shining stars in front of the village. They also heard confused, soft sounds of various instruments — flutes, little drums, psalteries, pipes, tabors and jingles. And when they got near they saw that the trees of an arbour that had been set up by hand at the entrance to the village were all full of lamps, which the wind did not trouble, for it was not blowing then but so gently that it had no strength to move the leaves of the trees.
The musicians were the merrymakers of the wedding, who were going about that pleasant place in various parties, some dancing, others singing and others playing the diversity of the instruments already named. In fact it looked like nothing but gladness running and contentment leaping all over that meadow.
A great many others were busy putting up stands from which, the next day, they could conveniently see the plays and dances that were to be performed in that place set aside for solemnising the wedding of Camacho the Rich and the funeral rites of Basilio. Don Quixote would not go into the place, though both the labourer and the bachelor asked him to; but he gave as his excuse, sufficient enough in his own view, that it was the custom of knights errant to sleep in the fields and the woods rather than in inhabited places, even under gilded roofs. And with this he turned a little off the road, much against Sancho's will, the memory coming back to him of the good lodging he had had in Don Diego's castle or house.
Hardly had the white dawn given shining Phoebus room to dry the liquid pearls out of her golden hair with the heat of his warm rays, when Don Quixote, shaking the sloth out of his limbs, got to his feet and called his squire Sancho, who was still snoring. Which Don Quixote seeing, before he woke him he said to him:
"O you, more blessed than any who live on the face of the earth, since without envying or being envied you sleep with a quiet spirit, and no enchanters persecute you and no enchantments startle you! Sleep, I say again, and I shall say it another hundred times, with no jealousy over your lady keeping you in perpetual watchfulness, and no thought of paying the debts you owe keeping you awake, nor of what you must do to feed yourself and your small, distressed family tomorrow.
"Ambition does not disturb you, and the vain pomp of the world does not tire you, since the limits of your desires do not stretch any further than to thinking about your donkey — for the thinking about your person you have laid on my shoulders: a counterweight and a load that nature and custom have laid on masters. The servant sleeps and the master lies awake, thinking how he is to keep him, better him and do him favours. The anguish of seeing the sky turn to bronze and not come to the earth with the dew it needs does not afflict the servant but the master, who must keep in barrenness and hunger the man who served him in fertility and abundance."
To all this Sancho made no answer, because he was asleep, nor would he have woken up so soon if Don Quixote had not brought him round with the butt of his lance. He woke at last, sleepy and lazy, and, turning his face in every direction, said:
"From over by that arbour, if I am not mistaken, there comes a whiff and a smell a great deal more of grilled bacon than of rushes and thyme. Weddings that begin with smells like that, by my blessed self, must be plentiful and open-handed ones."
"Have done, glutton," said Don Quixote. "Come, we shall go and see this wedding, to see what the scorned Basilio does."
"Let him do whatever he likes," answered Sancho. "He should not have been poor, and then he would have married Quiteria. Is there nothing more to it than having not a farthing and wanting to raise yourself up above the clouds? Upon my word, sir, I am of the opinion that a poor man should be content with what he finds, and not go asking for oysters up a tree.
"I would bet an arm that Camacho could bury Basilio in silver; and if that is so, as it must be, Quiteria would be a great fool to throw away the finery and the jewels Camacho must have given her and can still give her, and choose instead Basilio's bar-throwing and his play with the black sword. They will not give you a quarter-pint of wine in the tavern for a good throw of the bar or a fine pass with a sword. Talents and gifts that are not saleable — let Count Dirlos have them and welcome; but when such gifts fall on a man who has good money, may my life be as good as they look. On a good foundation you can raise a good building, and the best foundation and trench in the world is money."
"For God's sake, Sancho," said Don Quixote at this, "make an end of your harangue. It is my belief that if you were let go on with the ones you start at every step, you would have no time left for eating or for sleeping, since you would spend it all in talking."
"If your worship had a good memory," replied Sancho, "you would remember the articles of our agreement before we came out of the house this last time. One of them was that you were to let me talk as much as I liked, so long as it was not against my neighbour or against your worship's authority; and up to now I do not think I have gone against that article."
"I do not remember, Sancho," answered Don Quixote, "any such article. And granting that it is so, I want you to be quiet and to come along; for the instruments we heard last night are beginning to gladden the valleys again, and no doubt the wedding will be celebrated in the cool of the morning and not in the heat of the afternoon."
Sancho did as his master ordered him, and, putting the saddle on Rocinante and the pack-saddle on the grey, the two of them mounted and went at a walking pace in under the arbour.
The first thing that offered itself to Sancho's sight was a whole young bullock spitted on a whole elm tree; and in the fire where it was to be roasted a middling mountain of wood was burning. Six pots that stood round the bonfire had not been cast in the common mould of the rest of the world's pots, because they were six half-jars, each one of which would hold a whole slaughterhouse of meat: they soaked up and shut inside themselves whole sheep without its showing, as though they were pigeons. The skinned hares and the plucked hens hanging from the trees to be buried in the pots were beyond number; the birds and game of various sorts were infinite, hanging from the trees so that the air could cool them.
Sancho counted more than sixty wineskins of over sixteen gallons each, and all of them full, as it later turned out, of generous wines. There were stacks of the whitest bread, like the heaps of wheat there generally are on the threshing floors; the cheeses, laid up like lattice-work bricks, made a wall; and two cauldrons of oil, bigger than a dyer's, served for frying things of batter, which they lifted out fried with two stout paddles and plunged into another cauldron of prepared honey that stood alongside.
The cooks, men and women, came to more than fifty: all clean, all busy and all contented. In the swollen belly of the bullock were twelve tender little sucking pigs, sewn up inside, which served to give it flavour and make it tender. The spices of various kinds looked as though they had been bought not by the pound but by the hundredweight, and they were all on show in a great chest. In short, the show made by the wedding was rustic, but so abundant that it could have fed an army.
Sancho Panza looked at it all and contemplated it all and took a fancy to it all. First the pots captured and conquered his desire, out of which he would very willingly have taken a middling stewpot; then the wineskins won over his good will; and last of all the fritters, if such round-bellied cauldrons could be called frying pans. And so, unable to bear it and unable to help himself, he went up to one of the busy cooks and, with courteous and hungry words, begged him to let him dip a crust of bread in one of those pots. To which the cook answered:
"Brother, this day is not one of those over which hunger has any jurisdiction, thanks to the rich Camacho. Get down and see whether there is a ladle about, and skim off a hen or two, and much good may it do you."
"I do not see one," answered Sancho.
"Wait," said the cook. "Sinner that I am, what a squeamish, useless creature you must be!"
And saying this he seized a small cauldron, and, plunging it into one of the half-jars, brought up in it three hens and two geese, and said to Sancho:
"Eat, my friend, and breakfast on this skimming while the dinner hour comes round."
"I have nothing to put it in," answered Sancho.
"Then take the ladle and all," said the cook; "Camacho's riches and Camacho's contentment make up for everything."
While this was happening to Sancho, then, Don Quixote was watching some twelve labourers coming in at one side of the arbour on twelve most beautiful mares, with rich and showy country harness and a great many little bells on their breast-bands, all dressed in their merrymaking and holiday clothes. In an ordered troop they ran not one but a great many courses across the meadow, with a merry uproar and shouting, calling out:
"Long live Camacho and Quiteria: he as rich as she is beautiful, and she the most beautiful in the world!"
Which Don Quixote hearing, he said to himself:
"It is plain enough that these men have never seen my Dulcinea of El Toboso, because if they had seen her they would hold their hands in praising this Quiteria of theirs."
A little after that, many and various dances began to come in at different parts of the arbour, among them a sword dance of some twenty-four young men of gallant looks and spirit, all dressed in fine, very white linen with their head-cloths worked in various colours of fine silk. And one of the men on the mares asked the young fellow leading them, who was a nimble lad, whether any of the dancers had been wounded.
"So far, blessed be God, nobody has been wounded: we are all going sound."
And at once he began to weave in and out with the rest of his companions, with so many turns and so much skill that, although Don Quixote was used to seeing dances of the sort, none had ever pleased him as much as that one.
He was also pleased by another that came in, of the most beautiful girls, so young that to look at them none was under fourteen or over eighteen, all dressed in fine green cloth, their hair partly braided and partly loose, but all of it so fair that it could have competed with the sun's; and over it they wore garlands made up of jasmine, roses, amaranth and honeysuckle. A venerable old man and an elderly matron led them, but nimbler and more loose-limbed than their years promised. A Zamoran bagpipe made the music for them; and they, carrying decency in their faces and their eyes and nimbleness in their feet, showed themselves the best dancers in the world.
After this one came in another dance, one of the contrived sort and of those they call spoken dances. It was of eight nymphs, divided into two files. Of one file the god Cupid was the leader, and of the other Self-Interest — Cupid decked out with wings, bow, quiver and arrows, Self-Interest dressed in rich and various colours of gold and silk.
The nymphs who followed Love carried their names written on their backs on white parchment in large letters: the title of the first was poetry, that of the second good sense, that of the third good birth and that of the fourth valour. In the same way those who followed Self-Interest came labelled: the title of the first said liberality, that of the second largesse, that of the third treasure and that of the fourth peaceful possession.
In front of them all came a wooden castle drawn by four wild men, all dressed in ivy and in hemp dyed green, so much to the life that they came near frightening Sancho. On the front of the castle and on all four sides of it was written: the castle of modesty. Four skilled players of the tabor and pipe made the music for them.
Cupid began the dance, and, having made two figures, he raised his eyes and drew his bow at a girl who placed herself between the battlements of the castle, to whom he spoke in this way:
I am the god who is powerful in the air and on the earth and in the wide and billowing sea, and in everything the abyss shuts up in its terrifying pit. I have never known what fear is; whatever I want, I can do, even when I want the impossible, and in everything that is possible I command, take away, set up and forbid.
He finished the stanza, shot an arrow over the top of the castle and withdrew to his place. Then Self-Interest came out and made two more figures; the little drums fell silent, and he said:
I am the one who can do more than Love, and it is Love who guides me; I am of the best stock that heaven breeds on earth, the best known and the greatest. I am Self-Interest, in whom few are used to doing well, and to do anything without me is a great miracle; and such as I am, I consecrate myself to you for ever and ever, amen.
Self-Interest withdrew and Poetry came forward, who, after making her figures like the rest, fixed her eyes on the girl on the castle and said:
In the sweetest of conceits, the sweetest Poetry, lofty, grave and judicious, sends you her soul, my lady, wrapped up in a thousand sonnets. If my insistence does not trouble you, then your fortune, envied by a great many others, will be lifted up by me above the circle of the moon.
Poetry moved off, and from Self-Interest's side came Liberality, and, having made her figures, said:
They give the name of Liberality to the giving that runs from the extreme of prodigality, and from the opposite one, which argues a lukewarm and slack will. But I, to make you great, mean from today on to be prodigal; for though it is a vice, it is an honourable vice and the vice of a heart in love, which shows itself in giving.
In this way all the figures of the two squadrons came out and withdrew, and each one made his figures and said his verses, some of them elegant and some of them ridiculous; and Don Quixote took down by heart — and his memory was a great one — only the ones already given. Then they all mixed together, making and unmaking knots with graceful ease and freedom; and when Love went past in front of the castle he shot his arrows over the top, but Self-Interest broke gilded money-pots against it.
Finally, after they had danced a good while, Self-Interest brought out a large purse made from the skin of a great tabby cat, which looked as if it were full of money, and, throwing it at the castle, the boards were knocked out of their sockets with the blow and fell down, leaving the girl uncovered and without any defence at all. Self-Interest came up with the figures of his party, and, throwing a great gold chain round her neck, they made a show of seizing her, conquering her and carrying her off captive. Which Love and his supporters seeing, they made as if to take her from him; and all the demonstrations they made were in time to the little drums, dancing and stepping in order. The wild men made peace between them, who with great quickness set the boards of the castle up and fitted them together again, and the girl shut herself up in it as before; and with this the dance ended, to the great contentment of those who were watching it.
Don Quixote asked one of the nymphs who had composed and arranged it. She answered that it was a beneficed priest of that village, who had a fine head for inventions of the kind.
"I would bet," said Don Quixote, "that this bachelor or beneficed priest must be more Camacho's friend than Basilio's, and that he must have more of the satirist in him than of the vespers-singer. He has fitted Basilio's talents and Camacho's riches into the dance very neatly!"
Sancho Panza, who was listening to all of it, said:
"My money's on the king: I stand by Camacho."
"In short," said Don Quixote, "it is plain enough, Sancho, that you are a peasant and one of those who say, 'Long live the winner!'"
"I do not know which sort I am," answered Sancho, "but I do know that I shall never take such elegant skimmings out of Basilio's pots as this that I have taken out of Camacho's."
And he showed him the cauldron full of geese and hens, and, seizing one of them, began to eat with great charm and appetite, and said:
"In the teeth of Basilio's talents! You are worth as much as you have, and you have as much as you are worth. There are only two families in the world, as a grandmother of mine used to say — the Haves and the Have-nots — although she stood by the Haves. And these days, my lord Don Quixote, they take the pulse of the purse sooner than of the person: a donkey covered in gold looks better than a horse under a pack-saddle. So I say again that I stand by Camacho, out of whose pots the skimmings are plentiful geese and hens, hares and rabbits; while out of Basilio's, if it comes to hand, and even if it only comes to foot, they will be dishwater."
"Have you finished your harangue, Sancho?" said Don Quixote.
"I shall have finished it," answered Sancho, "because I see that your worship takes it heavily; for if that did not come in between, I had work cut out here for three days."
"Please God, Sancho," replied Don Quixote, "that I may see you dumb before I die."
"At the rate we are going," answered Sancho, "before your worship dies I shall be chewing earth, and then it may be that I shall be so dumb that I shall not speak a word until the end of the world, or at least until the day of Judgement."
"Even if that should happen so, Sancho," answered Don Quixote, "your silence will never come up to what you have talked, are talking and are going to talk in your lifetime. And besides, it is very much in the order of nature that the day of my death should come before the day of yours; and so I never expect to see you dumb, not even when you are drinking or sleeping, which is as far as I can go."
"Upon my faith, sir," answered Sancho, "there is no trusting the fleshless lady — I mean death, who eats lamb as readily as mutton. And I have heard our curate say that she treads with an equal foot on the high towers of kings and on the humble huts of the poor. This lady has more of power about her than of squeamishness: she is not at all fussy, she eats everything and makes do with anything, and she stuffs her saddlebags with people of every sort, age and rank. She is no reaper who sleeps through the noonday, for she reaps at all hours and cuts the dry grass along with the green; and she does not seem to chew but to bolt and swallow whatever is put in front of her, because she has a dog's hunger that is never satisfied. And although she has no belly, she gives you to understand that she is dropsical and thirsty enough to drink down the lives of all who live, the way a man drinks down a jug of cold water."
"No more, Sancho," said Don Quixote at this point. "Hold yourself at your best and do not let yourself fall; for truly what you have said about death in your rustic terms is what a good preacher could have said. I tell you, Sancho, that if along with the good nature and good sense you have you could take a pulpit in hand, you might go about this world preaching fine things."
"He preaches well who lives well," answered Sancho, "and I know no other 'ologies."
"Nor do you need any," said Don Quixote; "but I cannot for the life of me understand or make out how, the fear of God being the beginning of wisdom, you, who are more afraid of a lizard than of Him, know so much."
"Let your worship judge of your chivalries, sir," answered Sancho, "and not go meddling in judging other people's fears or bravery; for I am as fine a fearer of God as anybody's son in the parish. And let your worship let me polish off this skimming, since all the rest is idle words that they will call us to account for in the other life."
And saying this he began afresh to storm his cauldron, with such good appetite that he woke Don Quixote's; and he would no doubt have helped him, if he had not been stopped by what must of necessity be told further on.
While Don Quixote and Sancho were in the talk reported in the last chapter, loud shouts and a great noise were heard; and the men on the mares were making them and causing it, going at full gallop and shouting to meet the bride and bridegroom, who came surrounded by a thousand kinds of instruments and contrivances, accompanied by the curate and by the relations of both, and by all the most distinguished people of the neighbouring places, everybody dressed for the holiday.
And as soon as Sancho saw the bride he said:
"Upon my faith, she does not come dressed as a farm girl but as a fine court lady! By God, as far as I can make out, the medallions she was to have worn are rich coral, and the green cloth of Cuenca is thirty-pile velvet! And I'll be bound the trimming is strips of white linen — I swear it is satin! And take a look at her hands, decked out with jet rings: strike me down if they are not gold rings, and very gold, and set with pearls as white as curds, each one of which must be worth an eye out of your head. Oh, the whoreson, and what hair! If it is not false, I have never seen it longer or fairer in all my life. No, go on, find a fault in her spirit or in her figure, and don't compare her to a palm tree swaying loaded down with clusters of dates — because that is just what the trinkets look like that she has hanging from her hair and her throat. I swear on my soul she is a fine, well-built girl, and she could sail past the shoals of Flanders and come through."
Don Quixote laughed at Sancho Panza's rustic praises; but it seemed to him that, apart from his lady Dulcinea of El Toboso, he had never seen a more beautiful woman. Beautiful Quiteria came along somewhat pale, and it must have been from the bad night that brides always spend getting themselves up for the coming day of their wedding.
They were drawing near a platform that stood at one side of the meadow, decked out with carpets and boughs, where the marriage was to be made and from where they were to watch the dances and the contrivances. And just as they were reaching the place, they heard great shouting behind them, and a voice saying:
"Wait a little, you people, as thoughtless as you are in a hurry."
At which shouts and words they all turned their heads, and saw that the man making them was dressed, by the look of it, in a black tunic slashed with crimson in the shape of flames. He came crowned — as was seen at once — with a crown of funereal cypress, and in his hands he carried a great staff.
As he came nearer he was recognised by everybody as the gallant Basilio, and they were all left in suspense, waiting to see where his shouts and his words were going to end, and fearing some bad outcome from his coming at such a moment.
He arrived at last, tired and out of breath; and, planting himself in front of the couple, driving his staff into the ground — for it had a steel point at the end of it — with his colour changed and his eyes fixed on Quiteria, in a trembling and hoarse voice he said these words:
"You know very well, ungrateful Quiteria, that by the holy law we profess, while I am alive you cannot take a husband; and at the same time you are not ignorant that, because I was waiting for time and my own efforts to improve the goods of my fortune, I never chose to stop keeping the decorum your honour called for. But you, throwing behind you all the obligations you owe to my honest desire, want to make another man lord of what is mine — a man whose riches serve him not only as good fortune but as the very best of luck.
"And so that he may have it in full measure, and not as I think he deserves it but as the heavens choose to give it him, I shall with my own hands undo the impossibility or the obstacle that could stand in its way, by taking myself out from between. Long live, long live the rich Camacho with the ungrateful Quiteria, for long and happy ages; and let him die, let him die, poor Basilio, whose poverty cut the wings of his happiness and put him in the grave!"
And saying this he seized the staff he had driven into the ground; and, half of it staying in the earth, he showed that it served as the sheath of a middling rapier that was hidden inside it. And, setting what might be called the hilt on the ground, with a light unconcern and a settled purpose he threw himself upon it, and in an instant showed the bloody point coming out at his back, with half the steel blade — the wretched man left bathed in his own blood and stretched on the ground, run through by his own weapon.
His friends ran up at once to help him, grieved by his misery and pitiful misfortune; and Don Quixote, leaving Rocinante, ran to help him and took him in his arms, and found that he had not yet expired. They wanted to draw the rapier out, but the curate, who was there, was of the opinion that they should not draw it out before confessing him, because drawing it out and his expiring would be all in one moment. But Basilio, coming round a little, said in a pained and fainting voice:
"If you would only, cruel Quiteria, in this last and forced extremity give me your hand as my wife, I should still think my rashness had some excuse, since in it I attained the good of being yours."
The curate, hearing this, told him to attend to the health of his soul before the pleasures of the body, and to ask God very earnestly for pardon for his sins and for his desperate decision. To which Basilio answered that on no account would he confess unless Quiteria first gave him her hand as his wife: that this contentment would set his will to rights and give him breath to confess.
As soon as Don Quixote heard the wounded man's request, he said in a loud voice that Basilio was asking a thing that was very just and reasonable, and, besides, very easily done; and that Señor Camacho would be left just as honoured in receiving the lady Quiteria as the widow of the valorous Basilio as if he had received her from her father's side.
"Here there need be no more than a single yes, which will have no other effect than the pronouncing of it, since the marriage bed of this wedding is to be the grave."
Camacho heard it all, and it all left him bewildered and confused, not knowing what to do or what to say. But the voices of Basilio's friends were so many, begging him to consent to Quiteria's giving him her hand so that his soul should not be lost by departing this life in despair, that they moved him and even forced him to say that if Quiteria wanted to give it, he was content, since it was all only putting off the fulfilling of his desires for a moment.
Then they all turned to Quiteria, and some with entreaties, and others with tears, and others with forcible arguments, urged her to give her hand to poor Basilio; and she, harder than marble and more motionless than a statue, showed that she neither knew how, nor was able, nor wanted to answer a word — and she would not have answered if the curate had not told her to make up her mind quickly about what she was going to do, because Basilio already had his soul between his teeth and there was no room to wait for undecided decisions.
Then the beautiful Quiteria, without answering a single word, troubled, and to all appearances sad and sorry, came to where Basilio was lying with his eyes already turned up, his breath short and hurried, murmuring Quiteria's name between his teeth and giving signs of dying like a pagan and not like a Christian. Quiteria came, then, and, going down on her knees, asked him for his hand by signs and not by words. Basilio unfixed his eyes, and, looking at her attentively, said to her:
"O Quiteria, you have come to be merciful at a moment when your mercy must serve as the knife that finishes taking my life away, since I no longer have the strength to bear the glory you give me in choosing me for your own, or to hold off the pain that is so quickly covering my eyes with the terrible shadow of death! What I beg of you is this, O fatal star of mine: that the hand you ask of me and want to give me should not be for form's sake, nor to deceive me all over again, but that you should confess and say that, with no force put on your will, you hand it over and give it to me as to your lawful husband. For it is not reasonable that at a moment like this you should deceive me, or use any pretence with a man who has dealt in so many truths with you."
In the middle of these words he kept fainting away, so that all who were present thought that each faint was going to carry his soul off with it. Quiteria, all decency and all modesty, taking Basilio's hand in her right hand, said to him:
"No force would be enough to twist my will; and so, with the freest will I have, I give you my hand as your lawful wife and take yours — if it is that you give it me of your own free choice, without its being troubled or crossed by the calamity your hasty reasoning has put you in."
"I do give it," answered Basilio, "not troubled or confused, but with the clear understanding heaven chose to give me; and so I give myself and hand myself over as your husband."
"And I as your wife," answered Quiteria, "whether you live long years or whether they carry you out of my arms to the grave."
"For a young man as badly wounded as this," said Sancho Panza at this point, "he does a great deal of talking. Make him leave off the sweet nothings and attend to his soul, which to my mind he has more in his tongue than between his teeth."
Basilio and Quiteria being joined hand in hand, then, the curate, tender and in tears, gave them his blessing and asked heaven to give a good rest to the soul of the newly married man — who, as soon as he had received the blessing, jumped nimbly to his feet and with unheard-of coolness pulled out the rapier that had his own body for a sheath.
All the bystanders were left astonished, and some of them, simpler than they were curious, began to cry out at the tops of their voices:
"A miracle, a miracle!"
But Basilio answered:
"Not 'a miracle, a miracle', but a trick, a trick!"
The curate, disconcerted and thunderstruck, ran up with both hands to feel the wound, and found that the blade had gone not through Basilio's flesh and ribs but through a hollow iron tube, full of blood, that he had fitted neatly in that place — the blood, as was learnt afterwards, prepared in such a way that it would not congeal.
In short, the curate and Camacho and all the rest of the bystanders held themselves to have been fooled and made game of. The bride gave no sign of being sorry about the trick; on the contrary, hearing it said that the marriage, having been a deception, could not hold good, she said that she confirmed it afresh. From which they all gathered that the whole business had been arranged by the agreement and knowledge of the two of them — at which Camacho and his supporters were left so put out that they referred their revenge to their hands, and, drawing a great many swords, charged at Basilio, in whose favour almost as many were drawn in an instant.
And Don Quixote, taking the lead on horseback with his lance on his arm and well covered by his shield, made everybody give way to him. Sancho, who never took any pleasure or delight in doings of the kind, took refuge among the jars where he had drawn off his agreeable skimmings, that place seeming to him a sanctuary that ought to be held in respect. Don Quixote was saying in a loud voice:
"Hold, gentlemen, hold; for there is no reason for you to take revenge for the wrongs love does us. And note that love and war are one and the same thing; and just as in war it is lawful and customary to use tricks and stratagems to overcome the enemy, so in the contests and rivalries of love the deceits and dodges that are worked to get the end desired are held to be good, provided they are not to the damage and dishonour of the thing loved.
"Quiteria was Basilio's, and Basilio Quiteria's, by the just and favourable disposition of the heavens. Camacho is rich, and will be able to buy his pleasure when, where and how he likes. Basilio has nothing but this one ewe, and nobody is going to take her from him, however powerful he may be; for those two whom God has joined, man cannot separate — and whoever tries it must first come past the point of this lance."
And with that he brandished it so strongly and so skilfully that he struck terror into all who did not know him. And Quiteria's slight fixed itself so deeply in Camacho's imagination that it rubbed her out of his memory in an instant; and so the persuasions of the curate, who was a prudent and well-meaning man, took effect with him, by which Camacho and those of his party were left peaceable and quiet. In sign of which they put their swords back in their places, blaming Quiteria's readiness more than Basilio's trickery — Camacho reasoning that if Quiteria loved Basilio as a girl, she would love him as a married woman too, and that he ought to give thanks to heaven more for having taken her from him than for having given her.
Camacho and his troop being consoled and pacified, then, all those of Basilio's side quieted down; and the rich Camacho, to show that he did not feel the trick and set no store by it, wanted the festivities to go on as though he were really being married. But Basilio and his wife and their followers would not stay for them, and so they went off to Basilio's village — for the virtuous and judicious poor also have people to follow them, honour them and stand by them, as the rich have people to flatter them and keep them company.
They took Don Quixote away with them, valuing him as a man of worth and with hair on his chest. Sancho alone had his soul darkened, at seeing himself unable to wait for Camacho's splendid dinner and festivities, which lasted until night. And so, worn out and sad, he followed his master, who was going along with Basilio's party, and so he left behind him the fleshpots of Egypt — though he carried them in his soul, the by now nearly finished and used-up skimming he had in his cauldron standing for the glory and abundance of the good thing he was losing. And so, distressed and thoughtful, though not hungry, without getting down off the grey he followed in Rocinante's tracks.
Great and many were the attentions the newly married couple paid Don Quixote, feeling themselves obliged by the show he had made in defending their cause; and along with his valour they rated his good sense, holding him for a Cid in arms and a Cicero in eloquence. Good Sancho took his ease for three days at the bride and bridegroom's expense, from whom it was learnt that the mock wounding had not been a plan arranged with the beautiful Quiteria but a device of Basilio's, expecting from it exactly the outcome that had been seen. It is true, though, that he confessed he had let some of his friends into his idea, so that at the necessary moment they might back up his intention and warrant his deception.
"They cannot and should not be called deceptions," said Don Quixote, "when they have virtuous ends in view."
And he said that the marrying of two people in love was the most excellent of ends, pointing out that the greatest enemy love has is hunger and continual need, because love is all gladness, merriment and contentment, and the more so when the lover is in possession of the thing loved, against which need and poverty are opposed and declared enemies. And he said all this with the intention that Señor Basilio should leave off practising the talents he had, which, though they gave him fame, did not give him money, and should attend to getting himself an estate by lawful and industrious means, which are never wanting to the prudent and hard-working.
"The honourable poor man — if a poor man can be honourable — has a treasure in having a beautiful wife; and when she is taken from him, his honour is taken from him and killed. The beautiful and honourable woman whose husband is poor deserves to be crowned with the laurels and palms of conquest and triumph. Beauty by itself draws the good will of all who look at it and know it, and the royal eagles and the high-flying birds swoop down on it as on a delicious lure; but if need and hardship are joined to such beauty, then the crows and the kites and the other birds of prey attack it too — and the woman who stands firm against so many assaults well deserves to be called her husband's crown.
"Look here, judicious Basilio," Don Quixote added. "It was the opinion of some wise man or other that there was only one good woman in the whole world, and he gave it as his advice that every man should think and believe that this one good woman was his own, and in that way he would live contented. I am not married, nor has it come into my mind so far to be so; and, for all that, I should venture to give advice to any man who asked me for it about the way he ought to look for the woman he meant to marry.
"First of all, I should advise him to look more at her reputation than at her property, because a good woman does not attain a good reputation merely by being good but by seeming so; for public forwardness and freedom do a great deal more damage to women's honour than secret wickednesses. If you bring a good woman into your house, it will be an easy thing to keep her, and even improve her, in that goodness; but if you bring in a bad one, you will have your work cut out mending her — for it is not very easily done to pass from one extreme to the other. I do not say it is impossible, but I hold it to be difficult."
Sancho was listening to all this, and he said to himself:
"This master of mine, when I talk about things with pith and substance in them, generally says that I might take a pulpit in my hands and go about the world preaching fine things; and I say of him that when he starts threading judgements together and giving advice, he could take not only one pulpit in his hands but two on every finger, and go about the market squares saying whatever he pleased. The devil take you for a knight errant, and all the things you know! I thought, upon my soul, that he could only know what had to do with his chivalries; but there is nothing he does not peck at and stick his spoon into."
Sancho was muttering this a little out loud, and his master half heard him, and asked him:
"What are you muttering, Sancho?"
"I am not saying anything or muttering about anything," answered Sancho. "I was only saying to myself that I wish I had heard what your worship has said here before I married, for perhaps I should be saying now: 'the ox that is loose licks himself best'."
"Is your Teresa as bad as that, Sancho?" said Don Quixote.
"She is not very bad," answered Sancho, "but she is not very good; at least she is not as good as I should like."
"You do wrong, Sancho," said Don Quixote, "in speaking ill of your wife, who is, after all, the mother of your children."
"We owe each other nothing," answered Sancho, "because she speaks ill of me too whenever she takes it into her head — especially when she is jealous, and then Satan himself may put up with her."
Finally they spent three days with the newly married couple, where they were entertained and served like royal persons. Don Quixote asked the licentiate swordsman to give him a guide to take him to the cave of Montesinos, because he had a great desire to go into it and see with his own eyes whether the marvels that were told of it all through those parts were true.
The licentiate told him he would give him a cousin of his, a famous student and very fond of reading books of chivalry, who would very willingly put him at the mouth of the cave itself and would show him the Lagoons of Ruidera, likewise famous through all La Mancha and even through all Spain. And he told him he would find pleasant entertainment in him, since he was a young man who knew how to make books for printing and for dedicating to princes.
At last the cousin came on a pregnant she-ass whose pack-saddle was covered with a bright striped rug or piece of sacking. Sancho saddled Rocinante and got the grey ready, provided his saddlebags — which were joined by the cousin's, likewise well provided — and, commending themselves to God and taking their leave of everybody, they set out, taking the road to the famous cave of Montesinos.
On the way Don Quixote asked the cousin what kind and quality his pursuits, his profession and his studies were; to which he answered that his profession was to be a humanist, and his pursuits and studies to compose books for the press, all of them of great profit and no less entertainment to the commonwealth. That one of them was called The Book of Liveries, in which he painted seven hundred and three liveries with their colours, mottoes and devices, out of which courtier knights could pick and take whichever they liked at times of festival and merrymaking, without going about begging them from anybody or distilling their brains, as they say, to get them to fit their wishes and intentions.
"Because I give to the jealous man, to the scorned man, to the forgotten man and to the absent man the ones that suit them, and they will fit them better than their own skins. I have another book too, which I mean to call The Metamorphoses, or the Spanish Ovid, of a new and rare invention; because in it, imitating Ovid in the burlesque style, I paint who the Giralda of Seville was, and the Angel of the Magdalen, who the Vecinguerra Conduit of Cordova was, who the Bulls of Guisando were, and the Sierra Morena, and the fountains of Leganitos and Lavapiés in Madrid, not forgetting the Louse Fountain, the Gilded Spout and the Prioress — and this with their allegories, metaphors and transferences, so that they gladden, astonish and instruct all at once.
"I have another book that I call A Supplement to Polydore Vergil, which deals with the invention of things and is of great erudition and study, on the grounds that the things of great substance Polydore left unsaid, I find out and set forth in a graceful style. Vergil forgot to declare to us who was the first man in the world to have a cold, and the first to take the mercury cure for the French disease; and I declare it to the letter and back it up with more than twenty-five authors — so your worship may see whether I have worked well and whether such a book will be useful to all the world."
Sancho, who had been very attentive to the cousin's account, said to him:
"Tell me, sir, and so may God give you good luck in the printing of your books: could you tell me — and of course you could, since you know everything — who was the first man to scratch his head? For I hold for my own part that it must have been our father Adam."
"It must have been," answered the cousin, "because there is no doubt that Adam had a head and hair; and, this being so, and his being the first man in the world, he would have scratched himself at some time."
"So I believe," answered Sancho. "But tell me now: who was the first tumbler in the world?"
"Truly, brother," answered the cousin, "I shall not be able to settle that for the moment, until I have studied it. I shall study it when I get back to where my books are, and I shall satisfy you next time we see each other, for this must not be the last."
"Well look, sir," replied Sancho, "do not put yourself to any trouble over it, because I have just this minute hit on the answer to what I asked you. Know that the first tumbler in the world was Lucifer, when they threw him or hurled him out of heaven, and he came tumbling all the way down to the pit."
"You are right, my friend," said the cousin.
And Don Quixote said:
"That question and that answer are not yours, Sancho: you have heard somebody else say them."
"Be quiet, sir," replied Sancho, "for upon my faith, if I take to asking and answering, I shall not have finished between now and tomorrow. Why, to ask foolish questions and answer nonsense I have no need to go about looking for help from the neighbours."
"You have said more, Sancho, than you know," said Don Quixote; "for there are some men who wear themselves out learning and establishing things which, once learnt and established, are not worth a farthing to the understanding or to the memory."
In these and other pleasant conversations that day went by for them, and at night they lodged in a small village, where the cousin told Don Quixote that from there to the cave of Montesinos was no more than two leagues, and that if he had made up his mind to go into it, it would be necessary to provide themselves with ropes to tie himself with and let himself down into its depths.
Don Quixote said that even if it went down to the abyss, he had to see where it ended; and so they bought nearly a hundred fathoms of rope, and the next day at two in the afternoon they reached the cave, whose mouth is spacious and wide but full of thorn bushes and wild fig trees, of brambles and undergrowth so thick and tangled that they altogether blind and cover it.
On seeing it, the cousin, Sancho and Don Quixote dismounted, and the two of them at once tied Don Quixote very tightly with the ropes; and while they were swathing and girding him, Sancho said to him:
"Look what you are doing, my dear sir. Do not go burying yourself alive, or put yourself where you will look like a bottle being let down into a well to cool. Why, it is nothing to do with your worship and none of your business to be the explorer of this place, which must be worse than a dungeon."
"Tie and be quiet," answered Don Quixote; "for an undertaking like this one, Sancho my friend, was reserved for me."
And then the guide said:
"I beg your worship, Señor Don Quixote, to look hard and to examine with a hundred eyes what is down there: perhaps there will be things I can put into my book of Transformations."
"The tambourine is in the hands of a man who knows how to play it," answered Sancho Panza.
This said, and the tying of Don Quixote finished — which was not over his armour but over his arming doublet — Don Quixote said:
"We have been careless in not providing ourselves with some small cowbell, which could have been tied next to me on this same rope, and by whose sound it would be understood that I was still going down and was still alive. But since that is not possible now, into the hand of God, who will guide me."
And then he went down on his knees and said a prayer in a low voice to heaven, asking God to help him and give him good success in that apparently dangerous and untried adventure; and then he said in a loud voice:
"O lady of my actions and my movements, most illustrious and peerless Dulcinea of El Toboso! If it is possible for the pleas and prayers of this fortunate lover of yours to reach your ears, by your unheard-of beauty I beg you to hear them, which are nothing but a prayer that you should not deny me your favour and protection, now that I have such need of it. I am about to hurl myself down, to sink myself and to plunge into the abyss that is opening here in front of me, only so that the world may know that if you favour me, there is no impossibility I shall not attempt and carry through."
And, saying this, he went up to the chasm and saw that it was not possible to let himself down or to make room for the entry except by main force or by sword-strokes; and so, laying his hand on his sword, he began to knock down and cut away the undergrowth at the mouth of the cave. At whose noise and racket there came out of it an infinite number of enormous crows and jackdaws, so thick and in such haste that they knocked Don Quixote to the ground; and if he had been as much of a believer in omens as he was a Catholic Christian, he would have taken it for a bad sign and excused himself from shutting himself up in such a place.
Finally he got up, and, seeing that no more crows were coming out, nor other night birds such as the bats that had come out among the crows, with the cousin and Sancho paying out the rope he let himself sink to the bottom of the terrible cavern. And as he went in, Sancho gave him his blessing and made a thousand crosses over him, saying:
"God guide you, and Our Lady of the Rock of France along with the Trinity of Gaeta, flower and cream and froth of knights errant! There you go, champion of the world, heart of steel, arms of bronze! God guide you again, and bring you back free, sound and without a scratch to the light of this life you are leaving to bury yourself in this darkness you are looking for!"
Almost the same prayers and supplications were made by the cousin.
Don Quixote went down calling out for them to give him rope and more rope, and they gave it to him little by little; and when the shouts, coming out channelled up the cave, stopped being heard, they had already paid out the hundred fathoms of rope, and were of the opinion that they should haul Don Quixote up again, since they could give him no more line.
Even so, they waited about half an hour, at the end of which space they set to hauling in the rope again — with great ease and with no weight at all, a sign that made them imagine that Don Quixote was staying down there. And believing so, Sancho wept bitterly and hauled away in a great hurry to find out the truth; but, coming to a little over eighty fathoms as far as they could judge, they felt a weight, at which they were extremely glad. Finally, at ten fathoms, they saw Don Quixote distinctly, and Sancho called out to him, saying:
"Very welcome back, my dear sir, for we were already thinking you were staying down there for breeding stock."
But Don Quixote did not answer a word; and, getting him right out, they saw that he had his eyes shut, with every sign of being asleep. They laid him out on the ground and untied him, and even so he did not wake; but they turned him and rolled him and shook him and shifted him about so much that at the end of a good while he came to himself, stretching, exactly as if he were waking from some heavy, deep sleep. And, looking one way and the other, as if terrified, he said:
"God forgive you, my friends; for you have taken me away from the sweetest and most agreeable life and sight that any human being has ever seen or passed through. In fact I now know for certain that all the contentments of this life pass like a shadow and a dream, or wither like the flower of the field. O unfortunate Montesinos! O sorely wounded Durandarte! O luckless Belerma! O weeping Guadiana, and you unhappy daughters of Ruidera, who show in your waters the tears your beautiful eyes have wept!"
The cousin and Sancho listened to Don Quixote's words, which he said as though he were dragging them out of his entrails with immense pain. They begged him to give them to understand what he was saying, and to tell them what he had seen in that hell.
"Do you call it a hell?" said Don Quixote. "Well, do not call it that, because it does not deserve the name, as you will see presently."
He asked them to give him something to eat, for he was extremely hungry. They spread the cousin's sacking on the green grass, went to the store in their saddlebags and, all three of them sitting down in good love and fellowship, took their tea and their supper all at once. The sacking taken up, Don Quixote of La Mancha said:
"Let nobody get up, and all of you, my sons, be attentive to me."
It must have been four in the afternoon when the sun, covered over among the clouds, with scanty light and tempered rays, gave Don Quixote room to tell his two most distinguished listeners, without heat and discomfort, what he had seen in the cave of Montesinos. And he began in the following way:
"About twelve or fourteen times a man's height down in this dungeon, on the right-hand side, there opens a hollow and a space big enough to hold a great cart with its mules. A little light comes into it through some chinks or holes that answer to it a long way off, opening on the surface of the earth. I saw this hollow and this space at a time when I was already tired and vexed at finding myself hanging and dangling from the rope, travelling down through that dark region without any certain or settled road; and so I decided to go into it and rest a little.
"I shouted, asking you not to let down any more rope until I told you to, but you must not have heard me. I went on gathering in the rope you were sending down and, making a coil or a heap of it, I sat down on it, deep in thought, considering what I ought to do to get down to the bottom, having nobody to hold me up. And while I was in this thought and confusion, suddenly and without my seeking it, a very deep sleep came over me. And when I least expected it, without knowing how or why, I woke out of it and found myself in the middle of the most beautiful, pleasant and delightful meadow that nature can breed or the most judicious human imagination imagine.
"I opened my eyes wide, I rubbed them, and I saw that I was not asleep but was really awake. For all that, I felt my head and my chest to make certain whether it was I myself who was there, or some empty and counterfeit phantom; but the touch, the feeling, the ordered reasoning I was doing inside me, all made me certain that I was there then the same man that I am here now.
"Then there offered itself to my sight a royal and sumptuous palace or castle whose walls seemed to be built of transparent, clear crystal; and, two great doors of it opening, I saw a venerable old man coming out through them and towards me, dressed in a long cloak of purple baize that trailed on the ground. Over his shoulders and his chest ran a collegiate sash of green satin; his head was covered with a black Milanese cap, and his beard, snow-white, came down past his waist. He carried no weapon at all, only a rosary in his hand with beads larger than middling walnuts, and its every tenth bead like a middling ostrich egg. His bearing, his walk, his gravity and his enormously broad presence, each thing by itself and all of them together, astonished me and filled me with wonder.
"He came up to me, and the first thing he did was to embrace me tightly, and then to say to me: 'For long ages now, valorous knight Don Quixote of La Mancha, those of us who are enchanted in these solitudes have been waiting to see you, so that you might give the world notice of what is shut up and covered by the deep cave you have come into, called the cave of Montesinos: an exploit reserved to be undertaken by nothing but your invincible heart and your stupendous spirit. Come with me, most illustrious sir, for I want to show you the marvels this transparent castle hides, of which I am the governor and perpetual chief warden — because I am Montesinos himself, from whom the cave takes its name.'
"Hardly had he told me that he was Montesinos when I asked him whether it was true what was told in the world up here: that he had cut the heart out of the middle of the breast of his great friend Durandarte with a small dagger, and carried it to the lady Belerma, as Durandarte had ordered him at the point of his death. He answered me that they told the truth in everything except about the dagger, because it was no dagger, nor small, but a keen-pointed poniard, sharper than an awl."
"The poniard must have been," said Sancho at this point, "one of Ramón de Hoces's, the Sevillian's."
"I do not know," Don Quixote went on, "but it would not be that dagger-maker's, because Ramón de Hoces was yesterday, and the business at Roncesvalles, where this misfortune happened, was many years ago. And this point is of no importance, and it neither disturbs nor alters the truth and the tenor of the history."
"That is so," answered the cousin. "Go on, your worship, Señor Don Quixote, for I am listening to you with the greatest pleasure in the world."
"And with no less do I tell it," answered Don Quixote. "And so I say that the venerable Montesinos took me into the crystal palace, where in a low chamber, extremely cool and all of alabaster, there was a marble tomb, made with great craftsmanship, on which I saw a knight stretched out at full length — not made of bronze, or of marble, or of jasper, as they generally are on other tombs, but of pure flesh and pure bone. He had his right hand — which to my mind is somewhat hairy and sinewy, a sign that its owner had great strength — laid over the region of his heart.
"And before I could ask Montesinos anything, seeing me hanging astonished over the man on the tomb, he said to me: 'This is my friend Durandarte, the flower and mirror of the loving and valiant knights of his time. Merlin holds him enchanted here, as he holds me and a great many other men and women — Merlin, that French enchanter who they say was the devil's son; and what I believe is that he was not the devil's son, but that he knew, as they say, one point more than the devil. How or why he enchanted us nobody knows, and time will tell — and it is not very far off, as I imagine.
"'What astonishes me is that I know, as surely as I know it is day now, that Durandarte ended the days of his life in my arms, and that after he was dead I took out his heart with my own hands; and truly it must have weighed two pounds, because, according to the naturalists, the man who has the bigger heart is endowed with more valour than the man whose heart is small. Well then, this being so, and this knight having really died, how is it that he now complains and sighs from time to time as if he were alive?'
"This said, the wretched Durandarte, giving a great cry, said:
O my cousin Montesinos! The last thing that I begged of you was that when I should be dead and my soul torn out of me, you would carry off my heart to where Belerma was, cutting it out of my breast with a poniard or a dagger.
"Which hearing, the venerable Montesinos went down on his knees before the grieving knight, and with tears in his eyes said to him: 'Long ago, Señor Durandarte, dearest cousin of mine, long ago I did what you ordered me on the ill-starred day of our loss. I took out your heart as best I could, without leaving the least part of it in your breast; I cleaned it with a lace handkerchief; I set off with it at a gallop for France, having first laid you in the bosom of the earth with tears enough to wash my hands and clean off with them the blood they had on them from having been about in your entrails.
"'And, for still better proof, cousin of my soul, at the first place I came to on the way out of Roncesvalles I put a little salt on your heart, so that it should not smell badly and should come, if not fresh then at least cured, into the presence of the lady Belerma — whom, along with you, and me, and Guadiana your squire, and the duenna Ruidera and her seven daughters and two nieces, and a great many others of your acquaintances and friends, the wise Merlin has kept enchanted here these many years. And though more than five hundred have gone by, not one of us has died. Only Ruidera and her daughters and nieces are missing, whom Merlin, out of the compassion he must have felt for their weeping, turned into as many lagoons, which now, in the world of the living and in the province of La Mancha, they call the Lagoons of Ruidera. Seven of them belong to the kings of Spain, and the two nieces to the knights of a most holy order they call the Order of Saint John.
"'Guadiana your squire, likewise lamenting your misfortune, was turned into a river called by his own name; and when he reached the surface of the earth and saw the sun of that other sky, the grief he felt at seeing that he was leaving you was so great that he plunged into the bowels of the earth. But since it is impossible not to follow his natural current, from time to time he comes out and shows himself where the sun and the people can see him. The lagoons I have named keep feeding him with their waters, and with these and a great many others that join him he goes into Portugal, grand and pompous. But for all that, wherever he goes he shows his sadness and melancholy, and he does not pride himself on breeding fine and valuable fish in his waters, but coarse and unpalatable ones, very different from those of the golden Tagus.
"'And what I am telling you now, my cousin, I have told you many times; and, since you do not answer me, I imagine that you do not believe me, or do not hear me, at which I take as much pain as God knows. Some news I want to give you now which, even if it does not serve to relieve your grief, will not increase it in any way. Know that you have here in your presence — and open your eyes and you will see him — that great knight of whom the wise Merlin has prophesied so many things: that Don Quixote of La Mancha, I mean, who has brought the by now forgotten order of knight-errantry back to life in the present age, freshly and with greater advantages than in the ages past; and by whose means and favour it might be that we should be disenchanted, for great exploits are reserved for great men.'
"'And if it should not be so,' answered the grieving Durandarte in a faint, low voice, 'if it should not be so, cousin, I say: patience, and shuffle the cards.'
"And, turning on his side, he went back to his accustomed silence without speaking another word.
"At this there were heard great howls and weeping, along with deep groans and anguished sobs. I turned my head, and saw through the crystal walls that a procession was passing through another chamber, in two files of the most beautiful girls, all dressed in mourning, with white turbans on their heads in the Turkish fashion. At the very end of the files came a lady — for so her gravity made her look — likewise dressed in black, with white veils so long and flowing that they kissed the ground. Her turban was twice as big as the biggest of any of the others'. Her eyebrows met, and her nose was somewhat flat; her mouth was large, but her lips were red; her teeth, when she now and then let them show, proved to be thin-set and badly arranged, though they were as white as peeled almonds. In her hands she carried a fine cloth, and in it, as far as I could make out, a heart of mummified flesh, so dried and cured did it come.
"Montesinos told me that all those people in the procession were the servants of Durandarte and Belerma, who were enchanted there with their two masters, and that the last, who carried the heart in the cloth in her hands, was the lady Belerma, who with her maidens made that procession four days a week and sang — or, better said, wept — laments over the body and over the grieving heart of her cousin. And that if she had seemed to me somewhat ugly, or not as beautiful as her fame made her, the cause was the bad nights and the worse days she went through in that enchantment, as I could see by the great rings under her eyes and by her broken colour.
"'And her sallowness and the rings under her eyes,' he said, 'do not come from her being in the monthly trouble that is ordinary in women, because it is many months, and even years, since she has had it or since it has looked in at her door; they come from the pain her heart feels for the one she has in her hands all the time, which renews and brings back to her memory the misfortune of her ill-fated lover. If it were not for that, the great Dulcinea of El Toboso, so celebrated in all these parts and even in all the world, would scarcely come up to her in beauty, grace and spirit.'
"'Hold hard there!' I said then. 'Señor Don Montesinos, let your worship tell his history as he ought; for you know very well that all comparison is odious, and so there is no call to compare anybody with anybody. The peerless Dulcinea of El Toboso is who she is, and the lady Doña Belerma is who she is and who she has been, and let it stay there.'
"To which he answered me: 'Señor Don Quixote, forgive me, for I confess I did wrong, and I did not speak well in saying that the lady Dulcinea would scarcely come up to the lady Belerma; since it was enough for me to have gathered, from certain hints or other, that your worship is her knight, for me to bite my tongue before comparing her with anything but heaven itself.'
"With this satisfaction the great Montesinos gave me, my heart quieted down from the shock I received at hearing my lady compared with Belerma."
"And I do wonder," said Sancho, "how your worship did not get on top of the old fellow and grind all his bones with kicking and pluck his beard until there was not a hair left in it."
"No, Sancho my friend," answered Don Quixote, "it would not have been becoming in me to do that, because we are all obliged to have respect for the old, even if they are not knights, and chiefly for those who are knights and are under enchantment. I know very well that in a great many other questions and answers that passed between the two of us, neither of us was left owing the other anything."
At this point the cousin said:
"I do not know, Señor Don Quixote, how in as little time as your worship has been down there, you can have seen so many things and talked and answered so much."
"How long ago did I go down?" asked Don Quixote.
"A little over an hour," answered Sancho.
"That cannot be," replied Don Quixote, "because down there night fell on me and day broke, and night fell and day broke again, three times over; so that by my reckoning I have been three days in those remote parts, hidden from our sight."
"My master must be telling the truth," said Sancho; "for since everything that has happened to him is by enchantment, perhaps what seems to us an hour must seem three days and nights down there."
"That will be it," answered Don Quixote.
"And has your worship eaten in all this time, my dear sir?" asked the cousin.
"I have not broken my fast with a mouthful," answered Don Quixote, "and I have not even been hungry, or thought about it."
"And do the enchanted eat?" said the cousin.
"They do not eat," answered Don Quixote, "nor have they any of the grosser needs of the body; although it is held that their nails, their beards and their hair go on growing."
"And do the enchanted sleep, by any chance, sir?" asked Sancho.
"Certainly not," answered Don Quixote; "at least in these three days I have been with them, none of them has shut an eye, and neither have I."
"Here the proverb fits well," said Sancho: "'tell me who you go with and I will tell you who you are'. Your worship goes about with the enchanted, who are fasters and wakers — no wonder if you neither eat nor sleep while you are about with them. But forgive me, my dear sir, if I tell you that of everything you have said here, God take me — I was going to say the devil — if I believe a single thing."
"How not?" said the cousin. "Was Señor Don Quixote going to lie? Why, even if he had wanted to, he has not had time to compose and imagine so many million lies."
"I do not believe my master lies," answered Sancho.
"Then what do you believe?" Don Quixote asked him.
"I believe," answered Sancho, "that that Merlin, or those enchanters who enchanted the whole crew your worship says you saw and dealt with down there, jammed into your fancy or your memory this whole machine you have told us, and everything else you have left to tell."
"All that might be, Sancho," replied Don Quixote, "but it is not so, because what I have told I saw with my own eyes and touched with my own hands.
"But what will you say when I tell you now how, among an infinite number of other things and marvels Montesinos showed me — which, at leisure and in their own good time, I shall go on telling you in the course of our journey, since they do not all belong in this place — he showed me three country girls who were going about those most delightful fields skipping and jumping like goats? And hardly had I seen them when I knew that one of them was the peerless Dulcinea of El Toboso, and the other two those very country girls who were coming with her, whom we spoke to on the way out of El Toboso.
"I asked Montesinos whether he knew them; he answered me that he did not, but that he imagined they must be some great ladies under enchantment who had appeared in those meadows a few days before, and that I should not wonder at it, because there were a great many other ladies there of the past and present ages, enchanted in different and strange shapes, among whom he recognised Queen Guinevere and her duenna Quintañona, pouring out the wine for Lancelot
when he came from Britain."
When Sancho Panza heard his master say this, he thought he would lose his wits or die laughing; for as he knew the truth about the pretended enchantment of Dulcinea, of which he himself had been the enchanter and the raiser of the false witness, he came to know beyond any doubt that his master was out of his senses and mad at every point. And so he said to him:
"In an unlucky conjunction and in a worse season and on an ill-starred day did your worship go down, my dear patron, to the other world, and in a bad moment did you meet with Señor Montesinos, who has sent you back to us like this. You were very well off up here with your whole judgement such as God had given it to you, speaking judgements and giving advice at every step, and not as you are now, telling the greatest absurdities that can be imagined."
"As I know you, Sancho," answered Don Quixote, "I take no notice of your words."
"Nor I of your worship's," replied Sancho, "even if you wound me, even if you kill me for the ones I have said to you, or for the ones I mean to say if you do not correct and mend your own. But tell me, your worship, now that we are at peace: how, or by what, did you recognise our lady and mistress? And if you spoke to her, what did you say, and what did she answer you?"
"I recognised her," answered Don Quixote, "by her wearing the same clothes she was wearing when you showed her to me. I spoke to her, but she did not answer me a word; on the contrary, she turned her back on me and went off in flight so fast that an arrow would not have caught her. I wanted to follow her, and I should have done it if Montesinos had not advised me not to wear myself out over it, because it would be in vain, and the more so because the hour was coming round when it was proper for me to come out of the chasm again. He told me too that in the course of time I should be given notice how he, and Belerma and Durandarte, with all who were there, were to be disenchanted.
"But what gave me the most pain of all I saw and noted there was this: that while Montesinos was saying these things to me, one of the two companions of the luckless Dulcinea came up to me at my side, without my seeing her come, and, her eyes full of tears, said to me in a troubled, low voice: 'My lady Dulcinea of El Toboso kisses your worship's hands, and begs your worship to do her the kindness of letting her know how you are; and, being in great need, she likewise begs your worship, as earnestly as she can, to be so good as to lend her, on the security of this new cotton petticoat I have here, half a dozen reals, or whatever your worship may have; and she gives her word to give them back to you very shortly.'
"This message astonished and amazed me, and, turning to Señor Montesinos, I asked him: 'Is it possible, Señor Montesinos, that the enchanted people of quality suffer want?' To which he answered me: 'Believe me, your worship, Señor Don Quixote of La Mancha, that this thing they call want is in use everywhere, and stretches over everything, and reaches everybody, and does not spare even the enchanted. And since the lady Dulcinea of El Toboso sends to ask for those six reals, and the pledge is a good one by the look of it, there is nothing for it but to give them to her; for without doubt she must be in some great strait.'
"'A pledge I shall not take,' I answered him, 'nor shall I give her what she asks, because I have only four reals' — which I gave her (and they were the ones you gave me the other day, Sancho, to give in alms to the poor I met on the roads) — and I said to her: 'Tell your lady, my friend, that her troubles grieve me to the soul, and that I wish I were a Fugger to put them right; and let her know that I neither can nor ought to have any health while I go without the sight of her and her judicious conversation; and that I beg her, as earnestly as I can, that her worship be pleased to let herself be seen and dealt with by this captive servant of hers and worn-out knight.
"'You shall tell her too that when she least expects it she will hear how I have made an oath and a vow, in the manner of the one the Marquis of Mantua made to avenge his nephew Baldwin when he found him at the point of death in the middle of the mountain — which was not to eat bread off a tablecloth, with the other odds and ends he added there, until he had avenged him. And so I shall make mine, not to rest, and to travel the seven parts of the world more punctually than the Infante Don Pedro of Portugal travelled them, until I have disenchanted her.'
"'All that and more your worship owes to my lady,' the girl answered me. And, taking the four reals, instead of making me a curtsey she cut a caper and sprang two full measuring-yards into the air."
"O holy God!" said Sancho at this, letting out a great shout. "Is it possible that there is such a thing in the world, and that enchanters and enchantments have such force in it that they have turned my master's good judgement into so preposterous a madness? Oh sir, sir, for God's sake, let your worship look to yourself and stand up for your honour, and give no credit to these emptinesses that have left your senses short and out of true!"
"You talk that way, Sancho, because you love me," said Don Quixote; "and, since you are not experienced in the things of the world, everything that has any difficulty in it seems impossible to you. But time will go on, as I have said before, and I shall tell you some of the things I have seen down there that will make you believe the ones I have told here, whose truth admits of neither reply nor dispute."
The man who translated this great history from the original written by its first author, Cide Hamete Benengeli, says that when he came to the chapter of the adventure of the cave of Montesinos, there were written in the margin of it, in Hamete's own hand, these very words:
"I cannot bring myself to understand, nor can I persuade myself, that everything written in the foregoing chapter happened exactly so to the valorous Don Quixote. The reason is that all the adventures that have happened up to here have been possible and probable; but for this one of the cave I can find no way in to holding it for true, since it goes so far outside the bounds of reason.
"For me to think that Don Quixote lied, he being the most truthful gentleman and the noblest knight of his time, is not possible: he would not have told a lie if they had shot him full of arrows. On the other hand, I consider that he told it and said it with all the circumstances given, and that he could not have manufactured so great a machine of absurdities in so short a space. And if this adventure seems apocryphal, the fault is not mine; and so, without affirming it to be false or true, I write it down.
"You, reader, since you are prudent, judge whatever seems best to you; for I neither ought nor am able to do more — although it is held for certain that at the time of his end and death they say he took it back, and said he had invented it because it seemed to him to fit and square well with the adventures he had read in his histories."
And then he goes on, saying:
The cousin was astonished, both at Sancho Panza's boldness and at his master's patience, and judged that the mild temper Don Quixote was showing just then was born of the contentment he felt at having seen his lady Dulcinea of El Toboso, even under enchantment; because if it had not been so, Sancho had said him words and arguments that deserved a beating with a stick, since it really seemed to the cousin that he had been getting a little bold with his master, to whom he said:
"I, Señor Don Quixote of La Mancha, count the day I have spent with your worship as most excellently well spent, because in it I have gained four things. The first, to have come to know your worship, which I hold to be a great piece of happiness. The second, to have learnt what is shut up in this cave of Montesinos, along with the transformations of the Guadiana and of the Lagoons of Ruidera, which will serve me for the Spanish Ovid I have in hand.
"The third, to have made out the antiquity of playing cards, which were at least already in use in the time of the emperor Charlemagne, as may be gathered from the words your worship says Durandarte spoke when, at the end of that long space Montesinos spent talking to him, he woke up saying: 'Patience, and shuffle the cards.' And that expression and manner of speaking he cannot have learnt while he was enchanted, but when he was not, in France and in the time of the said emperor Charlemagne. And this discovery comes to me exactly to the pattern for that other book I am composing, which is the Supplement to Polydore Vergil on the invention of antiquities; and I believe that in his he forgot to put in the invention of playing cards, which I shall put in now, and it will be of great importance, and the more so when I cite an author as grave and as truthful as Señor Durandarte. The fourth is to have learnt with certainty the source of the river Guadiana, until now unknown to the world."
"Your worship is right," said Don Quixote; "but I should like to know, granting that God does you the favour of giving you licence to print these books of yours — which I doubt — whom you mean to dedicate them to."
"There are lords and grandees in Spain they can be dedicated to," said the cousin.
"Not many," answered Don Quixote; "and not because they do not deserve it, but because they do not want to accept them, so as not to be obliged to the recompense that seems to be owing to their authors' labour and courtesy. I know one prince who can make up for the failure of all the rest, with so many advantages that if I dared to name them I should perhaps wake envy in more than four generous breasts. But let this stay here for another and more convenient time, and let us go and look for somewhere to shelter tonight."
"Not far from here," answered the cousin, "there is a hermitage where a hermit makes his dwelling, who they say has been a soldier, and who is held to be a good Christian and very judicious and charitable besides. Next to the hermitage he has a small house he has built at his own expense; but for all that, small though it is, it can take in guests."
"Does this hermit by any chance keep hens?" asked Sancho.
"Few hermits are without them," answered Don Quixote, "because the ones in use nowadays are not like those of the deserts of Egypt, who dressed in palm leaves and ate roots out of the ground. And it is not to be understood that by speaking well of those I do not speak well of these; I only mean that the penances of the present ones do not come up to the rigour and hardness of those days. But that does not stop them all from being good men; at least I judge them for good; and, when everything is running murky, the hypocrite who pretends to be good does less harm than the open sinner."
While they were at this, they saw a man coming on foot towards where they were, walking fast and beating with a stick at a mule loaded with lances and halberds. When he came up to them he greeted them and passed straight on. Don Quixote said to him:
"Good man, stop; for it looks as if you are going faster than that mule needs."
"I cannot stop, sir," answered the man, "because the arms you see I am carrying here are to be used tomorrow; and so I am forced not to stop, and God be with you. But if you want to know what I am carrying them for, I mean to lodge tonight at the inn that is above the hermitage; and if you are taking this same road, you will find me there, and I shall tell you marvels. And God be with you again."
And he prodded the mule on in such a way that Don Quixote had no chance to ask him what marvels these were that he meant to tell them; and, as he was somewhat curious and was always worn down by his desire to know new things, he ordered that they should set off at once and go and spend the night at the inn, without touching at the hermitage, where the cousin would have liked them to stay.
So it was done: they mounted, and all three followed the straight road to the inn, which they reached a little before nightfall. The cousin told Don Quixote they should call at the hermitage to drink a draught. As soon as Sancho Panza heard this he turned the grey towards the hermitage, and Don Quixote and the cousin did the same; but Sancho's bad luck seems to have arranged that the hermit should not be at home, for that was what an under-hermit they found at the hermitage told them. They asked her for some of the good stuff; she answered that her master had none, but that if they wanted cheap water, she would give it them very willingly.
"If it were water I was thirsty for," answered Sancho, "there are wells on the road where I could have satisfied myself. Oh, Camacho's wedding and the abundance of Don Diego's house, how many times am I going to miss you!"
With this they left the hermitage and spurred on towards the inn; and a little way along they came upon a young lad who was walking ahead of them, not in any great hurry, so that they caught him up. He was carrying his sword over his shoulder, with a bundle or wrapper on it, apparently of his clothes — which, by the look of it, must have been his breeches or wide trousers, and a short cloak and a shirt or two, because he had on a velvet jerkin with a few glimmers of satin about it, and his shirt was hanging out. His stockings were of silk and his shoes square-toed in the court fashion; his age must have come to eighteen or nineteen; his face was cheerful and to all appearances he was nimble on his feet. He was going along singing seguidillas to lighten the labour of the road. When they came up to him he had just finished singing one that the cousin took down by heart, which they say went:
To the wars I am carried by my own need; if I had any money, I would not go, in truth.
The first to speak to him was Don Quixote, saying:
"You travel very light, sir gallant. And where away? Let us know, if it is your pleasure to say."
To which the lad answered:
"Travelling so light is caused by the heat and by poverty, and where I am going is to the wars."
"How poverty?" asked Don Quixote. "For as to the heat, that may well be."
"Sir," replied the young man, "in this bundle I am carrying a pair of velvet trousers, the companions of this jerkin. If I wear them out on the road, I shall not be able to do myself honour with them in the city, and I have nothing to buy others with. And so, both for that reason and to air myself, I go about in this way, until I can catch up with some companies of infantry that are not twelve leagues from here, where I shall enlist; and there will be no lack of baggage animals to travel on from then on, as far as the port of embarkation, which they say is to be Cartagena. And I would sooner have the king for my master and lord, and serve him in the wars, than some threadbare wretch at court."
"And does your worship carry any special allowance, by any chance?" asked the cousin.
"If I had served some grandee of Spain, or some person of quality," answered the lad, "I should be sure to be carrying one, for that is what comes of serving good masters: out of the servants' hall men generally come out to be ensigns or captains, or with some good pension. But I, unfortunate creature, always served hunters after places and newcomers, on board and wages so wretched and so thin that half of it went in paying to have a collar starched. And it would be counted a miracle if a page out to make his fortune ever attained even a reasonable one."
"And tell me, on your life, my friend," asked Don Quixote, "is it possible that in the years you served you could not get hold of even one livery?"
"They have given me two," answered the page; "but just as, when a man leaves a religious house before taking his vows, they take back the habit and give him back his own clothes, so my masters gave me back mine. When the business they had come to court for was finished, they went back to their houses and took in the liveries they had given out for show and nothing else."
"A notable piece of spilorceria, as the Italian says," said Don Quixote; "but for all that, count it good fortune that you have come out of the court with as good an intention as you carry. Because there is nothing on earth more honourable or more profitable than to serve God first of all, and then your king and natural lord, especially in the exercise of arms, by which a man attains, if not more riches, at least more honour than by letters — as I have said many times. For although letters have founded more great estates than arms, still there is a something about the men of arms over the men of letters, with a certain I-know-what of splendour to be found in them that puts them ahead of everybody.
"And what I want to tell you now, carry in your memory, for it will be of great profit and relief to you in your hardships. And it is this: put aside the imagining of the adverse things that may come to you, of which the worst of all is death; and, so long as that death is a good one, the best of all is dying. They asked Julius Caesar, that valorous Roman emperor, which was the best death; he answered: the unthought-of, the sudden, the unforeseen. And although he answered as a pagan and a stranger to the knowledge of the true God, for all that he spoke well, so as to spare himself human feeling.
"For supposing they kill you in the first action and skirmish, either by a shot from a cannon or blown up by a mine — what does it matter? It is all dying, and the work is finished. And, according to Terence, the soldier who is dead in the battle makes a better show than the one who is alive and safe in flight. And the good soldier attains as much fame as he has obedience to his captains and to those who have the right to command him.
"And note, my son, that it becomes a soldier better to smell of gunpowder than of civet; and that if old age catches you in this honourable exercise, even though it be full of wounds and crippled or lame, at least it cannot catch you without honour — and with an honour that poverty cannot lessen. And the more so since orders are now being given for the keeping and relief of old and crippled soldiers; for it is not right that they should be treated the way some men treat the black people they hold enslaved, freeing them and giving them their liberty when they are already old and can no longer serve, and, turning them out of the house under the title of free men, making them the slaves of hunger, from which they can expect no freeing but by death.
"And for the present I do not want to tell you any more, except that you should get up behind me on this horse of mine as far as the inn, and there you shall have supper with me; and in the morning you shall follow your road, and may God give you as good a one as your intentions deserve."
The page did not accept the invitation to ride behind him, though he did accept the one to have supper with him at the inn; and at this moment, they say, Sancho said to himself:
"God bless you for a master! And is it possible that a man who knows how to say such things, and so many of them, and such good ones as he has said here, should say that he has seen the impossible absurdities he tells about the cave of Montesinos? Well now, time will tell."
And with this they came to the inn, just as night was falling, and not without pleasure to Sancho at seeing that his master judged it a real inn and not a castle as he usually did. They had hardly got in when Don Quixote asked the innkeeper about the man with the lances and halberds; who answered him that he was in the stable settling his mule. The cousin and Sancho did the same with their donkeys, giving Rocinante the best manger and the best place in the stable.
Don Quixote's bread would not bake, as the saying goes, until he had heard and learnt the marvels promised by the man who was carrying the arms. He went to look for him where the innkeeper had said he was, and found him, and told him that he must at all costs tell him now what he was going to tell him later, about what he had asked him on the road. The man answered him:
"The tale of my marvels has to be taken more at leisure, and not standing up. Let your worship, my good sir, let me finish seeing to my beast, and I shall tell you things to astonish you."
"Let there be no delay for that," answered Don Quixote, "for I shall help you with everything."
And so he did, sifting the barley for him and cleaning out the manger — a humility that obliged the man to tell him with good will what he was asking. And, sitting down on a stone bench with Don Quixote beside him, and having as his senate and audience the cousin, the page, Sancho Panza and the innkeeper, he began to speak in this way:
"Your worships must know that in a village that is four and a half leagues from this inn it happened that one of its aldermen, through the contrivance and trickery of a girl who was his servant — and this is a long story — lost a donkey. And although the alderman made every possible effort to find it, it was not possible.
"A fortnight must have gone by, according to public voice and report, since the donkey went missing, when the alderman who had lost it was standing in the market square and another alderman of the same village said to him: 'Pay me for the good news, my friend, for your donkey has turned up.' 'I promise you good payment, my friend,' answered the other, 'but let us know where it has turned up.' 'On the mountain,' answered the finder. 'I saw him this morning, without a pack-saddle and without any harness at all, and so thin it was a misery to look at him. I tried to drive him ahead of me and bring him to you, but he has gone so wild and so shy that when I got up to him he ran away and got into the most hidden part of the mountain. If you want the two of us to go back and look for him, let me put this she-ass of mine in my house, and I shall come straight back.' 'You will do me a great pleasure,' said the man who had lost the donkey, 'and I shall try to pay you back in the same coin.'
"With all these circumstances, and in the very way I am telling it, everybody tells it who is informed about the truth of this business. In short, the two aldermen went off on foot side by side to the mountain, and, coming to the place and spot where they thought they would find the donkey, they did not find him; nor did he appear anywhere in those parts, however hard they looked for him.
"Seeing, then, that he did not appear, the alderman who had seen him said to the other: 'Look, my friend: a plan has come into my head by which without any doubt we shall be able to find this animal, even if he has got into the bowels of the earth and not merely of the mountain. And it is that I know how to bray marvellously; and if you know anything at all about it, hold the business as concluded.' 'Anything at all, do you say, my friend?' said the other. 'By God, I would not give way to anybody at it, not even to the donkeys themselves.'
"'We shall see about that now,' answered the second alderman, 'because I have determined that you shall go by one part of the mountain and I by another, so that we go round it and cover the whole of it, and every so often you shall bray and I shall bray, and it cannot be otherwise but that the donkey will hear us and answer us, if he is on the mountain.' To which the owner of the donkey answered: 'I say, my friend, that the plan is excellent and worthy of your great wit.'
"And, the two of them dividing according to the agreement, it happened that they brayed at almost the same time; and each of them, deceived by the other's braying, came running to look for him, thinking the donkey had turned up. And, on seeing each other, the man who had lost him said: 'Is it possible, my friend, that it was not my donkey that brayed?' 'No, it was not; it was I,' answered the other. 'Now I say,' said the owner, 'that between you and a donkey, my friend, there is no difference at all as far as braying goes, because in all my life I have never seen or heard anything more to the life.'
"'Those praises and that extolling,' answered the man with the plan, 'belong and apply better to you than to me, my friend; for by the God who made me, you could give two brays' start to the greatest and most expert brayer in the world. Because the tone you have is high; the sustaining of the voice is in its right time and measure; the dying falls are many and quick; and, in short, I give myself up as beaten and hand you the palm and the standard of this rare accomplishment.' 'Now I say,' answered the owner, 'that from here on I shall hold and value myself more, and shall think I know something, since I have some gift; for although I thought I brayed well, I never understood I came up to the extreme you say.'
"'I shall say too, now,' answered the second, 'that there are rare accomplishments lost in the world, and that they are badly bestowed on those who do not know how to make use of them.' 'Ours,' answered the owner, 'except in cases like the one we have in hand, cannot serve us in others — and even in this one, please God they may be of some use.'
"This said, they divided again and went back to their braying, and at every step they deceived each other and came together again, until they settled it between them as a countersign that, so as to be understood as themselves and not the donkey, they should bray twice, one bray after the other. With this, doubling the brays at every step, they went round the whole mountain without the lost donkey answering, even by signs. But how was the poor unlucky creature to answer, when they found him in the most hidden part of the wood, eaten by wolves?
"And, on seeing him, his owner said: 'I was already wondering why he did not answer; for if he had not been dead he would have brayed if he had heard us, or he would not have been a donkey. But in exchange for having heard you bray with such grace, my friend, I count as well spent the labour I have had in looking for him, even though I have found him dead.' 'The credit is in a good hand, my friend,' answered the other, 'for if the abbot sings well, the altar boy is not far behind him.'
"With this, disconsolate and hoarse, they went back to their village, where they told their friends, neighbours and acquaintances everything that had happened to them in the search for the donkey, each of them exaggerating the other's grace in braying — all of which was learnt and spread through the neighbouring places.
"And the devil, who never sleeps, being a friend to sowing and scattering quarrels and discord everywhere, raising squabbles on the wind and great fights out of nothing, arranged and brought it about that the people of the other villages, on seeing anybody from ours, would bray, as though throwing our aldermen's braying in their faces. The boys took it up, which was to fall into the hands and the mouths of all the devils in hell; and the braying went spreading from one village to another, so that the natives of the village of the bray are known as easily as black people are known and told apart from white. And this joke has gone so far in its bad luck that many times, with armed hands and in formed squadrons, the mocked have gone out against the mockers to give them battle, and neither king nor rook, neither fear nor shame, could put a stop to it.
"I believe that tomorrow or the next day the men of my village, who are the men of the bray, are going to take the field against another place two leagues from ours, which is one of those that persecute us most; and, so as to come out well prepared, I have bought these lances and halberds you have seen.
"And these are the marvels I said I would tell you, and if they have not seemed marvels to you, I know no others."
And with this the good man made an end of his talk; and at this moment there came in at the inn door a man dressed all in chamois — stockings, wide breeches and doublet — who said in a loud voice:
"Master host, is there lodging? For here comes the soothsaying ape and the puppet play of the setting free of Melisendra."
"Body of me," said the innkeeper, "here is Master Pedro! We are in for a good night."
I was forgetting to say that this Master Pedro had his left eye and nearly half his cheek covered with a patch of green taffeta, a sign that all that side must have been diseased. And the innkeeper went on, saying:
"Very welcome, your worship, Master Pedro. Where is the ape and the puppet stage, that I do not see them?"
"They are coming up close," answered the man all in chamois, "except that I have come ahead to find out whether there is lodging."
"I would take it from the Duke of Alba himself to give it to Master Pedro," answered the innkeeper. "Let the ape and the stage come up, for there are people in the inn tonight who will pay to see it and to see the ape's accomplishments."
"So be it and welcome," answered the man with the patch, "and I shall bring the price down and count myself well paid with my costs alone. And I shall go back and make the cart come on that the ape and the stage are travelling in."
And with that he went out of the inn again.
Don Quixote then asked the innkeeper what Master Pedro this was, and what puppet stage and what ape he was bringing. To which the innkeeper answered:
"This is a famous puppet-master who has been going about this Aragonese Mancha for a good while now, showing a play of Melisendra set free by the famous Don Gaiferos, which is one of the best and best-performed stories to be seen in this kingdom for many years past. He also brings with him an ape of the rarest ability ever seen among apes or imagined among men; because if they ask him something, he pays attention to what they are asking him and then jumps on his master's shoulder, and, putting his mouth to his ear, tells him the answer to what they are asking, and Master Pedro declares it at once. And he says a great deal more about things past than about those to come; and although he does not hit it right every time in everything, he goes wrong in very few, so that he makes us believe he has the devil in him.
"Two reals he charges for every question, if the ape answers — I mean if the master answers for him after he has spoken in his ear; and so it is believed that this Master Pedro is extremely rich. And he is a gallant fellow, as they say in Italy, and bon compaño, and gives himself the best life in the world; he talks more than six men and drinks more than twelve, all at the cost of his tongue and his ape and his puppet stage."
At this Master Pedro came back, and in a cart came the stage, and the ape — big and without a tail, with a felt behind, but not bad-faced. And hardly had Don Quixote seen him when he asked him:
"Tell me, your worship, Sir Soothsayer: what fish do we catch? What is to become of us? And here you have my two reals."
And he ordered Sancho to give them to Master Pedro, who answered for the ape and said:
"Sir, this animal does not answer or give any notice about things that are to come; about things past he knows something, and about present ones a certain amount."
"Body of me," said Sancho, "I would not give a farthing to have anybody tell me what has happened to me! Because who can know it better than I do myself? And to pay to have somebody tell me what I know would be a great foolishness. But since he knows present things, here are my two reals, and let his lordship the Most Monkeyish tell me what my wife Teresa Panza is doing at this moment, and what she is busy with."
Master Pedro would not take the money, saying:
"I do not care to take the rewards in advance, without the services having come first."
And, giving two slaps with his right hand on his left shoulder, the ape sprang up on it in one leap; and, putting his mouth to his ear, he chattered his teeth very fast. And, having kept up this performance for about the space of a creed, with another leap he was down on the floor. And on the instant, in the greatest haste, Master Pedro went and knelt down in front of Don Quixote, and, embracing his legs, said:
"These legs I embrace as though I were embracing the two pillars of Hercules, O distinguished reviver of the by now forgotten knight-errantry! O never-sufficiently-praised knight Don Quixote of La Mancha, courage of the fainthearted, prop of the falling, arm of the fallen, staff and comfort of all the unfortunate!"
Don Quixote was left thunderstruck, Sancho dumbfounded, the cousin bewildered, the page astonished, the man of the braying gaping, the innkeeper confused and, finally, all who heard the puppet-master's words amazed; and he went on, saying:
"And you, O good Sancho Panza, the best squire and squire to the best knight in the world, be glad, for your good wife Teresa is well; and this is the very hour when she is combing a pound of flax, and, for a further sign, she has at her left side a broken-lipped jug that holds a good drop of wine, with which she entertains herself at her work."
"That I believe very well," answered Sancho, "because she is a blessed creature; and if she were not jealous, I would not swap her for the giantess Andandona, who, according to my master, was a very complete and worthy woman. And my Teresa is one of those who will not let themselves go short, even if it is at their heirs' expense."
"Now I say," said Don Quixote at this point, "that the man who reads much and travels much sees much and knows much. I say this because what persuasion would have been enough to persuade me that there are apes in the world who can tell fortunes, as I have now seen with my own eyes? Because I am that very Don Quixote of La Mancha this good animal has named — although he has stretched himself out somewhat in my praises. But whatever I may be, I give thanks to heaven that endowed me with a soft and compassionate spirit, always inclined to do good to everybody and harm to nobody."
"If I had money," said the page, "I would ask the ape what is to happen to me on the journey I am making."
To which Master Pedro answered, having by now got up from Don Quixote's feet:
"I have already said that this little beast does not answer about what is to come; for if he did, it would not matter that there was no money, since for the service of Señor Don Quixote here present I would give up all the profits in the world. And now, because I owe it to him, and to give him pleasure, I mean to set up my stage and give pleasure to everybody in the inn, without any payment at all."
Which the innkeeper hearing, and being extremely glad, he showed the place where the stage could be set up, and it was done in a moment.
Don Quixote was not very happy about the ape's divinations, since it did not seem to him proper that an ape should tell fortunes, either about things to come or about things past. And so, while Master Pedro was setting up the stage, Don Quixote withdrew with Sancho to a corner of the stable, where, without being heard by anybody, he said to him:
"Look, Sancho, I have thought hard about this ape's strange ability, and I find by my reckoning that without doubt this Master Pedro, his master, must have made a pact, tacit or express, with the devil."
"If the packet is expressed and the devil's," said Sancho, "no doubt it must be a very dirty packet; but what use are these packets to Master Pedro?"
"You do not understand me, Sancho. I only mean that he must have made some agreement with the devil to pour that ability into the ape, so that he may earn his living by it; and afterwards, when he is rich, he will give him his soul, which is what this universal enemy is after. And what makes me believe this is seeing that the ape only answers about things past or present, and the devil's knowledge cannot stretch further than that, since he does not know things to come except by conjecture, and not always then; because it is reserved to God alone to know the times and the moments, and for Him there is no past and no future, for everything is present.
"And this being so, as it is, it is clear that this ape talks in the devil's style; and I marvel that they have not denounced him to the Holy Office and examined him and dragged out of him by whose power he divines. Because it is certain that this ape is no astrologer, and neither he nor his master casts, or knows how to cast, these figures they call judicial, which are so much in use now in Spain that there is not a wretched little woman, or a page, or a cobbler who does not presume to cast a figure, as though it were a jack of cards off the floor — ruining with their lies and their ignorance the marvellous truth of the science.
"I know of one lady who asked one of these figure-casters whether a small lapdog she had would get with pup and litter, and how many and of what colour the pups would be that she littered. To which the gentleman astrologer, after having cast the figure, answered that the little bitch would get with pup and would litter three little dogs, one green, another red and the other mottled, on condition that the said bitch should be covered between eleven and twelve o'clock in the day or in the night, and that it should be on a Monday or a Saturday. And what happened was that two days later the bitch died of overeating, and the gentleman caster was left with the credit in the place of being a most infallible astrologer, as all or most casters are."
"For all that," said Sancho, "I should like your worship to tell Master Pedro to ask his ape whether what happened to your worship in the cave of Montesinos is true; for I hold for myself, with your worship's pardon, that it was all humbug and lies, or at the least things dreamed."
"It could all be," answered Don Quixote, "but I shall do what you advise, although a certain I-know-not-what of scruple will stay with me."
While they were at this, Master Pedro came looking for Don Quixote to tell him that the stage was in order now, and that his worship should come and see it, because it deserved it. Don Quixote told him what was on his mind, and begged him to ask his ape at once to tell him whether certain things that had happened to him in the cave of Montesinos had been dreamed or true, because to him they seemed to have something of both. To which Master Pedro, without answering a word, brought the ape back and, setting him in front of Don Quixote and Sancho, said:
"Look, Sir Ape: this gentleman wants to know whether certain things that happened to him in a cave called the cave of Montesinos were false or true."
And, making him the accustomed signal, the ape climbed up on his left shoulder, and, apparently speaking in his ear, Master Pedro said at once:
"The ape says that part of the things your worship saw or went through in the said cave are false, and part probable; and that this is what he knows, and nothing else, as far as this question goes. And that if your worship wants to know more, next Friday he will answer everything he is asked, because for now his power has run out and will not come to him until Friday, as he has said."
"Did I not say so?" said Sancho. "That I could not settle it in my mind that all your worship said, my dear sir, about the goings-on in the cave was true — no, nor even half of it?"
"Events will tell, Sancho," answered Don Quixote; "for time, the discoverer of all things, leaves nothing that it does not bring out into the light of the sun, even if it is hidden in the bosom of the earth. And for now let this be enough, and let us go and see good Master Pedro's stage, for I hold for myself that it must have something new about it."
"Something?" answered Master Pedro. "Sixty thousand somethings this stage of mine holds inside it. I tell your worship, my lord Don Quixote, that it is one of the most worth-seeing things the world has today; and operibus credite, et non verbis; and now to work, for it is getting late and we have a great deal to do and to say and to show."
Don Quixote and Sancho obeyed him and came to where the stage was already set up and uncovered, full on every side of lighted wax tapers that made it showy and shining. On arriving, Master Pedro got inside it, since he was the one who had to work the figures of the contrivance; and outside there stood a boy, Master Pedro's servant, to serve as interpreter and expounder of the mysteries of that stage: he had a little wand in his hand with which he pointed out the figures as they came on.
All the people in the inn being placed, then, some of them standing, facing the stage, and Don Quixote, Sancho, the page and the cousin settled in the best seats, the interpreter began to say what will be heard and seen by anyone who hears or sees the next chapter.
They all fell silent, Tyrians and Trojans alike — I mean that everybody who was watching the stage was hanging on the mouth of the man who declared its marvels — when there was heard sounding inside the stage a quantity of kettledrums and trumpets, and a great deal of artillery going off; whose noise passed in a short time, and then the boy raised his voice and said:
"This true history that is here performed before your worships is taken word for word out of the French chronicles and out of the Spanish ballads that are in the mouths of the people and of the boys about these streets. It deals with the setting free by Señor Don Gaiferos of his wife Melisendra, who was held captive in Spain, in the power of the Moors, in the city of Sansueña — for that was the name then of the city that today is called Saragossa. And your worships may see there how Don Gaiferos is playing at tables, according to what is sung:
Don Gaiferos sits playing at tables, and Melisendra is forgotten now.
"And that personage who looks out there, with a crown on his head and a sceptre in his hands, is the emperor Charlemagne, the reputed father of this Melisendra, who, vexed at seeing the idleness and carelessness of his son-in-law, comes out to scold him. And notice with what vehemence and eagerness he scolds him, so that it looks as if he wants to give him half a dozen raps on the head with the sceptre — and there are even authors who say he gave them to him, and gave them well. And, after having said him a great many things about the danger his honour was running in not seeing to his wife's freedom, they say he said to him:
"'I have said enough to you: look to it.'
"Let your worships also observe how the emperor turns his back and leaves Don Gaiferos in a rage; who, as you now see, impatient with fury, hurls the board and the pieces far away from him and asks in haste for his arms, and asks his cousin Don Roland for the loan of his sword Durindana, and how Don Roland will not lend it him, offering him his company in the difficult enterprise he is undertaking. But the valorous angry man will not accept it; on the contrary, he says that he alone is enough to bring his wife out, even if she were shut away in the deepest centre of the earth. And with this he goes in to arm himself, so as to set out at once.
"Turn your worships' eyes to that tower that appears there, which is supposed to be one of the towers of the castle of Saragossa that they now call the Aljafería; and that lady who appears on that balcony, dressed in the Moorish fashion, is the peerless Melisendra, who from there would often set herself to look at the road to France and, setting her imagination on Paris and on her husband, would console herself in her captivity.
"Look too at a new turn of events that is happening now, perhaps never seen before. Do you not see that Moor who, hushed and step by step, with his finger on his lips, is coming up behind Melisendra? Well, look how he gives her a kiss right on the lips, and the haste she makes to spit and to wipe them with the white sleeve of her shift, and how she laments and tears out her beautiful hair for grief, as though it had the blame for the mischief.
"Look too at that grave Moor there in those galleries, who is King Marsilio of Sansueña; who, having seen the Moor's insolence — although he was a relation of his and a great favourite — ordered him to be arrested on the spot and given two hundred lashes, taking him through the usual streets of the city,
with the criers going in front and the constables' staves behind;
"and here you see them coming out to carry out the sentence, when the offence has hardly been carried out at all; because among Moors there is no 'notice to the other party' or 'let it stand to proof', as there is among us."
"Boy, boy," said Don Quixote at this point in a loud voice, "keep to your history in a straight line, and do not go off into curves and cross-cuts; for to get a truth out clean a great many proofs and re-provings are needed."
Master Pedro said from inside as well:
"Boy, do not go in for fancy work, but do as this gentleman orders you, and that will be the surest way. Keep to your plainsong and do not go in for counterpoints, for they generally break from being too fine."
"I shall do so," answered the boy; and he went on, saying: "This figure that appears here on horseback, wrapped in a Gascon cloak, is Don Gaiferos himself, whose wife, now avenged of the amorous Moor's boldness, with a better and quieter countenance has set herself at the tower windows and is talking with her husband, believing him to be some traveller — with whom she went through all those words and speeches of the ballad that says:
Sir knight, if to France ye go, ask there for Gaiferos —
"which I do not say now, because from long-windedness tedium is usually bred. It is enough to see how Don Gaiferos discovers himself, and how by the glad gestures Melisendra makes we are given to understand that she has recognised him, and the more so now that we see she is letting herself down from the balcony to place herself on the crupper of her good husband's horse.
"But — oh, unlucky lady! — a corner of her petticoat has caught on one of the irons of the balcony, and she is hanging in the air unable to reach the ground. But you see how merciful heaven comes to the rescue in the greatest necessities: for Don Gaiferos arrives, and, without looking to see whether the rich petticoat will tear or not, he seizes hold of her and brings her down to the ground in spite of it, and then at one leap sets her on his horse's crupper, astride like a man, and tells her to hold on tight and to throw her arms round his back so as to cross them over his chest, so that she may not fall — because the lady Melisendra was not used to horsemanship of the kind.
"You see too how the horse's neighing gives signs that he is content with the valiant and beautiful burden he carries in his lord and his lady. You see how they turn their backs and leave the city and, glad and merry, take the road to Paris. Go in peace, O peerless pair of true lovers! May you come safe to your longed-for country, without fortune putting any obstacle in the way of your happy journey! May the eyes of your friends and your relations see you enjoy in quiet peace the days that are left you of your life — and may they be the days of Nestor!"
Here Master Pedro raised his voice again and said:
"Plainness, boy; do not soar; all affectation is bad."
The interpreter answered nothing; on the contrary, he went on, saying:
"There were not wanting some idle eyes, which generally see everything, that did not see Melisendra's coming down and getting up, and they gave notice of it to King Marsilio, who at once ordered the alarm to be sounded. And look how quickly, for the city is already sinking under the noise of the bells sounding from all the towers of the mosques."
"Not that!" said Don Quixote at this. "In this matter of the bells Master Pedro is going very wide of the mark, because bells are not used among Moors, but kettledrums and a kind of shawm like our own reed-pipes; and this business of bells ringing in Sansueña is beyond any doubt a great absurdity."
Which Master Pedro hearing, he left off ringing and said:
"Do not look at trifles, your worship, Señor Don Quixote, or want to carry things so far that you never find the end of them. Are there not a thousand plays performed about here, almost every day, full of a thousand improprieties and absurdities, and for all that they run their course most happily and are listened to not merely with applause but with admiration and everything else? Go on, boy, and let them talk; for so long as I fill my bag, let there be more improprieties in it than the sun has atoms."
"That is the truth," replied Don Quixote.
And the boy said:
"Look how much and how splendid a body of horse comes out of the city in pursuit of the two Catholic lovers, how many trumpets sounding, how many shawms playing and how many kettledrums and side drums thundering. I fear they will catch them up and bring them back tied to the tail of their own horse, which would be a horrible spectacle."
Seeing and hearing so much Moorishness and so much uproar, then, it seemed to Don Quixote a good thing to give help to the fugitives; and, standing up, he said in a loud voice:
"I shall not consent, in my days and in my presence, that so famous a knight and so daring a lover as Don Gaiferos should be treated with such foul play. Stop, you baseborn rabble! Do not follow him or pursue him, or you have me to fight with!"
And, saying and doing, he drew his sword and at one bound placed himself next to the stage, and with a headlong and never-before-seen fury began to rain sword-strokes down on the puppet Moorishness, knocking some over, beheading others, maiming this one, shattering that one; and, among many other blows, he let fly one downstroke such that if Master Pedro had not ducked, shrunk and crouched, it would have sheared his head off more easily than if it had been made of marzipan paste. Master Pedro was shouting, saying:
"Stop, your worship, Señor Don Quixote, and note that these you are knocking down and shattering and killing are not real Moors but figures made of paste. Look — sinner that I am! — you are destroying me and ruining my whole livelihood!"
But for all that Don Quixote did not stop dealing out sword-strokes, two-handed cuts, slashes and backhands as if it were raining them. Finally, in less than the time it takes to say two creeds, he had the whole stage on the ground, with all its gear and its figures smashed to pieces and crumbled: King Marsilio badly wounded, and the emperor Charlemagne with his crown and his head split in two.
The senate of listeners was thrown into an uproar, the ape fled over the roofs out of the window, the cousin was frightened, the page lost his nerve, and even Sancho Panza himself was in enormous terror, because, as he swore when the storm was over, he had never seen his master in such a headlong rage.
The general destruction of the stage being accomplished, then, Don Quixote quieted down a little and said:
"I should like to have here in front of me at this moment all those who do not believe, and do not want to believe, how much use knights errant are in the world. Look — if I had not been present here, what would have become of good Don Gaiferos and the beautiful Melisendra? It is a safe bet that by this hour those dogs would have caught them and done them some outrage. In short, long live knight-errantry over everything alive on earth today!"
"Long live it and welcome," said Master Pedro at this in a sickly voice, "and let me die, since I am so unfortunate that I can say with King Rodrigo:
Yesterday I was lord of Spain, and today I have not one battlement that I can call my own.
"Not half an hour ago, nor even a middling moment, I saw myself lord of kings and emperors, my stables and my chests and my bags full of infinite horses and innumerable finery; and now I see myself desolate and cast down, poor and a beggar, and, above all, without my ape — for upon my word my teeth will sweat before I get him back into my hands. And all through the ill-considered fury of this gentleman knight, of whom it is said that he protects orphans and rights wrongs and does other charitable works; and in me alone has his generous intention come to fail — blessed and praised be the heavens, up there where they have their loftiest seats. In short, the Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance was bound to be the one to disfigure my figures."
Sancho Panza was moved by Master Pedro's words, and said to him:
"Do not weep, Master Pedro, and do not lament, for you break my heart. Because I let you know that my master Don Quixote is so Catholic and so scrupulous a Christian that if he grasps that he has done you some wrong, he will know it and will want to pay you and satisfy you with a great deal over."
"If Señor Don Quixote would only pay me some part of the workmanship he has unworked, I should be content, and his worship would set his conscience at rest — because no man can be saved who holds what belongs to another against its owner's will and does not restore it."
"That is so," said Don Quixote; "but so far I do not know that I have anything of yours, Master Pedro."
"How not?" answered Master Pedro. "And these relics lying on this hard and barren ground — who scattered them and annihilated them but the invincible force of that powerful arm? And whose were their bodies but mine? And what did I keep myself on but them?"
"Now I finally believe," said Don Quixote at this point, "what I have believed a great many other times: that these enchanters who persecute me do nothing but set the figures in front of my eyes as they really are, and then change them and swap them for whatever ones they please. Really and truly I tell you, gentlemen who hear me, that everything that has happened here seemed to me to be happening to the letter: that Melisendra was Melisendra, Don Gaiferos Don Gaiferos, Marsilio Marsilio and Charlemagne Charlemagne. That is why my choler rose; and, to fulfil my profession as a knight errant, I wanted to give help and favour to those who were fleeing, and with this good purpose I did what you have seen. If it has come out backwards, it is not my fault but the fault of the wicked ones who persecute me; and, for all that, for this mistake of mine, though it did not come out of malice, I mean to condemn myself in costs. Let Master Pedro see what he wants for the broken figures, and I offer to pay it him at once in good current Castilian money."
Master Pedro bowed to him, saying:
"I expected no less from the unheard-of Christian charity of the valorous Don Quixote of La Mancha, true helper and protector of all needy and destitute vagabonds. And here the master innkeeper and the great Sancho shall be mediators and appraisers between your worship and me of what the now broken figures are worth or might be worth."
The innkeeper and Sancho said they would do so, and then Master Pedro picked up off the ground King Marsilio of Saragossa, with his head gone, and said:
"It can be seen how impossible it is to restore this king to his first condition; and so it seems to me, saving a better judgement, that I should be given for his death, end and finish four reals and a half."
"Go on," said Don Quixote.
"Well, for this split from top to bottom," Master Pedro went on, taking the halved emperor Charlemagne in his hands, "it would not be too much if I asked five reals and a quarter."
"That is not little," said Sancho.
"Nor much," replied the innkeeper. "Split the difference and set him down five reals."
"Let him have the whole five and a quarter," said Don Quixote, "for the sum of this notable misfortune does not stand on a quarter more or less; and let Master Pedro finish quickly, for supper time is coming on and I have certain forebodings of hunger."
"For this figure," said Master Pedro, "which is without a nose and short of one eye, and is the beautiful Melisendra, I want — and I am setting it fairly — two reals and twelve maravedís."
"The devil would be in it," said Don Quixote, "if Melisendra were not by now with her husband, at the very least, on the borders of France; because the horse they were riding seemed to me to be flying rather than running. And so there is no call to sell me the cat for a hare by presenting me here with a noseless Melisendra, when the other one, if it comes to that, is at this moment taking her ease in France with her husband with her legs stretched out. God help every man with what is his own, Master Pedro, and let us all walk on level ground and with sound intentions. And go on."
Master Pedro, who saw that Don Quixote was heeling over and going back to his first theme, did not want him to get away; and so he said to him:
"This must not be Melisendra but one of the girls who waited on her; and so, with sixty maravedís given me for her I shall be content and well paid."
In this way he went on putting a price on a great many other shattered figures, which the two arbitrating judges afterwards moderated to the satisfaction of both parties, and which came to forty reals and three quarters; and besides this, which Sancho paid out at once, Master Pedro asked for two reals for the trouble of catching the ape.
"Give them to him, Sancho," said Don Quixote, "not for catching the ape but for catching himself a drink; and I would give two hundred now as a reward to anybody who could tell me with certainty that the lady Doña Melisendra and Señor Don Gaiferos were already in France and among their own people."
"Nobody could tell us better than my ape," said Master Pedro, "but there is no devil that could catch him now — though I imagine that affection and hunger will force him to come looking for me tonight; and God will send the morning and we shall see each other."
In short, the storm of the puppet stage came to an end, and they all had supper in peace and good company at Don Quixote's expense, for he was generous in the last degree.
Before daybreak the man with the lances and the halberds went off; and after it was light the cousin and the page came to take their leave of Don Quixote, the one to go back to his own country and the other to go on with his journey, towards which Don Quixote gave him a dozen reals. Master Pedro did not want to get into any more chopping and changing of words with Don Quixote, whom he knew very well; and so he was up before the sun and, gathering up the relics of his stage and his ape, went off to look for his own adventures too.
The innkeeper, who did not know Don Quixote, was as astonished by his madnesses as by his generosity. Finally Sancho paid him very well by his master's orders, and, taking their leave of him, at about eight in the morning they left the inn and set out on their road — where we shall leave them going, for that is what is needed to make room for telling other things that belong to the setting out of this famous history.
Cide Hamete, the chronicler of this great history, comes into this chapter with these words: "I swear as a Catholic Christian..." — to which his translator says that Cide Hamete's swearing as a Catholic Christian, he being a Moor, as he undoubtedly was, meant nothing else but this: that just as the Catholic Christian, when he swears, swears — or ought to swear — the truth, and to tell it in whatever he says, so he was telling the truth, as though he were swearing as a Catholic Christian, in what he meant to write about Don Quixote, and especially in saying who Master Pedro was and who the soothsaying ape was that had all those villages marvelling with his divinations.
He says, then, that anybody who has read the first part of this history will remember that Ginés de Pasamonte to whom, among other galley slaves, Don Quixote gave freedom in the Sierra Morena — a kindness that was afterwards ill thanked and worse repaid by that malignant and badly brought up crew.
This Ginés de Pasamonte, whom Don Quixote called Ginesillo de Parapilla, was the man who stole Sancho Panza's grey; and, since the how and the when of it were not put into the first part through the printers' fault, it has given a great many people something to puzzle over, who put the missing passage down to the author's short memory. But in short, Ginés stole him while Sancho Panza was sleeping on his back, using the trick and the method Brunello used when, while Sacripante was at Albraca, he drew the horse out from between his legs; and afterwards Sancho got him back, as has been told.
This Ginés, then, afraid of being found by the law, which was looking for him to punish him for his infinite villainies and crimes — which were so many and such that he himself composed a great volume telling them — decided to cross over into the kingdom of Aragon and cover his left eye, taking up the trade of puppet-master; for this and sleight of hand he could do to perfection.
It happened, then, that from some Christians who had been set free and were coming from Barbary he bought that ape, whom he taught that on being given a certain signal he should climb up on his shoulder and murmur — or seem to murmur — in his ear. This done, before he went into any place where he was going with his stage and his ape, he would find out at the nearest place, or from whoever he best could, what particular things had happened in that place, and to what people. And, carrying them well in his memory, the first thing he did was to show his stage, which was sometimes of one story and sometimes of another, but all of them cheerful and merry and well known.
The show over, he would announce his ape's abilities, telling the people that he divined all things past and present, but that in the matter of things to come he had no skill. For the answer to each question he asked two reals, and for some he cut the price, according to how he took the pulse of the questioners. And since he sometimes came to the houses of people whose doings he knew, even if they asked him nothing so as not to have to pay him, he would give the ape the signal and then say that he had told him such and such a thing, which fitted the facts to a mould. With this he got himself an unspeakable credit, and everybody went trooping after him. Other times, being so shrewd, he would answer in such a way that the answers fitted the questions well; and, as nobody pressed him or pushed him to say how his ape divined, he made monkeys of them all and filled his pouches.
As soon as he came into the inn he recognised Don Quixote and Sancho, and through recognising them it was easy for him to fill Don Quixote and Sancho Panza with wonder, and everybody else who was there. But it would have cost him dear if Don Quixote had brought his hand down a little lower when he cut off King Marsilio's head and destroyed all his cavalry, as has been told in the foregoing chapter.
This is what there is to say about Master Pedro and his ape.
And, coming back to Don Quixote of La Mancha, I say that after leaving the inn he decided to see first the banks of the river Ebro and all those parts, before going into the city of Saragossa, since the great deal of time that was left from then until the jousts gave him room for everything. With this intention he followed his road, along which he travelled two days without anything happening to him worth putting in writing, until on the third, coming up a rise, he heard a great noise of drums, trumpets and harquebuses.
At first he thought some regiment of soldiers was passing that way, and to see them he spurred Rocinante up the rise. And when he was at the top he saw at the foot of it, as far as he could judge, more than two hundred men armed with different kinds of arms — that is to say, long spears, crossbows, partisans, halberds and pikes, and a few harquebuses, and a great many bucklers.
He came down the slope and got near enough to the squadron to see the flags distinctly, judge their colours and note the devices they carried on them — especially one that came on a standard or pennant of white satin, on which was painted very much to the life a donkey like a little Sardinian ass, its head raised, its mouth open and its tongue out, in the act and posture of a beast in the middle of braying. Around it were written in large letters these two lines:
Our two good magistrates, 'tis plain, did not stand and bray in vain.
By this ensign Don Quixote gathered that these people must be from the village of the bray, and he said so to Sancho, explaining to him what was written on the standard. He told him too that the man who had given them notice of the business had been wrong in saying that it was two aldermen who had brayed; but that, according to the lines on the standard, they had been magistrates. To which Sancho Panza answered:
"Sir, there is nothing to stick at in that, for it may very well be that the aldermen who brayed then came in time to be magistrates of their village, and so they can be called by both titles; and what is more, it makes no difference to the truth of the history whether the brayers were magistrates or aldermen, so long as they brayed one way or the other — because a magistrate is as likely to bray as an alderman."
Finally they learnt and made out that the mocked village was coming out to fight another that mocked it more than was just and more than was owing to good neighbourliness.
Don Quixote went up to them, to Sancho's no small distress, for he was never fond of finding himself in expeditions of the sort. The men of the squadron took him into their midst, believing he was one of their own party. Don Quixote, raising his visor with a fine spirit and bearing, came up to the standard of the donkey, and there all the chief men of the army gathered round him to look at him, filled with the usual astonishment that everybody fell into who looked at him for the first time.
Don Quixote, seeing them so intent on looking at him without anybody speaking to him or asking him anything, decided to make use of that silence, and, breaking his own, raised his voice and said:
"Good gentlemen, as earnestly as I can I beg you not to interrupt an argument I want to make you, until you find that it displeases and annoys you; for if that happens, at the least sign you make me I shall put a seal on my mouth and clap a gag on my tongue."
They all told him to say whatever he liked, for they would listen to him gladly. With this licence Don Quixote went on, saying:
"I, my dear sirs, am a knight errant, whose exercise is that of arms and whose profession is to favour those in need of favour and to come to the help of the destitute. Some days ago I learnt of your misfortune and of the cause that moves you to take up arms at every turn to avenge yourselves on your enemies; and, having gone over your business once and many times in my understanding, I find, according to the laws of duelling, that you are mistaken in holding yourselves affronted, because no single man can affront a whole community, unless it is by challenging all of it together for treason, since he does not know in particular who committed the treason he is challenging it for.
"An example of this we have in Don Diego Ordóñez de Lara, who challenged the whole people of Zamora because he did not know that Vellido Dolfos alone had committed the treason of killing his king; and so he challenged them all, and the vengeance and the answer concerned them all — although it is quite true that Señor Don Diego went somewhat too far, and even went a long way past the limits of the challenge, because he had no call to challenge the dead, the waters, the loaves of bread, those who were still unborn, and the other trifles that are set out there. But let it pass; for when choler bursts its banks, the tongue has no father, tutor or bridle to check it.
"This being so, then — that one man alone cannot affront a kingdom, a province, a city, a commonwealth or a whole community — it comes out clean that there is no call to go out to avenge the challenge of such an affront, since it is none. Because it would be a fine thing if the people of Clock-town killed each other at every turn with whoever called them by that name, and so with the stew-pot men, the aubergine men, the whale men, the soap men, and all the other names and nicknames that go about here in the mouths of boys and of people of no great account! It would be a fine thing, certainly, if all these distinguished towns took offence and revenged themselves and went about with their swords for ever sliding out like sackbuts at every quarrel, however small!
"No, no, and God neither permit it nor wish it. Prudent men and well-ordered commonwealths have to take up arms and draw their swords and put their persons, lives and estates at risk for four things: the first, to defend the Catholic faith; the second, to defend their own lives, which is a law of nature and of God; the third, in defence of their honour, their family and their property; the fourth, in the service of their king in a just war. And if we want to add a fifth, which can be counted as second, it is in defence of their country. To these five causes, as the chief ones, some others may be added that are just and reasonable and that make it right to take up arms; but to take them up for childishness and for things that are matter for laughter and entertainment rather than for affront, looks as if the man who takes them up is short of all reasonable judgement.
"What is more, taking unjust revenge — and there can be none that is just — goes directly against the holy law we profess, in which we are commanded to do good to our enemies and to love those who hate us; a commandment which, though it looks somewhat difficult to keep, is not so except for those who have less of God in them than of the world, and more of the flesh than of the spirit. Because Jesus Christ, true God and true man, who never lied and could not and cannot lie, being our lawgiver, said that his yoke was easy and his burden light; and so he would not command us anything that it was impossible to carry out. And so, my dear sirs, your worships are bound by divine and human laws to quiet down."
"The devil take me," said Sancho to himself at this, "if this master of mine is not a 'ologian; and if he is not one, he is as like one as one egg is to another."
Don Quixote took a little breath, and, seeing that they were still lending him silence, wanted to go further with his talk — as he would have done if Sancho's sharpness had not got in the way; for Sancho, seeing that his master had stopped, took over from him, saying:
"My master Don Quixote of La Mancha, who at one time was called the Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance and is now called the Knight of the Lions, is a very well-advised gentleman who knows Latin and Spanish like a bachelor of arts, and in everything he deals with and advises on he goes about it like a very good soldier, and he has all the laws and ordinances of what they call duelling at his fingertips. And so there is nothing to do but let yourselves be led by whatever he says, and it is on my head if you go wrong.
"And besides, it stands said already that it is foolishness to take offence merely at hearing a bray; because I remember, when I was a boy, that I brayed whenever I felt like it, without anybody stopping me, and with such grace and truth to life that when I brayed all the donkeys in the village brayed too. And I was none the less for that the son of my parents, who were most honourable people; and although for this ability I was envied by more than four of the stiff-necked men of my village, I did not care two farthings. And, so that you may see I am telling the truth, wait and listen — for this science is like swimming: once learnt, it is never forgotten."
And then, putting his hand to his nose, he began to bray so lustily that all the nearby valleys rang with it. But one of the men standing next to him, believing he was making fun of them, raised a long stick he had in his hand and gave him such a blow with it that, without being able to help himself, Sancho Panza went down on the ground.
Don Quixote, who saw Sancho in such bad case, charged at the man who had struck him with his lance couched; but so many got in the way that it was not possible to avenge him. On the contrary, seeing that a stormcloud of stones was raining down on him and that a thousand levelled crossbows and no fewer harquebuses were threatening him, he turned Rocinante's reins and, at the fastest gallop he could manage, got out from among them, commending himself with all his heart to God to deliver him from that danger, fearing at every step that some bullet would come in at his back and out at his chest; and every moment he took in his breath to see whether it failed him.
But the men of the squadron were satisfied with seeing him run, and did not shoot at him. They put Sancho on his donkey, hardly come round yet, and let him go after his master — not because he had his senses about him to steer it, but because the grey followed Rocinante's tracks, without whom he could not be a moment at ease. Don Quixote, then, having got a good way off, turned his head and saw Sancho coming, and waited for him, seeing that nobody was following.
The men of the squadron stayed there until night; and, their opponents not having come out to battle, they went back to their village, merry and glad; and if they had known the ancient custom of the Greeks, they would have raised a trophy in that place.
When the brave man flees, foul play has been discovered, and it is the part of prudent men to keep themselves for a better occasion. This truth was borne out in Don Quixote, who, giving way to the fury of the village and to the bad intentions of that indignant squadron, took to his heels; and, without remembering Sancho or the danger he was leaving him in, he got as far off as seemed to him enough to be safe. Sancho followed him, laid across his donkey, as has been related.
He arrived at last, come round to his senses by now, and on arriving he let himself fall off the grey at Rocinante's feet, all anguish, all bruises and all beating. Don Quixote dismounted to look at his wounds; but, finding him sound from head to foot, he said to him with a good deal of choler:
"In an evil hour did you know how to bray, Sancho! And where did you find it good to name the rope in the hanged man's house? To music of brays, what counterpoint was to be expected but of cudgels? And give thanks to God, Sancho, that since they crossed you with a stick they did not make the sign of the cross over you with a scimitar."
"I am not up to answering," answered Sancho, "because I feel as if I were talking out of my shoulder blades. Let us mount and get away from here, and I shall put silence on my brays — but not on saying that knights errant run away and leave their good squires ground like henna, or like chaff, in the power of their enemies."
"He does not flee who retires," answered Don Quixote; "because you must know, Sancho, that valour which is not founded on the base of prudence is called rashness, and the exploits of the rash man are put down more to good luck than to his spirit. And so I confess that I have retired but have not fled; and in this I have imitated a great many brave men who have kept themselves for better times, and the histories are full of it — which, since they would be of no profit to you or of any pleasure to me, I do not report to you now."
By this time Sancho was on his beast, helped by Don Quixote, who likewise got up on Rocinante; and little by little they went to take cover in a poplar grove that showed itself about a quarter of a league from there. From time to time Sancho let out some very deep "ohs" and some sorrowful groans; and when Don Quixote asked him the cause of such bitter feeling, he answered that from the end of his backbone to the nape of his skull it hurt him in such a way that it took his senses away.
"The cause of that pain," said Don Quixote, "must without doubt be that, as the stick they struck you with was long and full-length, it caught you all across the back, where all those parts come in that are hurting you; and if it had caught more of you, more would be hurting."
"By God," said Sancho, "your worship has got me out of a great doubt, and has cleared it up for me in fine terms! Body of me! Was the cause of my pain so hidden that it needed telling me that everything hurts that the stick reached? If my ankles were hurting, there might still be some guessing about why they hurt; but for what has been pounded to hurt me is not much of a guess.
"Upon my word, sir our master, another man's trouble hangs by a hair; and every day I am sighting more land of how little I can expect from the company I keep with your worship. Because if this time you have let me be cudgelled, another time and another hundred times we shall go back to the blanket-tossings of long ago and to other childishnesses — which, if this time they have come out on my back, next time will come out at my eyes.
"I should do a great deal better — except that I am a barbarian and shall never do anything good in all my life — I should do a great deal better, I say again, to go back home and to my wife and to my children, and to keep her and bring them up on what God was pleased to give me, and not go trailing after your worship along roads that are no roads and by paths and highways that are neither, drinking badly and eating worse.
"And then take sleeping! Count out seven feet of earth, brother squire, and if you want more, take as many again, for it is in your own hand to dish it out; and stretch yourself out to your heart's content. May I see burnt and turned to powder the first man who put a stitch into knight-errantry, or at least the first man who wanted to be squire to such fools as all the past knights errant must have been. Of the present ones I say nothing, since your worship is one of them, and I have respect for them, and because I know that your worship knows one point more than the devil in everything you say and everything you think."
"I would make a good bet with you, Sancho," said Don Quixote, "that now that you go along talking with nobody to stop you, nothing at all hurts you anywhere in your body. Talk, my son, everything that comes into your mind and to your mouth; for in exchange for nothing hurting you, I shall count as a pleasure the annoyance your impertinences give me. And if you so much want to go back to your house with your wife and children, God forbid that I should stop you: you have money of mine. Look how long it is since this third time we came out of our village, and look what you can and ought to earn each month, and pay yourself with your own hand."
"When I served Tomé Carrasco," answered Sancho, "the father of the bachelor Sansón Carrasco, whom your worship knows well, I earned two ducats a month, besides my food. With your worship I do not know what I can earn, although I know that the squire of a knight errant has more work than the man who serves a farmer. Because, in short, those of us who serve farmers, however much we work by day and however badly things go, at night we have a stew for supper and sleep in a bed — which I have not slept in since I have been serving your worship. Except for the short time we were at Don Diego de Miranda's house, and the feast I had with the skimmings I took out of Camacho's pots, and what I ate and drank and slept at Basilio's house, all the rest of the time I have slept on the hard ground in the open air, subject to what they call the inclemencies of heaven, keeping myself going on scraps of cheese and crusts of bread, and drinking water, sometimes from brooks and sometimes from springs, out of whatever we come across in these out-of-the-way places where we go about."
"I confess," said Don Quixote, "that everything you say is true, Sancho. How much do you think I ought to give you over and above what Tomé Carrasco gave you?"
"To my mind," said Sancho, "with two reals more that your worship added each month, I should count myself well paid. That is as to the wages of my labour; but as to satisfying me over the word and promise your worship has made me of giving me the government of an isle, it would be just for another six reals to be added, which in all would come to thirty."
"That is very good," replied Don Quixote; "and, according to the wages you have set yourself, it is twenty-three days since we came out of our village. Reckon it up, Sancho, pro rata, and see what I owe you, and pay yourself, as I have told you, with your own hand."
"Oh, body of me!" said Sancho. "Your worship goes very wide in this reckoning, because in the matter of the promise of the isle it has to be counted from the day your worship promised it me until the present hour we are in."
"Well then, how long is it, Sancho, since I promised it you?" said Don Quixote.
"If I remember rightly," answered Sancho, "it must be more than twenty years, three days more or less."
Don Quixote gave himself a great slap on the forehead and began to laugh very heartily, and said:
"Why, I was hardly two months in the Sierra Morena, or in the whole course of our sallies — and you say, Sancho, that it is twenty years since I promised you the isle? Now I say that you want the money of mine that you have to be eaten up in your wages; and if that is so and it pleases you, from here I give it you, and much good may it do you; for in exchange for seeing myself rid of so bad a squire, I shall be glad to be left poor and without a farthing.
"But tell me, you perverter of the squirely ordinances of knight-errantry: where have you seen or read that any squire of a knight errant ever set himself to bargain with his master about 'so much more must you give me every month for serving you'? Go in, go in, you villain, poltroon and monster — for you look like all of them; go in, I say, into the mare magnum of their histories, and if you find that any squire ever said, or thought, what you have said here, I want you to nail him on my forehead and, into the bargain, give me four good flicks on the nose, sealed and delivered.
"Turn the grey's reins, or his halter, and go back home, because not one step further from here shall you go on with me. O bread ill-acknowledged! O promises badly placed! O man who has more of the beast in him than of the person! Now, when I was thinking of setting you up in such a station that in spite of your wife they would call you 'your lordship' — now you take your leave? Now you go, when I was coming with a firm and binding intention of making you lord of the best isle in the world? In short, as you have said at other times, honey is not for the mouth of... and so forth. An ass you are, and an ass you have to be, and you will end an ass when the course of your life runs out; for I hold for myself that your life will come to its last term before you tumble to it and grasp that you are a beast."
Sancho was looking hard at Don Quixote while he was saying him these abuses, and he was so stricken that the tears came into his eyes, and in a pained and sickly voice he said to him:
"My dear sir, I confess that to be an ass altogether I lack nothing but the tail. If your worship wants to put one on me, I shall count it well put on, and shall serve you as a donkey all the days that are left me of my life. Let your worship forgive me and pity my green years, and note that I know little, and that if I talk a lot it comes more from a disease than from malice; but he who errs and mends commends himself to God."
"I should have been astonished, Sancho, if you had not mixed some little proverb into your talk. Well now, I forgive you, provided that you mend yourself and that from now on you do not show yourself such a friend of your own interest, but try to broaden your heart, and take heart and courage to wait for the fulfilling of my promises — which, though it is late, is not made impossible."
Sancho answered that he would do so, even if he had to draw strength out of weakness.
With this they went into the poplar grove, and Don Quixote settled himself at the foot of an elm and Sancho at the foot of a beech; for trees of that kind, and others like them, always have feet and never hands. Sancho spent the night painfully, because the cudgelling made itself felt more in the night air. Don Quixote spent it in his usual memories; but for all that they gave their eyes up to sleep, and at daybreak they followed their road, looking for the banks of the famous Ebro — where there happened to them what will be told in the coming chapter.
By their measured steps, and by steps still to be measured, two days after leaving the poplar grove Don Quixote and Sancho came to the river Ebro; and the sight of it was a great pleasure to Don Quixote, because he contemplated and looked at the pleasantness of its banks, the clearness of its waters, the quietness of its course and the abundance of its liquid crystal, whose glad sight renewed a thousand loving thoughts in his memory. Above all he went back and forth over what he had seen in the cave of Montesinos; for although Master Pedro's ape had told him that part of those things were true and part lies, he held more by the true ones than by the lying ones — quite the other way from Sancho, who held them all for the very truth of lying.
Going along in this way, then, there offered itself to his sight a small boat without oars or any other tackle, tied up on the bank to the trunk of a tree that stood on the shore. Don Quixote looked in every direction and saw nobody at all; and then, without any more ado, he got down off Rocinante and ordered Sancho to do the same off the grey, and to tie both beasts very securely together to the trunk of a poplar or willow that stood there. Sancho asked him the cause of this sudden dismounting and this tying up. Don Quixote answered:
"You must know, Sancho, that this boat here is directly — and it cannot possibly be otherwise — calling me and inviting me to get into it and go in it to bring help to some knight, or to some other person of quality in need, who must be laid under some great affliction. Because this is the manner of the books of chivalrous histories and of the enchanters who meddle and talk in them: when some knight is laid under some hardship out of which he cannot be delivered except by the hand of another knight, even though they are two or three thousand leagues apart, and even more, either they snatch him up in a cloud or they furnish him with a boat to get into, and in less than the opening and shutting of an eye they carry him, either through the air or over the sea, wherever they like and wherever his help is needed. And so, Sancho, this boat is put here for that same purpose; and this is as true as it is now day. And before this one is over, tie the grey and Rocinante together, and into the hand of God, who will guide us; for I would not give up embarking if barefoot friars begged me to."
"Well, since that is so," answered Sancho, "and your worship means to run at every step into these things — I do not know whether to call them absurdities — there is nothing for it but to obey and bow my head, keeping to the proverb 'do what your master tells you and sit down at table with him'. But for all that, for the discharge of my conscience, I want to warn your worship that to my mind this boat is not one of the enchanted ones but belongs to some fishermen on this river, because the best shad in the world are caught in it."
This is what Sancho was saying while he tied up the beasts, leaving them to the protection and shelter of the enchanters with a good deal of pain to his soul. Don Quixote told him not to grieve over the abandoning of those animals, since the one who was going to carry them along such longinquous roads and regions would see to feeding them.
"I do not understand that about 'longwinkyous'," said Sancho, "and I have never heard such a word in all the days of my life."
"Longinquous," answered Don Quixote, "means far off; and it is no wonder that you do not understand it, for you are not obliged to know Latin, like some who presume they know it and are ignorant of it."
"They are tied up now," replied Sancho. "What are we to do next?"
"What?" answered Don Quixote. "Cross ourselves and weigh anchor — I mean, embark and cut the cable this boat is tied by."
And, giving a leap into it, with Sancho after him, he cut the cord, and the boat began to draw away little by little from the bank. And when Sancho saw himself a matter of two yards out into the river, he began to shake, fearing he was lost; but nothing gave him more pain than hearing the grey braying and seeing Rocinante struggling to get himself loose, and he said to his master:
"The grey is braying, grieved at our being gone, and Rocinante is trying to get free to throw himself after us. O dearest friends, stay in peace, and may the madness that takes us away from you, turned into a coming to our senses, bring us back into your presence!"
And with that he began to weep so bitterly that Don Quixote, vexed and choleric, said to him:
"What are you afraid of, you cowardly creature? What are you weeping about, you heart of butter? Who is chasing you, or who is hunting you, you spirit of a house mouse? Or what do you lack, you destitute man in the very bowels of abundance? Are you by any chance travelling on foot and barefoot over the Riphaean mountains, instead of sitting on a plank like an archduke on the smooth course of this pleasant river, out of which in a short space we shall come to the wide sea? But we must have come out already, and travelled at least seven or eight hundred leagues; and if I had an astrolabe here to take the height of the pole with, I would tell you how many we have travelled — although either I know very little, or we have already passed, or shall soon pass, the equinoctial line, which divides and cuts the two opposite poles at equal distance."
"And when we get to that line your worship talks about," asked Sancho, "how far shall we have travelled?"
"A long way," replied Don Quixote; "because of the three hundred and sixty degrees the globe contains, of water and of land, according to the computation of Ptolemy, who was the greatest cosmographer known, we shall have travelled half when we reach the line I have named."
"By God," said Sancho, "your worship brings me a fine sort of person as a witness for what he says — a Toll-and-Lousy, with 'pee' tacked on the front of him, or 'pee-oh', or I do not know what."
Don Quixote laughed at the interpretation Sancho had given to the name and to the computation and reckoning of the cosmographer Ptolemy, and said to him:
"You must know, Sancho, that among the Spaniards and those who embark at Cadiz to go to the East Indies, one of the signs they have for knowing they have passed the equinoctial line I have told you about is that all the lice die on everybody in the ship, without one being left, and you would not find one in the whole vessel if you paid its weight in gold. And so, Sancho, you may run a hand over a thigh; and if you come across anything alive, we shall be out of this doubt, and if not, we have passed it."
"I do not believe any of that," answered Sancho, "but for all that I shall do what your worship orders me — although I do not see what need there is for these experiments, since I see with my own eyes that we have not got five yards from the bank, and we have not slipped two yards from where the beasts are, because there are Rocinante and the grey in the very place where we left them. And taking a sight of it, as I am taking one now, I swear we are not moving or going along at an ant's pace."
"Make the test I have told you, Sancho, and do not trouble about any other; for you know nothing about what colures, lines, parallels, zodiacs, ecliptics, poles, solstices, equinoxes, planets, signs, points and measures are, of which the celestial and terrestrial spheres are composed. If you knew all these things, or part of them, you would see clearly how many parallels we have cut, how many signs we have seen and how many constellations we have left behind and are leaving behind now. And I tell you again to feel and fish about, for I hold for myself that you are cleaner than a sheet of smooth white paper."
Sancho felt himself, and, bringing his hand round nicely and carefully towards the back of his left knee, he raised his head, looked at his master and said:
"Either the experiment is false, or we have not got to where your worship says, not by many leagues."
"Why, what is it?" asked Don Quixote. "Have you come across something?"
"Something, and somethings!" answered Sancho.
And, shaking his fingers, he washed his whole hand in the river, down the middle of whose current the boat was quietly gliding, moved by no secret intelligence and by no hidden enchanter, but by the very course of the water, gentle and smooth just then.
At this they made out some great water mills that stood in the middle of the river; and hardly had Don Quixote seen them when he said to Sancho in a loud voice:
"Do you see, my friend? There is the city, castle or fortress where there must be some knight held down, or some queen, princess or infanta come to grief, for whose rescue I have been brought here."
"What the devil city, fortress or castle is your worship talking about, sir?" said Sancho. "Do you not see that those are water mills standing in the river, where they grind the wheat?"
"Be quiet, Sancho," said Don Quixote; "for although they look like water mills, they are not; and I have told you before that enchantments turn everything about and change it out of its natural being. I do not mean that they really change one being into another, but that they seem to — as experience showed in the transformation of Dulcinea, the only refuge of my hopes."
At this the boat, having got into the middle of the river's current, began to travel less slowly than it had until then. The millers at the mills, who saw that boat coming down the river and going to run into the millrace, came out in a hurry, a great many of them with long poles to stop it; and, as they came out floured, with their faces and their clothes covered in the dust of the flour, they made an ugly sight. They shouted at the tops of their voices, saying:
"Devils of men! Where are you going? Have you come here to kill yourselves? What do you want — to drown and be torn to pieces on these wheels?"
"Did I not tell you, Sancho," said Don Quixote at this point, "that we had come to where I must show how far the valour of my arm reaches? Look what villains and poltroons come out to meet me, look how many monsters set themselves against me, look how many hideous faces are pulling grimaces at us... Well, now you shall see, you rascals!"
And, standing up in the boat, he began to threaten the millers in a loud voice, saying to them:
"Wicked and worse-advised rabble, set at liberty and at their own free will the person you hold oppressed in that fortress or prison of yours, high or low, of whatever sort or quality he may be; for I am Don Quixote of La Mancha, called by another name the Knight of the Lions, to whom, by the order of high heaven, it is reserved to bring this adventure to a happy end."
And, saying this, he laid his hand on his sword and began to fence with it in the air against the millers; who, hearing and not understanding that nonsense, set themselves with their poles to stop the boat, which was already going into the race and channel of the wheels.
Sancho went down on his knees, devoutly asking heaven to deliver him from so plain a danger — as it did, through the skill and quickness of the millers, who, putting their poles against the boat, stopped it, but not in such a way as to keep from capsizing it and pitching Don Quixote and Sancho into the water. But it turned out well for Don Quixote, who could swim like a goose, although the weight of his armour took him to the bottom twice; and if it had not been for the millers, who threw themselves into the water and pulled the pair of them out almost bodily, it would have been Troy for them both.
Set on land, then, more wet than dying of thirst, Sancho went down on his knees, his hands together and his eyes fixed on heaven, and asked God in a long and devout prayer to deliver him from then on from the bold desires and undertakings of his master.
At this the fishermen who owned the boat arrived, whose boat the wheels of the mills had smashed to pieces; and, seeing it broken, they set about stripping Sancho and asking Don Quixote to pay for it. And he, with great calm, as though nothing at all had happened to him, told the millers and the fishermen that he would pay for the boat most willingly, on condition that they gave up, freely and without any trickery, the person or persons who were held down in that castle of theirs.
"What persons or what castle are you talking about," answered one of the millers, "you man without any sense? Do you by any chance want to carry off the women who come to grind wheat at these mills?"
"Enough!" said Don Quixote to himself. "Here it would be preaching in the desert to try to bring this rabble round to doing any virtuous thing for the asking. And in this adventure two mighty enchanters must have met, and one of them blocks what the other tries: one furnished me with the boat and the other pitched me over the side. God set it right, for this whole world is machinery and contrivances, one against another. I can do no more."
And, raising his voice, he went on, looking at the mills:
"My friends, whoever you may be, who are left shut up in that prison, forgive me; for by my misfortune and by yours, I cannot bring you out of your affliction. This adventure must be kept and reserved for some other knight."
Having said this, he came to terms with the fishermen and paid fifty reals for the boat, which Sancho handed over most unwillingly, saying:
"With two boat-fares like this we shall have the whole capital at the bottom."
The fishermen and millers were astonished, looking at those two figures so far outside the use of other men, and they could not make out at all where the arguments and questions Don Quixote was putting to them were leading; and, taking them for madmen, they left them and went back to their mills, and the fishermen to their huts. Don Quixote and Sancho went back to their beasts, and to being beasts; and this was the end of the adventure of the enchanted boat.
Knight and squire got back to their animals melancholy enough and in a bad humour, and especially Sancho, whom it went to the soul to touch the stock of their money, since it seemed to him that everything taken out of it was being taken out of the pupils of his own eyes. Finally, without a word passing between them, they mounted and went away from the famous river — Don Quixote buried in the thoughts of his love and Sancho in those of his advancement, which just then seemed to him to be a long way off. Because, dolt though he was, he grasped well enough that his master's actions, all or most of them, were absurdities, and he was looking for a chance when, without going into accounts or leave-takings with his master, he might one day break away and go off home. But fortune arranged things quite the other way from what he feared.
It happened, then, that the next day, at sunset and on coming out of a wood, Don Quixote cast his eyes over a green meadow, and at the far end of it he saw people; and, coming nearer, he made out that they were a hawking party. He came nearer still, and among them he saw a splendid lady on a snow-white palfrey or hackney, decked out with green harness and a silver saddle. The lady likewise came dressed in green, and so gallantly and richly that gallantry itself seemed transformed into her. On her left hand she carried a goshawk, a sign that gave Don Quixote to understand that this was some great lady, and that she must be the mistress of all those hunters — as was the truth. And so he said to Sancho:
"Run, Sancho my son, and tell that lady of the palfrey and the goshawk that I, the Knight of the Lions, kiss the hands of her great beauteousness; and that if her greatness gives me leave, I shall go and kiss them, and serve her in whatever my strength can and her highness may command me. And mind how you speak, Sancho, and take care not to jam any proverb of yours into your embassy."
"You have found your jammer, have you not?" answered Sancho. "Try that on me! Why, this is not the first time in my life that I have carried embassies to high and lofty ladies!"
"Unless it was the one you carried to the lady Dulcinea," replied Don Quixote, "I do not know that you have carried any other, at least in my service."
"That is true," answered Sancho, "but a good payer does not mind pledges, and in a full house supper is soon cooked. I mean that there is no need to tell me or warn me about anything, because I have something for everything and I know a little about it all."
"I believe it, Sancho," said Don Quixote. "Go, and good luck, and God guide you."
Sancho set off at a gallop, driving the grey out of his usual pace, and came to where the beautiful huntress was; and, dismounting and going down on his knees in front of her, he said to her:
"Beautiful lady, that knight who appears over there, called the Knight of the Lions, is my master, and I am a squire of his who at home is called Sancho Panza. This same Knight of the Lions, who not long ago was called the Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance, sends by me to ask your greatness to be pleased to give him leave so that, with your purpose and good pleasure and consent, he may put his desire into practice — which is nothing else, as he says and as I think, but to serve your soaring high-flyingness and beauteousness. In giving it, your ladyship will do a thing that redounds to your own good, and he will receive a most signal favour and contentment."
"Certainly, good squire," answered the lady, "you have delivered your embassy with all the circumstances such embassies call for. Get up off the ground, for it is not right that the squire of so great a knight as the Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance — of whom we already have a great deal of news here — should be on his knees. Get up, my friend, and tell your master that he is very welcome to come and make use of me and of the duke my husband, at a country house we have here."
Sancho got up, astonished as much at the good lady's beauty as at her great breeding and courtesy, and still more at what she had said about having news of his master the Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance; and if she had not called him the Knight of the Lions, it must have been because he had taken the name so recently. The duchess, whose title is still not known, asked him:
"Tell me, brother squire: this master of yours, is he not one about whom there goes a printed history called The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha, who has for the lady of his soul a certain Dulcinea of El Toboso?"
"That is the very man, my lady," answered Sancho; "and that squire of his who goes about, or ought to go about, in that history, whom they call Sancho Panza, is me — unless they swapped me in the cradle, I mean unless they swapped me in the printing."
"I am very glad of all this," said the duchess. "Go, brother Panza, and tell your master that he is well arrived and welcome to my estates, and that nothing could come to me that would give me greater contentment."
Sancho, with this most agreeable answer, went back to his master with the greatest pleasure, and told him everything the great lady had said, praising her great beauteousness, her great grace and courtesy to the skies in his rustic terms. Don Quixote drew himself up gallantly in the saddle, settled himself well in the stirrups, adjusted his visor, spurred Rocinante and with a fine boldness went to kiss the duchess's hands.
The duchess, having sent for the duke her husband, told him the whole of Don Quixote's embassy while Don Quixote was coming up; and the two of them, having read the first part of this history and having understood from it the preposterous humour of Don Quixote, waited for him with the greatest pleasure and with a desire to know him, having settled it beforehand to fall in with his humour and to agree with him in whatever he said, treating him as a knight errant for as long as he stayed with them, with all the ceremonies customary in the books of chivalry, which they had read and were even very fond of.
At this Don Quixote came up with his visor raised; and, making as if to dismount, Sancho ran up to hold his stirrup for him. But he was so unlucky that, in getting off the grey, he caught one foot in a rope of the pack-saddle in such a way that it was not possible to untangle him, and instead he was left hanging from it with his mouth and his chest on the ground.
Don Quixote, who was not in the habit of dismounting without somebody holding his stirrup, thinking that Sancho had already got there to hold it, threw the weight of his body down all at once, and brought Rocinante's saddle with him — for it must have been badly girthed — and the saddle and he came to the ground, not without shame to him and with a great many curses that he muttered between his teeth at the wretched Sancho, who still had his foot in the shackle.
The duke ordered his hunters to go to the knight and the squire, who lifted up Don Quixote, badly used by his fall; and, limping and as best he could, he went to bend his knees before the two nobles. But the duke would not allow it on any account; on the contrary, dismounting from his own horse, he went and embraced Don Quixote, saying to him:
"It grieves me, Sir Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance, that the first thing your worship has done in my country should have been as bad as we have just seen; but the carelessness of squires is often the cause of worse things than this."
"The thing I have had happen in meeting you, valorous prince," answered Don Quixote, "cannot possibly be bad, even if my fall had not stopped until the bottom of the abyss, since the glory of having seen you would have lifted me and brought me out of it. My squire, God curse him, is better at untying his tongue to say malicious things than at tying and girthing a saddle so that it will hold. But however I may find myself, fallen or standing, on foot or on horseback, I shall always be at your service and at that of my lady the duchess, your worthy consort, worthy lady of beauty and universal princess of courtesy."
"Gently, my lord Don Quixote of La Mancha!" said the duke. "For where my lady Doña Dulcinea of El Toboso is, it is not reasonable that other beauties should be praised."
By this time Sancho Panza was free of the noose; and, finding himself close by, before his master could answer he said:
"It cannot be denied, but must be affirmed, that my lady Dulcinea of El Toboso is very beautiful; but where you least expect it, up jumps the hare. Because I have heard it said that this thing they call nature is like a potter who makes clay pots, and the man who makes one beautiful pot can make two, and three, and a hundred. I say it because upon my word my lady the duchess is not one step behind my mistress the lady Dulcinea of El Toboso."
Don Quixote turned to the duchess and said:
"Your greatness may imagine that no knight errant in the world ever had a more talkative or a more amusing squire than the one I have; and he will bear me out if your great loftiness cares to make use of me for a few days."
To which the duchess answered:
"That good Sancho is amusing I value highly, because it is a sign that he is judicious; for wit and drollery, Señor Don Quixote, as your worship knows very well, do not settle on dull minds. And, since good Sancho is amusing and droll, from this moment I confirm him as judicious."
"And talkative," added Don Quixote.
"So much the better," said the duke, "because a great deal of drollery cannot be said in a few words. And, so that we may not lose our time in them, let the great Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance come..."
"Of the Lions your highness should say," said Sancho, "for there is no Sorrowful Countenance now, nor any countenance at all."
"Let it be the Knight of the Lions," the duke went on. "I say let the Knight of the Lions come to a castle of mine that is nearby, where he shall be given the welcome that is justly owed to so lofty a person, and the one that the duchess and I generally give to all the knights errant who come to it."
By this time Sancho had put Rocinante's saddle to rights and girthed it properly; and, Don Quixote getting up on him and the duke on a handsome horse, they set the duchess between them and made for the castle. The duchess ordered Sancho to ride beside her, because she took infinite pleasure in hearing his judicious sayings. Sancho did not need asking twice, and wove himself in among the three of them and made a fourth in the conversation, to the great pleasure of the duchess and the duke, who counted it a great piece of luck to take into their castle so errant a knight and so errand-run a squire.
Extreme was the gladness Sancho carried about with him at seeing himself, as he thought, in the duchess's favour; because he imagined he was going to find in her castle what he had found in Don Diego's house and in Basilio's, being always fond of the good life. And so he took the chance by the forelock in this matter of treating himself well, whenever and wherever it offered.
The history relates, then, that before they reached the country house or castle, the duke rode on ahead and gave orders to all his servants about the way they were to treat Don Quixote; who, as soon as he came with the duchess to the castle gates, was met by two footmen or grooms who came out of it dressed to their feet in what they call morning gowns, of the finest crimson satin; and, catching Don Quixote up in their arms, without his being heard or seen, they said to him:
"Let your greatness go and help my lady the duchess down."
Don Quixote did so, and there were great civilities between the two of them over the business; but in the end the duchess's insistence won, and she would not come down off the palfrey except in the duke's arms, saying that she did not find herself worthy of giving so great a knight so useless a burden. Finally the duke came out to help her down; and, on going into a great courtyard, two beautiful maidens came up and threw over Don Quixote's shoulders a great cloak of the finest scarlet, and in an instant all the galleries of the courtyard were crowned with the menservants and maidservants of those nobles, calling out at the tops of their voices:
"Welcome to the flower and cream of knights errant!"
And all of them, or most, sprinkled flasks of scented waters over Don Quixote and over the duke and duchess; at all of which Don Quixote marvelled. And that was the first day when he wholly knew and believed himself to be a true knight errant and not a fanciful one, seeing himself treated in the very way he had read that such knights were treated in the ages past.
Sancho, abandoning the grey, stitched himself to the duchess and went into the castle; and, his conscience biting him for leaving the donkey alone, he went up to a reverend duenna who had come out with others to receive the duchess, and said to her in a low voice:
"Señora González, or whatever your worship's name may be..."
"I am called Doña Rodríguez de Grijalba," answered the duenna. "What is it you want, brother?"
To which Sancho answered:
"I should like your worship to do me the kindness of going out to the castle gate, where you will find a grey donkey of mine. Let your worship be so good as to order him to be put — or to put him — in the stable, because the poor little creature is a little timid, and will not be able to bear being alone on any account."
"If the master is as judicious as the man," answered the duenna, "we are in a fine way! Be off with you, brother, and much bad luck to you and to whoever brought you here, and see to your own donkey; for we duennas of this house are not accustomed to business of that kind."
"Well, truly," answered Sancho, "I have heard my master say — and he is a diviner of the histories — telling that one about Lancelot,
when he came from Britain, for ladies waited on him, and duennas on his horse;
"and as far as my donkey in particular goes, I would not swap him for Sir Lancelot's nag."
"Brother, if you are a jester," replied the duenna, "keep your drolleries for where they will look like drolleries and be paid for; for from me you will get nothing but a fig."
"Well and good," answered Sancho, "and it will be a good ripe one, since your worship will not lose the trick of her years by a single point!"
"Son of a whore," said the duenna, all fired up with choler by now, "whether I am old or not I shall account for to God and not to you, you rascal stuffed with garlic."
And she said this in such a loud voice that the duchess heard it; and, turning and seeing the duenna so upset and her eyes so bloodshot, she asked her who she was quarrelling with.
"With this good man here," answered the duenna, "who has earnestly asked me to go and put a donkey of his that is at the castle gate into the stable, bringing it up as an example that they did so I do not know where — that some ladies waited on a certain Lancelot and some duennas on his nag — and, above all, by way of good manners, he has called me old."
"That I should take as an affront," answered the duchess, "beyond anything anybody could say to me."
And, speaking to Sancho, she said:
"Note, Sancho my friend, that Doña Rodríguez is very young, and that she wears that headdress more for authority and for custom than for her years."
"May the years I have left to live be bad ones," answered Sancho, "if I said it for that. I only said it because I have such affection for my donkey that it seemed to me I could not commend him to a more charitable person than the lady Doña Rodríguez."
Don Quixote, who was hearing it all, said to him:
"Are these conversations for this place, Sancho?"
"Sir," answered Sancho, "every man must talk about his own business wherever he may be. Here I remembered the grey, and here I spoke of him; and if I had remembered him in the stable, there I should have spoken of him."
To which the duke said:
"Sancho is quite right, and there is nothing to blame him for. The grey shall be given all he could ask for, and let Sancho not worry, for he shall be treated like Sancho's own person."
With these speeches, agreeable to everybody but Don Quixote, they came up to the top of the house and brought Don Quixote into a hall hung with the richest cloths of gold and brocade. Six maidens unarmed him and served him as pages, all of them coached and instructed by the duke and duchess about what they had to do and how they had to treat Don Quixote, so that he might imagine and see that they were treating him as a knight errant.
Don Quixote, once unarmed, was left in his narrow wide breeches and his chamois doublet — dry, tall, stretched out, with his jaws kissing each other on the inside; a figure such that, if the maidens who were serving him had not taken care to hide their laughter, which was one of the strict orders their master and mistress had given them, they would have burst laughing.
They asked him to let himself be undressed for a shirt, but he would never consent, saying that decency looked as well in knights errant as valour. Still, he said they should give the shirt to Sancho; and, shutting himself up with him in a chamber where there was a rich bed, he undressed and put on the shirt. And, finding himself alone with Sancho, he said to him:
"Tell me, you modern clown and ancient blockhead: does it seem to you a good thing to dishonour and affront a duenna as venerable and as worthy of respect as that one? Were those times to be remembering the grey, or are these nobles the sort to let the beasts go badly when they treat their owners so handsomely? For God's sake, Sancho, restrain yourself, and do not show the coarse thread in such a way that they tumble to it that you are woven of villainous and common cloth.
"Look, you sinner, that a lord is held in higher esteem the more honourable and well-born servants he has; and that one of the greatest advantages princes have over other men is that they are served by servants as good as themselves. Do you not see, distressed man that you are and unlucky man that I am, that if they see you are a coarse peasant or a droll idiot, they will think that I am some charlatan or some sham knight? No, no, Sancho my friend, run, run from these dangers; for the man who trips into being a talker and a wit falls at the first kick and comes down a wretched buffoon.
"Bridle your tongue, consider and chew over your words before they come out of your mouth, and note that we have arrived at a place where, with God's favour and the valour of my arm, we must come out bettered by a third and a fifth in fame and in fortune."
Sancho promised him very earnestly that he would sew up his mouth, or bite his tongue, before speaking a word that was not very much to the point and well considered, as his master ordered him; and that he should not worry about it, for it would never be through him that anybody found out who they were.
Don Quixote dressed, put on his baldric with his sword, threw the scarlet cloak over his shoulders, put on a cap of green satin the maidens gave him, and with this adornment went out into the great hall, where he found the maidens drawn up in a line, as many on one side as on the other, and all of them with the wherewithal to give him water for his hands, which they did with a great many bows and ceremonies.
Then came twelve pages with the steward to take him in to dinner, for the duke and duchess were already waiting for him. They took him into their midst and, full of pomp and majesty, led him to another hall, where a rich table was laid with only four covers. The duchess and the duke came out to the door of the hall to receive him, and with them a grave churchman, one of those who govern the houses of princes; one of those who, not being born princes, never manage to teach those who are how they ought to be so; one of those who want the greatness of the great to be measured by the narrowness of their own minds; one of those who, meaning to teach those they govern to be moderate, make them mean. Of such as these, I say, must have been the grave churchman who came out with the duke and duchess to receive Don Quixote.
A thousand courteous civilities were exchanged, and, finally, taking Don Quixote into their midst, they went and sat down at the table.
The duke invited Don Quixote to take the head of the table; and although he refused it, the duke's importunities were so many that he had to take it. The churchman sat opposite him, and the duke and the duchess on the two sides.
Sancho was present at all of it, gaping and astonished at seeing the honour those princes were paying his master; and, seeing the many ceremonies and entreaties that passed between the duke and Don Quixote to make him sit at the head of the table, he said:
"If your worships give me leave, I shall tell you a story that happened in my village about this business of seats."
Hardly had Sancho said this when Don Quixote trembled, believing beyond any doubt that he was going to say some foolish thing. Sancho looked at him and understood him, and said:
"Do not be afraid, my dear sir, that I shall let myself go, or that I shall say anything that does not come very much to the point; for I have not forgotten the advice your worship gave me a little while ago about talking much or little, or well or badly."
"I do not remember any of it, Sancho," answered Don Quixote. "Say what you like, so long as you say it quickly."
"Well, what I want to say," said Sancho, "is so true that my master Don Quixote here present will not let me lie."
"For my part," replied Don Quixote, "lie as much as you like, Sancho, for I shall not stop you; but look to what you are going to say."
"I have looked and looked at it again so much that the man who rings the alarm is safe enough, as will be seen by the deed."
"It would be as well," said Don Quixote, "if your greatnesses ordered this fool thrown out of here, for he will say a thousand pieces of nonsense."
"By the duke's life," said the duchess, "Sancho shall not leave my side a moment. I am very fond of him, because I know he is very judicious."
"Judicious days may your holiness live," said Sancho, "for the good opinion you have of me, even if there is nothing of it in me. And the story I want to tell is this. A gentleman of my village, very rich and of good family — because he came of the Álamos of Medina del Campo, and married Doña Mencía de Quiñones, who was the daughter of Don Alonso de Marañón, a knight of the Order of Santiago, who was drowned at the Herradura, over whom there was that quarrel in our village years ago in which, as I understand it, my master Don Quixote took a part, and out of which Tomasillo the Rascal, the son of Balbastro the blacksmith, came out wounded... Is not all this true, sir our master? Say so, on your life, so that these gentlefolk may not take me for some lying chatterer."
"So far," said the churchman, "I take you more for a chatterer than a liar; but from now on I do not know what I shall take you for."
"You give so many witnesses, Sancho, and so many particulars, that I cannot help saying that you must be telling the truth. Get on, and shorten the story, for you are on the road not to finish in two days."
"He shall not shorten it at all," said the duchess, "if he means to please me; on the contrary, he shall tell it in the way he knows how, even if he does not finish it in six days — and if they were so many, they would be for me the best days I ever spent in my life."
"I say, then, my dear sirs," Sancho went on, "that this same gentleman, whom I know like my own hands, because it is not a crossbow-shot from my house to his, invited a farmer, poor but honourable —"
"Get on, brother," said the churchman at this point, "for you are on the road not to stop with your story before the next world."
"I shall stop short of halfway, if God is pleased," answered Sancho. "And so I say that, this same farmer coming to the house of the said gentleman who had invited him — God rest his soul, for he is dead now, and for a further sign they say he died the death of an angel, though I was not there myself, having gone off at that time to reap at Tembleque —"
"On your life, my son, come back quickly from Tembleque, and, without burying the gentleman, unless you want to hold any more funerals, finish your story."
"The fact is, then," replied Sancho, "that as the two of them were about to sit down at table — and I seem to see them now more than ever —"
The duke and duchess were taking great pleasure in the displeasure the good churchman was showing at the delays and pauses with which Sancho was telling his story, and Don Quixote was eating himself up with choler and rage.
"I say, then," said Sancho, "that, the two of them being, as I have said, about to sit down at table, the farmer kept insisting that the gentleman should take the head of the table, and the gentleman kept insisting too that the farmer should take it, because in his house what he ordered was to be done. But the farmer, who prided himself on being courteous and well brought up, would never do it, until the gentleman, vexed, put both hands on his shoulders and made him sit down by force, saying to him: 'Sit down, you blockhead, for wherever I sit will be the head of the table for you.' And that is the story, and truly I believe it has not been brought in here beside the point."
Don Quixote turned a thousand colours, which marbled his brown skin and showed through it. The duke and duchess hid their laughter, so that Don Quixote should not be utterly put out of countenance, having understood Sancho's malice; and, to change the conversation and stop Sancho going on with other absurdities, the duchess asked Don Quixote what news he had of the lady Dulcinea, and whether he had sent her any presents of giants or villains in the last few days, since he could not have failed to conquer a great many. To which Don Quixote answered:
"My lady, my misfortunes, though they had a beginning, will never have an end. Giants I have conquered, and poltroons and villains I have sent her; but where were they to find her, if she is enchanted and turned into the ugliest peasant girl that can be imagined?"
"I do not know," said Sancho Panza. "To me she seems the most beautiful creature in the world; at least in nimbleness and in jumping I know well enough that she would not give a tumbler any odds. Upon my word, my lady duchess, she leaps from the ground onto a she-ass as if she were a cat."
"Have you seen her enchanted, Sancho?" asked the duke.
"Have I seen her!" answered Sancho. "Why, who the devil but me was the first to hit on the business of the enchantment? She is about as enchanted as my father is!"
The churchman, who heard talk of giants, poltroons and enchantments, tumbled to it that this must be Don Quixote of La Mancha, whose history the duke read regularly, and which he had rebuked him for many times, telling him that it was an absurdity to read such absurdities. And, making certain that what he suspected was true, with great choler he said to the duke:
"Your Excellency, my lord, will have to give an account to Our Lord of what this good man does. This Don Quixote, or Don Fool, or whatever he is called, I imagine cannot be as much of an idiot as Your Excellency wants him to be, when you put chances into his hand so that he may carry his nonsense and emptiness further."
And, turning the conversation to Don Quixote, he said to him:
"And you, soul of a pitcher, who has jammed it into your brain that you are a knight errant and that you conquer giants and take villains prisoner? Be off with you, and much good may it do you: go back home, and bring up your children if you have any, and see to your property, and leave off wandering about the world gaping at the wind and giving everybody who knows you and does not know you something to laugh at. Where in the world have you found that there ever were, or are now, knights errant? Where are there giants in Spain, or villains in La Mancha, or enchanted Dulcineas, or all the herd of simplicities that are told about you?"
Don Quixote listened attentively to the arguments of that venerable man; and, seeing that he had fallen silent, with no respect for the duke and duchess, with an angry expression and a face in an uproar, he got to his feet and said...
But this answer deserves a chapter to itself.
Don Quixote, then, being on his feet and trembling from head to foot like a man dosed with quicksilver, said in a hurried and troubled voice:
"The place where I am, and the presence I find myself in, and the respect I have always had and still have for the calling your worship professes, hold and tie the hands of my just anger. And so, both for what I have said and because everybody knows that the weapons of gowned men are the same as women's, which are the tongue, I shall enter with mine into an equal battle with your worship — from whom good advice was rather to be expected than shameful abuse.
"Holy and well-meaning reproofs call for other circumstances and require other conditions. At the very least, having reproved me in public and so harshly has gone past all the limits of good reproof, since the first sort settle better on gentleness than on harshness; and it is not right, without having any knowledge of the sin one is reproving, to call the sinner an idiot and a fool without any more ado.
"If not, tell me, your worship: for which of the idiocies you have seen in me do you condemn and abuse me, and order me to go home and see to the government of my house and my wife and my children, without knowing whether I have any? Is there nothing more to it than to walk helter-skelter into other people's houses and govern their owners — and, some of you having been brought up in the narrowness of some boarding school, without having seen more of the world than can be contained in twenty or thirty leagues of territory, to burst in and lay down laws for chivalry and pass judgement on knights errant?
"Is it by any chance a vain undertaking, or time badly spent, that is spent wandering about the world, not looking for its comforts but for the rough places by which the good climb to the seat of immortality? If knights held me for a fool, or the magnificent, or the generous, or the highly born, I should count it an irreparable affront; but that students who never entered or set foot on the paths of chivalry should hold me for a simpleton, I do not care a farthing. A knight I am and a knight I shall die, if it please the Almighty.
"Some go by the broad field of proud ambition; others by that of servile and base flattery; others by that of deceitful hypocrisy; and some by that of true religion. But I, inclined by my star, go by the narrow path of knight-errantry, for the exercise of which I despise property but not honour. I have made satisfaction for wrongs, righted injustices, punished insolences, conquered giants and trampled monsters. I am in love, only because it is necessary that knights errant should be; and, being so, I am not one of the vicious lovers but of the continent Platonic ones. My intentions I always direct to good ends, which are to do good to everybody and harm to nobody. Whether the man who understands this, who does this, who deals in this deserves to be called a dolt, let your greatnesses say — excellent duke and duchess."
"Well said, by God!" said Sancho. "Do not say another word in your own defence, my lord and master, because there is nothing more to say, or to think, or to keep on with in the world. And besides, when this gentleman denies, as he has denied, that there have been any knights errant in the world or that there are any now, what wonder is it that he knows nothing of the things he has been talking about?"
"By any chance," said the churchman, "are you, brother, that Sancho Panza they speak of, to whom your master has promised an isle?"
"I am," answered Sancho, "and I am one who deserves it as well as anybody else. I am one of those who say 'keep company with the good and you will be one of them', and I am one of those 'not who you are born with, but who you graze with', and one of those 'he who leans against a good tree is covered by a good shade'. I have leaned against a good master, and I have been many months in his company, and I mean to be another like him, God willing; and long life to him and long life to me — for he will not run short of empires to command, nor I of isles to govern."
"No, certainly not, Sancho my friend," said the duke at this point. "For I, in Señor Don Quixote's name, grant you the government of one I have going spare, and of no small quality."
"Down on your knees, Sancho," said Don Quixote, "and kiss His Excellency's feet for the favour he has done you."
Sancho did so; which the churchman seeing, he got up from the table extremely vexed, saying:
"By the habit I wear, I am half inclined to say that Your Excellency is as much of a simpleton as these sinners are. Look whether they are not bound to be mad, when the sane canonise their madnesses! Your Excellency may stay with them; for as long as they are in the house, I shall be in mine, and shall excuse myself from reproving what I cannot remedy."
And, without saying any more or eating any more, he went off, without the duke and duchess's entreaties being able to stop him — although the duke did not say much to him, prevented by the laughter his impertinent choler had caused him. He finished laughing and said to Don Quixote:
"Your worship, Sir Knight of the Lions, has answered so loftily for yourself that there is nothing left for you to make good over this business, which, though it looks like a wrong, is no wrong at all; because, just as women cannot inflict a wrong, neither can churchmen, as your worship knows better than I."
"That is so," answered Don Quixote, "and the reason is that the man who cannot be wronged cannot wrong anybody. Women, children and churchmen, since they cannot defend themselves, cannot be affronted even though they are offended; because between a wrong and an affront there is this difference, as Your Excellency knows better: the affront comes from a party who can inflict it, and does inflict it, and stands by it; the wrong can come from any quarter without affronting.
"Take an example. A man is in the street, off his guard; ten come up with armed hands and, beating him with sticks, he lays hand to his sword and does his duty, but the multitude of his opponents stands against him and does not let him carry out his intention, which is to avenge himself. This man is left wronged but not affronted. And another example will confirm the same thing. A man is standing with his back turned; another comes up and beats him with a stick, and, having beaten him, runs off and does not wait, and the first follows and does not catch him. The man who took the blows received a wrong but not an affront, because the affront must be stood by. If the man who gave him the blows, though he gave them by a treacherous stroke, had laid hand to his sword and stood his ground, facing his enemy, then the beaten man would be left wronged and affronted at the same time: wronged, because he was struck by treachery; affronted, because the man who struck him stood by what he had done, without turning his back and standing his ground.
"And so, according to the laws of that accursed duelling, I may be wronged but not affronted; because children have no feeling in the matter, nor women, and they cannot run away, and they have no call to stand their ground — and the same holds of those set apart in holy religion, because these three kinds of people lack offensive and defensive weapons; and so, although they are naturally obliged to defend themselves, they are not obliged to offend anybody. And although a little while ago I said I might be wronged, I now say that I may not, on any account; because the man who cannot receive an affront can still less give one.
"For which reasons I ought not to feel, and do not feel, the things that good man has said to me. I only wish he had waited a little, so that I could have given him to understand the error he is in, in thinking and saying that there have never been and are not now any knights errant in the world; for if Amadís had heard such a thing, or one of the infinite number of his line, I know it would not have gone well with his worship."
"That I would swear to," said Sancho: "they would have given him such a slash as would have split him from top to bottom like a pomegranate, or like a very ripe melon. They were fine ones for putting up with ticklings of that sort! Upon my blessed self, I hold it for certain that if Reinaldos de Montalbán had heard those arguments from the little man, he would have given him such a smack across the mouth that he would not have spoken for three years. No, let him just take them on and see how he got out of their hands!"
The duchess was dying of laughter at hearing Sancho talk, and in her opinion she held him for more amusing and more mad than his master; and there were many in that time who were of this same opinion.
Finally Don Quixote quieted down, and the dinner came to an end; and, as the cloth was taken away, four maidens came in, one with a silver basin, another with a silver ewer, another with two of the whitest and richest towels over her shoulder, and the fourth with her arms bared to the elbow and in her white hands — which were undoubtedly white — a round ball of Naples soap.
The one with the basin came up, and with a fine grace and ease fitted the basin under Don Quixote's beard; and he, without saying a word, astonished at such a ceremony, believing that it must be the custom of that country to wash the beard instead of the hands, stretched his out as far as he could. And at the same moment the ewer began to rain, and the maiden with the soap worked his beard over in great haste, raising flakes of snow — for the soapsuds were no less white — not only on the beard but all over the face and the eyes of the obedient knight, so much so that they made him shut them by force.
The duke and the duchess, who knew nothing about any of this, were waiting to see where such an extraordinary washing was going to end. The barber maiden, when she had him a hand's breadth deep in lather, pretended that the water had run out and ordered the one with the ewer to go and fetch some, saying that Señor Don Quixote would wait. She did so, and Don Quixote was left the strangest figure, and the most calculated to raise laughter, that could be imagined.
Everybody present was looking at him, and there were a good many of them; and, seeing him with half a yard of neck, more than moderately brown, his eyes shut and his beard full of soap, it was a great marvel and a great piece of discretion that they could hide their laughter. The maidens who were playing the trick kept their eyes lowered, not daring to look at their master and mistress, in whose bodies choler and laughter were tumbling over each other, so that they did not know which to attend to: punishing the girls' boldness or rewarding them for the pleasure they were getting from seeing Don Quixote in that state.
Finally the maiden with the ewer came, and they finished washing Don Quixote; and then the one who had the towels wiped him and dried him very deliberately, and, all four making him a great and deep bow and curtsey together, they were about to go. But the duke, so that Don Quixote should not tumble to the joke, called the maiden with the basin, saying to her:
"Come and wash me, and mind that the water does not run out on you."
The girl, sharp and quick, came and set the basin on the duke as on Don Quixote, and, hurrying, they washed him and soaped him very well; and, leaving him dried and clean, they went off with curtseys. Afterwards it was learnt that the duke had sworn that if they had not washed him as they washed Don Quixote, he would have punished their impudence — which they had judiciously put right by soaping him too.
Sancho was watching the ceremonies of that washing attentively, and he said to himself:
"God bless me! Can it be the custom in this country to wash squires' beards as well as knights'? Because in God and in my soul I have great need of it, and even if they shaved mine off with a razor I should count it a further kindness."
"What are you saying to yourself, Sancho?" asked the duchess.
"I say, my lady," he answered, "that in the courts of other princes I have always heard it said that when the cloth is taken away they give water for the hands, but not lye for the beard; and that this is why it is good to live a long time, so as to see a great deal. Although they also say that the man who lives a long life has to go through a great deal of trouble — although going through a washing of this kind is more of a pleasure than a labour."
"Do not be uneasy, Sancho my friend," said the duchess, "for I shall have my maidens wash you, and even put you in the wash-tub if need be."
"With the beard I shall be content," answered Sancho, "for now at least; for as time goes on, God has said what will be."
"See, steward," said the duchess, "to what good Sancho asks, and carry out his wishes to the letter."
The steward answered that Señor Sancho should be served in everything, and with that he went off to his dinner and took Sancho with him, leaving the duke and duchess and Don Quixote at the table talking about many different things, but all of them touching on the exercise of arms and of knight-errantry.
The duchess begged Don Quixote to sketch out and describe for her — since he seemed to have a happy memory — the beauty and the features of the lady Dulcinea of El Toboso; for, from what fame proclaimed about her beauty, she took it for understood that she must be the loveliest creature on the globe, and even in all La Mancha. Don Quixote sighed at hearing what the duchess asked of him, and said:
"If I could take out my heart and set it before your greatness's eyes, here on this table and on a plate, it would save my tongue the labour of saying what can hardly be thought — because Your Excellency would see her in it, painted entire. But what is the use of my setting myself now to sketch and describe point by point and part by part the beauty of the peerless Dulcinea, when it is a load worthy of other shoulders than mine, an enterprise on which the brushes of Parrhasius, Timanthes and Apelles ought to be employed, and the chisels of Lysippus, to paint her and grave her on panels, on marble and on bronze, and Ciceronian and Demosthenic rhetoric to praise her?"
"What does Demosthenic mean, Señor Don Quixote?" asked the duchess. "For it is a word I have never heard in all the days of my life."
"Demosthenic rhetoric," answered Don Quixote, "is the same as saying the rhetoric of Demosthenes, as Ciceronian is that of Cicero — who were the two greatest rhetoricians in the world."
"That is so," said the duke, "and you have been caught out in asking such a question. But for all that, Señor Don Quixote would give us great pleasure if he would paint her for us; for it is a safe bet that even in a rough sketch and outline she would come out such that the most beautiful women would envy her."
"I would do it, certainly," answered Don Quixote, "if the misfortune that happened to her a little while ago had not rubbed her out of my mind — a misfortune such that I am more in a state to weep over it than to describe it. Because your greatnesses must know that, going a few days ago to kiss her hands and to receive her blessing, her good pleasure and her leave for this third sally, I found a different woman from the one I was looking for. I found her enchanted and turned from a princess into a peasant, from beautiful into ugly, from an angel into a devil, from fragrant into stinking, from well-spoken into rustic, from composed into a leaper, from light into darkness and, finally, from Dulcinea of El Toboso into a country wench from Sayago."
"God bless me!" said the duke at this instant, letting out a great shout. "Who has been the man who has done the world so much harm? Who has taken from it the beauty that gladdened it, the grace that entertained it and the decency that did it credit?"
"Who?" answered Don Quixote. "Who can it be but some malignant enchanter, of the many envious ones who persecute me? That accursed race, born into the world to darken and annihilate the exploits of the good and to give light and raise up the doings of the wicked. Enchanters have persecuted me, enchanters persecute me and enchanters will persecute me until they have thrown me and my high chivalries into the deep abyss of oblivion; and they hurt me and wound me in the place where they see I feel it most, because to take away a knight errant's lady is to take away the eyes he sees with, and the sun that gives him light, and the food that keeps him alive. Many other times I have said it, and now I say it again: that a knight errant without a lady is like a tree without leaves, a building without foundations and a shadow without a body to cast it."
"There is no more to be said," said the duchess. "But if, for all that, we are to give credit to the history of Señor Don Quixote that has come out into the light of the world a few days since, with the general applause of the people, it is gathered from it — if I remember rightly — that your worship has never seen the lady Dulcinea, and that this lady does not exist in the world but is a fanciful lady whom your worship engendered and gave birth to in your understanding, and painted with all the graces and perfections you pleased."
"There is a great deal to say about that," answered Don Quixote. "God knows whether there is a Dulcinea in the world or not, or whether she is fanciful or not fanciful; and these are not the kind of things whose investigation is to be carried to the end. I neither engendered nor gave birth to my lady, although I contemplate her as a lady ought to be who contains in herself the qualities that can make her famous in all the parts of the world: beautiful without a blemish, grave without pride, loving with decency, grateful because courteous, courteous because well brought up, and, finally, high by lineage — since on good blood beauty shines out and shows itself with more degrees of perfection than in beautiful women humbly born."
"That is so," said the duke; "but Señor Don Quixote must give me leave to say what the history of his exploits that I have read forces me to say — from which it is inferred that, granting there is a Dulcinea, in El Toboso or out of it, and that she is beautiful in the highest degree in which your worship paints her for us, in the matter of the height of her lineage she does not run level with the Orianas, the Alastrajareas, the Madásimas or others of that stamp, of whom the histories are full that your worship knows so well."
"To that I can say," answered Don Quixote, "that Dulcinea is the daughter of her own works, and that virtues improve the blood, and that a humble man who is virtuous is to be esteemed and held higher than a vicious man who has been raised up. And what is more, Dulcinea has a strip of quality about her that can carry her to being a queen with a crown and a sceptre; for the merit of a beautiful and virtuous woman stretches to working greater miracles, and, though not formally, still virtually she has greater fortunes shut up inside her."
"I say, Señor Don Quixote," said the duchess, "that in everything your worship says you go with a leaden foot and, as the saying is, with the sounding line in your hand; and that from now on I shall believe, and make everybody in my house believe — and even the duke my lord, if it should be necessary — that there is a Dulcinea in El Toboso, and that she is alive today, and beautiful, and nobly born, and worthy that such a knight as Señor Don Quixote should serve her, which is the most I can say or know how to say.
"But I cannot help forming one scruple, and having a certain I-do-not-know-what of a grudge against Sancho Panza. The scruple is that the history I mentioned says that this Sancho Panza found this lady Dulcinea, when he carried her a letter on your worship's behalf, winnowing a sack of wheat — and, for a further sign, it says it was red wheat: a thing that makes me doubt the height of her lineage."
To which Don Quixote answered:
"My lady, your greatness must know that all or most of the things that happen to me go outside the ordinary bounds of the things that happen to other knights errant, whether they are directed by the inscrutable will of the fates or whether they come directed by the malice of some envious enchanter. And since it is by now an established thing that all or most famous knights errant have some grace or other — one the grace of not being able to be enchanted, another that of having flesh so impenetrable that he cannot be wounded, as the famous Roland was, one of the Twelve Peers of France, of whom it is told that he could not be wounded except through the sole of his left foot, and that this had to be with the point of a stout pin and with no other kind of weapon at all; so that when Bernardo del Carpio killed him at Roncesvalles, seeing that he could not gash him with iron, he lifted him off the ground in his arms and strangled him, remembering then the death Hercules gave to Antaeus, that fierce giant who they said was the son of Earth.
"I want to infer from all this that I might have some grace of the kind — not that of not being able to be wounded, because experience has shown me many times that I am of soft flesh and not at all impenetrable, nor that of not being able to be enchanted, since I have already seen myself shut in a cage, into which all the world would not have had the power to shut me if it had not been by the force of enchantments. But since I got free of that one, I want to believe that there will be no other that can hurt me. And so, these enchanters, seeing that they cannot use their evil arts on my person, take their revenge on the things I love most, and want to take away my life by ill-treating Dulcinea's, by whom I live.
"And so I believe that when my squire carried her my embassy, they turned her into a country wench busy at so low an occupation as winnowing wheat. But I have already said that that wheat was neither red nor wheat, but grains of oriental pearl. And as proof of this truth I want to tell your magnitudes how, coming through El Toboso a little while ago, I could never find Dulcinea's palaces; and how the next day, Sancho my squire having seen her in her own shape, which is the loveliest on the globe, she seemed to me a coarse, ugly country girl, and not at all well-spoken, when she is the very discretion of the world. And since I am not enchanted, and cannot be, by any sound reasoning, it is she who is the enchanted one, the injured one, the changed and swapped and turned-about one; and in her my enemies have taken their revenge on me, and for her I shall live in perpetual tears until I see her in her first state.
"All this I have said so that nobody should stick at what Sancho said about Dulcinea's sifting or winnowing; for since they changed her for me, it is no wonder that they swapped her for him. Dulcinea is of good family and well born, and of the gentle lineages there are in El Toboso — which are many, ancient and very good — it is a safe bet that no small part belongs to the peerless Dulcinea, through whom her place will be famous and named in the ages to come, as Troy has been through Helen and Spain through la Cava, though with a better title and a better fame.
"On the other hand, I want your ladyships to understand that Sancho Panza is one of the most amusing squires who ever served a knight errant. Sometimes he has simplicities so sharp that the wondering whether he is simple or sharp gives no small pleasure. He has malices that condemn him for a rogue, and carelessnesses that confirm him for a dolt. He doubts everything and believes everything; when I think he is about to throw himself over the cliff of foolishness, he comes out with judgements that lift him to the sky. In short, I would not swap him for any other squire, even if they gave me a city into the bargain; and so I am in doubt whether it will be a good thing to send him to the government your greatness has favoured him with — although I see in him a certain aptitude for this business of governing, so that with his understanding trimmed up a little he would carry off any government as the king carries off his taxes.
"And what is more, we already know by many experiences that a man needs neither much ability nor much learning to be a governor, since there are a hundred about who can hardly read and who govern like gerfalcons. The touchstone is that they should have good intentions and want to get everything right; for they will never lack somebody to advise them and set them on the road in what they have to do — like those governors who are knights and not lawyers, and give judgement with an assessor. I would advise him to take no bribe and lose no right, and other little things I still have in my stomach, which will come out in their own time for Sancho's use and the profit of the isle he governs."
The duke, the duchess and Don Quixote had reached this point in their conversation when they heard a great many voices and a great noise of people in the palace; and all at once Sancho came into the hall in a great fright, with a lye-cloth for a bib, and behind him a great many lads — or, better said, kitchen scullions and other small fry — and one came with a little trough of water which by its colour and its lack of cleanness showed itself to be washing-up water. The one with the trough was following him and chasing him, and was doing his best to get it into place and fit it under his beard, while another scullion made as if he wanted to wash it.
"What is this, brothers?" asked the duchess. "What is this? What do you want with this good man? How is it you do not consider that he is a governor elect?"
To which the scullion barber answered:
"This gentleman will not let himself be washed, as the custom is, and as the duke my lord was washed and his master the gentleman."
"I will indeed," answered Sancho with a great deal of choler, "but I should like it to be with cleaner towels, with clearer lye and with hands not so dirty. There is not so much difference between me and my master that they should wash him with angels' water and me with devils' lye. The customs of countries and of princes' palaces are good just so far as they do not cause distress; but the custom of washing that is used here is worse than a flogging by penitents. I am clean about the beard and have no need of refreshments of that kind; and whoever comes to wash me, or to touch a hair of my head — I mean of my beard, speaking with all due respect — I shall give him such a punch that I shall leave my fist set in his skull; for these ceremonies and soapings look more like tricks than the entertaining of guests."
The duchess was dying of laughter, seeing Sancho's choler and hearing his arguments; but it did not give Don Quixote much pleasure to see him so badly got up with the marbled towel and so surrounded by so many kitchen entertainers. And so, making the duke and duchess a deep bow, as though asking their leave to speak, in a composed voice he said to the rabble:
"Here, gentlemen knights! Let your worships leave the young man alone and go back the way you came, or by some other way if you feel like it; for my squire is as clean as anybody else, and those little troughs are cramping little pots for him. Take my advice and leave him, because neither he nor I know anything about the business of jokes."
Sancho took the words out of his mouth and went on, saying:
"No, let them just come and make fun of the stray — I shall put up with it about as well as it is now night! Bring a comb here, or whatever they like, and curry-comb this beard of mine; and if they get anything out of it that offends cleanliness, let them shear me in crosses."
At this point, without leaving off laughing, the duchess said:
"Sancho Panza is right in everything he has said, and he will be right in everything he says. He is clean, and, as he says, he has no need to wash; and if our custom does not please him, his soul is in his own palm. And besides, you ministers of cleanliness have been excessively slack and careless — and I do not know whether to say impudent — in bringing to such a personage and to such a beard, instead of basins and ewers of pure gold and towels of German linen, little troughs and wooden bowls and sideboard dishcloths. But in short, you are bad men and badly born, and you cannot help, villains that you are, showing the grudge you bear the squires of knights errant."
The rascally ministers, and even the steward who had come with them, believed that the duchess was speaking in earnest; and so they took the lye-cloth off Sancho's chest, and all of them, confused and almost put out of countenance, went off and left him. And he, seeing himself out of what to his mind was an extreme danger, went and knelt down before the duchess and said:
"From great ladies, great favours are to be expected; this one that your worship has done me today cannot be paid for with less than wishing to see myself dubbed a knight errant, so as to spend all the days of my life in serving so lofty a lady. A labourer I am, Sancho Panza is my name, married I am, children I have and as a squire I serve. If with any of these things I can serve your greatness, I shall be quicker to obey than your ladyship to command."
"It is plain enough, Sancho," answered the duchess, "that you have learnt to be courteous in the school of courtesy itself; it is plain enough, I mean, that you have been brought up at the breast of Señor Don Quixote, who must be the cream of civilities and the flower of ceremonies — or cirrymonies, as you say. Blessings on such a master and such a servant: the one for the pole star of knight-errantry and the other for the star of squirely faithfulness. Get up, Sancho my friend, for I shall repay your courtesies by making the duke my lord fulfil, as soon as he can, the promised favour of the government."
With this the conversation stopped, and Don Quixote went off to take his siesta; and the duchess asked Sancho that if he was not very anxious to sleep, he should come and spend the afternoon with her and her maidens in a very cool room. Sancho answered that although it was true that he was in the habit of sleeping four or five hours during the summer siestas, still, to serve her goodness, he would try with all his strength not to sleep at all that day, and would come obediently at her order; and off he went. The duke gave fresh orders that Don Quixote should be treated as a knight errant, without departing a point from the manner in which they tell that the knights of old were treated.
The history relates, then, that Sancho did not sleep that siesta, but, to keep his word, came as soon as he had eaten to see the duchess; who, with the pleasure she took in hearing him, made him sit down next to her on a low chair — although Sancho, out of pure good breeding, did not want to sit. But the duchess told him to sit as a governor and talk as a squire, since for both things together he deserved the very bench of the Cid Ruy Díaz the Champion.
Sancho shrugged his shoulders, obeyed and sat down; and all the duchess's maidens and duennas gathered round her, attentive and in the deepest silence to hear what he would say. But the duchess was the one who spoke first, saying:
"Now that we are alone and nobody is listening to us here, I should like the lord governor to resolve certain doubts I have, born of the history of the great Don Quixote that is already in print. One of these doubts is that, since good Sancho never saw Dulcinea — I mean the lady Dulcinea of El Toboso — and never took her Señor Don Quixote's letter, because it was left behind in the notebook in the Sierra Morena, how did he dare to invent the answer, and all that about finding her winnowing wheat, when the whole thing was a trick and a lie, and so much to the damage of the good name of the peerless Dulcinea, and all of it so ill-suited to the quality and faithfulness of good squires?"
At these words, without answering any of them, Sancho got up out of his chair and, with quiet steps, his body bent over and his finger on his lips, went all round the room lifting the hangings; and then, this done, he sat down again and said:
"Now, my lady, that I have seen that nobody is listening to us on the sly, apart from the people present, I shall answer without fear or start what I have been asked and everything else I may be asked. And the first thing I say is that I hold my master Don Quixote for a downright madman — although sometimes he says things that, to my mind and to the minds of all who hear him, are so judicious and so well set on the right track that Satan himself could not say them better. But for all that, truly and without any scruple, it has settled in me that he is an idiot. And since I have this in my noddle, I make bold to make him believe things with neither head nor feet to them, like that business of the answer to the letter, and the business of six or eight days ago, which is not in the history yet: that is to say, the enchantment of my lady Doña Dulcinea, whom I have given him to understand is enchanted, when it is no more true than the hills of Úbeda."
The duchess begged him to tell her about that enchantment or trick, and Sancho told it to her all just as it had happened, at which the listeners took no small pleasure. And, going on with her talk, the duchess said:
"From what good Sancho has told me, a scruple goes leaping about in my soul, and a certain whisper comes to my ears saying: 'Since Don Quixote of La Mancha is mad, wanting and an idiot, and Sancho Panza his squire knows it, and for all that serves him and follows him and goes along relying on his empty promises, then without any doubt he must be madder and more foolish than his master. And this being so, as it is, it will be counted against you, my lady duchess, if you give this Sancho Panza an isle to govern; for the man who does not know how to govern himself, how will he know how to govern others?'"
"By God, my lady," said Sancho, "that scruple comes straight to the birth. But tell it, your worship, to speak plainly, or however it likes, for I know it is telling the truth: if I were judicious, I should have left my master days ago. But this was my luck and this my ill fortune; I can do no more, I have to follow him. We are from the same place, I have eaten his bread, I am fond of him, he is grateful, he gave me his ass-colts and, above all, I am faithful; and so it is impossible for anything to part us except the spade and the mattock.
"And if your high-flyingness does not want the promised government given to me, God made me out of less, and it might be that not giving it me would redound to the good of my conscience; for though I am a fool, I understand that proverb 'the ant grew wings to her own harm'. And it might even be that Sancho the squire would get to heaven quicker than Sancho the governor. They bake as good bread here as in France; and at night all cats are grey; and wretched enough is the man who has not breakfasted by two in the afternoon; and there is no stomach a hand's breadth bigger than another, and it can be filled, as they say, with straw and hay; and the little birds of the field have God for their provider and steward; and four yards of Cuenca cloth keep you warmer than another four of fine Segovia stuff; and when we leave this world and go down into the earth, the prince travels by as narrow a path as the day-labourer, and the Pope's body takes up no more feet of ground than the sexton's, even if the one is taller than the other; because when we go into the hole we all fit ourselves in and shrink, or they make us fit and shrink, however little we like it — and good night to us.
"And I say again that if your ladyship will not give me the isle because I am a fool, I shall know how to not care a bit about it because I am judicious. And I have heard it said that behind the cross stands the devil, and that all is not gold that glitters, and that from among the oxen and the ploughs and the yokes they took the ploughman Wamba to be king of Spain, and from among the brocades and the pastimes and the riches they took Rodrigo to be eaten by snakes — if the verses of the old ballads are not lying."
"And of course they are not lying!" said Doña Rodríguez the duenna at this point, who was one of the listeners. "For there is a ballad that says they put King Rodrigo alive, alive, into a tomb full of toads, snakes and lizards, and that two days later the king said from inside the tomb, in a pained and low voice:
Now they are eating me, now they are eating me there where I had most sinned;
"and, going by that, this gentleman is quite right to say that he would rather be a ploughman than a king, if he is to be eaten by vermin."
The duchess could not hold her laughter at hearing her duenna's simplicity, nor did she stop marvelling at hearing Sancho's arguments and proverbs, and she said to him:
"Good Sancho knows already that whatever a knight once promises he tries to carry out, even if it costs him his life. The duke, my lord and husband, although he is not one of the errant sort, is a knight none the less for that; and so he will keep his word about the promised isle, in spite of the envy and the malice of the world. Let Sancho be of good heart, for when he least expects it he will find himself sitting in the chair of his isle and of his estate, and taking his government in hand, and he shall throw it over for another of three-pile brocade. What I charge him with is to look how he governs his vassals, noting that they are all loyal and well born."
"As for governing them well," answered Sancho, "there is no need to charge me with that, because I am charitable by nature and have compassion for the poor; and don't steal a loaf from the man who bakes and kneads; and by my blessed self they shall not load the dice on me. I am an old dog and understand every 'here, boy'; and I know how to wake myself up at the right times, and I do not let cobwebs get in front of my eyes, because I know where the shoe pinches me. I say it because the good will find a hand and a hold with me, and the bad neither foot nor entrance. And it seems to me that in this business of governments it is all a matter of beginning, and it might be that after a fortnight of being a governor I should be licking my fingers after the office and know more about it than about working in the fields, where I was brought up."
"You are right, Sancho," said the duchess, "for nobody is born taught, and bishops are made out of men and not out of stones. But, coming back to the talk we were having a little while ago about the enchantment of the lady Dulcinea, I hold it for a certain and more than established thing that the notion Sancho had of playing a trick on his master and giving him to understand that the country girl was Dulcinea — and that if his master did not recognise her it must be because she was enchanted — was all the invention of one of the enchanters who persecute Señor Don Quixote. Because really and truly I know from a good source that the country wench who leapt up onto the she-ass was and is Dulcinea of El Toboso, and that good Sancho, thinking he was the deceiver, is the deceived; and there is no more doubting this truth than there is about things we never saw.
"And let Señor Sancho Panza know that we have enchanters here too who are fond of us and tell us what goes on in the world, plainly and simply, without tangles and machinery. And let Sancho believe me that the leaping country wench was and is Dulcinea of El Toboso, who is as enchanted as the mother who bore her; and when we least expect it we shall see her in her own shape, and then Sancho will come out of the deception he is living in."
"All that may very well be," said Sancho Panza. "And now I am willing to believe what my master tells about what he saw in the cave of Montesinos, where he says he saw the lady Dulcinea of El Toboso in the same dress and habit as I said I had seen her in when I enchanted her purely to please myself. And it must all have been the other way round, as your worship says, my lady; because from my poor wits it neither can nor ought to be presumed that I could build so sharp a piece of humbug in an instant, nor do I believe my master is so mad that with so feeble and thin a persuasion as mine he would believe a thing so far outside all bounds.
"But, my lady, your goodness should not for this reason take me for ill-meaning, since a blockhead like me is not obliged to bore through the thoughts and malices of those wretched enchanters. I made that up to escape my master Don Quixote's scoldings, and not with any intention of offending him; and if it has come out backwards, God is in heaven and judges hearts."
"That is the truth," said the duchess; "but tell me now, Sancho, what is this you say about the cave of Montesinos? For I should like to know it."
Then Sancho Panza told her point by point what has been said about that adventure. Which the duchess hearing, she said:
"From this business it can be inferred that, since the great Don Quixote says he saw there the very country girl Sancho saw on the way out of El Toboso, it is undoubtedly Dulcinea, and the enchanters are going about here very sharp and excessively inquisitive."
"That is what I say," said Sancho Panza. "For if my lady Dulcinea of El Toboso is enchanted, so much the worse for her; I am not going to take on my master's enemies, who must be many and bad. The truth is that the woman I saw was a country girl, and I took her for a country girl and judged her for such a country girl; and if that was Dulcinea, it is not to be put down to my account, nor is it to run at my charge, or there will be a fight over it.
"No — but let them keep coming at me at every turn with a 'say-you and say-I', 'Sancho said it, Sancho did it, Sancho went off and Sancho came back', as though Sancho were some whoever-you-please and not the very Sancho Panza who goes about in books now all over the world, according to what Sansón Carrasco told me — and he is at least a person bachelored at Salamanca, and such people cannot lie except when they feel like it or when it suits them very well. So there is no call for anybody to take me on; and, since I have a good name, and, as I heard my master say, a good name is worth more than great riches, jam that government on me and you shall see wonders; for a man who has been a good squire will be a good governor."
"Everything good Sancho has said here," said the duchess, "is a set of Catonian judgements, or at least drawn from the very entrails of Micael Verino himself, florentibus occidit annis. In short, in short, to speak in his own manner: under a bad cloak there is often a good drinker."
"Truly, my lady," answered Sancho, "in my life I have never drunk out of malice; out of thirst it may well be, because I have nothing of the hypocrite about me. I drink when I feel like it, and when I do not feel like it and when they give it me, so as not to look either squeamish or badly brought up; for at a friend's toast, what heart could be so much of marble as not to pledge him back? But though I put them on, I do not dirty them; and what is more, the squires of knights errant almost always drink water, because they are always going about through woods, forests and meadows, mountains and crags, without finding a drop of mercy of wine even if they would give an eye for it."
"So I believe," answered the duchess. "And for now, let Sancho go and rest, and afterwards we shall talk at more length and give orders about his going quickly to have that government jammed on him, as he puts it."
Sancho kissed the duchess's hands again, and begged her to do him the favour of having good care taken of his grey, because he was the light of his eyes.
"What grey is this?" asked the duchess.
"My donkey," answered Sancho; "and so as not to name him by that name, I generally call him the grey. And I asked this lady duenna, when I came into this castle, to take care of him, and she flew up as if I had told her she was ugly or old — when it ought to be more proper and natural for duennas to look after donkeys than to lend authority to drawing rooms. God bless me, how badly a gentleman of my village got on with these ladies!"
"He must have been some peasant," said Doña Rodríguez the duenna, "for if he had been a gentleman and well born he would have set them above the horn of the moon."
"Well now," said the duchess, "let there be no more of it. Let Doña Rodríguez be quiet and let Señor Panza calm himself, and let the treatment of the grey be my charge; for since he is a jewel of Sancho's, I shall set him above the pupils of my eyes."
"It will be enough for him to be in the stable," answered Sancho; "for as to being above the pupils of your greatness's eyes, neither he nor I is worthy to be there for a single moment, and I should consent to it about as readily as to being stabbed. For although my master says that in courtesies it is better to lose by a card too many than by too few, in donkeyish ones — and eye-pupilish ones — you have to go with the dividers in your hand and by measured limits."
"Let Sancho take him to the government," said the duchess, "and there he can treat him as he likes, and even pension him off from work."
"Do not think your worship, my lady duchess, that you have said anything very much," said Sancho; "for I have seen more than two asses go off to governments, and my taking mine would be nothing new."
Sancho's arguments renewed the duchess's laughter and her contentment; and, sending him off to rest, she went to give the duke an account of what had passed between them, and between the two of them they laid out and arranged a trick to play on Don Quixote that should be a famous one and should fit the chivalric style — in which style they played him a great many, so apt and so judicious that they are the best adventures this great history contains.
Great was the pleasure the duke and duchess took in Don Quixote's conversation and in Sancho Panza's; and, confirming themselves in their intention of playing them some tricks that should carry the glimmerings and appearance of adventures, they took as their starting point the adventure of the cave of Montesinos that Don Quixote had already told them, so as to play him one that should be famous. (But what most astonished the duchess was that Sancho's simplicity should be so great that he had come to believe it an infallible truth that Dulcinea of El Toboso was enchanted, when he himself had been the enchanter and the humbug of that business.)
And so, having given their servants orders about everything they had to do, six days later they took him out boar hunting, with as great an apparatus of huntsmen and beaters as a crowned king could have taken. They gave Don Quixote a hunting suit and Sancho another, green, of the finest cloth; but Don Quixote would not put his on, saying that the next day he had to go back to the hard exercise of arms and could not carry wardrobes and stores about with him. Sancho did take the one they gave him, with the intention of selling it at the first chance he could get.
The expected day having come, then, Don Quixote armed himself, Sancho dressed himself, and, on his grey, which he would not leave although they offered him a horse, he got in among the troop of huntsmen. The duchess came out splendidly turned out, and Don Quixote, out of pure courtesy and civility, took the rein of her palfrey, although the duke would not have consented to it. And finally they came to a wood that lay between two very high mountains, where, the stands, hides and paths being taken and the people distributed to different positions, the hunt began with a great uproar, shouting and hallooing, so that they could not hear one another, what with the barking of the dogs and the sound of the horns.
The duchess dismounted, and with a sharp boar spear in her hands took up a stand where she knew boars generally came. The duke dismounted too, and Don Quixote, and they placed themselves at her sides. Sancho placed himself behind all of them without getting off the grey, whom he would not have dared to abandon in case some mishap befell him.
And they had hardly set foot and drawn up in a line with a great many other servants of theirs when, harried by the dogs and followed by the hunters, they saw an enormous boar coming at them, gnashing its teeth and tusks and throwing foam out of its mouth. And, on seeing it, gripping his shield and laying his hand on his sword, Don Quixote went forward to receive it. The duke did the same with his boar spear; and the duchess would have gone ahead of them all if the duke had not stopped her.
Only Sancho, on seeing the valiant animal, abandoned the grey and ran for it as fast as he could, and, trying to climb up a tall oak, found it impossible. On the contrary, being halfway up and gripping a branch, struggling to get to the top, he was so short of luck and so unfortunate that the branch broke off; and, on his way to the ground, he was left hanging in the air, caught on a stump of the oak and unable to reach the ground.
And, seeing himself like that, and that the green coat was tearing, and thinking that if that fierce animal came up there it could reach him, he began to shout so much and to call for help so earnestly that everybody who heard him and could not see him believed he was between the teeth of some wild beast.
Finally the tusked boar was left run through with the blades of the many boar spears that were put in front of it; and Don Quixote, turning his head at Sancho's shouts — for by them he had recognised him by now — saw him hanging from the oak head downwards, with the grey next to him, for he had not abandoned him in his calamity. And Cide Hamete says that he seldom saw Sancho Panza without seeing the grey, or the grey without seeing Sancho: such was the friendship and good faith the two of them kept with each other.
Don Quixote came and unhooked Sancho; who, seeing himself free and on the ground, looked at the tear in his hunting coat and it grieved him to the soul, for he had thought he had an entailed estate in that suit. At this they laid the mighty boar across a pack mule and, covering it with sprigs of rosemary and branches of myrtle, carried it, as though in sign of victorious spoils, to some great field tents that were pitched in the middle of the wood, where they found the tables laid in order and the dinner ready — so sumptuous and grand that the greatness and magnificence of the man who gave it could be plainly seen in it. Sancho, showing the duchess the wounds in his torn suit, said:
"If this hunt had been for hares or little birds, my coat would have been safe from coming to this pass. I do not know what pleasure there is in waiting for an animal that, if it reaches you with one tusk, can take your life. I remember having heard an old ballad sung that says:
May you be eaten by the bears, like Favila the renowned."
"That was a Gothic king," said Don Quixote, "who, going out to hunt boar, was eaten by a bear."
"That is what I say," answered Sancho: "that I would not have princes and kings put themselves into dangers of the kind for the sake of a pleasure that ought not to be one, since it consists in killing an animal that has committed no crime at all."
"On the contrary, you are mistaken, Sancho," answered the duke, "because the exercise of hunting big game is more suitable and necessary for kings and princes than any other. Hunting is an image of war: there are stratagems in it, tricks and ambushes for overcoming the enemy in safety; extreme colds and intolerable heats are borne in it; idleness and sleep are cut down, the strength is built up, the limbs of the man who practises it are made nimble; and, in short, it is an exercise that can be carried out without harm to anybody and with pleasure to many. And the best thing about it is that it is not for everybody, as the other kinds of hunting are — except hawking, which is likewise only for kings and great lords. So, Sancho, change your opinion; and when you are a governor, busy yourself with hunting and you will see how it repays you a hundredfold."
"Not that," answered Sancho. "The good governor, a broken leg and at home. It would be a fine thing if people with business came looking for him worn out and he were up in the hills enjoying himself! The government would go finely then! Upon my word, sir, hunting and pastimes are more for idlers than for governors. What I mean to entertain myself with is playing trumps for stakes at the holidays and skittles on Sundays and feast days; for those hunts, or hunt-pots either, do not go with my nature or agree with my conscience."
"Please God, Sancho, that it may be so, for from saying to doing is a long way."
"Let it be what it may," replied Sancho, "for a good payer does not mind pledges, and the man God helps is better off than the man who rises early, and guts carry feet and not feet guts. I mean that if God helps me, and I do what I ought with good intentions, I shall undoubtedly govern better than a gerfalcon. No — just put a finger in my mouth and see whether I bite or not!"
"God curse you and all his saints curse you, cursed Sancho," said Don Quixote, "and when will the day come — as I have said so many other times — when I shall see you speak one connected and orderly sentence without proverbs! Let your greatnesses leave this fool alone, my dear sirs, for he will grind your souls not merely between two but between two thousand proverbs, brought in as seasonably and as timely as God may give him health, or give it me if I should ever want to listen to them."
"Sancho Panza's proverbs," said the duchess, "although they are more than the Greek Commander's, are not for that reason less to be valued, because of the shortness of the judgements in them. For my own part I can say that they give me more pleasure than others, however much better brought in and more seasonably fitted."
With these and other entertaining conversations they came out of the tent into the wood, and in going round some of the hides the day went by and night came on them — and not as clear or as calm as the season of the year called for, which was midsummer; but a certain half-light it brought with it helped the duke and duchess's plan a great deal.
And so, as soon as it began to grow dark, a little after twilight, all at once it seemed that the whole wood was on fire on all four sides; and then there were heard here and there, and this way and that, infinite bugles and other instruments of war, as of many troops of cavalry going through the wood. The light of the fire and the sound of the warlike instruments almost blinded and deafened the eyes and ears of the bystanders, and of everybody else in the wood.
Then there were heard infinite battle cries in the Moorish fashion, as they raise them when they go into battle; trumpets and clarions sounded, drums thundered, fifes shrilled, almost all at once, so continuously and so fast that the man would have had no senses who did not lose them at the confused sound of so many instruments. The duke was struck dumb, the duchess dumbfounded, Don Quixote amazed, Sancho Panza trembling; and, in the end, even those who knew the cause were frightened. Fear brought silence on them, and a courier who went past in front of them in the dress of a devil, blowing on a huge hollow horn in place of a bugle, which gave out a hoarse and terrible sound.
"Hey there, brother courier!" said the duke. "Who are you, where are you going, and what men of war are these who seem to be crossing this wood?"
To which the courier answered in a hideous and unabashed voice:
"I am the Devil. I am going to look for Don Quixote of La Mancha. The people coming this way are six troops of enchanters, who are bringing the peerless Dulcinea of El Toboso on a triumphal car. She comes enchanted, with the gallant Frenchman Montesinos, to give Don Quixote his orders about how this lady is to be disenchanted."
"If you were the devil, as you say and as your figure shows, you would already have recognised this knight Don Quixote of La Mancha, since you have him in front of you."
"In God and in my conscience," answered the Devil, "I was not looking at that, because I carry my thoughts scattered over so many things that I was forgetting the main one I came for."
"Without any doubt," said Sancho, "this demon must be a decent man and a good Christian; because if he were not, he would not swear in God and in my conscience. Now I hold for myself that even in hell itself there must be good people."
Then the Demon, without dismounting, turned his eyes to Don Quixote and said:
"To you, Knight of the Lions — and may I see you between their claws — the unfortunate but valiant knight Montesinos sends me, ordering me to tell you on his behalf that you are to wait for him in the very place where I find you, because he brings with him the lady they call Dulcinea of El Toboso, with orders to give you what is needed for disenchanting her. And, since my coming was for nothing more, my stay shall be no longer: demons like me be with you, and the good angels with these ladies and gentlemen."
And, saying this, he blew the monstrous horn, turned his back and went off without waiting for an answer from anybody.
Astonishment was renewed in everyone, and especially in Sancho and Don Quixote: in Sancho, at seeing that in the teeth of the truth they wanted Dulcinea to be enchanted; in Don Quixote, at not being able to make certain whether what had happened to him in the cave of Montesinos was true or not. And, while he was raised up in these thoughts, the duke said to him:
"Does your worship mean to wait, Señor Don Quixote?"
"Why not?" he answered. "Here I shall wait, fearless and strong, even if all hell should come to attack me."
"Well, if I see another devil and hear another horn like the last one, I shall wait here about as much as I shall in Flanders," said Sancho.
At this the night closed in more, and a great many lights began to run about through the wood, exactly as the dry exhalations of the earth run about the sky, which look to our eyes like running stars. There was heard likewise a terrible noise, of the kind made by the solid wheels that ox carts generally have, from whose harsh and continuous screech they say the wolves and the bears run away, if there are any where they pass.
To all this tempest there was added another that increased them all, which was that it really seemed as though four encounters or battles were being fought at one and the same time on the four sides of the wood: for over there sounded the hard uproar of terrifying artillery, over yonder infinite muskets were being fired, close by sounded almost the voices of the combatants, far off the Moorish battle cries were repeated.
Finally the bugles, the horns, the hunting horns, the clarions, the trumpets, the drums, the artillery, the harquebuses and, above all, the fearful noise of the carts, all together made a sound so confused and so horrible that Don Quixote needed all his heart to bear it; but Sancho's came to the ground, and he fell in a faint into the duchess's lap. She received him there, and in great haste ordered water to be thrown in his face. It was done, and he came round to his senses just as one of the carts with the screeching wheels was arriving at that place.
It was drawn by four sluggish oxen, all covered with black trappings; on each horn they carried a great wax torch tied and lit; and on top of the cart was made a high seat, on which sat a venerable old man with a beard whiter than snow itself, and so long that it came down past his waist. His dress was a long gown of black buckram; and, since the cart came full of infinite lights, everything on it could be well made out and discerned. It was guided by two hideous demons dressed in the same buckram, with such hideous faces that Sancho, having seen them once, shut his eyes so as not to see them twice.
The cart coming level with the place, then, the venerable old man got up from his high seat and, standing on his feet, said in a great voice:
"I am the wise Lirgandeo."
And the cart passed on without another word. Behind this one there passed another cart in the same fashion, with another old man enthroned; who, making the cart stop, said in a voice no less grave than the other's:
"I am the wise Alquife, the great friend of Urganda the Unknown."
And he passed on.
Then, in the same manner, another cart arrived; but the man sitting on the throne was not old like the others, but a big robust fellow with an ugly look about him, who, on arriving, standing up like the others, said in a hoarser and more devilish voice:
"I am Arcaláus the enchanter, mortal enemy of Amadís of Gaul and of all his kindred."
And he passed on. A little way off from there these three carts halted, and the tiresome noise of their wheels stopped; and then there was heard another — not a noise, but a sound made up of a soft and ordered music, at which Sancho was glad, and he took it for a good sign. And so he said to the duchess, from whom he never moved a point or a step:
"My lady, where there is music there can be nothing bad."
"Nor where there are lights and brightness," answered the duchess.
To which Sancho replied:
"Fire gives light and bonfires give brightness, as we see in the ones that surround us — and they might very well burn us up; but music is always a sign of merrymaking and festivity."
"Time will tell," said Don Quixote, who was listening to it all.
And he was right, as is shown in the following chapter.
In time to the agreeable music they saw coming towards them one of the carts they call triumphal, drawn by six dun mules covered over with white linen; and on each one rode a torch-bearing penitent, likewise dressed in white, with a great lighted wax torch in his hand. The cart was twice, and even three times, bigger than the ones before, and the sides of it and the top were taken up by twelve more penitents as white as snow, all with their torches lit — a sight that filled them with wonder and terror together.
And on a raised throne there sat a nymph dressed in a thousand veils of silver tissue, with infinite leaves of gold spangling shining through them all, which made her, if not richly, at least showily dressed. She had her face covered with a transparent and delicate gauze, so that, without its threads getting in the way, there could be made out through them a most beautiful maiden's face; and the many lights gave room to distinguish her beauty and her years, which to look at did not reach twenty nor fall short of seventeen.
Beside her came a figure dressed in one of those trailing gowns, down to the feet, its head covered with a black veil. But the moment the cart came face to face with the duke and duchess and Don Quixote, the music of the shawms stopped, and then that of the harps and lutes that were playing on the cart. And, the figure in the gown getting to its feet, it parted the gown to both sides, and, taking the veil off its face, showed itself plainly to be the very figure of death, fleshless and hideous — at which Don Quixote felt distress and Sancho fear, and the duke and duchess made some show of being frightened.
This living death, raised up and standing, in a rather sleepy voice and with a not very wide-awake tongue, began to speak in this way:
I am Merlin, the one the histories say had the devil for a father (a lie made authoritative by the ages), prince of Magic and monarch and archive of the Zoroastrian science, rival of the ages and the centuries that try to cover over the exploits of the brave and errant knights for whom I have had and still have great affection. And although the condition of enchanters, of magi or of magicians, is always hard, harsh and unyielding, mine is tender, soft and loving, and a friend to doing good to all people. In the gloomy caverns of Dis, where my soul was busying itself in forming certain rhombs and characters, there came the grieving voice of the beautiful and peerless Dulcinea of El Toboso. I learnt of her enchantment and her misfortune, and her transformation from a gentle lady into a rustic village girl; I was moved to pity, and, shutting my spirit in the hollow of this terrible and fierce skeleton, after turning over a hundred thousand books of this devilish and clumsy science of mine, I come to give the remedy that suits so great a grief, so great an ill. O you, the glory and honour of all who wear the tunics of steel and of diamond, light and lantern, path, pole star and guide of those who, leaving behind dull sleep and the idle feather bed, set themselves to practise the intolerable exercise of bloody and heavy arms! To you I speak — O man, as you deserve, never sufficiently praised — to you, valiant and judicious together, Don Quixote, splendour of La Mancha, star of Spain: that for the peerless Dulcinea of El Toboso to recover her first estate, it is needful that Sancho, your squire, should give himself three thousand lashes and three hundred, upon both his valiant buttocks, bared to the air, and in such a way that they smart him, sting him and vex him. And in this all those are agreed who have been the authors of her misfortune, and this is what my coming is for, my lords and ladies.
"By all that's holy!" said Sancho at this. "Never mind three thousand lashes — I would as soon give myself three as three stabs. The devil take you for a way of disenchanting! I do not see what my backside has to do with enchantments! By God, if Señor Merlin has found no other way of disenchanting the lady Dulcinea of El Toboso, she can go to her grave enchanted!"
"I shall take you," said Don Quixote, "you villain stuffed with garlic, and tie you to a tree as naked as your mother bore you; and I shall give you not three thousand three hundred lashes but six thousand six hundred, so well laid on that they will not come off at three thousand three hundred tugs. And do not answer me a word, or I shall tear the soul out of you."
Hearing which, Merlin said:
"It must not be like that, because the lashes good Sancho has to receive must be of his own free will and not by force, and at whatever time he likes; no fixed term is set for him. But he is allowed, if he wants to buy off his suffering by half of this whipping, to let them be given him by somebody else's hand, even if it is a rather heavy one."
"Neither somebody else's nor my own, neither heavy nor weighing," replied Sancho. "No hand at all is going to touch me. Did I by any chance give birth to the lady Dulcinea of El Toboso, that my backside should pay for what her eyes sinned? My lord and master, now — yes, he is a party to her, since he calls her at every turn 'my life', 'my soul', his food and his prop — he can and should whip himself for her and take all the steps necessary for her disenchantment. But whipping myself...? Abernuncio!"
Sancho had hardly finished saying this when the silvered nymph who came beside Merlin's spirit got to her feet, and, taking the fine veil off her face, showed it to be such that it seemed to everybody more than excessively beautiful; and, with a manly unconcern and in a voice that was not very ladylike, speaking straight at Sancho Panza, she said:
"O wretched squire, soul of a pitcher, heart of cork, with entrails of pebble and flint! If you were ordered, you thieving face-flayer, to throw yourself down to the ground from a high tower; if you were asked, enemy of the human race, to eat a dozen toads, two dozen lizards and three dozen snakes; if you were urged to kill your wife and your children with some cruel, sharp scimitar — it would be no wonder if you showed yourself squeamish and unwilling. But to make a fuss about three thousand three hundred lashes, when there is no charity-school boy, however poor a creature, who does not take that many every month, astonishes, stuns and terrifies all the merciful hearts of those who hear it, and even the hearts of all those who come to learn of it in the course of time.
"Set, O miserable and hardened animal, set, I say, those skittish little mule's eyes of yours on the pupils of these of mine, which have been compared to shining stars, and you shall see them weep thread by thread and skein by skein, making furrows, tracks and paths across the beautiful fields of my cheeks. Let it move you, you sly and evil-minded monster, that my age, so full of flower — still in the teen-and-something of my years, for I am nineteen and have not reached twenty — is being consumed and withered under the rind of a rustic peasant girl. And if I do not look like her now, it is a particular favour that Señor Merlin here present has done me, only so that my beauty may soften you; for the tears of an afflicted beauty turn crags into cotton wool and tigers into sheep.
"Lay it on, lay it on that great carcass of yours, you untamed brute, and rouse that spirit out of its sloth — the spirit that inclines you to nothing but eating and more eating — and set free the smoothness of my flesh, the gentleness of my nature and the beauty of my face. And if you will not soften for my sake or bring yourself round to any reasonable terms, do it for that poor knight you have at your side — for your master, I mean, whose soul I can see stuck crosswise in his throat, not ten fingers from his lips, waiting for nothing but your hard or soft answer, either to come out at his mouth or to go back down to his stomach."
Hearing this, Don Quixote felt his throat and said, turning to the duke:
"By God, sir, Dulcinea has told the truth, for here I have my soul stuck crosswise in my throat like the nut of a crossbow."
"What do you say to this, Sancho?" asked the duchess.
"I say, my lady," answered Sancho, "what I have said: as for the lashes, abernuncio."
"Abrenuncio you should say, Sancho, and not as you say it," said the duke.
"Let your greatness let me be," answered Sancho, "for I am not in a state now to look at subtleties or at a letter more or less; because these lashes they are going to give me, or that I am going to give myself, have me so troubled that I do not know what I am saying or what I am doing.
"But I should like to know from the lady my lady Doña Dulcina of El Toboso where she learnt the manner of begging she has. She comes to ask me to open up my flesh with lashes, and she calls me a soul of a pitcher and an untamed brute, with a whole string of bad names that the devil may put up with. Is my flesh made of bronze, by any chance, or is it anything to me whether she is disenchanted or not? What basket of white linen, of shirts, of headcloths and of socks — even though I do not wear them — does she bring along in front of her to soften me, instead of one piece of abuse after another? For she knows the proverb they say about here, that a donkey loaded with gold climbs a mountain lightly, and that gifts break rocks, and 'pray to God and keep hammering', and that one 'here you are' is worth more than two 'I'll give you'.
"And my lord and master, who ought to have stroked my hair the right way and coaxed me into turning myself into wool and carded cotton, says that if he catches me he will tie me naked to a tree and double the stake on the lashes. And these afflicted gentlefolk ought to consider that they are asking not only a squire to whip himself but a governor — as who should say, 'and cherries with it'. Let them learn, let them learn, much good may it do them, how to beg and how to ask and how to have some breeding; for all times are not alike, and men are not always in a good humour. I am bursting with grief just now over seeing my green coat torn, and they come and ask me to whip myself of my own free will, when my will is about as far from it as from turning me into a cacique in the Indies."
"Well truly, Sancho my friend," said the duke, "if you do not soften more than a ripe fig, you shall not take that government in hand. It would be a fine thing if I sent my islanders a cruel governor with flinty entrails, who will not bend to the tears of afflicted maidens or to the pleas of judicious, imperious and ancient enchanters and sages! In short, Sancho, either you must be whipped, or they must whip you, or you must not be a governor."
"Sir," answered Sancho, "would they not give me two days' grace to think about what suits me best?"
"No, on no account," said Merlin. "Here, in this instant and in this place, it must be settled what is to become of this business. Either Dulcinea will go back to the cave of Montesinos and to her first state as a peasant girl, or else, in the state she is in, she will be carried to the Elysian Fields, where she will be waiting until the tale of the whipping is complete."
"Come, good Sancho," said the duchess, "good courage, and a good return for the bread you have eaten of Señor Don Quixote's — whom we must all serve and please for his good nature and for his high chivalries. Say yes to this whipping, my son, and let the devil go to the devil and fear to the mean-spirited; for a good heart breaks bad luck, as you know very well."
To these arguments Sancho answered with these preposterous ones, saying to Merlin:
"Tell me, your worship, Señor Merlin: when the devil courier arrived here and gave my master a message from Señor Montesinos, ordering him on his behalf to wait for him here because he was coming to give orders for the lady Doña Dulcinea of El Toboso to be disenchanted — and up to now we have not seen Montesinos, or anything like him."
To which Merlin answered:
"The Devil, Sancho my friend, is an ignorant fellow and a very great rogue. I sent him to look for your master, but not with a message from Montesinos, but with one from me; because Montesinos is in his cave attending to — or, better said, waiting for — his own disenchantment, which still has the tail left to skin. If he owes you anything, or you have any business to do with him, I shall bring him to you and set him down wherever you like best. And for now, finish saying yes to this discipline; and believe me, it will do you a great deal of good, both for the soul and for the body: for the soul, because of the charity with which you will do it; for the body, because I know you are of a sanguine complexion, and taking a little blood out of you can do you no harm."
"There are a great many doctors in the world — even the enchanters are doctors," replied Sancho. "But since everybody tells me so, though I do not see it myself, I say I am content to give myself the three thousand three hundred lashes, on condition that I am to give them to myself whenever and however I like, without any limit being set on the days or on the time; and I shall try to get out of the debt as soon as possible, so that the world may enjoy the beauty of the lady Doña Dulcinea of El Toboso, since, by the look of it, she really is beautiful, the other way round from what I thought.
"It must also be a condition that I am not to be obliged to draw blood with the discipline, and that if any of the lashes are fly-flicks, they are to be counted in. Item, that if I make a mistake in the number, Señor Merlin, since he knows everything, is to take care to count them and to let me know how many I am short of or over."
"About the ones over there will be no need to give notice," answered Merlin, "because on reaching the exact number the lady Dulcinea will at once and suddenly be disenchanted, and she will come looking for good Sancho, like a grateful woman, to give him thanks and even rewards for the good work. So there is nothing to have any scruples about, over or under; and heaven forbid that I should cheat anybody, even by a hair of the head."
"Well then, into the hand of God!" said Sancho. "I consent to my own bad luck; I say I accept the penance on the conditions set down."
Sancho had hardly said these last words when the music of the shawms sounded again and infinite harquebuses were let off again, and Don Quixote hung on Sancho's neck, giving him a thousand kisses on the forehead and on the cheeks. The duchess and the duke and all the bystanders showed signs of having received the greatest contentment, and the cart began to move off; and, as she passed, the beautiful Dulcinea bowed her head to the duke and duchess and made Sancho a great curtsey.
And by now the dawn was coming on apace, glad and smiling: the little flowers of the fields were lifting themselves up and standing straight, and the liquid crystal of the streams, murmuring between white and grey pebbles, was going to pay its tribute to the rivers that waited for it. The glad earth, the clear sky, the clean air, the serene light, each by itself and all together, gave plain signs that the day, which came treading on the skirts of the dawn, was going to be calm and bright. And the duke and duchess, satisfied with the hunt and with having carried out their intention so judiciously and so successfully, went back to their castle, with the intention of following up their tricks — for there was no earnest that could give them more pleasure.
The duke had a steward of a very playful and easy wit, who had taken the part of Merlin and arranged all the apparatus of the adventure just described, composed the verses and got a page to play Dulcinea. Finally, with his master and mistress taking a hand in it, he arranged another of the most amusing and strangest contrivance that can be imagined.
The duchess asked Sancho the next day whether he had begun the task of the penance he had to perform for Dulcinea's disenchantment. He said he had, and that the night before he had given himself five lashes. The duchess asked him what he had given them to himself with. He answered that it was with his hand.
"That," replied the duchess, "is giving yourself pats rather than lashes. I hold for myself that the wise Merlin will not be content with such gentleness. It will be necessary for good Sancho to make himself some scourge of thorns, or of knotted cords, that will let themselves be felt; because learning enters with blood, and the freedom of so great a lady as Dulcinea is not to be given away so cheaply for so small a price. And let Sancho note that works of charity done lukewarmly and slackly have no merit and are worth nothing."
To which Sancho answered:
"Let your ladyship give me some suitable scourge or lash, and I shall give it myself so long as it does not hurt too much; because I would have your worship know that although I am a rustic, my flesh has more of cotton in it than of esparto grass, and it would not be a good thing for me to waste myself away for somebody else's profit."
"So be it," answered the duchess. "Tomorrow I shall give you a scourge that will fit you exactly and will suit the tenderness of your flesh as though they were its own sisters."
To which Sancho said:
"Your highness must know, my lady of my soul, that I have a letter written to my wife Teresa Panza, giving her an account of everything that has happened to me since I left her. I have it here in my bosom, and it needs nothing but the address on it. I should like your judiciousness to read it, because it seems to me that it goes in the governor style — I mean, in the way governors ought to write."
"And who dictated it?" asked the duchess.
"Who was to dictate it but me, sinner that I am?" answered Sancho.
"And did you write it yourself?" said the duchess.
"Not by a long way," answered Sancho, "because I cannot read or write, although I can sign my name."
"Let us see it," said the duchess, "for it is a safe bet that you show in it the quality and sufficiency of your wits."
Sancho took an open letter out of his bosom, and, the duchess taking it, she saw that it went in this way:
If they gave me good lashes, I was riding well mounted; if I have a good government, it is costing me good lashes. You will not understand this, my Teresa, for the present; another time you will know it. You must know, Teresa, that I have decided that you are to travel in a coach, which is what matters, because every other way of travelling is going on all fours. You are a governor's wife — see whether anybody is going to gnaw at your heels now!
I am sending you a green hunting suit here that my lady the duchess gave me; alter it so that it will serve for a skirt and a bodice for our daughter. Don Quixote, my master, from what I have heard said in this country, is a sane madman and an amusing idiot, and I am not far behind him. We have been in the cave of Montesinos, and the wise Merlin has laid hold of me for the disenchanting of Dulcinea of El Toboso, who is called Aldonza Lorenzo over there. With three thousand three hundred lashes, less five, that I have to give myself, she will be left as disenchanted as the mother who bore her. You are not to say anything about this to anybody, because put your business to the council and some will say it is white and others that it is black.
In a few days from now I shall set off for the government, where I go with the greatest desire to make money, because they have told me that all new governors go with this same desire. I shall feel its pulse and let you know whether you are to come and be with me or not. The grey is well, and sends you his best regards; and I do not mean to leave him even if they carried me off to be the Great Turk.
My lady the duchess kisses your hands a thousand times; send her back two thousand, for there is nothing that costs less or comes cheaper, as my master says, than good manners. It has not pleased God to furnish me with another portmanteau with another hundred crowns in it, like the one of the other day; but do not let that grieve you, my Teresa, for safe is the man who rings the alarm, and it will all come out in the wash of the government. Only it has grieved me a great deal that they tell me if I once get a taste of it, I shall be licking my fingers after it; and if that were so, it would not come cheap to me — although the crippled and maimed have their own canonry in the alms they beg. So one way or another you are going to be rich and in luck. God give it you, as He can, and keep me to serve you. From this castle, the twentieth of July 1614.
Your husband the governor,
Sancho Panza.
When the duchess had finished reading the letter she said to Sancho:
"In two things the good governor goes a little off the road. One is in saying, or giving to understand, that this government has been given him for the lashes he has to give himself — when he knows, and cannot deny, that when the duke my lord promised it him, there was no dreaming that there were lashes in the world. The other is that he shows himself very greedy in it, and I should not like that to turn out ill; for greed bursts the sack, and a greedy governor makes justice ungoverned."
"I do not mean it in that way, my lady," answered Sancho; "and if it seems to your worship that this letter does not go as it should, there is nothing for it but to tear it up and make a new one — and it might well be worse, if it is left to my noddle."
"No, no," replied the duchess, "this one is good, and I want the duke to see it."
With this they went out to a garden where they were to dine that day. The duchess showed the duke Sancho's letter, at which he received the greatest pleasure. They dined; and after the cloth had been taken away, and after they had entertained themselves a good while with Sancho's delicious conversation, all at once there was heard the very mournful sound of a fife and that of a hoarse and untuned drum. Everybody showed themselves disturbed by the confused, martial and mournful harmony, and especially Don Quixote, who could not keep still in his seat for pure agitation. Of Sancho there is nothing to say except that fear carried him to his usual refuge, which was the side or the skirts of the duchess, because really and truly the sound they were hearing was extremely mournful and melancholy.
And, while they were all in this suspense, they saw coming into the garden two men dressed in mourning, so long and trailing that it dragged on the ground. These came beating two great drums, likewise covered with black. At their side came the fife player, black and pitch-dark like the rest. Following the three came a personage of gigantic body, mantled rather than dressed in a gown of the deepest black, whose skirt was likewise outrageously large. Over the gown he was girt and crossed with a broad baldric, also black, from which there hung an enormous scimitar with black fittings and scabbard. He came with his face covered by a transparent black veil, through which there half showed an extremely long beard, white as snow. He moved his steps in time to the drums with great gravity and composure. In short, his greatness, his swagger, his blackness and his attendants could have astonished — and did astonish — everybody who looked at him without knowing him.
He came, then, with the deliberation and pomp described, and knelt down before the duke, who was standing waiting for him with the rest of those there. But the duke would on no account allow him to speak until he got up. The prodigious scarecrow did so; and, standing on his feet, he lifted the mask off his face and made plain the most horrifying, the longest, the whitest and the thickest beard that human eyes had until then ever seen; and then he unfixed and dragged out of his broad, deep chest a grave and sonorous voice, and, fixing his eyes on the duke, said:
"Most high and mighty lord, I am called Trifaldin of the White Beard. I am squire to the Countess Trifaldi, otherwise called the Distressed Duenna, on whose behalf I bring your greatness an embassy — which is that your magnificence should be pleased to give her the power and the leave to come in and tell you her trouble, which is one of the strangest and most astonishing that the most troubled mind in the world could ever have thought of.
"And first she wishes to know whether the valorous and never-conquered knight Don Quixote of La Mancha is in this castle of yours; in search of whom she has come on foot and without breakfasting from the kingdom of Candaya to this estate of yours — a thing that can and ought to be held for a miracle or for the force of enchantment. She is waiting at the gate of this fortress or country house, and waits for nothing but your good pleasure to come in. I have spoken."
And then he coughed and stroked his beard from top to bottom with both hands, and with great composure stood waiting for the duke's answer, which was:
"Good squire Trifaldin of the White Beard, we have had news these many days now of the misfortune of my lady the Countess Trifaldi, whom the enchanters have made them call the Distressed Duenna. You may very well tell her, stupendous squire, to come in, and that the valiant knight Don Quixote of La Mancha is here, from whose generous nature she may safely promise herself all protection and all help. And you may likewise tell her on my behalf that if my favour should be necessary to her, it shall not be wanting, since being a knight already obliges me to give it — a knight being bound and concerned to favour all sorts of women, and especially widowed, ruined and distressed duennas, as her ladyship must be."
Hearing which, Trifaldin bent his knee to the ground; and, making a sign to the fife and the drums to play, at the same sound and at the same pace as he had come in, he went out of the garden again, leaving everybody astonished at his presence and his bearing. And the duke, turning to Don Quixote, said to him:
"In short, famous knight, the darkness of malice and of ignorance cannot cover and dim the light of valour and of virtue. I say this because your goodness has hardly been six days in this castle when already they come looking for you from far-off and distant lands, and not in coaches or on dromedaries but on foot and fasting — the sad and the afflicted, trusting that they will find in that mighty arm the remedy for their troubles and hardships, thanks to your great exploits, which run and travel round the whole discovered surface of the earth."
"I could wish, lord duke," answered Don Quixote, "that that blessed churchman were here present who at table the other day showed himself in such an ill temper and with such a grudge against knights errant, so that he might see with his own eyes whether such knights are necessary in the world. He would at least put his hand on it, that people who are extraordinarily afflicted and disconsolate, in great cases and in enormous misfortunes, do not go looking for their remedy to the houses of lawyers, or to that of the village sacristans, or to the gentleman who has never managed to get outside the boundaries of his own place, or to the idle courtier who is sooner looking for news to report and tell than trying to do deeds and exploits for others to tell and write about.
"The remedy for troubles, the succour of needs, the protection of maidens, the consolation of widows are found in no kind of persons better than in knights errant; and for being one I give infinite thanks to heaven, and I count as very well spent any mishap and hardship that may come to me in this so honourable exercise. Let this duenna come and ask whatever she likes, for I shall make out her remedy for her in the strength of my arm and in the fearless resolution of my courageous spirit."
The duke and duchess were extremely glad to see how well Don Quixote was answering to their design; and at this point Sancho said:
"I should not like this lady duenna to put any stumbling block in the way of the promise of my government, because I have heard a Toledo apothecary say — and he talked like a goldfinch — that wherever duennas came into it, nothing good could happen. God bless me, how badly that apothecary got on with them! From which I gather that, since all duennas are tiresome and impertinent, of whatever quality and condition they may be, what will the distressed ones be like — such as they say this Countess Three-Skirts, or Three-Tails, is? For in my country skirts and tails, tails and skirts, are all one."
"Be quiet, Sancho my friend," said Don Quixote; "for since this lady duenna comes from such far-off lands to look for me, she cannot be one of those the apothecary had in his reckoning — and what is more, this one is a countess; and when countesses serve as duennas, it must be in the service of queens and empresses, since in their own houses they are the greatest of ladies and are served by other duennas."
To this Doña Rodríguez, who happened to be there, answered:
"My lady the duchess has duennas in her service who could have been countesses if fortune had wished it; but laws go where kings wish. And let nobody speak ill of duennas, and especially of the old ones and the unmarried; for although I am not one myself, I understand very well and can see clearly the advantage an unmarried duenna has over a widowed one — and whoever sheared us was left with the scissors in his hand."
"For all that," replied Sancho, "there is so much to shear off duennas, according to my barber, that it will be better not to stir the rice even if it sticks."
"Squires are always our enemies," answered Doña Rodríguez; "for, since they are the goblins of the anterooms and see us at every turn, the times they are not praying — which are many — they spend in gossiping about us, digging up our bones and burying our good name. Well, I consign them to the walking logs; for whether they like it or not we shall go on living in the world, and in the great houses, even if we die of hunger and cover our delicate or not-so-delicate flesh with a black widow's gown, as a man covers or hides a dunghill with a tapestry on a procession day. Upon my word, if it were given to me and the occasion called for it, I would make it plain, not only to those present but to the whole world, that there is no virtue that is not shut up in a duenna."
"I believe," said the duchess, "that my good Doña Rodríguez is right, and very much so; but she had better wait for a proper time to stand up for herself and for the rest of the duennas, so as to confound the bad opinion of that bad apothecary and root out the one the great Sancho Panza has in his breast."
To which Sancho answered:
"Ever since I have had the fumes of a governor about me, the dizzy spells of a squire have left me, and I do not care a wild fig for all the duennas there are."
They would have gone further with their duenna-ish talk if they had not heard the fife and the drums beginning to sound again, from which they understood that the Distressed Duenna was coming in. The duchess asked the duke whether it would be right to go out and receive her, since she was a countess and a person of quality.
"For what she has of countess about her," answered Sancho, before the duke could answer, "I am quite content that your greatnesses should go out and receive her; but for the duenna part of her, my opinion is that you should not stir a step."
"Who brings you into this, Sancho?" said Don Quixote.
"Who, sir?" answered Sancho. "I bring myself in, and I may bring myself in, as a squire who has learnt the terms of courtesy in your worship's school — you being the most courteous and best brought-up knight there is in all courteousness. And in these things, as I have heard your worship say, a man loses as much by a card too many as by a card too few; and a word to the wise."
"It is as Sancho says," said the duke. "We shall see the cut of the countess, and by that we shall measure out the courtesy that is owing to her."
At this the drums and the fife came in, as they had the first time.
And here, with this short chapter, the author made an end, and began the next, carrying on the same adventure, which is one of the most notable in the history.
Behind the mournful musicians there began to come into the garden as many as twelve duennas, divided into two files, all dressed in wide widow's gowns of what looked like fulled serge, with white headdresses of fine cotton so long that they showed nothing of the gown but its hem.
After them came the Countess Trifaldi, led by the hand by the squire Trifaldin of the White Beard, dressed in the finest black baize, unnapped — for had it been napped, every grain of it would have shown as big as one of the good chickpeas of Martos. The tail, or skirt, or whatever they may like to call it, ended in three points, which were held up in the hands of three pages, likewise dressed in mourning, making a showy and mathematical figure with the three acute angles that the three points formed. From which everybody who looked at the pointed skirt gathered that she must be called the Countess Trifaldi for that reason, as who should say the Countess of the Three Skirts.
And Benengeli says that it was true, and that by her own family name the countess was called Lobuna, on the grounds that a great many wolves were bred in her county; and that if they had been foxes instead of wolves she would have been called Zorruna, it being the custom in those parts for lords to take the style of their names from the thing or things their estates are richest in. But this countess, to favour the novelty of her skirt, dropped the Lobuna and took up the Trifaldi.
The twelve duennas and their lady came at a procession pace, their faces covered with black veils — not transparent like Trifaldin's, but so close-woven that nothing at all showed through.
As soon as the duennaish squadron had finished appearing, the duke, the duchess and Don Quixote got to their feet, and so did all those who were watching that deliberate procession. The twelve duennas halted and made an aisle, down the middle of which the Distressed Lady came forward, with Trifaldin still holding her by the hand. Seeing which, the duke, the duchess and Don Quixote came forward some twelve paces to receive her. She, going down on her knees on the ground, said in a voice coarse and hoarse rather than fine and delicate:
"Let your greatnesses be pleased not to pay so much courtesy to this servant of yours — I mean this servingwoman of yours; because, distressed as I am, I shall not manage to answer as I ought, on account of my strange and never-before-seen misfortune having carried off my understanding I do not know where, and it must be very far off, since the more I look for it the less I find it."
"He would be without his own, my lady countess," answered the duke, "who did not discover your worth from your person, which without anything more to see deserves all the cream of courtesy and all the flower of well-bred ceremony."
And, raising her by the hand, he led her to sit down in a chair next to the duchess, who received her likewise with a great deal of civility.
Don Quixote said nothing, and Sancho was dying to see the face of the Trifaldi and of some of her many duennas; but it was not possible until they uncovered themselves of their own free will and pleasure.
Everybody having settled down and fallen silent, they were waiting to see who would break the silence, and it was the Distressed Duenna, with these words:
"I am confident, most powerfullest lord, most beautifullest lady and most judiciousest bystanders, that my most afflictedest trouble will find in your most valorousest breasts a reception no less pleasant than it is generous and sorrowful; because it is such a trouble as is enough to move marble to tenderness, and to soften diamonds, and to make pliable the steel of the hardest hearts in the world. But before it comes out into the square of your hearings — not to say your ears — I should like to be made knowing whether there is in this gathering, ring and company the most refinedest knight Don Quixote of La Manchissima and his squirissimo Panza."
"The Panza," said Sancho, before anybody else could answer, "is here, and the Don Quixotissimo likewise; and so you may, most dolorousest duennissima, say whatever you likissimost, for we are all ready and most preparedest to be your most servantissimous."
At this Don Quixote got up, and, directing his words to the Distressed Duenna, said:
"If your troubles, afflicted lady, can promise themselves any hope of remedy from the valour or the strength of any knight errant, here are mine, which, weak and brief though they are, will all be employed in your service. I am Don Quixote of La Mancha, whose business it is to come to the help of all sorts of needy people; and, this being so, as it is, you have no need, my lady, to seek anybody's good will or to look for preambles, but plainly and without going round about to tell your ills — for there are ears listening to you that will know how to grieve over them, if not how to remedy them."
Hearing which, the Distressed Duenna made as if to throw herself at Don Quixote's feet, and indeed threw herself down; and, struggling to embrace them, she said:
"Before these feet and legs I throw myself, O unconquered knight, since they are the bases and pillars of knight-errantry. These feet I want to kiss, on whose steps hangs and depends the whole remedy of my misfortune, O valorous errant, whose true exploits leave behind and outshine the fabulous ones of the Amadíses, Esplandiáns and Belianíses!"
And, leaving Don Quixote, she turned to Sancho Panza, and, taking him by the hands, said to him:
"O you, the most loyal squire who ever served a knight errant in the present or in the past ages, longer in goodness than the beard of Trifaldin my attendant, who is here present! You may well pride yourself that in serving the great Don Quixote you serve in shorthand the whole herd of knights who have handled arms in the world. I conjure you, by what you owe to your most faithful goodness, to be a good intercessor for me with your master, so that he may at once favour this most humble and most unfortunate countess."
To which Sancho answered:
"That my goodness should be as long and as great as your squire's beard, my ladyship, matters very little to me. Let my soul have its beard and moustaches on it when I go out of this life, which is what matters; for about the beards down here I care little or nothing. But without all these wheedlings and entreaties I shall beg my master — who I know is fond of me, and the more so now that he needs me for a certain piece of business — to favour and help your worship in everything he can. Let your worship unpack your trouble and tell it to us, and leave it to us, for we shall all understand one another."
The duke and duchess were bursting with laughter at all this, as the people who had felt the pulse of that adventure, and they praised between themselves the sharpness and the play-acting of the Trifaldi, who, sitting down again, said:
"Of the famous kingdom of Candaya, which lies between the great Taprobana and the South Sea, two leagues beyond Cape Comorin, the lady was Queen Doña Maguncia, widow of King Archipiela her lord and husband, of which marriage they had and procreated the Infanta Antonomasia, heiress of the kingdom; which said Infanta Antonomasia was brought up and grew up under my tutelage and teaching, since I was the most senior and the chief duenna of her mother.
"It happened, then, that with days going and days coming, the child Antonomasia reached the age of fourteen with such great perfection of beauty that nature could not have raised her a point higher. And are we to say that her good sense was a snivelling little thing? She was as judicious as she was beautiful, and she was the most beautiful in the world — and is so still, unless by now the envious fates and the hardened Parcae have cut the thread of her life. But they will not have, for the heavens will not permit so great a harm to be done to the earth as it would be to carry off unripe the cluster of the loveliest vine in the world.
"With this beauty — and not praised as it deserves by my clumsy tongue — an infinite number of princes fell in love, both native and foreign; among whom a private gentleman who was at court dared to raise his thoughts to the heaven of so much beauty, trusting in his youth and his gallantry and in his many abilities and graces and in the ease and happiness of his wit. Because I would have your greatnesses know, if you do not take it amiss, that he played a guitar until he made it talk; and, what is more, he was a poet and a great dancer, and he knew how to make a birdcage, so that merely by making them he could have earned his living if he had found himself in extreme need — and all these parts and graces are enough to bring down a mountain, let alone a delicate maiden.
"But all his gentility and his fine grace and all his graces and abilities would have counted for little or nothing in reducing the fortress of my girl, if the thieving face-flayer had not used the remedy of reducing me first. First the villain and soulless vagabond wanted to get my good will and bribe my liking, so that I, a bad governor, should hand him the keys of the fortress I was guarding. In short: he flattered my understanding and reduced my will with I do not know what trinkets and toys he gave me; but what most laid me low and brought me down on the ground were some verses I heard him sing one night from a grating that looked out on a little alley where he was standing — which, if I remember rightly, went:
From my sweet enemy there comes a hurt that wounds the soul, and, for greater torment still, it wills that it be felt and not be told.
"The verses seemed to me of pearl, and his voice of syrup; and ever since — I mean from that time on, seeing the ill I fell into through these and other such verses — I have thought that from good and well-ordered commonwealths the poets ought to be banished, as Plato advised; at least the lascivious ones, because they write verses that are not like those of the Marquis of Mantua, which entertain and make children and women weep, but sharp things that, like soft thorns, run through your soul and, like lightning, wound you inside it, leaving your clothes untouched. And another time he sang:
Come, death, so hidden away that I may not feel you coming, so that the pleasure of dying may not give me back my life.
"And other little verses and tail-pieces of the same stamp, which sung enchant and written hold you spellbound. And then, what about when they stoop to composing a kind of verse that was in use in Candaya at that time, which they called seguidillas? Then there was the leaping of souls, the frisking of laughter, the restlessness of bodies and, in short, the quicksilver of all the senses. And so I say, my dear sirs, that such versifiers ought by a just title to be banished to the Isles of the Lizards.
"But it is not their fault, but the fault of the simpletons who praise them and the fools who believe them; and if I had been the good duenna I ought to have been, their stale-brewed conceits would not have moved me, and I should not have believed it true when they say: 'I live dying, I burn in the ice, I shiver in the fire, I hope without hope, I go away and I stay,' along with other impossibilities of that breed that their writings are full of. And then what about when they promise the phoenix of Arabia, the crown of Ariadne, the horses of the Sun, the pearls of the South, the gold of Tibar and the balsam of Panchaia? Here is where they stretch out their pens furthest, since it costs them little to promise what they never intend and are not able to fulfil.
"But where am I straying to? Ah, wretched me! What madness or what folly carries me off to tell other people's faults when I have so much to say about my own? Ah, luckless me again! It was not the verses that reduced me but my own simplicity; it was not the music that softened me but my own frivolity. My great ignorance and my small caution opened the road and cleared the path for the steps of Don Clavijo — that being the name of the said gentleman.
"And so, with me as the go-between, he found himself once and a great many times in the chamber of Antonomasia, who was deceived by me and not by him, under the title of her true husband; for, sinner though I am, I would never have consented to his coming, without being her husband, as near as the welt of the sole of her slippers. No, no, not that: matrimony must come first in any business of this kind that is handled by me!
"There was only one harm in this business, which was the inequality of it, Don Clavijo being a private gentleman and the Infanta Antonomasia the heiress, as I have said, of the kingdom. For some days this tangle stayed hidden and covered up by the shrewdness of my caution, until it seemed to me that a certain swelling of Antonomasia's belly was uncovering it at a great rate; the fear of which made the three of us go into council, out of which it came that, before the bad business came out into the light, Don Clavijo should apply to the vicar for Antonomasia as his wife, on the strength of a written promise the infanta had made him of being his wife, drawn up by my wits with such force that not even Samson's strength could have broken it.
"The steps were taken, the vicar saw the promise, this same vicar took the lady's confession, she confessed straight out, and he ordered her to be lodged in the house of a very honourable officer of the court..."
At this point Sancho said:
"So there are officers of the court in Candaya too, and poets and seguidillas — from which I can swear that I imagine all the world is one and the same. But let your worship hurry up, Señora Trifaldi, for it is late and I am already dying to know the end of this very long story."
"I shall," answered the countess.
Every word Sancho said gave the duchess as much pleasure as it drove Don Quixote to despair; and, ordering him to be quiet, the Distressed Lady went on, saying:
"In short, after a great many questions and answers, the infanta staying always at her thirteen, without going back on or varying from her first declaration, the vicar gave sentence in favour of Don Clavijo and handed her over to him as his lawful wife — at which Queen Doña Maguncia, the mother of the Infanta Antonomasia, took such offence that within three days we buried her."
"She must have died, no doubt about it," said Sancho.
"Obviously!" answered Trifaldin. "In Candaya they do not bury living people, but dead ones."
"It has been known, sir squire," replied Sancho, "for a person in a faint to be buried in the belief that they were dead; and it seemed to me that Queen Maguncia was more obliged to faint than to die. With life a great many things are put right, and the infanta's folly was not so great as to deserve being felt so much. If that lady had married some page of hers, or some other servant of her household, as a great many others have done, from what I have heard, the harm would have been past remedy; but her having married a gentleman as much of a gentleman and as well-informed as they have painted him here for us — truly and truly, though it was a piece of foolishness, it was not so great a one as people think. Because, according to my master's rules — and he is here present and will not let me lie — just as bishops are made out of learned men, so out of knights, and especially errant ones, can be made kings and emperors."
"You are right, Sancho," said Don Quixote, "because a knight errant, so long as he has a couple of fingers of good luck, is in the immediate potentiality of being the greatest lord in the world. But let the Distressed Lady go on, for I can see through it that she still has the bitter part to tell of this history that has been sweet so far."
"And how bitter the bitter part is!" answered the countess. "So bitter that beside it colocynth is sweet and oleander tasty.
"The queen being dead, then — and not in a faint — we buried her; and hardly had we covered her with the earth and hardly had we said her the last farewell, when —
quis talia fando temperet a lachrymis? —
"mounted on a wooden horse, there appeared above the queen's grave the giant Malambruno, first cousin to Maguncia, who along with being cruel was an enchanter. And he, by his arts, in revenge for his cousin's death, and as a punishment for Don Clavijo's boldness, and out of spite at Antonomasia's excess, left the two of them enchanted on the grave itself: her turned into a bronze she-ape, and him into a terrifying crocodile of some unknown metal; and between the two of them stands a pillar, likewise of metal, and on it, written in the Syriac tongue, some letters which, having been set out in the Candayan and now in the Castilian, hold this sentence: 'These two bold lovers shall not recover their first shape until the valorous Manchegan comes to grips with me in single battle; for the fates keep this never-before-seen adventure for his great valour alone.'
"This done, he drew from its scabbard a broad and enormous scimitar and, seizing me by the hair, made a feint of wanting to cut my throat and slice my head clean off. I was thrown into confusion, my voice stuck in my throat, I was cast down in the last degree; but for all that I made the greatest effort I could, and in a trembling, pained voice I said him so many things and such things that they made him suspend the carrying out of so severe a punishment.
"Finally he had all the palace duennas brought before him, who were these here present; and, after having enlarged on our guilt and abused the nature of duennas, their bad habits and worse contrivances, and loading them all with the guilt that was mine alone, he said he did not want to punish us with capital punishment but with other, drawn-out punishments that would give us a civil and continuous death. And in that very moment and instant when he finished saying this, we all felt the pores of our faces opening, and pricking all over them as if with the points of needles. We put our hands at once to our faces and found ourselves in the state you shall now see."
And then the Distressed Lady and the other duennas lifted the masks they had come covered with, and uncovered their faces, all thickly grown with beards — some fair, some black, some white and some grizzled. At the sight of which the duke and duchess showed themselves astonished, Don Quixote and Sancho thunderstruck, and all those present dumbfounded.
And the Trifaldi went on:
"In this way that poltroon and evil-minded Malambruno punished us, covering the softness and smoothness of our faces with the roughness of these bristles. Would to heaven he had rather struck our heads off with his enormous scimitar than shadowed the light of our faces with this fleece that covers us! Because if we go into the reckoning, my dear sirs — and what I am going to say now I should have liked to say with my eyes turned to fountains; but the thought of our misfortune, and the seas they have rained until now, have left them without moisture and dry as beards of corn, and so I shall say it without tears — I say, then: where can a duenna with a beard go? What father or what mother will grieve for her? Who will give her any help? For even when she has a smooth skin and a face martyred with a thousand kinds of paints and washes, she can hardly find anybody to love her; what will she do when she uncovers a face turned into a forest? O duennas and companions of mine, we were born at an unlucky moment, in an ill-starred hour our parents engendered us!"
And, saying this, she gave signs of fainting away.
Really and truly, everybody who enjoys histories like this one ought to show themselves grateful to Cide Hamete, its first author, for the care he took in telling us the smallest quavers of it, without leaving anything, however minute, that he did not bring distinctly into the light: he paints the thoughts, uncovers the imaginings, answers the unspoken questions, clears up the doubts, resolves the arguments; in short, he makes plain the very atoms of the most inquisitive desire. O most celebrated author! O fortunate Don Quixote! O famous Dulcinea! O amusing Sancho Panza! All together and each one of you singly, may you live infinite ages, for the pleasure and the general entertainment of the living.
The history says, then, that as soon as Sancho saw the Distressed Lady in a faint, he said:
"By the faith of an honest man, I swear, and by the memory of all my ancestors the Panzas, that I have never heard or seen such an adventure as this, nor has my master ever told me of one, nor has it ever fitted into his imagination. May a thousand Satans take you — not to curse you as an enchanter and a giant, Malambruno — and could you find no other kind of punishment to give these poor sinners but bearding them? How much better would it not have been, and how much more to their purpose, to take away the upper halves of their noses, even if they talked through them, than to put beards on them? I would wager they have not the means to pay anybody to shave them."
"That is the truth, sir," answered one of the twelve; "we have not the means to trim ourselves. And so some of us have taken as a thrifty remedy the use of certain plasters or sticking patches, and, applying them to our faces and pulling them off all at once, we are left as bare and smooth as the bottom of a stone mortar. Because although there are women in Candaya who go from house to house to take off the down and shape the eyebrows and do other cosmetic offices belonging to women, we duennas of my lady's household would never let them in — because most of them smell of being third parties, having left off being first ones. And if we are not relieved by Señor Don Quixote, they will carry us to the grave with beards."
"I would have my own plucked out in the land of the Moors," said Don Quixote, "if I did not put an end to yours."
At this point the Trifaldi came out of her faint and said:
"The ring of that promise, valorous knight, reached my ears in the middle of my faint, and has been the means of my coming out of it and recovering all my senses. And so I beg you again, illustrious errant and indomitable lord, that your gracious promise may turn into a deed."
"It shall not be held up by me," answered Don Quixote. "See, my lady, what it is I have to do, for my spirit is very ready to serve you."
"The case is," answered the Distressed Lady, "that from here to the kingdom of Candaya, if you go by land, is five thousand leagues, two more or less; but if you go by air and in a straight line, it is three thousand two hundred and twenty-seven. It is also to be known that Malambruno told me that when fortune furnished me with the knight who was to set us free, he would send him a mount a great deal better and with fewer vices than the ones you hire; because it is to be that same wooden horse on which the valorous Pierres carried off the fair Magalona.
"This horse is steered by a peg he has in his forehead, which serves him for a bridle, and he flies through the air with such lightness that it looks as if the devils themselves were carrying him. This horse, according to ancient tradition, was made by that wise Merlin; he lent him to Pierres, who was his friend, and with him Pierres made great journeys and carried off, as has been said, the fair Magalona, taking her on the crupper through the air and leaving everybody who looked at them from the ground gaping. And he lent him to nobody but the man he chose, or the man who paid best for him; and from the great Pierres until now we know of nobody who has got up on him.
"Malambruno has taken him from there by his arts and has him in his power, and makes use of him in his journeys, which he makes at every moment to various parts of the world; and today he is here and tomorrow in France and the next day in Potosí. And the good of it is that this horse neither eats nor sleeps nor wears out horseshoes, and goes at an amble through the air without having wings, so that the man on his back can carry a cup full of water in his hand without spilling a drop of it, so smoothly and quietly does he travel — for which reason the fair Magalona was very glad to ride on him."
To this Sancho said:
"For travelling quietly and smoothly, my grey — even though he does not travel through the air; but on the ground I would match him against all the ambling horses in the world."
They all laughed, and the Distressed Lady went on:
"And this horse, if Malambruno means to put an end to our misfortune, will be in our presence before half an hour of the night has gone; because he gave me to understand that the sign he would give me by which I should know that he had found the knight I was looking for would be to send me the horse, wherever I was, conveniently and quickly."
"And how many will that horse hold?" asked Sancho.
The Distressed Lady answered:
"Two people: one in the saddle and the other on the crupper; and for the most part these two people are a knight and a squire, when there is no stolen maiden."
"I should like to know, Señora Distressed Lady," said Sancho, "what name that horse has."
"His name," answered the Distressed Lady, "is not like Bellerophon's horse, which was called Pegasus, or like Alexander the Great's, called Bucephalus, or like the furious Orlando's, whose name was Brigliadoro, still less Bayard, which was Reinaldos de Montalbán's, or Frontino, like Ruggiero's, or Boötes or Pyrois, as they say the horses of the Sun are called; nor is he called Orelia either, like the horse on which the unfortunate Rodrigo, the last king of the Goths, went into the battle where he lost his life and his kingdom."
"I would wager," said Sancho, "that since they have not given him any of those famous names of such well-known horses, they will not have given him my master's either — Rocinante, which for fitness beats all the ones that have been named."
"That is so," answered the bearded countess, "but still his name suits him very well, because he is called Clavileño the Swift — a name that agrees with his being made of wood, and with the peg he carries in his forehead, and with the lightness with which he travels; for in our tongue the peg is the clavija and the wood the leño. And so, as far as the name goes, he may well compete with the famous Rocinante."
"The name does not displease me," replied Sancho, "but with what bridle or with what halter is he steered?"
"I have already said," answered the Trifaldi, "that it is with the peg; for by turning it one way or the other the knight on his back makes him travel as he likes, whether through the air, or skimming and almost sweeping the ground, or by the middle way, which is the one to be looked for and to be kept to in all well-ordered actions."
"I should like to see it," answered Sancho; "but to think that I have to get up on him, either in the saddle or on the crupper, is asking pears of an elm tree. It is a fine thing that I can hardly keep my seat on my grey, and on a pack-saddle softer than silk itself, and now they want me to keep my seat on a wooden crupper without any cushion or padding at all! By God, I do not intend to pound myself to bits to take the beards off anybody. Let everybody shave as best suits him, for I do not intend to keep my master company on such a long journey. What is more, I cannot be as much to the point for the shaving of these beards as I am for the disenchantment of my lady Dulcinea."
"Yes you are, my friend," answered the Trifaldi, "and so much so that without your presence I understand we shall do nothing."
"Help, in the king's name!" said Sancho. "What have squires got to do with their masters' adventures? Are they to carry off the fame of the ones they finish, and are we to carry the labour? Body of me! If only the historians would say: 'Such and such a knight finished such and such an adventure, but with the help of so-and-so his squire, without whom it would have been impossible to finish it.' But they write bare and dry, 'Don Paralipomenon of the Three Stars finished the adventure of the six monsters,' without naming the person of his squire, who was present at the whole of it, as though he had never been in the world!
"Now, gentlemen, I say again that my master may go alone, and much good may it do him; and I shall stay here in the company of the duchess my lady, and it might be that when he came back he would find my lady Dulcinea's cause improved by a third and a fifth — because in my idle and unoccupied moments I mean to give myself a round of lashes that no hair shall cover."
"For all that, you must go with him if it is necessary, good Sancho, because good people will beg you to; and the faces of these ladies must not be left so thickly grown for your useless fear. That would certainly be a bad business."
"Help, in the king's name, again!" replied Sancho. "If this charity were being done for some sheltered maidens or for some charity-school girls, a man might venture on any labour; but to bear it for taking the beards off duennas — bad luck to it! I would sooner see them all bearded, from the greatest to the least, and from the most affected to the primmest."
"You get on badly with duennas, Sancho my friend," said the duchess. "You are following the Toledo apothecary's opinion very closely. But upon my word you are wrong; for there are duennas in my house who could be a model for duennas, and here is my Doña Rodríguez, who will not let me say otherwise."
"Let your excellency say it if you like," said Rodríguez; "for God knows the truth of everything, and good or bad, bearded or smooth as we duennas may be, our mother bore us like the other women; and since God threw us into the world, He knows why, and I hold by His mercy and not by anybody's beard."
"Well now, Señora Rodríguez," said Don Quixote, "and Señora Trifaldi and company: I trust in heaven that it will look with kind eyes on your troubles, and that Sancho will do what I order him — let Clavileño only come and let me only find myself face to face with Malambruno. For I know there would be no razor that could shave your worships as easily as my sword would shave Malambruno's head off his shoulders; for God suffers the wicked, but not for ever."
"Ah!" said the Distressed Lady at this. "May all the stars of the celestial regions look with kindly eyes on your greatness, valorous knight, and pour into your spirit all prosperity and valour, so that you may be the shield and protection of the abused and downtrodden duennaish race, abominated by apothecaries, gossiped about by squires and wheedled at by pages. Cursed be the wretched girl who in the flower of her years did not go and be a nun sooner than a duenna! Unfortunate creatures that we duennas are — for even if we came down in a straight line, man from man, from Hector the Trojan himself, our ladies would still not leave off throwing a 'you there' at us, if they thought it would make them queens by it. O giant Malambruno, who, enchanter though you are, are most certain in your promises! Send us the peerless Clavileño now, so that our misfortune may come to an end; for if the hot weather sets in and these beards of ours last, woe to our luck!"
The Trifaldi said this with so much feeling that she drew the tears out of the eyes of all the bystanders, and even flooded Sancho's; and he resolved in his heart to go with his master to the furthest parts of the world, if the taking of the wool off those venerable faces depended on it.
Night came on at this, and with it the appointed moment when the famous horse Clavileño should arrive; whose lateness was already wearing at Don Quixote, since it seemed to him that, Malambruno being slow in sending him, either he was not the knight for whom that adventure was reserved or Malambruno did not dare to come to single battle with him.
But see here: all at once there came into the garden four wild men dressed all in green ivy, carrying a great wooden horse on their shoulders. They set him with his feet on the ground, and one of the wild men said:
"Let the man who has the spirit for it get up on this machine."
"I do not get up here," said Sancho, "because I have neither the spirit nor the knighthood."
And the wild man went on, saying:
"And let the squire take the crupper, if there is one; and let him trust the valorous Malambruno, for he shall be harmed by no sword but Malambruno's own and by no other malice. And there is nothing to do but turn this peg he has set on his neck, and he will carry them through the air to where Malambruno is waiting for them. But so that the height and loftiness of the road may not give them vertigo, they must have their eyes covered until the horse neighs, which will be the sign that their journey is over."
This said, leaving Clavileño, with a graceful bearing they went back the way they had come. The Distressed Lady, as soon as she saw the horse, said to Don Quixote almost in tears:
"Valorous knight, Malambruno's promises have proved certain. The horse is in the house, our beards are growing, and every one of us and with every hair of them begs you to shave us and shear us; since there is nothing more to it but for you to get up on him with your squire and give a happy beginning to your new journey."
"That I shall do, Señora Countess Trifaldi, most willingly and with the best will in the world, without stopping to take a cushion or put on my spurs, so as not to lose time: so great is my desire to see you, my lady, and all these duennas smooth and bare."
"That I shall not do," said Sancho, "either with a bad will or with a good one, on any account. And if this shaving cannot be done without my getting up on the crupper, my master may well look for another squire to go with him, and these ladies for another way of smoothing their faces; for I am no witch, to take pleasure in going about through the air. And what will my islanders say when they learn that their governor goes about taking walks on the winds?
"And another thing: there being three thousand and so many leagues from here to Candaya, if the horse gets tired or the giant gets annoyed we shall take half a dozen years to get back, and by then there will be neither isle nor isler in the world that knows me. And since it is commonly said that in delay lies danger, and that when they give you the heifer you should run with the halter, let these ladies' beards forgive me, but Saint Peter is well enough off in Rome — I mean I am well enough off in this house, where so much kindness is done me and from whose master I look for so great a benefit as seeing myself a governor."
To which the duke said:
"Sancho my friend, the isle I have promised you is not movable or fugitive: it has roots so deep, thrown down into the depths of the earth, that they will not pull it up or shift it from where it is at three tugs. And since you know that I know that there is no kind of office of any great value that is not got by some sort of bribe, one more and another less, the bribe I mean to take for this government is that you should go with your master Don Quixote to bring this memorable adventure to its top and its end. And whether you come back on Clavileño with the speed his lightness promises, or whether contrary fortune brings you back on foot, turned pilgrim from inn to inn and from tavern to tavern, whenever you come back you will find your isle where you left it, and your islanders with the same desire to receive you as their governor that they have always had, and my will shall be the same. And do not put this truth in doubt, Señor Sancho, for it would be doing a plain wrong to the desire I have to serve you."
"No more, sir," said Sancho. "I am a poor squire and I cannot carry so many courtesies on my back. Let my master mount, let them cover these eyes of mine and commend me to God; and let them tell me whether, when we are going through those high places, I may commend myself to Our Lord or call on the angels to favour me."
To which the Trifaldi answered:
"Sancho, you may very well commend yourself to God or to whomever you like; for Malambruno, though he is an enchanter, is a Christian, and works his enchantments with a great deal of shrewdness and a great deal of care, without meddling with anybody."
"Well then," said Sancho, "God help me, and the Most Holy Trinity of Gaeta!"
"Since the memorable adventure of the fulling mills," said Don Quixote, "I have never seen Sancho in such terror as now; and if I were as much of a believer in omens as some, his faint-heartedness would tickle my spirit a little. But come here, Sancho, for with these ladies' and gentlemen's leave I want to have two words with you apart."
And, drawing Sancho aside among some trees in the garden and taking both his hands, he said to him:
"You see now, brother Sancho, the long journey that is waiting for us, and that God knows when we shall come back from it, or what convenience and leisure our business will give us. And so I should like you to withdraw now to your room, as though you were going to look for something necessary for the road, and in the twinkling of an eye give yourself, on account of the three thousand three hundred lashes you are bound to, five hundred at least — which will be so many given; and to begin things is to have them half finished."
"By God," said Sancho, "your worship must be out of your mind! This is like what they say: 'You see me in a hurry and you ask me for my maidenhead!' Now, when I have to go and sit on a bare board, does your worship want me to hurt my backside? Truly and truly, your worship is not being reasonable. Let us go now and shave these duennas, and on the way back I promise your worship, as sure as I am who I am, to make such haste to get out of my obligation that your worship will be content; and I say no more."
And Don Quixote answered:
"Well, with that promise, good Sancho, I go consoled; and I believe you will keep it, because in fact, though a fool, you are a man of true colours."
"I am not of any colour, I am brown," said Sancho; "but even if I were of mixed cloth, I would keep my word."
And with this they went back to mount Clavileño, and as he mounted Don Quixote said:
"Cover yourself, Sancho, and mount, Sancho; for a man who sends for us from such far-off lands will not be one to deceive us, for the little glory that can come to him from deceiving somebody who trusts him. And, granting that everything turned out backwards from what I imagine, no malice can dim the glory of having undertaken this exploit."
"Let us go, sir," said Sancho, "for these ladies' beards and tears I have nailed into my heart, and I shall not eat a mouthful that tastes good to me until I see them in their first smoothness. Let your worship mount and cover yourself first; for if I am to go on the crupper, it is plain that the man in the saddle mounts first."
"That is the truth," replied Don Quixote.
And, taking a handkerchief out of his pocket, he asked the Distressed Lady to cover his eyes very well; and, having had them covered, he uncovered them again and said:
"If I remember rightly, I have read in Virgil that business of the Palladium of Troy, which was a wooden horse the Greeks presented to the goddess Pallas, and which went pregnant with armed knights who were afterwards the total ruin of Troy. And so it will be as well to see first what Clavileño has in his stomach."
"There is no call for it," said the Distressed Lady, "for I answer for him and know that Malambruno has nothing malicious or treacherous about him. Let your worship, Señor Don Quixote, mount without any dread, and on my head be it if any harm comes to you."
It seemed to Don Quixote that anything he might say about his own safety would be to the detriment of his valour; and so, without arguing any more, he got up on Clavileño and tried the peg, which turned easily. And, as he had no stirrups and his legs hung down, he looked like nothing so much as a figure in a Flemish tapestry, painted or woven into some Roman triumph.
Unwillingly and little by little Sancho got himself up; and, settling as best he could on the crupper, he found it rather hard and not at all soft, and asked the duke whether, if it were possible, they could let him have some cushion or some pillow, even if it were from my lady the duchess's drawing room or from some page's bed, because that horse's crupper seemed more of marble than of wood.
To this the Trifaldi said that Clavileño would suffer no harness or any kind of adornment on him; that what he could do was to sit sidesaddle, and then he would not feel the hardness so much. Sancho did so, and, saying goodbye, let himself be blindfolded; and then, after being blindfolded, he uncovered himself again, and, looking tenderly and with tears at everybody in the garden, asked them to help him in this pass with a paternoster and an ave apiece, so that God might furnish somebody to say them for them when they found themselves in the same pass. To which Don Quixote said:
"You thief, are you on the gallows by any chance, or at the last term of your life, to use prayers of that kind? Are you not, you soulless and cowardly creature, in the very place the fair Magalona occupied, from which she came down not to the grave but to be queen of France, if the histories are not lying? And I, who am at your side, may I not set myself beside the valorous Pierres, who pressed this very place I am pressing now? Cover yourself, cover yourself, you disheartened animal, and do not let the fear you feel come out at your mouth, at least in my presence."
"Cover me up," answered Sancho; "and since they will not have me commend myself to God or be commended, what wonder is it if I am afraid there may be some region of devils about here who will land us in the criminals' field?"
They covered themselves; and Don Quixote, feeling that he was as he ought to be, tried the peg. And he had hardly put his fingers on it when all the duennas and everybody present raised their voices, saying:
"God guide you, valorous knight!"
"God be with you, fearless squire!"
"Now, now you are going through the air, cutting through it faster than an arrow!"
"Now you are beginning to astonish and amaze everybody watching you from the ground!"
"Hold on, valorous Sancho, you are swaying! Mind you do not fall, for your fall will be worse than that of the bold young man who wanted to drive the chariot of the Sun, his father!"
Sancho heard the voices, and, squeezing up against his master and gripping him with his arms, said to him:
"Sir, how can these people say we are going so high, if their voices reach us here, and it sounds for all the world as if they were talking right next to us?"
"Do not stick at that, Sancho; for since these things and these flights go outside the ordinary courses, from a thousand leagues off you will see and hear whatever you like. And do not squeeze me so tight, for you are pulling me over. And truly I do not know what you are troubled or frightened about, for I would dare to swear that in all the days of my life I have never got up on a mount with a smoother pace: it seems for all the world as though we were not moving from one place. Banish fear, my friend, for in fact the thing is going as it ought and we have the wind behind us."
"That is the truth," answered Sancho, "for on this side there comes such a strong wind at me that it seems as if they were blowing on me with a thousand bellows."
And so it was, for some great bellows were making the air on him: so well was that adventure laid out by the duke and the duchess and their steward that it lacked nothing that could make it perfect.
Feeling himself blown on, then, Don Quixote said:
"Without any doubt, Sancho, we must be arriving now at the second region of the air, where the hail and the snows are engendered; the thunder, the lightning and the thunderbolts are engendered in the third region; and if we go on climbing in this way, we shall soon strike the region of fire, and I do not know how to temper this peg so that we do not climb to where we shall be burnt up."
At this, with some tow that lit and went out easily, hanging from a cane, they were warming their faces from a distance. Sancho, feeling the heat, said:
"May they kill me if we are not in the place of fire already, or very near it; because a good part of my beard has been singed, and I am half inclined, sir, to uncover myself and see what part of the world we are in."
"Do no such thing," answered Don Quixote, "and remember the true story of the licentiate Torralba, whom the devils carried off through the air, riding on a cane with his eyes shut, and in twelve hours he arrived in Rome and got down at the Torre di Nona, which is a street of the city, and saw the whole disaster and assault and the death of Bourbon; and by morning he was back in Madrid, where he gave an account of everything he had seen. He said too that when he was going through the air the devil ordered him to open his eyes, and he opened them and saw himself so close, as it seemed to him, to the body of the moon that he could have grasped it with his hand; and that he did not dare to look at the earth for fear of growing dizzy.
"So, Sancho, there is no call for us to uncover ourselves; for the man who has charge of us will answer for us, and perhaps we are circling up and climbing high so as to drop at one swoop on the kingdom of Candaya, as the saker or the peregrine does on the heron to catch her, however high she soars. And, although it seems to us that it is not half an hour since we set off from the garden, believe me, we must have come a long way."
"I do not know how it is," answered Sancho Panza. "I can only say that if the lady Magellan, or Magalona, was satisfied with this crupper, she cannot have been very tender of flesh."
All this talk of the two brave men was heard by the duke and the duchess and the people in the garden, from which they took extraordinary pleasure; and, wanting to bring the strange and well-made adventure to a close, they set fire to Clavileño's tail with some tow. And at once, the horse being full of thundering rockets, he flew through the air with a strange noise and pitched Don Quixote and Sancho Panza to the ground, half singed.
By this time the whole bearded squadron of duennas and the Trifaldi and all had disappeared out of the garden, and the people in the garden were left stretched out on the ground as if in a faint. Don Quixote and Sancho got up in a bad way, and, looking in every direction, were astounded to find themselves in the very garden they had set out from, and to see so many people stretched out on the ground.
And their astonishment grew still greater when at one side of the garden they saw a great lance driven into the ground, and hanging from it by two green silk cords a smooth white parchment, on which, in great gold letters, was written the following:
The illustrious knight Don Quixote of La Mancha has finished and completed the adventure of the Countess Trifaldi, otherwise called the Distressed Duenna, and company, merely by attempting it.
Malambruno declares himself content and satisfied to the full of his desire; the duennas' beards are now smooth and bare, and King Don Clavijo and Antonomasia are restored to their first estate. And when the squirely whipping has been completed, the white dove shall find herself free of the pestilent gerfalcons who persecute her and in the arms of her beloved and cooing mate; for so it is ordained by the wise Merlin, arch-enchanter of enchanters.
Don Quixote, then, having read the letters on the parchment, clearly understood that they were speaking of Dulcinea's disenchantment; and, giving many thanks to heaven that with so little danger he had finished so great a feat, restoring to their former complexion the faces of the venerable duennas, who were no longer to be seen, he went to where the duke and duchess had still not come round, and, taking the duke by the hand, said to him:
"Come, good sir, good courage; good courage, for it is all nothing! The adventure is over now, and without harm to anybody, as the writing set up on that pillar plainly shows."
The duke, little by little, and like a man waking from a heavy sleep, came round to himself; and in the same manner the duchess and everybody else who had fallen down about the garden, with such signs of wonder and terror that they could almost have given it to be understood that what they knew so well how to feign in play had really happened to them. The duke read the notice with his eyes half shut, and then with open arms went to embrace Don Quixote, telling him that he was the best knight who had ever been seen in any age.
Sancho was looking about for the Distressed Lady, to see what face she had without the beard, and whether she was as beautiful without it as her splendid figure promised; but they told him that as soon as Clavileño came down burning through the air and struck the ground, the whole squadron of duennas with the Trifaldi had disappeared, and that they were already shaved and without a stubble. The duchess asked Sancho how he had got on during that long journey. To which Sancho answered:
"I, my lady, felt that we were flying, as my master told me, through the region of fire, and I wanted to uncover my eyes a little; but my master, of whom I asked leave to uncover them, would not allow it. But I, having I do not know what shreds of curiosity in me and of wanting to know what is kept from me and blocked off, quietly and without anybody seeing, right beside my nose, moved aside just so much of the handkerchief that was covering my eyes, and looked out that way towards the earth; and it seemed to me that the whole of it was no bigger than a grain of mustard seed, and the men walking about on it a little bigger than hazelnuts — so you may see how high we must have been going then."
To this the duchess said:
"Sancho my friend, look at what you are saying; for by the sound of it you did not see the earth but the men walking about on it. And it is plain that if the earth looked to you like a grain of mustard seed and every man like a hazelnut, one man alone would have covered the whole earth."
"That is true," answered Sancho, "but for all that I uncovered it from one little side and saw the whole of it."
"Look, Sancho," said the duchess, "for from one little side you cannot see the whole of what you are looking at."
"I do not know about those ways of looking," replied Sancho. "I only know that your ladyship had better understand that, since we were flying by enchantment, by enchantment I could see the whole earth and all the men wherever I looked at them. And if this is not believed of me, neither will your worship believe how, uncovering myself right by my eyebrows, I saw myself so close to heaven that there was not a hand and a half between me and it; and by what I can swear, my lady, it is very big indeed.
"And it happened that we were going through the part where the seven little goats are — the Pleiades, that is. And in God and in my soul, since in my childhood I was a goatherd in my own country, as soon as I saw them such a longing came over me to amuse myself with them for a while! And if I had not satisfied it, I think I should have burst. So I come along and I take and — what do I do? Without saying anything to anybody, or to my master either, quietly and gently I got down off Clavileño and amused myself with the little goats, which are like gillyflowers and like flowers, for nearly three quarters of an hour; and Clavileño never stirred from his place or went on."
"And while good Sancho was amusing himself with the goats," asked the duke, "what was Señor Don Quixote amusing himself with?"
To which Don Quixote answered:
"Since all these things and these events go outside the natural order, it is no great matter that Sancho says what he says. For myself I can say that I neither uncovered myself above nor below, and I saw neither the sky nor the earth, nor the sea nor the sands. It is quite true that I felt I was passing through the region of the air, and even that I was touching that of fire; but that we passed beyond that I cannot believe, since, the region of fire being between the heaven of the moon and the last region of the air, we could not have reached the heaven where the seven little goats Sancho speaks of are without being burnt up. And, since we were not scorched, either Sancho is lying or Sancho is dreaming."
"I am neither lying nor dreaming," answered Sancho. "If you doubt it, ask me for the marks of those goats, and by them you will see whether I am telling the truth or not."
"Say them, then, Sancho," said the duchess.
"They are," answered Sancho, "two green, two red, two blue, and one mottled."
"That is a new kind of goat," said the duke, "and in this region of ours on the ground such colours are not in use — I mean goats of such colours."
"That is plain enough," said Sancho. "Why, there has to be some difference between the goats of the sky and the goats of the ground."
"Tell me, Sancho," asked the duke: "did you see any he-goat up there among those goats?"
"No, sir," answered Sancho, "but I have heard it said that none of them ever goes past the horns of the moon."
They would not ask him anything more about his journey, because it seemed to them that Sancho had the thread in hand for strolling through all the heavens and bringing news of everything that went on up there, without having stirred from the garden.
In short, this was the end of the adventure of the Distressed Duenna, which gave the duke and duchess something to laugh about, not only at that time but for the whole of their lives, and gave Sancho something to tell for centuries, if he had lived them. And Don Quixote, going up to Sancho, said in his ear:
"Sancho, since you want people to believe you about what you saw in the sky, I want you to believe me about what I saw in the cave of Montesinos; and I say no more to you."
With the happy and amusing outcome of the adventure of the Distressed Lady, the duke and duchess were left so pleased that they decided to go further with their tricks, seeing what a convenient subject they had for having them taken for earnest. And so, having laid out the plan and the orders their servants and their vassals were to keep with Sancho in the government of the promised isle, the next day — which was the one after Clavileño's flight — the duke told Sancho to smarten himself up and get ready to go and be governor, for his islanders were already waiting for him like the rain in May. Sancho bowed to him and said:
"Ever since I came down from the sky, and ever since from its high summit I looked at the earth and saw it so small, the great longing I had to be a governor has cooled in me somewhat; because what greatness is there in ruling over a grain of mustard seed, or what dignity or empire in governing half a dozen men the size of hazelnuts — which, to my mind, was all there were in the whole earth? If your lordship would be pleased to give me a tiny little piece of the sky, even if it were no more than half a league, I would take it more willingly than the biggest isle in the world."
"Look, Sancho my friend," answered the duke, "I cannot give a piece of the sky to anybody, not even a piece the size of a fingernail, for those favours and graces are reserved to God alone. What I can give you I do give: an isle ready-made and proper, round and well proportioned and extremely fertile and rich, where if you know how to manage yourself you can, with the riches of earth, gain those of heaven."
"Well now," answered Sancho, "let this isle come; for I shall struggle to be such a governor that in spite of rascals I shall go to heaven. And this is not out of any greed I have to get above myself or to raise myself higher, but out of the desire I have to try what being a governor tastes like."
"If you once taste it, Sancho," said the duke, "you will be licking your fingers after the government, since it is the sweetest thing to command and be obeyed. It is a safe bet that when your master gets to be an emperor — which he undoubtedly will, the way his affairs are heading — they will not tear it away from him easily, and it will hurt and grieve him in the middle of his soul for the time he has spent without being one."
"Sir," replied Sancho, "I imagine it is a good thing to be in command, even if it is only of a flock of sheep."
"Let them bury me with you, Sancho, for you know about everything," answered the duke; "and I hope you will be as good a governor as your judgement promises. And let this rest here; and note that tomorrow, on that very day, you are to go to the government of the isle, and this afternoon they will fit you out with the proper clothes you are to wear and with all the things necessary for your departure."
"Let them dress me," said Sancho, "however they like; for whatever way I go dressed I shall be Sancho Panza."
"That is true," said the duke; "but the clothes have to fit the office or the dignity a man professes, for it would not be right for a jurist to dress like a soldier, or a soldier like a priest. You, Sancho, shall go dressed partly as a lawyer and partly as a captain; because in the isle I am giving you, arms are as necessary as letters, and letters as arms."
"Letters," answered Sancho, "I have few, because I do not even know my A B C; but it is enough for me to have the Christ-cross by heart to be a good governor. Of arms I shall handle whichever they give me until I drop, and God before us."
"With such a good memory," said the duke, "Sancho cannot go wrong in anything."
At this Don Quixote arrived; and, learning what was afoot and the speed with which Sancho was to set off to his government, with the duke's leave he took him by the hand and went with him to his own room, meaning to advise him how he was to conduct himself in his office.
Having gone into his room, then, he shut the door behind him and made Sancho sit down beside him almost by force; and in a composed voice he said to him:
"Infinite thanks I give heaven, Sancho my friend, that before and ahead of my coming across any good fortune of my own, good fortune has come out to receive and meet you. I, who had made over the payment of your services to my own good luck, find myself only at the beginnings of getting ahead; and you, ahead of time and against the law of reasonable expectation, find yourself rewarded in your desires.
"Others bribe, importune, solicit, get up early, beg, insist, and do not attain what they are after; and along comes another, and without knowing how or why finds himself with the charge and office that a great many others were after; and here it comes in and fits well to say that there is good and bad fortune in ambitions. You, who to my mind are without any doubt a blockhead, without getting up early or staying up late and without taking any pains at all, merely with the breath of knight-errantry that has touched you, find yourself, without any more ado, governor of an isle, as though it were nothing.
"All this I say, Sancho, so that you should not put down to your own deserts the favour you have received, but should give thanks to heaven, which disposes things gently — and afterwards you shall give them to the greatness that the profession of knight-errantry contains in itself. Your heart being disposed, then, to believe what I have told you, be attentive, my son, to this Cato of yours, who wants to advise you and to be the pole star and the guide to set you on your road and bring you out at a safe harbour from this stormy sea you are about to put out into; for offices and great charges are nothing but a deep gulf of confusions.
"First of all, my son, you must fear God, because in fearing him lies wisdom; and being wise you cannot go wrong in anything.
"Second, you must set your eyes on who you are, trying to know yourself — which is the most difficult knowledge that can be imagined. From knowing yourself will come your not puffing yourself up like the frog who wanted to make himself equal to the ox; for if you do that, the thought of having kept pigs in your own country will come to be the ugly feet to the spread tail of your folly."
"That is true," answered Sancho, "but it was when I was a boy; afterwards, when I was something of a young man, it was geese I kept and not pigs. But this seems to me beside the point, for not everybody who governs comes of the stock of kings."
"That is true," replied Don Quixote, "for which reason those who are not of noble beginnings must accompany the gravity of the charge they exercise with a mild gentleness which, guided by prudence, may free them from the malicious gossip that no station escapes.
"Make a display, Sancho, of the humbleness of your family, and do not be ashamed to say that you come of farm labourers; because, seeing that you are not put out of countenance, nobody will set about putting you out of countenance. And take more pride in being a virtuous humble man than a proud sinner. Innumerable are those who, born of low stock, have risen to the highest papal and imperial dignity; and of this truth I could bring you so many examples that they would tire you.
"Look, Sancho: if you take virtue as your means and pride yourself on doing virtuous deeds, there is no call to envy those who have princes and lords for parents; because blood is inherited and virtue is acquired, and virtue is worth by itself what blood is not worth.
"This being so, as it is, then if by any chance some relation of yours should come to see you when you are in your isle, do not turn him away or affront him; on the contrary, you must receive him, make much of him and entertain him. In doing so you will satisfy heaven, which is pleased that nobody should despise what it made, and you will answer to what you owe to a well-ordered nature.
"If you bring your wife with you — for it is not right that those who attend governments for a long time should be without their own wives — teach her, instruct her and rub off her natural roughness, because everything a judicious governor generally gains, a rustic and foolish woman generally loses and spills.
"If by any chance you should be widowed — a thing that can happen — and with your office should better yourself in a consort, do not take one of the kind who will serve you as a hook and a fishing rod, and as the 'no thank you — but drop it in my hood'; because in truth I tell you that for everything the judge's wife receives, the husband must give an account at the universal reckoning, where in death he shall pay fourfold the entries he did not charge himself with in life.
"Never be guided by the law of your own fancy, which generally finds a great deal of favour with ignorant men who presume to be sharp.
"Let the tears of the poor man find more compassion in you, but no more justice, than the depositions of the rich. Try to uncover the truth through the rich man's promises and gifts as much as through the poor man's sobs and importunities.
"When equity can and should have a place, do not lay all the rigour of the law on the offender, for the reputation of the severe judge is no better than that of the compassionate one.
"If you should happen to bend the rod of justice, let it not be with the weight of a gift but with that of mercy.
"When it falls to you to judge some case of an enemy of yours, take your mind off your own injury and set it on the truth of the case.
"Do not let your own passion blind you in another man's cause, for the mistakes you make in it will most often be past remedy; and if they are not, it will be at the cost of your credit and even of your property.
"If some beautiful woman comes to ask you for justice, take your eyes off her tears and your ears off her sighs, and consider at leisure the substance of what she is asking for, unless you want your reason to be drowned in her weeping and your goodness in her sighs.
"The man you have to punish in deeds, do not treat badly in words; for the pain of the punishment is enough for the wretched man, without the addition of hard words.
"Consider the guilty man who falls under your jurisdiction to be a miserable man, subject to the conditions of our depraved nature; and in everything that lies with you, without doing a wrong to the other party, show yourself merciful and clement to him. Because although all God's attributes are equal, to our eyes the attribute of mercy shines and shows itself more than that of justice.
"If you follow these precepts and these rules, Sancho, your days will be long, your fame will be everlasting, your rewards heaped up, your happiness beyond telling; you will marry your children as you like, they and your grandchildren will have titles, you will live in peace and in the good pleasure of the people, and in the last steps of your life the step of death will reach you, in a gentle and ripe old age, and the tender, delicate hands of your great-great-grandchildren will close your eyes.
"What I have told you so far are precepts that are to adorn your soul; listen now to those that are to serve for the adornment of the body."
Who could have heard Don Quixote's last speech without taking him for a very sane person and a very well-meaning one? But, as has been said many times in the course of this great history, he only went off the rails when they touched him on chivalry, and in all his other talk he showed himself to have a clear and unencumbered understanding — so that at every step his deeds discredited his judgement and his judgement his deeds. But in this second set of precepts he gave Sancho, he showed great charm and set his judiciousness and his madness at a very high pitch.
Sancho listened to him most attentively, and tried to keep his advice in his memory, like a man who meant to hold on to it and to come by it to a good delivery from the pregnancy of his government. Don Quixote went on, then, and said:
"As to how you are to govern your own person and household, Sancho, the first thing I charge you with is to be clean, and to cut your nails and not let them grow, as some do, whose ignorance has given them to understand that long nails make their hands beautiful — as if that excrement and outgrowth they leave uncut were a nail, when it is rather the claws of a lizard-hunting kestrel: a filthy and monstrous abuse.
"Do not go about ungirt and slack, Sancho, for disordered clothes are a sign of a feeble spirit — unless the disorder and the slackness come under the head of slyness, as was judged in Julius Caesar's case.
"Take the pulse with discretion of what your office may be worth; and if it will run to giving liveries to your servants, give them decent and useful ones rather than showy and gallant ones, and share them out between your servants and the poor. I mean that if you are to dress six pages, dress three and another three poor men, and then you will have pages for heaven and pages for the ground; and this new way of giving liveries is beyond the reach of the vainglorious.
"Do not eat garlic or onions, so that they may not find out your rusticity by the smell.
"Walk slowly; speak with composure, but not in such a way that you seem to be listening to yourself, for all affectation is bad.
"Eat little and sup even less, for the health of the whole body is forged in the workshop of the stomach.
"Be temperate in drinking, considering that too much wine keeps no secret and holds to no promise.
"Take care, Sancho, not to chew on both sides of your mouth, and not to eructate in front of anybody."
"That business of eructating I do not understand," said Sancho.
And Don Quixote said to him:
"To eructate, Sancho, means to belch; and this is one of the coarsest words the Castilian tongue has, although it is very expressive. And so people of taste have taken refuge in Latin, and for belching say eructating, and for belches, eructations. And if some people do not understand these terms, it matters little; usage will bring them in with time, so that they are easily understood — and this is enriching the language, over which the common people and usage have power."
"Truly, sir," said Sancho, "one of the pieces of advice and warning I mean to carry in my memory will be that of not belching, because I generally do it very often."
"Eructating, Sancho, not belching," said Don Quixote.
"Eructating I shall say from now on," answered Sancho, "and upon my word I shall not forget it."
"Also, Sancho, you must not mix into your talk the multitude of proverbs you generally do; for although proverbs are short judgements, you often drag them in so much by the hair that they look more like nonsense than judgements."
"God can put that right," answered Sancho, "because I know more proverbs than a book, and so many of them come into my mouth together when I talk that they fight one another to get out; but my tongue goes on throwing out the first ones it comes across, even if they are not to the point. But I shall take care from now on to say the ones that suit the gravity of my charge; for in a full house supper is soon cooked, and he who cuts the pack does not shuffle, and safe is the man who rings the alarm, and giving and holding needs some brains."
"That is it, Sancho!" said Don Quixote. "Jam them in, thread them, string them together, for there is nobody to hold you back! 'My mother beats me and I spin my top!' I am telling you to leave off proverbs, and in an instant you have thrown out a whole litany of them here, which fit what we are talking about about as well as the hills of Úbeda do. Look, Sancho, I am not telling you that a proverb brought in to the point looks bad; but to load and thread proverbs on helter-skelter makes conversation feeble and low.
"When you get on horseback, do not go throwing your body over the hind saddlebow, or carry your legs stiff and straight out and away from the horse's belly; nor go so slack that it looks as if you were on the grey. For riding makes some men horsemen and others horse-boys.
"Let your sleep be moderate, for the man who does not get up with the sun does not enjoy the day. And note, Sancho, that diligence is the mother of good fortune, and that laziness, her opposite, never reached the goal a good wish asks for.
"This last piece of advice I want to give you now, although it does not serve for the adornment of the body, I want you to carry very much in your memory, for I believe it will be of no less use to you than the ones I have given you so far. And it is that you should never set yourself to argue about lineages, at least by comparing them with each other; because of necessity, among those compared one has to be the better, and by the one you cast down you will be hated and by the one you raise up you will in no way be rewarded.
"Your dress shall be full hose, a long jerkin and a cloak a little longer; wide breeches, not by any means, for they suit neither knights nor governors.
"For now this is what has occurred to me, Sancho, to advise you. Time will go on, and according to the occasions so shall my precepts be, so long as you take care to let me know the state you find yourself in."
"Sir," answered Sancho, "I see well enough that everything your worship has told me is good and holy and profitable; but what use will it be if I remember none of it? It is true that the business of not letting my nails grow and of marrying again if it should happen will not slip out of my noddle; but all those other hotchpotches and tangles and jumbles, I do not remember them and shall remember them no more than last year's clouds. And so it will be necessary for them to be given me in writing; for although I cannot read or write, I shall give them to my confessor so that he can drive them into me and go over them with me when it is needed."
"Ah, sinner that I am," answered Don Quixote, "how badly it looks in governors not to be able to read or write! Because you must know, Sancho, that a man's not knowing how to read, or his being left-handed, argues one of two things: either that he was the son of parents who were excessively humble and low, or that he was so mischievous and bad that no good habits or good teaching could get into him. It is a great fault you carry about with you, and so I should like you to learn at least to sign your name."
"I know very well how to sign my name," answered Sancho; "for when I was steward of the confraternity in my village I learnt to make some letters like the mark on a bale, which they said made my name. And besides, I shall pretend that my right hand is crippled and get somebody else to sign for me; for there is a remedy for everything except death, and, having the command and the staff, I shall do what I like. What is more, the man whose father is mayor — and I being a governor, which is more than being a mayor, come along and see!
"No — let them jeer at me and slander me, and they will come for wool and go back shorn; and whom God loves, his house smells sweet; and a rich man's follies pass for wise judgements in this world; and, being one myself, being a governor and generous into the bargain, as I mean to be, no fault of mine will show. No — make yourself honey and the flies will eat you; you are worth as much as you have, a grandmother of mine used to say; and of a man with roots you will never get your revenge."
"Oh, God curse you, Sancho!" said Don Quixote at this. "May sixty thousand Satans carry you off and your proverbs with you! For an hour now you have been stringing them together and giving me a swallow of torment with each one. I assure you that these proverbs will take you to the gallows one day; because of them your vassals will take the government away from you, or there will be risings among them. Tell me, where do you find them, ignoramus, or how do you apply them, idiot? For me to say one and apply it properly, I sweat and labour as though I were digging."
"By God, sir our master," replied Sancho, "your worship complains about very small things. Why the devil do you fret about my making use of my own property, when I have no other and no other capital but proverbs and more proverbs? And now four occur to me that came in here exactly to the pattern, or like pears in a basket; but I shall not say them, because good silence they call Sancho."
"That Sancho is not you," said Don Quixote, "because you are not only not good silence, but bad speech and bad insisting. All the same, I should like to know what four proverbs came into your memory just now that were to the point here; for I am going over my own, which is a good one, and none occurs to me."
"What better," said Sancho, "than 'never put your thumbs between two wisdom teeth', and 'to "get out of my house" and "what do you want with my wife" there is no answering', and 'whether the pitcher hits the stone or the stone the pitcher, it goes badly for the pitcher' — all of which come to the point? Because nobody should take on his governor or the man who commands him, since he will come off hurt, like the man who puts his finger between two wisdom teeth; and even if they are not wisdom teeth, so long as they are teeth it does not matter. And to whatever the governor says there is no answering, as with 'get out of my house' and 'what do you want with my wife'. And as for the stone and the pitcher, a blind man would see it. So it is necessary that the man who sees the mote in his neighbour's eye should see the beam in his own, so that it may not be said of him: 'the dead woman was frightened of the one with her throat cut'; and your worship knows very well that a fool knows more in his own house than a wise man in another's."
"Not that, Sancho," answered Don Quixote; "for the fool knows nothing, either in his own house or in another's, since on the foundation of foolishness no judicious building will stand. And let us leave this here, Sancho; for if you govern badly, the fault will be yours and the shame mine. But I console myself that I have done what I ought in advising you with all the earnestness and judgement possible to me: with this I discharge my obligation and my promise. God guide you, Sancho, and govern you in your government, and get me out of the scruple I am left with that you are going to turn the whole isle upside down — a thing I could avoid by disclosing to the duke who you are, telling him that all that fat and that little person of yours is nothing but a sack full of proverbs and mischief."
"Sir," replied Sancho, "if it seems to your worship that I am not fit for this government, I release you from it here and now; for I care more for a single black speck of my soul's fingernail than for my whole body. And I shall keep myself alive as plain Sancho on bread and onions as well as as a governor on partridges and capons; and what is more, while we are asleep we are all equal, the great and the small, the poor and the rich. And if your worship looks into it, you will see that it was your worship alone who put me into this business of governing; for I know no more about governing isles than a vulture does. And if you imagine that because I am a governor the devil will carry me off, I would rather go to heaven as Sancho than to hell as a governor."
"By God, Sancho," said Don Quixote, "for these last words alone that you have said, I judge that you deserve to be governor of a thousand isles. You have a good nature, without which there is no learning worth anything. Commend yourself to God, and try not to go wrong in your first intention — I mean that you should always have the aim and firm purpose of getting things right in whatever business comes to you, because heaven always favours good desires. And let us go in to dinner, for I believe these ladies and gentlemen are waiting for us."
They say that in the very original of this history it is read that when Cide Hamete came to write this chapter, his interpreter did not translate it as he had written it — which was a kind of complaint the Moor made against himself for having taken in hand a history as dry and as limited as this one of Don Quixote, since it seemed to him that he always had to talk about him and about Sancho, without daring to spread himself into other digressions and episodes graver and more entertaining.
And he said that to have the understanding, the hand and the pen always tied to writing about a single subject and speaking through the mouths of a few people was an unbearable labour whose fruit did not redound to its author; and that, to escape this drawback, he had used in the first part the device of certain tales, such as The Ill-Advised Curiosity and that of the Captive Captain, which stand as though separate from the history, since the rest that are told there are cases that happened to Don Quixote himself and could not be left unwritten.
He also thought, as he says, that many people, carried away by the attention Don Quixote's exploits demand, would not give it to the tales and would pass over them either in a hurry or in annoyance, without noticing the elegance and craftsmanship they contain in themselves — which would show itself plainly in the open when they came out into the light on their own, without leaning on Don Quixote's madnesses or on Sancho's foolishness.
And so in this second part he did not want to insert loose or stuck-on tales but some episodes that should look like them, born of the very events that the truth provides — and even these limitedly, and with only the words that are enough to set them out. And since he holds and shuts himself within the narrow limits of the narrative, having the ability, sufficiency and understanding to deal with the whole universe, he asks that his labour should not be despised, and that he should be given praise not for what he writes but for what he has left unwritten.
And then the history goes on, saying that when Don Quixote had finished dinner on the day he gave Sancho his advice, that afternoon he gave it him in writing, so that he could look for somebody to read it to him. But hardly had he given it him when it fell out of his hands and came into the duke's, who shared it with the duchess; and the two of them marvelled afresh at Don Quixote's madness and his wit. And so, carrying their tricks further, that afternoon they sent Sancho with a great retinue to the place that was to be his isle.
It happened, then, that the man who had charge of him was a steward of the duke's, very judicious and very amusing — for there can be no amusement where there is no judgement — who had played the part of the Countess Trifaldi with the grace already described; and with this, and with being coached by his master and mistress on how he was to conduct himself with Sancho, he carried out his purpose marvellously.
I say, then, that it happened that as soon as Sancho saw this steward, he seemed to see the very face of the Trifaldi in his; and, turning to his master, he said to him:
"Sir, either the devil must carry me off from where I stand here, in justice and in belief, or your worship must admit to me that this face of the duke's steward here is the same as the Distressed Lady's."
Don Quixote looked attentively at the steward, and, having looked at him, said to Sancho:
"There is no call for the devil to carry you off, Sancho, either in justice or in belief — for I do not know what you mean. The Distressed Lady's face is the steward's, but that does not make the steward the Distressed Lady; for if it did, it would imply a very great contradiction. And this is not the time to make these investigations, for it would be getting ourselves into intricate labyrinths. Believe me, my friend, it is necessary to pray to Our Lord very earnestly to deliver the two of us from bad sorcerers and bad enchanters."
"It is no joke, sir," replied Sancho, "for a little while ago I heard him speak, and it sounded for all the world as though the Trifaldi's voice were ringing in my ears. Well now, I shall be quiet; but I shall not leave off going about on the watch from now on, to see whether I can find another sign that confirms or undoes my suspicion."
"That is what you must do, Sancho," said Don Quixote, "and you shall give me notice of everything you find out in this business and of everything that happens to you in the government."
Sancho set off at last, attended by a great many people, dressed as a lawyer, and over that a very wide coat of tawny watered camlet with a cap of the same, riding a mule with short stirrups; and behind him, by the duke's orders, went the grey with harness and donkeyish trappings of silk and brand new. Sancho turned his head from time to time to look at his donkey, in whose company he went so contented that he would not have swapped with the emperor of Germany.
On taking his leave of the duke and duchess he kissed their hands, and took his master's blessing, which he gave him in tears; and Sancho received it with a pouting lip.
Let good Sancho go in peace and good luck, kind reader, and expect two bushels of laughter from learning how he conducted himself in his charge; and meanwhile attend to learning what happened to his master that night — at which, if you do not laugh, at least you will part your lips in an ape's grin, since Don Quixote's doings must be celebrated either with wonder or with laughter.
It is told, then, that Sancho had hardly set off when Don Quixote felt his loneliness; and if it had been possible for him to revoke his commission and take away his government, he would have done it. The duchess noticed his melancholy and asked him what he was sad about; and that if it was Sancho's absence, there were squires, duennas and maidens in her house who would serve him quite to the satisfaction of his wishes.
"It is true, my lady," answered Don Quixote, "that I feel Sancho's absence; but that is not the chief cause that makes me seem sad. And of the many offers your excellency makes me, I accept and choose only the good will with which they are made; and for the rest I beg Your Excellency to consent and permit that within my own room I alone should be the one to serve myself."
"Truly," said the duchess, "Señor Don Quixote, it must not be so: four of my maidens, as beautiful as flowers, shall serve you."
"For me," answered Don Quixote, "they will not be like flowers but like thorns to pierce my soul. They shall come into my room, or anything like it, about as soon as they can fly. If your greatness wants to go on doing me favours I do not deserve, let me be alone with myself and serve myself inside my own doors; let me put a wall between my desires and my chastity. And I do not want to lose this habit because of the generosity your highness wants to show me. In short, I would sooner sleep in my clothes than let anybody undress me."
"No more, no more, Señor Don Quixote," replied the duchess. "For my part I say that I shall give orders that not so much as a fly shall come into your chamber, let alone a maiden. I am not the person to spoil Señor Don Quixote's decency; for, as far as I can see, the virtue that shows most among his many virtues is that of chastity. Let your worship undress and dress by yourself and in your own way, how and when you like, for there will be nobody to stop you; and inside your room you will find the vessels needed by a man who sleeps behind a shut door, so that no natural necessity may oblige him to open it. Long live the great Dulcinea of El Toboso for a thousand ages, and let her name be spread over the whole round of the earth, since she has deserved to be loved by so valiant and so chaste a knight; and may the kindly heavens pour into the heart of Sancho Panza, our governor, a desire to finish his disciplines quickly, so that the world may go back to enjoying the beauty of so great a lady."
To which Don Quixote said:
"Your loftiness has spoken like the woman you are; for in the mouth of good ladies there can be nothing bad. And Dulcinea will be more fortunate and better known in the world for your greatness's having praised her than for all the praises the most eloquent men on earth could give her."
"Well now, Señor Don Quixote," replied the duchess, "the supper hour is coming on, and the duke must be waiting. Let your worship come and let us have supper, and you shall go to bed early; for the journey you made yesterday from Candaya was not so short that it will not have caused you some aching."
"I feel none, my lady," answered Don Quixote, "because I would venture to swear to Your Excellency that in all my life I have never got up on a quieter beast or one of a better pace than Clavileño; and I do not know what could have moved Malambruno to get rid of so light and so fine a mount, and burn it up like that without any more ado."
"It may be imagined about that," answered the duchess, "that, repenting of the harm he had done the Trifaldi and company and other people, and of the wickednesses he must have committed as a sorcerer and an enchanter, he wanted to make an end of all the instruments of his trade; and, as the chief one and the one that most kept him restless, wandering from land to land, he burned Clavileño. And with his burnt ashes and with the trophy of the notice, the valour of the great Don Quixote of La Mancha is made everlasting."
Don Quixote gave the duchess fresh thanks again; and after supper he withdrew alone to his room, without allowing anybody to come in with him to serve him — so much did he fear meeting with occasions that might move or force him to lose the chaste decorum he kept for his lady Dulcinea, always keeping in his imagination the goodness of Amadís, the flower and mirror of knights errant. He shut the door behind him, and by the light of two wax candles undressed; and as he was taking off his stockings — O disaster unworthy of such a person! — there escaped him not sighs or anything else that might discredit the cleanness of his manners, but as many as two dozen stitches of one stocking, which was left like a lattice.
The good gentleman was distressed in the extreme, and he would have given an ounce of silver to have a scruple of green silk there — I say green silk because the stockings were green.
Here Benengeli broke out and, writing, said: "O poverty, poverty! I do not know with what reason that great poet of Cordova was moved to call you
holy gift ungratefully received!
"I, although a Moor, know very well, through the dealings I have had with Christians, that holiness consists in charity, humility, faith, obedience and poverty; but for all that, I say that a man must have a great deal of God in him who can come to be content with being poor — unless it is with that kind of poverty of which one of their greatest saints says: 'Have all things as though you had them not'; and this they call poverty of spirit. But you, second poverty — and it is you I am talking about — why do you want to dash yourself against gentlemen and the well born rather than against other people? Why do you oblige them to give their shoes a lick of lampblack, and to have the buttons on their jerkins some of silk, some of horsehair and some of glass? Why must their collars, for the most part, always be crimped and not spread open with a mould?"
And in this it will be seen that the use of starch and open collars is an old one. And he went on: "Wretched is the well-born man who goes about feeding his honour with thin broth, eating badly and behind a closed door, making a hypocrite of the toothpick he goes out into the street with after eating nothing that obliged him to clean his teeth! Wretched, I say, is the man who has a skittish honour and thinks that from a league off people can see the patch on his shoe, the sweat stains on his hat, the threadbare place on his cloak and the hunger in his stomach!"
All this was renewed for Don Quixote in the running of his stitches; but he consoled himself with seeing that Sancho had left him a pair of travelling boots, which he meant to put on the next day. Finally he lay down thoughtful and grieved, as much for the loss Sancho was to him as for the irreparable disaster of his stockings, whose stitches he would have taken up even with silk of another colour — which is one of the greatest signs of poverty a gentleman can give in the course of his long-drawn-out hardship.
He put out the candles; it was hot and he could not sleep; he got up from the bed and opened a little the window of a grating that looked out on a beautiful garden, and, on opening it, he felt and heard that there were people walking and talking in the garden. He set himself to listen attentively. The people below raised their voices enough for him to hear these words:
"Do not press me, Emerencia, to sing; for you know that from the moment this stranger came into this castle and my eyes looked at him, I do not know how to sing but only how to weep. What is more, my lady's sleep is lighter rather than heavy, and I should not want her to find us here for all the treasure in the world. And supposing she were asleep and did not wake, my song would be in vain if this new Aeneas, who has come to my regions to leave me mocked, sleeps and does not wake to hear it."
"Do not think so, Altisidora my friend," they answered. "For without any doubt the duchess and everybody in this house is asleep, except the lord of your heart and the awakener of your soul; because I heard just now that he was opening the window of the grating in his chamber, and no doubt he must be awake. Sing, my wounded one, in a low and gentle tone to the sound of your harp; and if the duchess hears us, we shall blame the heat."
"That is not the point of it, Emerencia," answered Altisidora, "but that I should not like my song to uncover my heart and have me judged by those who know nothing of the mighty power of love as a whimsical and light girl. But come what may, for a blush on the face is better than a stain on the heart."
And with this she heard a harp very sweetly played. Hearing which, Don Quixote was thunderstruck, because in that instant there came into his memory the infinite adventures like this one — of windows, gratings and gardens, music, love-making and swoonings — that he had read in his empty-headed books of chivalry.
Then he imagined that some maiden of the duchess's was in love with him, and that modesty forced her to keep her feeling secret. He was afraid she might overcome him, and he resolved in his mind not to let himself be conquered; and, commending himself with all good courage and good will to his lady Dulcinea of El Toboso, he determined to listen to the music. And, to give it to be understood that he was there, he gave a pretended sneeze, at which the maidens were not a little glad, for they wanted nothing else but that Don Quixote should hear them. The harp being run over, then, and tuned, Altisidora began this ballad:
O you who lie in your bed between sheets of finest linen, sleeping with your legs stretched out from the night until the morning, the most valiant knight that La Mancha has ever produced, more chaste and more blessed than the fine gold of Arabia! Hear a sorrowful maiden, well grown and badly used, who in the light of your two suns feels her soul burning up. You go looking for your adventures and you find other people's misfortunes; you deal out the wounds and you deny the remedy that would heal them. Tell me, valorous young man — and God prosper your longings — whether you were raised in Libya or in the mountains of Jaca; whether serpents gave you milk; whether, by chance, your nurses were the roughness of the forests and the horror of the mountains. Dulcinea may very well, that plump and healthy girl, pride herself on having tamed a tigress and a fierce wild beast. For this she will be famous from Henares to Jarama, from the Tagus to Manzanares, from Pisuerga as far as Arlanza. I would trade myself for her, and give a petticoat on top, one of the gayest ones I have, with fringes trimmed with gold. Oh, to find myself in your arms, or if not, beside your bed, scratching your head for you and killing off your dandruff! I ask too much, and I am not worthy of so signal a favour: I should like to rub your feet, which is enough for a humble girl. Oh, what caps I would give you, what socks worked with silver, what hose of damask, what cloaks of the finest linen! What most excellent pearls, each one the size of an oak gall, which, if they had no companions, would be called the Peerless Ones! Do not look from your Tarpeian rock on this fire that burns me up, Manchegan Nero of the world, and do not fan it with your fury. I am a girl, a tender maiden; my age does not pass fifteen: I am fourteen and three months, I swear to you by God and my soul. I am not lame and I am not crippled, and I have nothing withered about me; my hair is like lilies, and, standing up, it trails on the ground. And though my mouth is aquiline and my nose is rather flat, my teeth being of topaz exalts my beauty to the sky. My voice, as you can hear if you listen, is a match for the sweetest; and I am of a figure something less than middling. These and my other graces are the spoils of your quiver; I am a maiden of this house, and Altisidora they call me.
Here the song of the sorely wounded Altisidora came to an end, and the dismay of the courted Don Quixote began; who, giving a great sigh, said to himself:
"That I must be such an unfortunate errant that there is no maiden who looks at me and does not fall in love with me...! That the peerless Dulcinea of El Toboso must be so short of luck that they will not leave her alone to enjoy my incomparable constancy...! What do you want with her, you queens? Why do you persecute her, you empresses? Why do you harry her, you maidens of fourteen and fifteen? Leave her, leave the poor girl to triumph and rejoice and take pride in the lot Love chose to give her in surrendering my heart to her and handing over my soul.
"See, you enamoured crew, that for Dulcinea alone I am of dough and sugar paste, and for all the rest I am of flint; for her I am honey and for you aloes; for me Dulcinea alone is the beautiful, the judicious, the chaste, the gallant and the well born, and the rest are the ugly, the foolish, the light and the worst born. Nature threw me into the world to be hers and no other woman's. Let Altisidora weep or sing; let the lady despair for whom they beat me in the castle of the enchanted Moor; for I have to be Dulcinea's, boiled or roast, clean, well brought up and chaste, in spite of all the sorcerous powers on earth."
And with this he shut the window with a bang; and, put out and grieved, as though some great misfortune had befallen him, he lay down on his bed, where we shall leave him for now, because the great Sancho Panza is calling us, wanting to make a beginning of his famous government.
O perpetual discoverer of the antipodes, torch of the world, eye of heaven, sweet swayer of the water coolers, Thymbraeus here, Phoebus there, archer this way and physician that, father of Poetry, inventor of Music — you who always rise and, though it looks like it, never set! To you I speak, O sun, by whose help man begets man; to you I speak, that you may favour me and light up the darkness of my wits, so that I may go point by point through the narration of the great Sancho Panza's government; for without you I feel myself lukewarm, feeble and confused.
I say, then, that with all his retinue Sancho came to a town of about a thousand inhabitants, which was one of the best the duke had. They gave him to understand that it was called the isle of Barataria — either because the place was called Baratario, or because of the bargain rate at which the government had been given him. On reaching the gates of the town, which was walled, the town council came out to receive him; the bells were rung, and all the inhabitants gave signs of general gladness, and with a great deal of pomp they took him to the chief church to give thanks to God. And then, with some ridiculous ceremonies, they handed him the keys of the town and admitted him as perpetual governor of the isle of Barataria.
The dress, the beard, the fatness and the shortness of the new governor astonished all the people who did not know the crux of the joke, and even all those who did, and they were many. Finally, on bringing him out of the church, they took him to the judgement seat and sat him down in it; and the duke's steward said to him:
"It is an ancient custom in this isle, my lord governor, that whoever comes to take possession of this famous isle is obliged to answer a question that is put to him, which shall be somewhat intricate and difficult; and by his answer the people take and feel the pulse of their new governor's wits, and so are either glad or sorry at his coming."
While the steward was saying this to Sancho, he was looking at some large and numerous letters written on the wall opposite his seat; and, as he could not read, he asked what those paintings on the wall were. He was answered:
"Sir, there is written and noted the day on which Your Lordship took possession of this isle, and the inscription says: Today, on such and such a day of such and such a month and year, Señor Don Sancho Panza took possession of this isle: may he enjoy it many years."
"And who do they call Don Sancho Panza?" asked Sancho.
"Your lordship," answered the steward; "for no other Panza has come into this isle but the one sitting in that chair."
"Then note, brother," said Sancho, "that I have no Don, and there has never been one in my whole family. Plain Sancho Panza they call me, and Sancho my father was called, and Sancho my grandfather, and they were all Panzas without any additions of Dons or Doñas. And I imagine that in this isle there must be more Dons than stones. But enough: God understands me; and it may be that if the government lasts me four days I shall weed out these Dons, which by their numbers must be as annoying as gnats. Let the steward go on with his question, and I shall answer as best I know how, whether the people are sorry or not sorry."
At this moment two men came into the court, one dressed as a farmer and the other as a tailor, since he carried a pair of scissors in his hand; and the tailor said:
"My lord governor, I and this farmer come before your worship because this good man came to my shop yesterday — for I, saving the presence of those here, am a licensed tailor, God be blessed — and, putting a piece of cloth in my hands, asked me: 'Sir, would there be enough cloth in this to make me a cap?' I, measuring the cloth by eye, answered that there would. He must have imagined, as I imagine, and I imagined rightly, that I no doubt wanted to steal some part of the cloth off him, going on his own bad conscience and on the bad name of tailors; and he came back at me and asked me to see whether there would be enough for two. I guessed his thought and told him there would. And he, riding on his damaging first intention, went on adding caps and I went on adding yeses, until we got to five caps; and just now, at this minute, he has come for them. I give them to him, and he will not pay me for the making; on the contrary, he wants me to pay him or give him back his cloth."
"Is all this so, brother?" asked Sancho.
"Yes, sir," answered the man; "but let your worship make him show the five caps he has made me."
"Willingly," answered the tailor.
And, pulling his hand out from under his cloak on the instant, he showed on it five caps set on the five tips of the fingers of his hand, and said:
"Here are the five caps this good man is asking me for; and in God and in my conscience I have nothing left over of the cloth, and I shall submit the work to the inspectors of the trade."
Everybody present laughed at the multitude of caps and at the novel lawsuit. Sancho set himself to think a little, and said:
"It seems to me that in this suit there is no call for long delays, but for judging straight away by the judgement of a good man. And so I give it as my sentence that the tailor should lose his making and the farmer his cloth, and that the caps should be taken to the prisoners in the gaol, and there is an end of it."
If his other sentences moved the bystanders to wonder, this one provoked them to laughter; but in the end what the governor ordered was done. And before him there presented themselves two old men, one of whom carried a giant fennel stalk for a staff; and the one without a staff said:
"Sir, some days ago I lent this good man ten gold crowns in gold, to do him a pleasure and a good turn, on condition that he should give them back to me when I asked for them. Many days went by without my asking him for them, so as not to put him in greater difficulty over giving them back than he was in when I lent them. But, since it seemed to me that he was being slack about paying, I have asked him for them once and many times; and not only does he not give them back, he denies them and says that I never lent him any such ten crowns, and that if I did lend them him he has already given them back. I have no witnesses either to the loan or to the return, because he has not returned them. I should like your worship to put him on his oath; and if he swears he has given them back, I forgive him them here and before God."
"What do you say to this, good old man with the staff?" said Sancho.
To which the old man said:
"I, sir, confess that he lent them me; and let your worship lower that rod of yours. And since he leaves it to my oath, I shall swear that I have given them back and paid them really and truly."
The governor lowered the rod; and meanwhile the old man with the staff gave the staff to the other old man to hold for him while he swore, as if it were much in his way, and then laid his hand on the cross of the rod, saying that it was true that those ten crowns he was being asked for had been lent to him, but that he had given them back out of his own hand into the other's, and that, not realising this, the other kept asking for them again and again.
Which the great governor seeing, he asked the creditor what he answered to what his opponent said; and he said that without any doubt his debtor must be telling the truth, because he took him for an honest man and a good Christian, and that he himself must have forgotten how and when he had given them back, and that from then on he would never ask him for anything again. The debtor took his staff again and, bowing his head, went out of the court.
Seeing which, and that he was going off without any more ado, and seeing too the patience of the plaintiff, Sancho bowed his head over his chest and, putting the forefinger of his right hand over his eyebrows and his nose, stayed as though in thought for a short space; and then he raised his head and ordered them to call back the old man with the staff, who had already gone. They brought him back, and, seeing him, Sancho said:
"Give me that staff, good man, for I need it."
"Very willingly," answered the old man. "Here it is, sir."
And he put it into his hand. Sancho took it and, giving it to the other old man, said to him:
"Go, and God be with you, for now you are paid."
"I, sir?" answered the old man. "Why, is this fennel stalk worth ten gold crowns?"
"Yes," said the governor; "or if not, I am the greatest blockhead in the world. And now it will be seen whether I have the headpiece to govern a whole kingdom."
And he ordered that there, in front of everybody, the cane should be broken open. It was done, and in the heart of it they found ten crowns in gold. Everybody was amazed, and they held their governor for a new Solomon.
They asked him how he had gathered that those ten crowns were in that fennel stalk, and he answered that it was from having seen the old man who was swearing give his opponent that staff while he made his oath, and swear that he had really and truly given them to him; and then, on finishing the oath, ask him for the staff back again. From this it came into his imagination that inside it was the payment they were arguing about. From which it could be gathered that those who govern, even if they are fools, are sometimes set on the right road by God in their judgements. And besides, he had heard the curate of his village tell another case like that one; and he had such a great memory that if it were not for his forgetting everything he wanted to remember, there would not be such a memory in the whole isle.
Finally, the one old man shamefaced and the other paid, they went off; and the bystanders were left amazed, and the man who was writing down Sancho's words, deeds and movements could not settle whether he should hold him and set him down for a fool or for a judicious man.
Then, this suit being over, there came into the court a woman gripping tightly to a man dressed as a rich herdsman, and she came shouting loudly and saying:
"Justice, my lord governor, justice! And if I do not find it on earth, I shall go and look for it in heaven! My lord governor of my soul, this wicked man caught me in the middle of that field and has used my body as if it were a badly washed rag; and, wretched creature that I am, he has taken from me what I had kept for more than twenty-three years, defending it from Moors and Christians, from natives and foreigners; and I always as hard as a cork tree, keeping myself as whole as the salamander in the fire or as wool among the brambles — only for this good man to come along now with his clean hands to handle me."
"That still has to be found out — whether this gallant has clean hands or not," said Sancho.
And, turning to the man, he asked him what he said and what he answered to that woman's complaint. And he, all confused, answered:
"Gentlemen, I am a poor herdsman of pigs, and this morning I was leaving this place after selling — saving your presence — four pigs, and what they took off me in excise and extortions came to little less than they were worth. I was going back to my village, and on the road I came across this good dame; and the devil, who mixes everything up and cooks everything, made us lie together. I paid her enough, and she, not content, laid hold of me and has not let me go until she had brought me to this place. She says I forced her, and she lies, by the oath I make or mean to make; and this is the whole truth, without a mite missing."
Then the governor asked him whether he had any silver money on him; he said he had about twenty ducats in his bosom in a leather purse. He ordered him to take it out and hand it over, just as it was, to the complainant; he did it trembling. The woman took it and, making a thousand bows to everybody and praying God for the life and health of the lord governor, who looked after needy orphans and maidens in this way, went out of the court holding the purse gripped in both hands — although first she looked to see whether the money she was carrying inside it was silver.
She had hardly gone out when Sancho said to the herdsman, whose tears were already starting and whose eyes and heart were going after his purse:
"Good man, go after that woman and take the purse from her whether she wants it or not, and come back here with her."
And he did not say it to a fool or a deaf man, for he set off at once like lightning and went to do what he was told. Everybody present was in suspense, waiting for the end of that suit; and a little later the man and the woman came back gripping and gripped tighter than the first time: she with her skirt lifted up and the purse held in her lap, and the man struggling to get it off her — but it was not possible, so well did the woman defend it, and she was calling out:
"Justice of God and of the world! Look, your worship, my lord governor, at the shamelessness and the little fear of this soulless man, who in the middle of a town and in the middle of the street has tried to take away from me the purse your worship ordered to be given me."
"And has he taken it from you?" asked the governor.
"Taken it?" answered the woman. "I would sooner let them take my life than take the purse. A fine thing that would be! They will have to throw other cats than this wretched, disgusting creature in my face! Pincers and hammers, mallets and chisels would not be enough to get it out of my nails, nor even lions' claws: they would sooner have my soul out of the middle of the middle of my flesh!"
"She is right," said the man, "and I give myself up beaten and out of strength, and I confess that mine are not enough to take it from her; and I leave it."
Then the governor said to the woman:
"Show me that purse, honourable and valiant lady."
She gave it him at once, and the governor gave it back to the man and said to the woman who had used force and had none used on her:
"Sister of mine, if you had shown the same spirit and courage in defending your body that you have shown in defending this purse — and even half as much — the strength of Hercules could not have forced you. Go, and God be with you, and much bad luck; and do not stop anywhere in this whole isle or within six leagues around it, on pain of two hundred lashes. Go at once, I say, you brazen, shameless cheat!"
The woman was frightened and went off with her head down and ill contented; and the governor said to the man:
"Good man, go with God to your village with your money; and from now on, if you do not want to lose it, see that you do not take a fancy to lying with anybody."
The man thanked him as badly as he knew how, and went off; and the bystanders were left amazed all over again at their new governor's judgements and sentences. All of which, noted by his chronicler, was written at once to the duke, who was waiting for it with great eagerness.
And let good Sancho stay here, for his master is pressing us hard, being greatly stirred by Altisidora's music.
We left the great Don Quixote wrapped up in the thoughts the music of the enamoured maiden Altisidora had caused him. He went to bed with them; and, as though they were fleas, they did not let him sleep or rest a moment, and the ones he had lost out of his stockings joined them. But since time is swift and there is no gully that holds it up, it went riding on the hours, and the morning hour arrived very quickly.
Which Don Quixote seeing, he left the soft feathers and, in no way sluggish, put on his chamois suit and pulled on his travelling boots, to hide the disaster of his stockings; he threw his scarlet cloak over him and set on his head a cap of green velvet trimmed with silver braid; he hung his baldric over his shoulders with his good cutting sword, took up a great rosary he always carried with him, and with great pomp and swagger went out into the antechamber, where the duke and duchess were already dressed and apparently waiting for him.
And, as he was passing along a gallery, Altisidora and the other maiden her friend were waiting for him on purpose; and as soon as Altisidora saw Don Quixote she pretended to faint, and her friend caught her in her lap and in great haste began to unfasten her bodice. Don Quixote, seeing it, came up to them and said:
"I know very well what these attacks come from."
"I do not know what they come from," answered the friend, "because Altisidora is the healthiest maiden in this whole house, and I have never heard so much as an 'ah' out of her in all the time I have known her. A curse on all the knights errant there are in the world, if they are all as ungrateful as this. Go away, your worship, Señor Don Quixote, for this poor girl will not come round while your worship is here."
To which Don Quixote answered:
"Let your worship see, madam, that a lute is put in my room tonight, and I shall console this wounded maiden as best I can; for in the beginnings of love, prompt disenchantment is generally a well-approved remedy."
And with this he went off, so as not to be noticed by anybody who might see him there. He had hardly got away when the fainting Altisidora, coming round, said to her companion:
"It will be necessary for the lute to be put there; for no doubt Don Quixote means to give us some music, and it will not be bad, since it is his."
They went at once to tell the duchess what was afoot and about the lute Don Quixote was asking for; and she, extremely glad, arranged with the duke and with her maidens to play him a trick that should be more laughable than harmful, and they waited for the night with great pleasure. And the night came on as quickly as the day had come, which the duke and duchess spent in delicious talk with Don Quixote.
And the duchess that day really and truly sent off a page of hers — the one who had played the enchanted figure of Dulcinea in the wood — to Teresa Panza, with the letter from her husband Sancho Panza and with the bundle of clothes he had left to be sent to her, charging him to bring back a good account of everything that passed between them.
This done, and eleven o'clock at night having come, Don Quixote found a guitar in his room. He tuned it, opened the grating and heard that there were people about in the garden; and, having run over the frets of the guitar and tuned it as best he knew how, he spat and cleared his chest, and then, in a slightly hoarse but tuneful voice, sang the following ballad, which he had himself composed that day:
The forces of love are apt to knock souls off their hinges, taking for their instrument a careless idleness. Sewing and needlework, and being always busy, are apt to be the antidote to the poison of love's longings. For sheltered young women who hope to be married, modesty is the dowry and the voice of their praises. Knights errant, and those who go about the court, pay their compliments to the loose and marry the modest. There are loves of the sunrise that pass between guests at an inn, which come quickly to their sunset, because they end in the parting. Love newly arrived, that came today and goes tomorrow, does not leave its images well printed on the soul. Painting laid over painting neither shows nor marks; and where there is a first beauty the second wins no trick. Dulcinea of El Toboso I have painted on the blank tablet of my soul in such a way that it is impossible to rub her out. Constancy in lovers is the part most to be prized, by which love works its miracles and by which it raises them up.
Don Quixote had got this far in his song — and the duke and duchess, Altisidora and almost all the people of the castle were listening to him — when all at once, from the top of a gallery that hung plumb over Don Quixote's grating, they let down a cord with more than a hundred cowbells tied to it; and then, after them, they emptied out a great sack of cats, which likewise had smaller bells tied to their tails.
So great was the noise of the bells and the yowling of the cats that, although the duke and duchess had been the inventors of the trick, it still startled them; and Don Quixote was left thunderstruck with fear. And it so happened that two or three cats got in through the grating of his chamber, and, dashing from one side to the other, it looked as though a region of devils were about the room. They put out the candles that were burning in the room, and went about looking for a way to escape. The letting down and pulling up of the cord of great bells did not stop; most of the people in the castle, who did not know the truth of the business, were bewildered and astonished.
Don Quixote got to his feet, and, laying his hand on his sword, began to lunge through the grating and to say in a loud voice:
"Away, malignant enchanters! Away, you sorcerous rabble; for I am Don Quixote of La Mancha, against whom your evil intentions have neither strength nor power!"
And, turning to the cats that were about the room, he let fly a great many sword-strokes at them. They made for the grating and got out that way — except one which, seeing itself so hard pressed by Don Quixote's slashes, sprang at his face and seized his nose with its claws and its teeth; at the pain of which Don Quixote began to shout as loudly as he could.
Hearing which, the duke and duchess, and guessing what it might be, ran with great haste to his chamber; and, opening it with a master key, they saw the poor knight struggling with all his strength to tear the cat off his face. They came in with lights and saw the unequal fight; the duke ran up to part it, and Don Quixote said loudly:
"Let nobody take him off me! Leave me hand to hand with this demon, with this sorcerer, with this enchanter, and I shall give him to understand between him and me who Don Quixote of La Mancha is!"
But the cat, taking no notice of these threats, growled and held on. In the end, though, the duke tore him loose and threw him out through the grating.
Don Quixote was left with his face riddled and his nose in no very sound state, though very put out that they had not let him finish the battle he had so well joined with that villainous enchanter. They had Aparicio's oil brought, that costly balm for wounds, and Altisidora herself with her snow-white hands put bandages over everything that was hurt. And, as she put them on, she said to him in a low voice:
"All these misadventures happen to you, you hard-hearted knight, for the sin of your hardness and obstinacy; and please God that your squire Sancho may forget to whip himself, so that this so beloved Dulcinea of yours may never come out of her enchantment, and you may never enjoy her or come to the marriage bed with her — at least while I am alive, who adore you."
To all this Don Quixote answered not a word, but only gave a deep sigh; and then he stretched himself out on his bed, thanking the duke and duchess for their kindness — not because he had any fear of that catty, enchanting, cowbell-ringing rabble, but because he had recognised the good intention with which they had come to help him. The duke and duchess left him to rest and went off, sorry at the bad outcome of the trick; for they had not believed that that adventure would turn out so heavy and so costly for Don Quixote, whom it cost five days of being shut up in bed, where another adventure happened to him more agreeable than the last — which his historian does not want to tell now, so as to attend to Sancho Panza, who was going about very busily and very amusingly in his government.
The history tells that from the court they took Sancho Panza to a sumptuous palace, where in a great hall a royal and spotless table was laid; and, as soon as Sancho came into the hall, shawms sounded and four pages came out to give him water for his hands, which Sancho received with a great deal of gravity.
The music stopped, and Sancho sat down at the head of the table, because there was no other seat and no other cover on the whole of it. At his side there stood a personage who afterwards proved to be a doctor, with a whalebone wand in his hand. They lifted a very rich white cloth that was covering the fruit and a great variety of dishes of different foods; a man who looked like a student said grace, and a page put a laced bib on Sancho; another, who did the office of steward, set a dish of fruit in front of him.
But he had hardly eaten a mouthful when the man with the wand touched the dish with it, and it was taken away from in front of him with the greatest speed; but the steward brought him another with different food on it. Sancho was going to try it; but before he could reach it or taste it, the wand had touched it and a page had taken it up as quickly as he had the fruit. Which Sancho seeing, he was left bewildered; and, looking at everybody, he asked whether this dinner was to be eaten like a conjuring trick. To which the man with the wand answered:
"It is not to be eaten, my lord governor, except as is the use and custom in other isles where there are governors. I, sir, am a doctor, and I am salaried in this isle to be doctor to its governors; and I look after their health a great deal more than after my own, studying night and day and taking the measure of the governor's constitution, so as to get his cure right when he falls ill. And the chief thing I do is to attend his dinners and suppers, and to let him eat what seems to me suitable for him, and to take away from him what I imagine will do him harm and be noxious to his stomach.
"And so I ordered the dish of fruit taken away, for being excessively moist; and the dish of the other food I ordered taken away too, for being excessively hot and having a great many spices in it, which increase thirst; and the man who drinks a great deal kills and consumes the radical moisture, in which life consists."
"In that case, that dish of partridges over there, which are roasted and, to my mind, well seasoned, will do me no harm."
To which the doctor answered:
"Those the lord governor shall not eat as long as I have life in me."
"Well, why not?" said Sancho.
And the doctor answered:
"Because our master Hippocrates, the pole star and the light of medicine, says in an aphorism of his: Omnis saturatio mala, perdices autem pessima — which means, 'All surfeit is bad, but surfeit of partridges is the worst of all.'"
"If that is so," said Sancho, "let the doctor see, of all the dishes on this table, which will do me most good and least harm, and let me eat of it without his cudgelling it away from me; because, by the governor's life — and so may God let me enjoy it — I am dying of hunger; and denying me my food, however it may grieve the doctor and whatever more he may say to me, will sooner be taking my life away from me than adding to it."
"Your worship is right, my lord governor," answered the doctor; "and so it is my opinion that your worship should not eat any of those stewed rabbits over there, because it is a hairy sort of food. Of that veal, if it had not been roasted and pickled, one might still have tried it; but there is no call for it."
And Sancho said:
"That great dish over there that is steaming further along seems to me to be an olla podrida — that great mixed stew; and, given the variety of things there are in such stews, I cannot fail to come across something in it that will be to my taste and to my profit."
"Absit!" said the doctor. "Let so bad a thought go far from us: there is nothing in the world worse to live on than an olla podrida. Away with the mixed stews to the canons, or to the rectors of colleges, or to peasant weddings, and let them leave the tables of governors free, where all niceness and all refinement must be present. And the reason is that always and everywhere and by everybody simple medicines are more esteemed than compound ones, because in simple ones you cannot go wrong and in compound ones you can, by altering the quantity of the things they are compounded of. But what I know the lord governor must eat now, to preserve his health and strengthen it, is a hundred little rolled wafers and some thin little slices of quince paste, which will settle his stomach and help his digestion."
Hearing this, Sancho leaned back against the back of his chair and looked hard at this doctor, and in a grave voice asked him what he was called and where he had studied. To which he answered:
"I, my lord governor, am called Doctor Pedro Recio de Agüero, and I am a native of a place called Tirteafuera, which is between Caracuel and Almodóvar del Campo, on the right-hand side; and I have my doctor's degree from the university of Osuna."
To which Sancho answered, all fired up with choler:
"Well, Doctor Pedro Recio de Mal Agüero — Pedro Recio of Ill Omen — native of Get-You-Gone, a place that lies on the right-hand side as you go from Caracuel to Almodóvar del Campo, graduated at Osuna: get out of my sight this instant, or I swear by the sun that I shall take up a cudgel and that, beginning with you, there will not be a doctor left in the whole isle — at least of those I understand to be ignorant ones; for the wise, prudent and judicious doctors I shall set on top of my head and honour like divine persons.
"And I say again, Pedro Recio, be off with you from here; if not, I shall take this chair I am sitting in and smash it over your head. And let them ask me for it at my audit: I shall clear myself by saying that I did God a service in killing a bad doctor, who is the hangman of the commonwealth. And give me something to eat, or else take back your government; for an office that does not feed the man who holds it is not worth two beans."
The doctor was thrown into a fright at seeing the governor so choleric, and he wanted to do a get-you-gone out of the hall — except that at that instant a post horn sounded in the street; and the steward, leaning out of the window, came back saying:
"A courier is coming from the duke my lord; he must be bringing some despatch of importance."
The courier came in sweating and alarmed, and, taking a packet out of his bosom, put it into the governor's hands; and Sancho put it into the steward's, ordering him to read the address, which went thus: To Don Sancho Panza, governor of the isle of Barataria, into his own hand or into his secretary's. Hearing which, Sancho said:
"Who here is my secretary?"
And one of those present answered:
"I, sir, because I know how to read and write, and I am a Biscayan."
"With that addition," said Sancho, "you could very well be secretary to the emperor himself. Open that packet and see what it says."
The newborn secretary did so; and, having read what it said, he said that it was business to be dealt with in private. Sancho ordered the hall cleared, and that nobody should stay in it but the steward and the head steward; and the rest, and the doctor, went off. And then the secretary read the letter, which went like this:
It has come to my notice, Señor Don Sancho Panza, that certain enemies of mine and of that isle are to make a furious assault on it, I do not know on what night. It will be well to keep watch and be on the alert, so that they may not take you unprepared. I know too, from true spies, that four disguised persons have come into that place to take your life, because they are afraid of your wits. Keep your eye open, and look to who comes to speak to you, and do not eat anything they may offer you. I shall take care to come to your help if you find yourself in difficulty, and in everything you will act as is expected of your understanding. From this place, the sixteenth of August, at four in the morning.
Your friend,
The Duke.
Sancho was astounded, and the bystanders showed themselves astounded too; and, turning to the steward, he said:
"What must be done now, and it must be at once, is to put Doctor Recio in a dungeon; because if anybody is going to kill me, it is he, and by the most lingering and the worst kind of death, which is hunger."
"It seems to me too," said the head steward, "that your worship should not eat any of what is on this table, because it has been presented by some nuns; and, as they say, behind the cross stands the devil."
"I do not deny it," answered Sancho, "and for now give me a piece of bread and about four pounds of grapes, for no poison can come in them; because in fact I cannot get by without eating, and if we are to be ready for these battles that threaten us, it will be necessary to be well kept up, since it is guts that carry the heart and not the heart the guts.
"And you, secretary, answer the duke my lord and tell him that what he orders shall be carried out as he orders it, without a point missing; and you shall kiss my lady the duchess's hands on my behalf, and say that I beg her not to forget to send my letter and my bundle to my wife Teresa Panza by a special messenger, since I shall take it as a great kindness and shall take care to serve her with everything my strength can reach. And on your way you may jam in a kissing of hands to my lord Don Quixote of La Mancha, so that he may see that I am grateful bread. And you, as a good secretary and a good Biscayan, may add anything you like and whatever comes best to the point. And let this cloth be taken up and give me something to eat, and I shall deal with all the spies and murderers and enchanters that may come at me and at my isle."
At this a page came in and said:
"There is a farmer here with business who wants to speak to Your Lordship on a matter, as he says, of great importance."
"This is a strange business," said Sancho, "with these people with business. Is it possible that they are so foolish as not to see that hours like these are not the ones for coming to do business in? Are we who govern, we who are judges, not by any chance men of flesh and bone, and is it not necessary that they should let us rest for as long as need requires — or do they want us to be made of marble? By God and in my conscience, if the government lasts me — which it will not, as far as I can see through it — I shall bring more than one man of business to heel. Now tell that good man to come in; but let it first be made sure that he is not one of the spies or one of my murderers."
"No, sir," answered the page, "because he looks like a soul of a pitcher; and either I know very little, or he is as good as good bread."
"There is nothing to fear," said the steward, "for we are all here."
"Would it be possible," said Sancho, "head steward, now that Doctor Pedro Recio is not here, for me to eat something with some weight and substance to it, even if it were a piece of bread and an onion?"
"Tonight at supper the shortcomings of the dinner shall be made up, and Your Lordship will be satisfied and paid," said the head steward.
"God grant it," answered Sancho.
And with this the farmer came in, who was of very good appearance, and from a thousand leagues off you could see that he was good and a good soul. The first thing he said was:
"Which is the lord governor here?"
"Who should he be," answered the secretary, "but the man sitting in the chair?"
"I bow myself, then, before him," said the farmer.
And, going down on his knees, he asked him for his hand to kiss it. Sancho refused it, and ordered him to get up and say what he wanted. The farmer did so, and then said:
"I, sir, am a farmer, a native of Miguel Turra, a place two leagues from Ciudad Real."
"We have another Get-You-Gone!" said Sancho. "Speak, brother, for what I can tell you is that I know Miguel Turra very well, and that it is not very far from my village."
"The case is, then, sir," the farmer went on, "that I, by God's mercy, am married in the peace and presence of the Holy Roman Catholic Church; I have two sons who are students, the younger of whom is studying to be a bachelor and the elder to be a licentiate. I am a widower, because my wife died — or, better said, a bad doctor killed her for me by purging her when she was pregnant. And if God had been pleased for the birth to come out into the light, and if it had been a son, I would have set him to study to be a doctor, so that he should not envy his brothers the bachelor and the licentiate."
"So that," said Sancho, "if your wife had not died, or if they had not killed her, you would not be a widower now."
"No, sir, on no account," answered the farmer.
"We are in a fine way!" replied Sancho. "Get on, brother, for it is more the hour for sleeping than for doing business."
"I say, then," said the farmer, "that this son of mine who is to be a bachelor fell in love in that same village with a maiden called Clara Perlerina, daughter of Andrés Perlerino, an extremely rich farmer; and this name of Perlerines does not come to them from their ancestry or from any other family line, but because everybody of that line is palsy-struck — palsied being perlático in our speech — and, to better the name, they call them Perlerines, as though from perla, a pearl. Although, if the truth is to be told, the girl is like an oriental pearl; and looked at from the right-hand side she seems a flower of the field — from the left not so much, because she is missing that eye, which she lost to smallpox. And although the pits on her face are many and large, those who love her well say that they are not pits but graves in which the souls of her lovers are buried.
"She is so clean that, so as not to dirty her face, she carries her nose, as they say, turned up, so that it looks for all the world as if it were running away from her mouth. And with all this she looks extremely well, because she has a large mouth; and if she were not missing ten or twelve teeth and grinders, she could pass and hold her own among the best formed. Of her lips I have nothing to say, because they are so fine and delicate that if lips could be wound on a reel they could make a skein of them; but as they are a different colour from the one commonly in use for lips, they look miraculous, because they are mottled with blue and green and aubergine. And let the lord governor forgive me if I go painting so minutely the parts of the girl who in the end is to be my daughter; for I love her well and she does not seem bad to me."
"Paint whatever you like," said Sancho, "for I am enjoying the painting; and if I had eaten, there would have been no better dessert for me than your portrait."
"That is at your service," answered the farmer, "but the time will come when we shall be, if we are not now. And I say, sir, that if I could paint her gracefulness and the height of her body it would be a thing to wonder at; but it cannot be, on account of her being bent double and drawn in, and having her knees at her mouth. And with all that, it can be seen well enough that if she could straighten up she would knock her head on the ceiling. And she would have given her hand in marriage to my bachelor before now, only she cannot stretch it out, since it is knotted up; and even so, in her long, grooved nails you can see her goodness and her good making."
"That is well," said Sancho; "and take it, brother, that you have now painted her from head to foot. What is it you want now? And come to the point without going round about or down alleys, without scraps or additions."
"I should like, sir," answered the farmer, "your worship to do me the favour of giving me a letter of recommendation to my future in-law, begging him to be pleased for this marriage to be made, since we are not unequal in the goods of fortune or in those of nature. Because, to tell the truth, my lord governor, my son is possessed, and there is not a day when the malignant spirits do not torment him three or four times; and from having fallen once into the fire, he has his face wrinkled like parchment and his eyes rather watery and running. But he has the disposition of an angel, and if it were not that he beats himself and punches himself, he would be a blessed creature."
"Do you want anything else, good man?" replied Sancho.
"I should like one other thing," said the farmer, "except that I do not dare to say it. But let it come, for after all it is not going to rot in my breast, hit or miss. I say, sir, that I should like your worship to give me three hundred or six hundred ducats to help with my bachelor's marriage portion — I mean to help with setting up his house; because in the end they must live by themselves, without being subject to the impertinences of their in-laws."
"See whether you want anything else," said Sancho, "and do not leave it unsaid out of awkwardness or shame."
"No, certainly not," answered the farmer.
And he had hardly said this when the governor got to his feet, seized the chair he had been sitting in and said:
"I swear, you rustic and ill-mannered lout, that if you do not get away and hide yourself out of my presence this instant, I shall break your head open with this chair! You whoreson rascal, painter for the devil himself — and at this hour you come and ask me for six hundred ducats? And where have I got them, you stinking creature? And why should I give them to you even if I had them, you sly idiot? And what is Miguel Turra to me, or the whole line of the Perlerines? Get away from me, I say; if not, by the life of the duke my lord, I shall do what I have said! You cannot be from Miguel Turra, but some sly rogue that hell has sent here to tempt me. Tell me, you soulless man, it is not yet a day and a half since I have had the government, and already you want me to have six hundred ducats?"
The head steward made signs to the farmer to get out of the hall, which he did with his head down and, to all appearances, afraid that the governor would carry out his rage — for the great rogue knew how to do his office very well.
But let us leave Sancho with his choler, and let peace go round the ring, and let us come back to Don Quixote, whom we left with his face bandaged and treated for the cat's wounds, which he did not get better of for a week; and on one of those days there happened to him what Cide Hamete promises to tell with the exactness and the truth with which he generally tells the things of this history, however small they may be.
The badly wounded Don Quixote was extremely vexed and melancholy, his face bandaged and marked — not by the hand of God but by the claws of a cat: misfortunes that belong to knight-errantry. Six days he spent without coming out in public; and on one of those nights, being awake and unable to sleep, thinking about his misfortunes and about Altisidora's pursuit of him, he heard somebody opening the door of his room with a key, and at once imagined that the enamoured maiden was coming to make an assault on his chastity and put him in danger of failing in the faith he owed to his lady Dulcinea of El Toboso.
"No," he said, believing his own imagination — and he said it in a voice that could be heard; "the greatest beauty on earth shall not be enough to make me leave off adoring the one I have graven and stamped in the middle of my heart and in the deepest part of my entrails, whether you are, my lady, transformed into an onion-fed peasant girl, or into a nymph of the golden Tagus weaving cloths of gold and silk, or whether Merlin or Montesinos keeps you where they please; for wherever you are you are mine, and wherever I am I have been and shall be yours."
The finishing of these words and the opening of the door were all one. He got up on his feet on the bed, wrapped from top to bottom in a coverlet of yellow satin, a nightcap on his head, and his face and his moustaches bandaged — his face because of the scratches and his moustaches so that they should not droop and fall; in which get-up he looked like the most extraordinary phantom that could be imagined.
He fixed his eyes on the door; and when he was expecting to see the conquered and wounded Altisidora come in by it, he saw come in a most reverend duenna with white headcloths, hemmed and so long that they covered her and mantled her from foot to head. Between the fingers of her left hand she carried half a lighted candle, and with her right she was shading herself so that the light should not get in her eyes, which were covered by a very large pair of spectacles. She came stepping very quietly, and moved her feet softly.
Don Quixote watched her from his lookout; and when he saw her get-up and noticed her silence, he thought that some witch or sorceress was coming in that dress to work some evil upon him, and he began to cross himself in great haste. The vision came closer; and when it got to the middle of the room it raised its eyes and saw the haste with which Don Quixote was making crosses. And if he was terrified at seeing such a figure, she was frightened at seeing his; because as soon as she saw him so tall and so yellow, with the coverlet and with the bandages that disfigured him, she gave a great shout, saying:
"Jesus! What is this that I see?"
And in her fright the candle fell out of her hands; and, finding herself in the dark, she turned her back to go, and in her fear she tripped over her own skirts and came down in a great fall. Don Quixote, terrified, began to say:
"I conjure you, phantom, or whatever you are, to tell me who you are and to tell me what it is you want of me. If you are a soul in torment, tell me so, and I shall do for you everything my strength can reach; for I am a Catholic Christian and a friend to doing good to everybody, and it was for this that I took up the order of knight-errantry that I profess, whose exercise stretches even to doing good to the souls in purgatory."
The bruised duenna, hearing herself conjured, gathered Don Quixote's fear from her own, and in a distressed and low voice answered him:
"Señor Don Quixote — if by any chance your worship is Don Quixote — I am no phantom or vision or soul out of purgatory, as your worship must have thought, but Doña Rodríguez, my lady the duchess's duenna of honour, who comes to your worship with one of those needs your worship is in the habit of relieving."
"Tell me, Señora Doña Rodríguez," said Don Quixote, "does your worship by any chance come to act as a go-between? Because I must let you know that I am of no use to anybody, thanks to the peerless beauty of my lady Dulcinea of El Toboso. I say, in short, Señora Doña Rodríguez, that so long as your worship keeps out and sets aside all messages of love, you may go and light your candle again and come back, and we shall talk over whatever you may command and whatever comes best to your pleasure — leaving out, as I say, all provoking coquetry."
"I, sir, with a message from anybody?" answered the duenna. "Your worship knows me badly. Why, I am not yet of such advanced years as to take refuge in childishness of that kind; for, God be praised, I have my soul in my flesh and all my teeth and grinders in my mouth, except a few that some catarrhs have stolen from me, which in this country of Aragon are so common. But wait a little for me, your worship: I shall go out to light my candle and come back in an instant to tell my troubles, as to the reliever of all the troubles in the world."
And, without waiting for an answer, she went out of the room, where Don Quixote was left quiet and thoughtful, waiting for her; but at once a thousand thoughts came over him about this new adventure, and it seemed to him a badly done and a worse thought-out thing to put himself in danger of breaking the faith he had promised his lady, and he said to himself:
"Who knows whether the devil, who is subtle and crafty, may want to deceive me now with a duenna, when he has not been able to do it with empresses, queens, duchesses, marchionesses or countesses? For I have heard it said many times and by many judicious people that if he can, he will sooner give her to you snub-nosed than aquiline. And who knows whether this solitude, this occasion and this silence may wake my sleeping desires and make me at the end of my years fall where I have never yet stumbled? And in cases like this it is better to flee than to wait for the battle.
"But I must not be in my right mind, since I am saying and thinking such absurdities; for it is not possible that a white-coifed, long-drawn-out, spectacled duenna could move or raise a lascivious thought in the most soulless breast in the world. Is there by any chance a duenna on earth with good flesh on her? Is there by any chance a duenna on the globe who is not impertinent and puckered and affected? Away with you, then, you duennaish herd, useless for any human pleasure! Oh, how well that lady did who they say kept two dummy duennas with their spectacles and their sewing cushions at the end of her drawing room, as though they were at work — and those statues served her as well for the dignity of the room as real duennas would!"
And, saying this, he threw himself off the bed, meaning to shut the door and not let Señora Rodríguez in; but when he got there to shut it, Señora Rodríguez was already coming back with a white wax candle lit. And when she saw Don Quixote closer to, wrapped in the coverlet, with the bandages and the nightcap, she was frightened again; and, drawing back a couple of steps, she said:
"Are we safe, sir knight? Because I do not take it for a very decent sign that your worship should have got out of his bed."
"That is the very thing I should ask, madam," answered Don Quixote; "and so I ask whether I shall be safe from being assaulted and forced."
"Of whom and from whom do you ask that safety, sir knight?" answered the duenna.
"Of you and from you I ask it," replied Don Quixote; "because I am not made of marble nor you of bronze, and it is not ten in the morning now but midnight, and even a little past, as I imagine, and in a room more shut up and secret than the cave must have been where the treacherous and daring Aeneas enjoyed the beautiful and merciful Dido. But give me your hand, madam, for I want no greater safety than that of my own continence and reserve, and the safety those most reverend headcloths offer."
And, saying this, he kissed his own right hand and took hold of hers, which she gave him with the same ceremonies.
Here Cide Hamete puts in a parenthesis and says that by Muhammad he would have given, to see the two of them going along hand in hand like that from the door to the bed, the better of the two Moorish cloaks he owned.
Don Quixote got into his bed at last, and Doña Rodríguez was left sitting in a chair somewhat away from the bed, without taking off her spectacles or putting down the candle. Don Quixote curled himself up and covered himself all over, leaving nothing but his face uncovered; and, the two of them having settled down, the first to break the silence was Don Quixote, saying:
"Your worship may now, my lady Doña Rodríguez, unstitch yourself and disgorge everything you have inside that troubled heart and those wounded entrails of yours; for it shall be heard by me with chaste ears and helped with merciful deeds."
"So I believe," answered the duenna; "for from your worship's gentle and agreeable presence nothing could be expected but so Christian an answer.
"The case is, then, Señor Don Quixote, that although your worship sees me sitting in this chair and in the middle of the kingdom of Aragon, and in the dress of a worn-out and knocked-about duenna, I am a native of the Asturias of Oviedo and of a family crossed by a great many of the best in that province. But my short luck and the carelessness of my parents, who fell into poverty before their time without knowing how or why, brought me to the court, to Madrid, where for the sake of peace and to avoid worse misfortunes my parents placed me to serve as a sewing maid to a lady of quality. And I want to make your worship knowing that in hemstitching and white work nobody has ever put a foot ahead of me in all my life.
"My parents left me in service and went back to their own country, and a few years later they must have gone to heaven, for they were exceedingly good and Catholic Christians. I was left an orphan, and dependent on the wretched wages and the pinched favours that are generally given to such servants in great houses. And at this time, without my giving any occasion for it, a squire of the household fell in love with me — a man already on in years, bearded and well set up and, above all, as much a gentleman as the king, because he came from the northern mountains.
"We did not carry on our love so secretly that it did not come to my mistress's notice; and she, to save chattering and gossip, married us in the peace and presence of the Holy Mother Roman Catholic Church. Of which marriage there was born a daughter, to finish off my good luck if I had any — not that I died in childbirth, for I had her straight and in season, but because a little later my husband died of a certain fright he had; and if there were room now to tell it, I know your worship would be amazed."
And with this she began to weep tenderly, and said:
"Forgive me, your worship, Señor Don Quixote, for it is not in my power to help it; because every time I remember my poor ill-fated man my eyes fill with tears. God bless me, and with what dignity he used to carry my lady on the crupper of a mighty mule, black as jet itself! For in those days coaches and chairs were not in use, as they say they are now, and ladies rode on the cruppers of their squires' mules. This at least I cannot leave untold, so that my good husband's breeding and punctiliousness may be noticed.
"Coming into the Calle de Santiago in Madrid, which is rather narrow, there came out along it a judge of the court with two constables in front of him; and as soon as my good squire saw him he turned the mule's reins about, making as if to go back and escort him. My mistress, who was riding on the crupper, said to him in a low voice: 'What are you doing, you wretched man? Do you not see that I am here?' The judge, out of courtesy, drew rein on his horse and said to him: 'Go your own way, sir, for it is I who ought to be escorting my lady Doña Casilda' — for that was my mistress's name.
"Still my husband kept insisting, with his cap in his hand, on wanting to go and escort the judge; seeing which, my mistress, full of choler and annoyance, took a stout pin — or I believe a bodkin — out of her case and drove it into his back, so that my husband gave a great shout and twisted his body in such a way that he brought his mistress down on the ground. Two footmen of hers ran to lift her up, and so did the judge and the constables. The Guadalajara Gate was thrown into an uproar — I mean the idle crowd that stands about there. My mistress came home on foot, and my husband went off to a barber's house saying that his entrails were pierced right through.
"My husband's courtesy got about so widely that the boys chased him through the streets; and for this reason, and because he was somewhat short-sighted, my lady the duchess dismissed him; from grief at which, without any doubt, I hold for myself that his mortal illness came on him.
"I was left a widow and unprotected, with a daughter on my hands who kept growing in beauty like the foam of the sea. Finally, as I had a name for being a great needlewoman, my lady the duchess, who was then newly married to the duke my lord, wanted to bring me with her to this kingdom of Aragon, and my daughter neither more nor less. And there, with days going and days coming, my daughter grew, and with her all the charm in the world: she sings like a lark, she steps like a thought, she dances like a mad thing, she reads and writes like a schoolmaster and she reckons like a miser. Of her cleanness I say nothing: running water is no cleaner. And she must be now, if I remember rightly, sixteen years, five months and three days old, one more or less.
"In short: with this girl of mine there fell in love the son of an extremely rich farmer who lives in a village of the duke my lord's, not very far from here. In fact I do not know how or why, but they came together, and, under his word of being her husband, he made a mock of my daughter and will not keep it. And although the duke my lord knows about it, because I have complained to him not once but many times and asked him to order this farmer to marry my daughter, he turns a merchant's ear and will hardly listen to me. And the reason is that, since the deceiver's father is so rich and lends him money and stands surety for his debts at every turn, he does not want to displease him or give him any distress in any way.
"I should like, then, my dear sir, your worship to take in hand the undoing of this wrong, either by entreaty or by arms; since, as all the world says, your worship was born into it to undo them and to right injustices and protect the wretched. And let your worship set before you my daughter's orphaned state, her gracefulness, her youth, with all the good parts I have said she has; for in God and in my conscience, of all the maidens my lady has, there is not one who comes up to the sole of her shoe; and one they call Altisidora, who is the one they hold to be the freest and the most gallant, put in comparison with my daughter does not come within two leagues of her.
"Because I want your worship to know, my dear sir, that all is not gold that glitters; for this little Altisidora has more of presumption about her than of beauty, and more of the forward than of the modest, besides not being very healthy — for she has a certain weary breath about her that a man cannot bear to be next to for a moment. And even my lady the duchess... I had better be quiet, for they say that walls have ears."
"What of my lady the duchess, on my life, Señora Doña Rodríguez?" asked Don Quixote.
"With that adjuration," answered the duenna, "I cannot help answering what I am asked with the whole truth. Does your worship see, Señor Don Quixote, the beauty of my lady the duchess, that complexion of her face, which looks like nothing but a polished and burnished sword blade, those two cheeks of milk and carmine, which have the sun in the one and the moon in the other, and that gallantry with which she goes treading and even scorning the ground, so that she seems to be scattering health wherever she passes? Well, your worship must know that she can be grateful for it first to God and then to two issues she has in her two legs, through which all the bad humours drain away that the doctors say she is full of."
"Holy Mary!" said Don Quixote. "And is it possible that my lady the duchess has such drains? I would not have believed it if barefoot friars had told me; but since Señora Doña Rodríguez says so, it must be true. But such fountains, and in such places, must run not with humours but with liquid amber. Truly I now finally believe that this business of having issues made must be an important thing for one's health."
Don Quixote had hardly finished saying this when with a great bang the doors of the room were thrown open; and at the shock of the bang the candle fell out of Doña Rodríguez's hand, and the chamber was left like a wolf's mouth, as the saying goes. Then the poor duenna felt two hands seizing her by the throat so tightly that they did not let her squeak; and another person, very quickly and without saying a word, lifted her skirts and, with what seemed to be a slipper, began to give her so many lashes that it was a thing to pity.
And although Don Quixote did pity her, he did not stir from his bed and did not know what it could be, and stayed still and quiet, and even fearing that the round and the drubbing of lashes might come his way. And his fear was not empty; because, having left the duenna ground to a pulp, the silent executioners — and she did not dare to complain — came to Don Quixote, and, unwrapping him from the sheet and the coverlet, pinched him so thick and so hard that he could not help defending himself with his fists; and all this in an astonishing silence.
The battle lasted nearly half an hour; the phantoms went out; Doña Rodríguez gathered up her skirts, and, groaning over her misfortune, went out at the door without saying a word to Don Quixote, who, sore and pinched, confused and thoughtful, was left alone — where we shall leave him, longing to know who the perverse enchanter had been who had put him in that state. But that shall be told in its own time, for Sancho Panza is calling us, and the good order of the history requires it.
We left the great governor annoyed and vexed with that painting, sly farmer — who, coached by the steward, and the steward by the duke, were making game of Sancho. But he held his own with all of them, dolt and rough thick-set fellow though he was; and he said to those who were with him, and to Doctor Pedro Recio, who, once the secret of the duke's letter was over, had come back into the hall:
"Now truly I understand that judges and governors must be, or have to be, of bronze, so as not to feel the importunities of people with business, who at all hours and at all times want to be listened to and dealt with, attending only to their own affairs, come what may. And if the poor judge does not listen to them and deal with them, either because he cannot or because that is not the time set aside for giving them audience, then they curse him and gossip about him and gnaw his bones, and even go into his family tree.
"Foolish man of business, idiot man of business, do not hurry: wait for the season and the right moment for doing business. Do not come at dinner time or at sleeping time, for judges are of flesh and bone and must give nature what nature naturally asks of them — unless it is I, who do not give mine anything to eat, thanks to the doctor Pedro Recio of Get-You-Gone here present, who wants me to die of hunger and declares that this death is life; and may God give him and all his breed the same. I mean the breed of bad doctors, for the good ones deserve palms and laurels."
Everybody who knew Sancho Panza was astonished to hear him talk so elegantly, and they did not know what to put it down to except that great offices and charges either sharpen the wits or dull them. Finally Doctor Pedro Recio Agüero of Get-You-Gone promised to give him supper that night, even if it went beyond all the aphorisms of Hippocrates.
With this the governor was content, and he waited with great anxiety for the night and the supper hour to come; and although time, to his mind, was standing still without moving from its place, still the so much longed-for hour did come round for him, when they gave him for supper a hash of beef with onion and some boiled calves' feet from a beast somewhat on in years. He fell to on it all with more pleasure than if they had given him francolins of Milan, pheasants of Rome, veal of Sorrento, partridges of Morón or geese of Lavajos; and, in the middle of supper, turning to the doctor, he said:
"Look, doctor: from now on do not bother to give me dainty things or exquisite dishes to eat, because it will be taking my stomach off its hinges. It is used to goat, to beef, to bacon, to dried meat, to turnips and to onions; and if by any chance it is given other palace dishes, it takes them squeamishly and sometimes with disgust.
"What the head steward can do is to bring me these things they call olla podridas — and the more rotten they are the better they smell — and into them he can pack and shut up anything he likes, so long as it is food, and I shall thank him for it and pay him for it one day. And let nobody make game of me, because either we are or we are not: let us all live and eat in good peace and fellowship, for when God sends the dawn, he sends it for everybody.
"I shall govern this isle without giving up a right or taking a bribe, and let everybody keep their eye open and look out for the bolt; because I let them know that the devil is in Cantillana, and that if they give me cause they shall see wonders. No — make yourself honey and the flies will eat you."
"Certainly, my lord governor," said the head steward, "your worship is quite right in everything you have said; and I offer, in the name of all the islanders of this isle, that they shall serve your worship with all punctuality, love and good will; because the gentle manner of governing your worship has shown in these beginnings gives them no room to do or think anything that could redound to your worship's disservice."
"I believe it," answered Sancho, "and they would be fools if they did or thought otherwise. And I say again that care is to be taken with my keep and with my grey's, which is what matters most and comes most to the point in this business; and, when the hour comes, let us go the rounds, for it is my intention to clear this isle of every kind of filth and of vagabond people, idlers and badly occupied folk. Because I want you to know, my friends, that idle and lazy people are in a commonwealth what the drones are in a hive, which eat the honey the working bees make. I mean to favour the farmers, keep their privileges to the gentry, reward the virtuous and, above all, have respect for religion and for the honour of religious men. What do you think of that, my friends? Am I saying something, or am I breaking my head for nothing?"
"Your worship says so much, my lord governor," said the steward, "that I am amazed to see a man as unlettered as your worship — who, as I believe, has no letters at all — say such things and so many of them, full of judgements and of warnings, so far outside everything that those who sent us and those of us who came here expected of your worship's wits. Every day new things are seen in the world: jokes turn into earnest and the jokers find themselves the ones joked with."
Night came, and the governor had supper with the doctor Recio's leave. They got themselves ready for the rounds; he went out with the steward, the secretary and the head steward, and the chronicler who had the task of putting his deeds on record, and constables and clerks, so many that they could have made up a middling squadron. Sancho went in the middle with his rod, and there was nothing else to look at; and, a few streets of the place having been walked, they heard the noise of sword-strokes. They ran there and found that it was only two men quarrelling; who, seeing the law coming, kept still. And one of them said:
"Help, in God's name and the king's! Is it to be borne that people are robbed in a settled town like this one, and that men go out to hold up travellers in the middle of the streets?"
"Calm yourself, honest man," said Sancho, "and tell me the cause of this quarrel, for I am the governor."
The other opponent said:
"My lord governor, I shall tell it as shortly as I can. Your worship must know that this gentleman has just now won more than a thousand reals in this gambling house opposite here — and God knows how; and I, being present, judged more than one doubtful throw in his favour, against everything my conscience was telling me. He walked off with his winnings; and when I was expecting him to give me at least one crown as a tip, as is the use and custom of giving it to men of quality like me, who stand by to see fair play through good and bad and to back up wrong throws and prevent quarrels, he pocketed his money and went out of the house.
"I came out after him in a rage, and with good, courteous words asked him to give me at least eight reals, since he knows I am an honourable man and have no trade or benefice, because my parents neither taught me one nor left me one; and the sly fellow — who is no more a thief than Cacus and no more a cardsharp than Andradilla — would not give me more than four reals. So your worship may see, my lord governor, how little shame and how little conscience! But upon my word, if your worship had not come along, I would have made him vomit up his winnings and he would have learnt how many notches the steelyard had."
"What do you say to this?" asked Sancho.
And the other answered that everything his opponent said was true, and that he had not been willing to give him more than four reals because he gave them him many times; and that people who expect tips must be civil and take with a cheerful face whatever they are given, without going into accounts with the winners — unless they knew for certain that they were sharpers and that what they had won was ill won. And that as a sign that he himself was an honest man and not a thief, as the other said, there was no greater one than his not having been willing to give him anything; for sharpers are always tributaries to the onlookers who know them.
"That is so," said the steward. "See, your worship, my lord governor, what is to be done with these men."
"What is to be done is this," answered Sancho. "You, winner, good or bad or indifferent, give this slasher of yours a hundred reals at once; and, what is more, you must lay out thirty for the poor prisoners in the gaol. And you, who have no trade and no benefice and go about as a spare man in this isle, take those hundred reals at once, and tomorrow in the course of the day leave this isle, banished for ten years, on pain, if you break it, of serving them out in the next life, since I shall hang you from a gibbet, or at least the hangman will by my orders. And let nobody answer me back, or I shall lay my hand on him."
The one paid out, the other took it in; this one left the isle and that one went home; and the governor was left saying:
"Now either I have little power, or I shall do away with these gambling houses; for it comes through to me that they are very harmful."
"This one at least," said a clerk, "your worship will not be able to do away with, because it belongs to a great personage; and what he loses in a year is beyond comparison more than what he takes out of the cards. Against other gaming dens of less standing your worship may show your power, for those are the ones that do most harm and cover up most insolences. In the houses of knights of quality and of great lords the famous sharpers do not dare to use their tricks; and, since the vice of gambling has turned into a common practice, it is better that people should play in great houses than in some tradesman's, where after midnight they catch some poor wretch and flay him alive."
"Now, clerk," said Sancho, "I know there is a great deal to be said about that."
And at this a bailiff came up bringing a young man gripped by the arm, and said:
"My lord governor, this young fellow was coming towards us; and as soon as he made out the law he turned his back and began to run like a fallow deer — a sign that he must be some offender. I set off after him; and if it had not been that he tripped and fell, I should never have caught him."
"Why were you running away, man?" asked Sancho.
To which the young man answered:
"Sir, to save myself from answering the many questions that officers of the law ask."
"What is your trade?"
"Weaver."
"And what do you weave?"
"Lance-heads, by your worship's good leave."
"So you are a wit, are you? You fancy yourself a joker? Very good! And where were you going just now?"
"Sir, to take the air."
"And where does one take the air in this isle?"
"Where it blows."
"Good: you answer very much to the point! You are a judicious young man; but take it that I am the air and that I am blowing you astern, and steering you to the gaol. Seize him there, and take him off, for I shall see that he sleeps there tonight without any air!"
"By God," said the young man, "your worship will make me sleep in gaol about as soon as you will make me king!"
"Why, and why shall I not make you sleep in gaol?" answered Sancho. "Have I not the power to arrest you and let you go whenever I like?"
"However much power your worship may have," said the young man, "it will not be enough to make me sleep in gaol."
"How not?" replied Sancho. "Take him off at once, where he shall see the truth with his own eyes — however much the warder may want to use his interested generosity on him; for I shall lay a penalty of two thousand ducats on him if he lets you take a single step out of the gaol."
"All that is a laughing matter," answered the young man. "The point is that all the men alive today will not make me sleep in gaol."
"Tell me, you devil," said Sancho, "have you got some angel to get you out and take off the fetters I mean to have put on you?"
"Now, my lord governor," answered the young man very charmingly, "let us be reasonable and come to the point. Suppose your worship orders me to be taken to gaol, and that there they put fetters and chains on me and shut me in a dungeon, and heavy penalties are laid on the warder if he lets me out, and he carries it out just as he is ordered: with all this, if I choose not to sleep and to stay awake all night without shutting an eyelid, will your worship, with all your power, be enough to make me sleep if I do not want to?"
"Certainly not," said the secretary, "and the man has carried his point."
"So that," said Sancho, "you would not leave off sleeping for any other reason than your own will, and not out of any wish to go against mine."
"No, sir," said the young man, "not by any means."
"Then go, and God be with you," said Sancho; "go home and sleep, and God give you a good sleep, for I do not want to take it from you. But I advise you from now on not to make game of the law, because you will come across some officer who will hit you over the head with your own joke."
The young man went off, and the governor carried on with his rounds. And a little later two bailiffs came up bringing a man gripped by the arm, and said:
"My lord governor, this person who looks like a man is not one but a woman, and not an ugly one, and she comes dressed in man's clothes."
They brought two or three lanterns up to her eyes, in whose light they made out a woman's face, apparently of sixteen years or a few more, her hair gathered up in a net of gold and green silk, and as beautiful as a thousand pearls. They looked her up and down, and saw that she was wearing crimson silk stockings with garters of white taffeta with gold and seed-pearl fringes; her breeches were green, of cloth of gold, and she wore a loose overjacket of the same, under which she had a doublet of the finest cloth of gold and white; and her shoes were white and a man's. She wore no sword at her belt but a very rich dagger, and on her fingers a great many very good rings.
Finally the girl pleased everybody, and none of those who saw her recognised her; and the natives of the place said they could not think who she might be, and those who were in on the tricks to be played on Sancho were the ones who were most astonished, because this event and discovery had not been arranged by them; and so they were in doubt, waiting to see where the business would end.
Sancho was thunderstruck at the girl's beauty, and asked her who she was, where she was going and what had moved her to dress in that way. She, with her eyes on the ground and in the deepest modest shame, answered:
"I cannot, sir, say so publicly what it mattered so much to me to keep secret. One thing I want to be understood: that I am no thief and no criminal, but an unfortunate maiden whom the force of jealousy has made break the decorum that is owing to modesty."
Hearing this, the steward said to Sancho:
"Have the people moved off, my lord governor, so that this lady may say what she wants with less embarrassment."
The governor ordered it so; everybody moved off except the steward, the head steward and the secretary. Finding themselves alone, then, the maiden went on, saying:
"I, gentlemen, am the daughter of Pedro Pérez Mazorca, the wool-farmer of this place, who often comes to my father's house."
"That does not stand up, madam," said the steward, "because I know Pedro Pérez very well and I know he has no children, neither son nor daughter. And what is more, you say he is your father and then add that he often comes to your father's house."
"I had already noticed that," said Sancho.
"Now, gentlemen, I am confused and do not know what I am saying," answered the maiden. "But the truth is that I am the daughter of Diego de la Llana, whom all your worships must know."
"That does stand up," answered the steward, "for I know Diego de la Llana and I know that he is a gentleman of quality and rich, and that he has a son and a daughter, and that since he was widowed there has been nobody in this whole place who can say he has seen his daughter's face; for he keeps her so shut up that he does not give the sun room to see her. And with all that, report says she is extremely beautiful."
"That is the truth," answered the maiden, "and I am that daughter; whether report lies or not about my beauty you will by now have found out for yourselves, gentlemen, since you have seen me."
And with this she began to weep tenderly. Seeing which, the secretary came up to the head steward's ear and said to him very softly:
"Without any doubt something of importance must have happened to this poor maiden, since in such a dress, and at such an hour, and being of such quality, she is out of her house."
"There is no doubting that," answered the head steward; "and what is more, her tears confirm that suspicion."
Sancho consoled her with the best words he knew, and asked her to tell them without any fear what had happened to her, for they would all try very earnestly and in every possible way to put it right.
"The case is, gentlemen," she answered, "that my father has kept me shut up for the last ten years, which are the same as the years the earth has been eating my mother. In our house they say Mass in a rich oratory; and in all this time I have not seen the sun of heaven by day or the moon and the stars by night, nor do I know what streets, squares or churches are, or even men, apart from my father and a brother of mine and Pedro Pérez the wool-farmer — who, because he comes into my house regularly, I took it into my head to say was my father, so as not to declare my own.
"This shutting up and this refusing to let me go out of the house, even to church, has for many days and months left me very disconsolate. I wanted to see the world, or at least the town where I was born, since it seemed to me that this desire did not go against the good decorum that maidens of quality owe to themselves. When I heard it said that they were running bulls and playing at canes and performing plays, I asked my brother, who is a year younger than I am, to tell me what those things were and a great many others I had never seen; he explained them to me in the best ways he knew, but it was all setting my desire to see them more alight.
"Finally, to shorten the story of my ruin, I say that I begged and asked my brother — and I wish I had never asked or begged such a thing..."
And she began to weep again. The steward said to her:
"Go on, madam, your worship, and finish telling us what has happened to you, for your words and your tears have us all in suspense."
"I have few left to say," answered the maiden, "though a great many tears left to weep; because badly placed desires can bring nothing with them but the like of this."
The maiden's beauty had settled in the head steward's soul, and he brought his lantern up again to look at her afresh; and it seemed to him that what she was weeping were not tears but seed pearls or the dew of the fields, and he even raised them higher and brought them up to oriental pearls; and he was hoping her misfortune might not be as great as the signs of her weeping and her sighs gave to understand. The governor was in despair at the girl's slowness in drawing out her story, and told her to leave off keeping them in suspense, for it was late and there was a great deal of the town still to be walked. She, between broken sobs and badly formed sighs, said:
"My misfortune is nothing else, and my ill luck is nothing else, but that I begged my brother to dress me in man's clothes with one of his suits and to take me out one night to see the whole town when our father was asleep. He, worn down by my entreaties, gave in to my wish; and, putting this suit on me and dressing himself in another of mine, which fits him as though he were born in it — because he has not a hair of beard and looks like nothing but a most beautiful girl — tonight, it must be an hour ago, more or less, we came out of the house.
"And, guided by our own boyish and disordered judgement, we went all round the town; and when we wanted to go back home we saw a great crowd of people coming, and my brother said to me: 'Sister, this must be the watch: make your feet light and put wings on them, and come running after me, so that they do not recognise us, for it would go badly with us.' And, saying this, he turned his back and began, I will not say to run, but to fly; and I, at less than six paces, fell down in the shock. And then the officer of the law came up who has brought me before your worships, where, for being a bad, capricious girl, I find myself shamed in front of so many people."
"So that in fact, madam," said Sancho, "no other mishap has happened to you, and jealousy, as you said at the beginning of your story, did not bring you out of your house?"
"Nothing has happened to me, and jealousy did not bring me out, but only the desire to see the world, which stretched no further than to seeing the streets of this town."
And what finished confirming that what the maiden said was true was the arrival of the bailiffs with her brother under arrest, whom one of them had caught when he ran off from his sister. He was wearing nothing but a rich petticoat and a short cloak of blue damask with fine gold braid, and his head bare of any headdress and adorned with nothing but his own hair, which was rings of gold, so fair and curly was it.
The governor, the steward and the head steward drew aside with him and, out of his sister's hearing, asked him how he came to be in that dress; and he, with no less shame and embarrassment, told the same as his sister had told — at which the enamoured head steward took great pleasure. But the governor said to them:
"Certainly, ladies and gentlemen, this has been a great piece of childishness; and to tell this piece of folly and daring there was no need for such long-drawn-out delays, or so many tears and sighs. By saying, 'We are so-and-so and so-and-so, and we came out of our parents' house on this contrivance simply out of curiosity, with no other design at all,' the story would have been over — and no little groans and little weepings and on and on."
"That is the truth," answered the maiden, "but your worships must know that the confusion I have been in has been so great that it has not let me keep the bounds I should have."
"Nothing has been lost," answered Sancho. "Let us go, and we shall leave your worships at your father's house; perhaps he will not have missed you. And from now on do not be such children, or so eager to see the world; for the honourable maiden keeps a broken leg and stays at home; and a woman and a hen are soon lost by wandering; and the girl who is eager to see is also eager to be seen. I say no more."
The young man thanked the governor for the kindness he wanted to do them in taking them back to their house; and so they made their way towards it, which was not very far from there. They arrived, then; and the brother threw a pebble at a grating, and at once a maidservant came down who was waiting for them and opened the door to them, and they went in — leaving everybody amazed both at their gracefulness and beauty and at the desire they had to see the world by night and without leaving the town. But they put it all down to their few years.
The head steward was left with his heart pierced through, and he resolved to ask her father for her hand in marriage the very next day, holding it for certain that he would not refuse him, since he was a servant of the duke's. And even Sancho was seized with a longing and a notion of marrying the young man to Sanchica his daughter, and he decided to bring it up in its own time, giving himself to understand that no husband could be refused to a governor's daughter.
With this the rounds of that night came to an end, and two days later the government came to an end too, with which all his designs were cut down and rubbed out, as will be seen further on.
Cide Hamete, that most exact investigator of the atoms of this true history, says that at the time when Doña Rodríguez came out of her room to go to Don Quixote's chamber, another duenna who slept with her heard her; and, since all duennas are fond of knowing, finding out and nosing about, she went after her so silently that good Rodríguez did not notice it. And as soon as the duenna saw her go into Don Quixote's chamber, so that the general habit all duennas have of being gossips should not be wanting in her, she went at that moment to blab it to her lady the duchess, telling her how Doña Rodríguez was in Don Quixote's room.
The duchess told the duke, and asked his leave for her and Altisidora to go and see what that duenna wanted with Don Quixote. The duke gave it her; and the two of them, with great care and quietness, step by step, came and set themselves next to the door of the room, and so close that they could hear everything that was being said inside. And when the duchess heard that Rodríguez had thrown the Aranjuez of her issues out into the street — Aranjuez being the royal garden famous for its fountains — she could not bear it, and no more could Altisidora; and so, full of choler and eager for revenge, they burst into the room and riddled Don Quixote and whipped the duenna in the way that has been told; because affronts that go straight at women's beauty and their vanity wake anger in them in a very great degree and set alight their desire for revenge.
The duchess told the duke what had happened to her, at which he was much amused; and the duchess, going on with her intention of playing tricks and getting entertainment out of Don Quixote, sent off the page who had played the figure of Dulcinea in the agreement about her disenchantment — which Sancho Panza had quite forgotten with the business of his government — to Teresa Panza his wife, with her husband's letter and with another from herself, and with a great string of rich coral as a present.
The history says, then, that the page was very judicious and sharp; and, wanting to serve his master and mistress, he set off very willingly for Sancho's village. And before going into it he saw a number of women washing in a stream, and asked them whether they could tell him if there lived in that place a woman called Teresa Panza, wife of a certain Sancho Panza, squire to a knight called Don Quixote of La Mancha. At which question a young girl who was washing got to her feet and said:
"That Teresa Panza is my mother, and that Sancho is my lord father, and that knight is our master."
"Then come, my girl," said the page, "and show me your mother, because I bring her a letter and a present from this father of yours."
"That I shall do very willingly, my dear sir," answered the girl, who looked to be about fourteen years old, a little more or less.
And, leaving the washing she was doing to another companion, without putting on her headdress or her shoes — for she was bare-legged and tousled — she leapt out in front of the page's mount and said:
"Come, your worship, for our house is at the entrance of the village, and my mother is in it, in great distress at having had no news of my lord father for many days now."
"Well, I am bringing her such good news," said the page, "that she has good reason to thank God for it."
Finally, leaping and running and skipping, the girl reached the village; and before going into her house she called out from the door:
"Come out, mother Teresa, come out, come out, for here comes a gentleman who brings letters and other things from my good father."
At which shouts Teresa Panza her mother came out, spinning a bundle of tow, in a brown skirt. It seemed, so short was it, that it had been cut off at her shame; and she had a little brown bodice too and a shift. She was not very old, though she looked to be past forty; but she was strong, upright, sinewy and weather-browned. And, seeing her daughter and the page on horseback, she said:
"What is this, child? What gentleman is this?"
"He is a servant of my lady Doña Teresa Panza," answered the page.
And, suiting the deed to the word, he threw himself off the horse and went with great humility to kneel down before Señora Teresa, saying:
"Give me your hands, your worship, my lady Doña Teresa, as the lawful and particular wife of Señor Don Sancho Panza, proper governor of the isle of Barataria."
"Oh, my dear sir, get up from there; do not do that," answered Teresa. "For I am nothing of a court lady but a poor farm woman, the daughter of a clod-crusher and the wife of a wandering squire and not of any governor!"
"Your worship," answered the page, "is the most worthy wife of a most archly worthy governor; and, as proof of this truth, let your worship receive this letter and this present."
And he took out of his pocket on the instant a string of coral with gold ends and threw it round her neck and said:
"This letter is from my lord the governor, and another I am carrying and this coral are from my lady the duchess, who sends me to your worship."
Teresa was thunderstruck, and her daughter neither more nor less, and the girl said:
"May they kill me if our master Don Quixote is not behind this — he must have given father the government or the earldom he had promised him so many times."
"That is the truth," answered the page: "out of respect for Señor Don Quixote, Señor Sancho is now governor of the isle of Barataria, as will be seen by this letter."
"Read it to me, your worship, sir gentleman," said Teresa; "for although I can spin, I cannot read a crumb."
"Nor I either," added Sanchica; "but wait for me here, and I shall go and call somebody to read it — either the curate himself or the bachelor Sansón Carrasco, who will come very willingly to hear news of my father."
"There is no need to call anybody: I cannot spin, but I can read, and I shall read it."
And so he read the whole of it to her; which, having been already given, is not set down here. And then he took out another from the duchess, which went in this way:
Teresa my friend:
The good qualities of the goodness and the wit of your husband Sancho moved and obliged me to ask my husband the duke to give him the government of one of the many isles he has. I have news that he governs like a gerfalcon, at which I am very well pleased, and the duke my lord likewise; for which I give many thanks to heaven for not having been mistaken in choosing him for such a government. Because I want Señora Teresa to know that a good governor is hard to find in this world, and may God make me as good as Sancho is a governor.
I am sending you here, my dear, a string of coral with gold ends; I should have been glad if it had been of oriental pearls, but the man who gives you the bone would not like to see you dead. The time will come when we shall know each other and be in each other's company, and God knows what will come of it. Commend me to Sanchica your daughter, and tell her from me to get ready, for I mean to marry her highly when she least expects it.
They tell me that in that place of yours there are fat acorns: send me a couple of dozen, which I shall value greatly for being from your own hand; and write to me at length, letting me know about your health and your well-being. And if you should need anything, you have nothing to do but open your mouth, for your mouth shall be the measure. And God keep you. From this place.
Your friend, who is very fond of you,
The Duchess.
"Oh," said Teresa when she had heard the letter, "what a good, plain, humble lady! Let them bury me with ladies like that, and not with the gentlewomen who are in fashion in this village, who think that because they are gentlewomen the wind must not touch them, and go to church with as much airs as if they were queens themselves, and look for all the world as if they held it a dishonour to look at a farm woman. And see here how this good lady, being a duchess, calls me her friend and treats me as if I were her equal — and may I see her equal to the tallest belfry there is in La Mancha!
"And as to the acorns, my dear sir, I shall send her ladyship a peck of them, and they are so fat that people can come and look at them and marvel. And for now, Sanchica, see that this gentleman is looked after: get his horse seen to, and get eggs out of the stable, and cut plenty of bacon, and let us give him a dinner fit for a prince; for the good news he has brought us and his good face deserve it all. And meanwhile I shall go out and give my neighbours the news of our good fortune, and the father curate and Master Nicolás the barber, who are and have been such friends of your father's."
"I shall, mother," answered Sanchica; "but mind you must give me half of that string, for I do not think my lady the duchess such a fool as to have sent her the whole of it."
"It is all for you, daughter," answered Teresa, "but let me wear it round my neck for a few days, for truly it seems to gladden my heart."
"They will be glad too," said the page, "when they see the bundle in this portmanteau, which is a suit of the finest cloth that the governor wore only one day out hunting, and which he is sending in its entirety for Señora Sanchica."
"May he live a thousand years," answered Sanchica, "and the man who brings it neither more nor less, and even two thousand if there is need."
At this Teresa went out of the house with the letters and with the string round her neck, and went along drumming on the letters as though they were a tambourine; and, meeting the curate and Sansón Carrasco by chance, she began to dance and to say:
"Upon my word, now there are no poor relations! We have a nice little government! No — let the smartest gentlewoman take me on, and I shall trim her up like new!"
"What is this, Teresa Panza? What madness is this, and what papers are those?"
"There is no other madness but that these are letters from duchesses and governors, and these I am wearing round my neck are fine coral; the Ave Marias and the Our Fathers are of hammered gold, and I am a governess."
"Under God, we do not understand you, Teresa, and we do not know what you are saying."
"There they can see it for themselves," answered Teresa.
And she gave them the letters. The curate read them so that Sansón Carrasco heard them, and Sansón and the curate looked at each other as if amazed at what they had read; and the bachelor asked who had brought those letters. Teresa answered that they should come with her to her house and they would see the messenger, who was a young man like a golden pine, and that he was bringing her another present worth as much again.
The curate took the coral off her neck and looked at it and looked at it again, and, making certain that it was genuine, was amazed all over again, and said:
"By the habit I wear, I do not know what to say or what to think about these letters and these presents. On the one hand I see and touch the fineness of this coral, and on the other I read that a duchess is sending to ask for two dozen acorns."
"Match me those measurements!" said Carrasco then. "Well now, let us go and see the bearer of this packet, and we shall find out from him about the difficulties that occur to us."
They did so, and Teresa went back with them. They found the page sifting a little barley for his mount, and Sanchica cutting a rasher of bacon to pave it with eggs and give the page his dinner; and his appearance and his good dress pleased the two of them very much. And, after they had greeted him courteously and he them, Sansón asked him to tell them news both of Don Quixote and of Sancho Panza; for although they had read Sancho's letter and the lady duchess's, they were still confused and could not manage to hit on what this business of Sancho's government could be, and above all of an isle — since all or most of the isles there are in the Mediterranean belong to His Majesty. To which the page answered:
"That Señor Sancho Panza is a governor there is no doubting; whether what he governs is an isle or not, I do not meddle in that, but it is enough that it is a place of more than a thousand inhabitants. And as for the business of the acorns, I say that my lady the duchess is so plain and so humble that not merely sending to ask for acorns from a farm woman — she has even been known to send and ask a neighbour of hers for the loan of a comb. Because I want your worships to know that the ladies of Aragon, although they are of such great quality, are not as punctilious and as high-flown as Castilian ladies; they treat people with more plainness."
In the middle of this talk Sanchica burst in with a lapful of eggs, and asked the page:
"Tell me, sir: does my lord father by any chance wear tied hose now that he is a governor?"
"I have not looked at that," answered the page, "but he must do."
"Oh my God!" replied Sanchica. "And what a thing it will be to see my father in trunk hose! Is it not a fine thing that ever since I was born I have wanted to see my father in tied hose?"
"Your worship will see him in such things and worse if he lives," answered the page. "By God, he is on the way to travelling in a hooded cape if the government lasts him only two months."
The curate and the bachelor saw well enough that the page was talking slyly, but the fineness of the coral and the hunting suit Sancho was sending undid it all — for Teresa had already shown them the suit. And they could not help laughing at Sanchica's wish, and still more when Teresa said:
"Master curate, look about and see whether there is anybody going to Madrid or to Toledo, to buy me a round farthingale, a proper one and well made, in the fashion and one of the best there is; for truly and truly I mean to honour my husband's government as far as I can, and even, if I get annoyed, to go off to that court and set up a coach like everybody else. For the woman who has a governor for a husband may very well keep and maintain one."
"And how, mother!" said Sanchica. "Would to God it were today rather than tomorrow, even if those who saw me riding beside my lady mother in that coach were to say: 'Look at the such-and-such, daughter of the garlic-stuffed man, and how she goes sitting and stretched out in the coach as if she were a she-pope!' But let them tread the mud, and let me ride in my coach with my feet up off the ground. A bad year and a bad month to all the gossips in the world, and let me be warm and let people laugh! Am I right, mother?"
"And how right you are, daughter!" answered Teresa. "And all these good fortunes, and even greater ones, my good Sancho has prophesied to me; and you shall see, daughter, how he does not stop until he has made me a countess. It is all a matter of beginning to be lucky; and, as I have heard your good father say many times — and he is the father of proverbs as well as yours — when they give you the heifer, run with the halter; when they give you a government, take it; when they give you an earldom, grab it; and when they chuck you under the chin with some good gift, pocket it. No — go to sleep, and do not answer the good fortunes and the good luck that are knocking at the door of your house!"
"And what do I care," added Sanchica, "if anybody who likes says, when he sees me giving myself airs and putting on style: 'The dog got himself into hemp breeches...' and the rest of it?"
Hearing which, the curate said:
"I cannot help believing that all of this line of the Panzas were born with a sackful of proverbs inside them: I have never seen one of them who does not spill them at all hours and in every conversation they have."
"That is the truth," said the page; "for the lord governor Sancho says them at every turn, and, although a great many are beside the point, they still give pleasure, and my lady the duchess and the duke make much of them."
"And does your worship still hold to it, my dear sir," said the bachelor, "that this business of Sancho's government is true, and that there is a duchess in the world who sends him presents and writes to him? Because we, though we have touched the presents and have read the letters, do not believe it, and think that this is one of those affairs of Don Quixote our fellow townsman, who thinks everything is done by enchantment; and so I am half inclined to say that I want to touch and feel your worship, to see whether you are a fanciful ambassador or a man of flesh and bone."
"Gentlemen, I know no more about myself," answered the page, "than that I am a true ambassador, and that Señor Sancho Panza is an actual governor, and that my lord and lady the duke and duchess can give, and have given, that government; and that I have heard it said that this same Sancho Panza conducts himself in it most valiantly. Whether there is enchantment in this or not, let your worships argue it out among yourselves; for I know nothing else, by the oath I make, which is by the life of my parents, whom I have alive and love and am very fond of."
"It may very well be so," replied the bachelor, "but dubitat Augustinus."
"Let doubt who will doubt," answered the page, "the truth is what I have said, and it must always float on top of a lie, as oil does on water; and if not, operibus credite, et non verbis. Let one of your worships come with me and you shall see with your eyes what you do not believe with your ears."
"That journey is mine," said Sanchica. "Take me, sir, on your nag's crupper, for I shall go very willingly to see my lord father."
"Governors' daughters must not go along the roads alone, but attended by coaches and litters and a great number of servants."
"By God," answered Sancha, "I would go as well on a she-ass as in a coach. You have found your squeamish girl, have you not!"
"Be quiet, girl," said Teresa; "you do not know what you are saying, and this gentleman is right: as the times are, so the touch; when it is Sancho, Sancha, and when it is governor, my lady — and I do not know whether I am saying something."
"Señora Teresa says more than she thinks," said the page. "And give me something to eat and send me off soon, because I mean to go back this afternoon."
To which the curate said:
"Your worship shall come and take pot luck with me, for Señora Teresa has more good will than furnishings to serve so good a guest with."
The page refused; but in the end he had to agree to it for his own good, and the curate took him along very willingly, so as to have room to ask him at leisure about Don Quixote and his exploits.
The bachelor offered to write the answering letters for Teresa; but she did not want the bachelor to meddle in her affairs, for she took him for something of a joker; and so she gave a roll and two eggs to an altar boy who could write, who wrote her two letters, one for her husband and another for the duchess, dictated out of her own headpiece — and they are not the worst that are set down in this great history, as will be seen further on.
The day dawned that followed the night of the governor's rounds, which the head steward spent without sleeping, his mind taken up with the face, spirit and beauty of the disguised maiden; and the steward spent what was left of the night in writing to his master and mistress about what Sancho Panza was doing and saying, as amazed by his deeds as by his sayings — because his words and his actions went about mixed together, with glimmerings of the judicious and of the foolish.
The lord governor got up at last; and, by Doctor Pedro Recio's orders, they made him breakfast on a little preserve and four swallows of cold water — a thing Sancho would have traded for a piece of bread and a bunch of grapes; but, seeing that this was more force than free will, he put up with it, with a good deal of grief to his soul and distress to his stomach, Pedro Recio making him believe that scanty and delicate food sharpened the wits, which was what best suited persons set up in commands and in grave offices, where they have to make use not so much of their bodily strength as of the strength of their understanding.
With this sophistry Sancho suffered hunger, and to such a degree that in secret he cursed the government and even the man who had given it him. But, with his hunger and with his preserve, he set himself to give judgement that day; and the first thing that offered itself was a question a stranger put to him, with the steward and the rest of his acolytes present at the whole of it, which was:
"Sir, a great river divided two districts of one and the same lordship — and let your worship be attentive, because the case is important and rather difficult. I say, then, that over this river there was a bridge, and at the end of it a gallows and a kind of court house, in which there were ordinarily four judges who judged by the law laid down by the lord of the river, of the bridge and of the lordship, which was in this form: 'If anybody crosses this bridge from one side to the other, he must first swear where he is going and what he is going for; and if he swears the truth, let them let him pass; and if he tells a lie, let him die for it, hanged on the gallows that stands there, without any remission at all.'
"This law being known, and the severity of its condition, a great many people crossed; and then, from what they swore, it could be seen that they were telling the truth, and the judges let them pass freely. It happened, then, that, taking a man's oath, he swore and said that by the oath he was making, he was going to die on that gallows over there, and for nothing else. The judges stuck at the oath and said: 'If we let this man pass freely, he lied in his oath, and according to the law he must die; and if we hang him, he swore that he was going to die on that gallows, and, having sworn the truth, by the same law he must go free.'
"It is asked of your worship, my lord governor, what the judges are to do with this man; for even now they are still in doubt and suspense. And, having had news of your worship's sharp and lofty understanding, they sent me to beg your worship on their behalf to give your opinion in so intricate and doubtful a case."
To which Sancho answered:
"Certainly those gentlemen the judges who send you to me could have spared themselves the trouble, because I am a man who has more of the dull ox in him than of the sharp fellow. But for all that, repeat the business to me once more so that I understand it: perhaps I might hit the mark."
The questioner went over what he had said before once and again, and Sancho said:
"To my mind I can set this business out in two shakes, and it is this: the man swears he is going to die on the gallows; and if he dies on it, he swore the truth, and by the law laid down he deserves to go free and to cross the bridge; and if they do not hang him, he swore a lie, and by the same law he deserves to be hanged."
"It is just as the lord governor says," said the messenger; "and as to the completeness and understanding of the case, there is nothing more to ask or to doubt."
"I say, then, now," replied Sancho, "that of this man they should let the part that swore the truth cross, and hang the part that told a lie; and in this way the condition of the crossing will be carried out to the letter."
"Well, my lord governor," replied the questioner, "it will be necessary for this man to be divided into parts, the lying part and the truthful part; and if he is divided, he must of necessity die, and so nothing at all is achieved of what the law requires, and it is expressly necessary that the law should be carried out."
"Come here, my good man," answered Sancho. "This traveller you speak of — either I am a blockhead, or he has the same reason for dying as for living and crossing the bridge; because if the truth saves him, the lie condemns him equally. And this being so, as it is, I am of the opinion that you should tell those gentlemen who sent you to me that, since the reasons for condemning him and for absolving him are evenly balanced, they should let him cross freely; for doing good is always more praised than doing harm. And I would give you this signed with my name, if I knew how to sign.
"And in this case I have not spoken out of my own head, but there came into my memory one precept, among a great many others that my master Don Quixote gave me the night before I came to be governor of this isle: which was that when justice was in doubt I should lean and take refuge in mercy. And God has willed that I should remember it now, since it comes into this case as though it were cast in the mould."
"That is so," answered the steward, "and I hold for myself that Lycurgus himself, who gave the Spartans their laws, could not have given a better sentence than the one the great Panza has given. And let the morning's audience end with this, and I shall give orders for the lord governor to dine very much to his taste."
"That is what I ask, and fair play," said Sancho. "Give me something to eat, and let cases and doubts rain down on me, and I shall polish them off in the air."
The steward kept his word, thinking it would be a matter of conscience to starve so judicious a governor to death — and the more so as he meant to make an end of him that very night by playing him the last trick he had a commission to play.
It happened, then, that, having dined that day against the rules and aphorisms of the doctor of Get-You-Gone, as the cloth was being taken up a courier came in with a letter from Don Quixote for the governor. Sancho ordered the secretary to read it to himself, and, if there were nothing in it worth keeping secret, to read it out loud. The secretary did so; and, going over it first, he said:
"It may well be read out loud, for what Señor Don Quixote writes to your worship deserves to be stamped and written in letters of gold; and it goes like this:
When I was expecting to hear news of your carelessnesses and impertinences, Sancho my friend, I heard news of your judicious sayings; for which I gave particular thanks to heaven, which knows how to raise the poor out of the dunghill and to make wise men out of fools. They tell me that you govern as if you were a man, and that you are a man as if you were a beast, so humble is the way you conduct yourself.
And I want you to note, Sancho, that many times it is fitting and necessary, for the authority of the office, to go against the humility of the heart; because the good dress of a person set in grave charges must be according to what those charges require and not according to the measure of what his humble condition inclines him to. Dress well, for a stick well got up does not look like a stick. I do not say that you should wear trinkets and finery, or that, being a judge, you should dress like a soldier, but that you should adorn yourself with the habit your office requires, so long as it is clean and well arranged.
To win the good will of the people you govern, among other things you must do two: one, be well-mannered with everybody, although I have already told you this before; and the other, take care that there is plenty of food, for there is nothing that wears at the hearts of the poor more than hunger and scarcity.
Do not make many decrees; and if you make them, try to make them good ones, and above all see that they are kept and carried out — for decrees that are not kept are the same as if they had never been made; on the contrary, they give it to be understood that the prince who had the judgement and the authority to make them had not the courage to make them kept. And laws that frighten and are not enforced come to be like the log, king of the frogs: at first it terrified them, and in time they thought nothing of it and climbed up on top of it.
Be a father to the virtues and a stepfather to the vices. Do not always be severe, nor always mild, and choose the middle way between these two extremes, for in that lies the point of good judgement.
Visit the prisons, the butchers' shops and the markets, for the presence of the governor in such places is of great importance: he comforts the prisoners, who are hoping for a quick despatch of their cases; he is a bogey to the butchers, who for that occasion make their weights even; and he is a scarecrow to the market women, for the same reason.
Do not show yourself — even if by any chance you are so, which I do not believe — greedy, a womaniser or a glutton; because when the people and those who deal with you know your settled inclination, they will lay their batteries against you there until they bring you down into the depths of ruin.
Look and look again, go over and over again the advice and the precepts I gave you in writing before you set out from here to your government, and you will see how you find in them, if you keep them, a help in hand to carry you through the labours and difficulties that come to governors at every step.
Write to your lord and lady and show yourself grateful to them; for ingratitude is the daughter of pride and one of the greatest sins there is, and the person who is grateful to those who have done him good gives an indication that he will also be grateful to God, who has done him so many good things and goes on doing them.
My lady the duchess sent a special messenger with your suit and another present to your wife Teresa Panza; we are expecting an answer at any moment.
I have been a little out of sorts from a certain cat-mauling that happened to me not very much to the good of my nose; but it was nothing, for if there are enchanters who ill-treat me, there are also enchanters who defend me.
Let me know whether the steward who is with you had anything to do with the doings of the Trifaldi, as you suspected; and you shall keep giving me notice of everything that happens to you, since the road is so short. What is more, I mean to leave soon this idle life I am in, since I was not born for it.
A business has come up for me that I believe will put me out of favour with these nobles; but although it matters a great deal to me, it does not matter to me at all, since in the end I must fulfil my profession sooner than their pleasure, according to what they say: amicus Plato, sed magis amica veritas. I say this Latin to you because I give myself to understand that, since you have been a governor, you will have learnt it. And God be with you, and may He keep you from anybody's pitying you.
Your friend,
Don Quixote of La Mancha.
Sancho listened to the letter with great attention, and it was praised and held for judicious by those who heard it. And then Sancho got up from the table and, calling the secretary, shut himself up with him in his chamber; and, without putting it off any longer, he decided to answer his master Don Quixote at once, and told the secretary to write down what he said to him without adding or taking away anything at all. And so he did; and the letter of reply was of the following tenor:
The business of my affairs is so great that I have no time to scratch my head or even to cut my nails; and so I wear them so long that God help me. I say this, my dear lord of my soul, so that your worship should not be surprised that until now I have given no notice of how I am faring, well or badly, in this government, in which I am hungrier than when the two of us were going about through the woods and the wastelands.
The duke my lord wrote to me the other day, letting me know that certain spies had come into this isle to kill me; and up to now I have not discovered any but a certain doctor who is here on a salary to kill all the governors who come to this place. He is called Doctor Pedro Recio and he is a native of Get-You-Gone: so your worship may see what a name it is, for me not to be afraid of dying at his hands!
This doctor says of himself that he does not cure diseases when they are there but prevents them, so that they may not come; and the medicines he uses are diet and more diet, until he has the person down to bare bones — as though thinness were not a greater evil than fever. In short, he is killing me with hunger and I am dying of vexation; for when I thought I was coming to this government to eat hot and drink cold and rest my body between fine linen sheets on feather mattresses, I have come to do penance like a hermit — and, since I do not do it of my own will, I think that in the end the devil will carry me off.
Up to now I have not touched a fee or taken a bribe, and I cannot think what this means; because here they have told me that the governors who usually come to this isle, before coming into it, have been either given or lent a great deal of money by the townspeople, and that this is the ordinary custom with the rest who go to governments, not only in this one.
Last night, going the rounds, I came across a very beautiful maiden in man's clothes and a brother of hers in woman's; my head steward fell in love with the girl and picked her out in his imagination for his wife, as he has said, and I picked out the young man for my son-in-law. Today the two of us shall put our ideas to their father, who is a certain Diego de la Llana, a gentleman and as much of an old Christian as you please.
I visit the markets, as your worship advises me; and yesterday I found a stallholder selling new hazelnuts, and I established that she had mixed a bushel of new hazelnuts with another of old, empty and rotten ones. I gave the whole lot to the charity-school children, who would know how to tell them apart, and I sentenced her not to come into the market for a fortnight. They have told me that I did it valiantly; what I can tell your worship is that it is common talk in this town that there are no worse people than the market women, because they are all shameless, soulless and brazen — and so I believe, from the ones I have seen in other towns.
That my lady the duchess should have written to my wife Teresa Panza and sent her the present your worship speaks of, I am very much satisfied with; and I shall try to show myself grateful in due time. Let your worship kiss her hands on my behalf and say that I say she has not thrown it into a torn sack, as she shall see by the deed.
I should not like your worship to have any falling-out or unpleasantness with these lord and lady of mine; because if your worship gets angry with them, it is plain that it must redound to my harm — and it will not be right that, when I am given advice to be grateful, your worship should not be so with people who have done him so many kindnesses and by whom he has been treated with such indulgence in their castle.
That business of the cat-mauling I do not understand, but I imagine it must be one of the bad turns the bad enchanters generally play on your worship; I shall know when we see each other.
I should like to send your worship something, but I do not know what to send, unless it is some syringe tubes for use with bladders, which they make very neatly in this isle; although if the office lasts me I shall find something to send by hook or by crook.
If my wife Teresa Panza writes to me, let your worship pay the postage and send me the letter, for I have the greatest longing to know the state of my house, my wife and my children. And with this, God deliver your worship from ill-meaning enchanters, and bring me safely and peacefully out of this government — which I doubt, for I think I shall leave it along with my life, the way Doctor Pedro Recio treats me.
Your worship's servant,
Sancho Panza, the Governor.
The secretary closed the letter and sent the courier off at once. And the people who were playing tricks on Sancho, coming together, arranged among themselves how to get him out of the government. And Sancho spent that afternoon in making some ordinances touching the good government of what he imagined to be an isle; and he ordered that there should be no hoarders of provisions in the commonwealth, and that people might bring wine into it from wherever they liked, on condition that they declared the place it came from, so that a price could be set on it according to its value, its goodness and its reputation; and that anybody who watered it or changed its name should lose his life for it.
He brought down the price of all footwear, chiefly of shoes, since it seemed to him that it was running exorbitantly high. He set a limit to servants' wages, which were travelling at a loose rein along the road of self-interest. He laid the gravest penalties on those who sang lascivious and improper songs, either by night or by day. He ordered that no blind man should sing of a miracle in ballads unless he brought a genuine certificate that it was true, since it seemed to him that most of those the blind men sing are made up, to the damage of the true ones.
He made and created a constable of the poor, not to persecute them but to examine them as to whether they really were poor; because in the shadow of a pretended crippling and a false sore there go about thieving arms and drunken good health. In short, he ordained things so good that to this day they are kept in that place, and are named The Constitutions of the Great Governor Sancho Panza.
Cide Hamete tells that, Don Quixote being now healed of his scratches, it seemed to him that the life he was leading in that castle was against the whole order of chivalry he professed; and so he decided to ask the duke and duchess for leave to set out for Saragossa, whose festival was coming near, where he expected to win the suit of armour that is competed for at such festivals.
And, being one day at table with the duke and duchess and beginning to put his intention into practice and ask for leave, see here: all at once there came in at the door of the great hall two women — as they afterwards proved to be — covered in mourning from head to foot; and one of them, coming up to Don Quixote, threw herself at his feet, stretched out at full length, her mouth stitched to Don Quixote's feet, and she gave out groans so mournful, so deep and so pained that she threw everybody who heard and saw her into confusion.
And although the duke and duchess thought it must be some trick their servants wanted to play on Don Quixote, still, seeing the earnestness with which the woman sighed and groaned and wept, it left them doubtful and in suspense — until Don Quixote, out of compassion, raised her from the ground and made her uncover herself and take the mantle off her weeping face.
She did so, and showed herself to be what nobody could ever have imagined, because she uncovered the face of Doña Rodríguez, the duenna of the house; and the other woman in mourning was her daughter, the one deceived by the rich farmer's son. All those who knew her were astonished, and the duke and duchess more than anybody; for although they took her for a fool and a good-natured creature, they did not take her for one who would come to commit follies. Finally Doña Rodríguez, turning to her master and mistress, said to them:
"May your excellencies be pleased to give me leave to have a few words with this knight, since it is needful for me to come well out of the business the boldness of an ill-meaning peasant has put me in."
The duke said that he gave it her, and that she might have as many words with Señor Don Quixote as she pleased. She, directing her voice and her face to Don Quixote, said:
"Many days ago, valorous knight, I gave you an account of the wrong and the treachery a wicked farmer has done unto my dearly loved daughter — who is this unfortunate girl here present — and you have promised me to stand up for her and to right the injustice that has been done her. And now it has come to my notice that you mean to leave this castle in search of the good adventures that God may send you. And so I should like, before you slip away along those roads, that you should challenge this untamed rustic and make him marry my daughter, in fulfilment of the word he gave her of being her husband before and ere he lay with her. Because to think that the duke my lord will do me justice is to ask pears of an elm, for the reason I have already declared to your worship in confidence. And with this, may Our Lord give your worship much health, and not leave us unprotected."
To which words Don Quixote answered with a great deal of gravity and pomp:
"Good duenna, temper your tears — or, better said, dry them and save your sighs; for I take upon my own charge the remedy of your daughter, who would have done better not to be so ready to believe lovers' promises, which for the most part are light in the promising and very heavy in the keeping. And so, with the leave of the duke my lord, I shall set out at once in search of that soulless young man; and I shall find him and challenge him and kill him whenever and however he excuses himself from keeping the word he promised. For the chief business of my profession is to pardon the humble and punish the proud — I mean, to come to the help of the wretched and destroy the harsh."
"There is no need," answered the duke, "for your worship to put yourself to the labour of looking for the rustic this good duenna complains of; nor is there any need for your worship to ask my leave to challenge him. I take him as challenged, and I take it upon myself to let him know of this challenge and to make him accept it and come and answer for himself at this castle of mine, where I shall give the two of you a safe field, keeping all the conditions that generally are and ought to be kept in such matters, and keeping his justice equally to each of you, as all those princes are bound to do who give free field to men who fight within the bounds of their lordships."
"Then with that safe conduct and with your greatness's good leave," replied Don Quixote, "from here I say that for this once I renounce my gentle birth, and level and adjust myself to the lowness of the offender, and make myself his equal, qualifying him to fight with me. And so, though he is absent, I challenge and defy him, on the grounds that he did wrong in cheating this poor girl, who was a maiden and through his fault is one no longer; and that he must keep the word he gave her of being her lawful husband, or die in the attempt."
And then, pulling off a glove, he threw it into the middle of the hall; and the duke picked it up, saying that, as he had already said, he accepted that challenge in the name of his vassal, and set the term at six days from then; and the field, in the square of that castle; and the arms, the ones customary among knights: lance and shield and articulated armour with all the other pieces, without deceit, trickery or any superstition, examined and inspected by the judges of the field.
"But before anything else, it is necessary that this good duenna and this bad maiden should put the right of their case into Señor Don Quixote's hands; for otherwise nothing will be done, and the challenge will never come to be duly carried out."
"I do put it," answered the duenna.
"And I too," added the daughter, all in tears and all shamefaced and in bad spirits.
This memorandum being taken down, then, and the duke having imagined what he would do in the case, the women in mourning went off; and the duchess ordered that from then on they should not be treated as her servants but as adventuring ladies who had come to her house to ask for justice. And so they gave them a separate suite and served them as strangers, not without alarm among the rest of the servants, who did not know where the foolishness and forwardness of Doña Rodríguez and her ill-fortuned daughter were going to end.
While they were at this, to finish making the feast merry and give the dinner a good ending, see here where there came into the hall the page who had taken the letters and presents to Teresa Panza, wife of the governor Sancho Panza; at whose arrival the duke and duchess were greatly pleased, being eager to know what had happened to him on his journey. And, on their asking him, the page answered that he could not tell it so publicly or in a few words: let their excellencies be pleased to leave it until they were alone, and meanwhile entertain themselves with these letters. And, taking out two letters, he put them into the duchess's hands.
One had on its address: Letter for my lady the duchess of such-and-such, of I do not know where; and the other: To my husband Sancho Panza, governor of the isle of Barataria, whom God prosper more years than me. The duchess's bread would not bake, as the saying goes, until she had read her letter; and, opening it and reading it to herself and seeing that she could read it aloud so that the duke and the bystanders could hear it, she read in this way:
Great pleasure it gave me, my lady, the letter your greatness wrote me, which truly I had wanted very much. The string of coral is very good, and my husband's hunting suit is not one step behind it. That your ladyship should have made Sancho my consort a governor has given great pleasure to this whole place, though there is nobody who believes it — chiefly the curate, and Master Nicolás the barber, and Sansón Carrasco the bachelor. But I do not care a bit; for, so long as it is so, as it is, let everybody say what they like — although, to tell the truth, if the coral and the suit had not come, I should not have believed it either, because in this village everybody takes my husband for a blockhead, and, apart from governing a flock of goats, they cannot imagine what government he can be good for. God grant it, and set it on the road as He sees His children need.
I, lady of my soul, have made up my mind, with your worship's leave, to bring this good day into my house by going to the court to stretch myself out in a coach, so as to put out the eyes of the thousand envious people I have already. And so I beg your excellency to order my husband to send me a little money, and let it be something worth having, because at court expenses are great: bread is at a real and meat thirty maravedís the pound, which is a judgement. And if he does not want me to go, let him warn me in good time, because my feet are itching to be on the road; for my friends and my neighbours tell me that if my daughter and I go about grand and puffed up at court, my husband will come to be known through me more than I through him, since a great many people will have to ask: "Who are these ladies in this coach?" And a servant of mine will answer: "The wife and daughter of Sancho Panza, governor of the isle of Barataria." And in this way Sancho will be known and I shall be respected, and off to Rome with the whole thing.
It grieves me, as much as it can grieve me, that this year there has been no crop of acorns in this village; even so, I am sending your highness about half a peck of them, which I went and gathered and picked one by one on the mountain, and I could not find any bigger; I wish they had been like ostrich eggs.
Do not let your pomposity forget to write to me, for I shall take care of the answer, letting you know of my health and of everything there is to let you know from this place, where I remain praying to Our Lord to keep your greatness, and not to forget me. Sancha my daughter and my son kiss your worship's hands.
She who wants more to see your ladyship than to write to you, your servant,
Teresa Panza.
Great was the pleasure everybody took in hearing Teresa Panza's letter, and chiefly the duke and duchess; and the duchess asked Don Quixote's opinion whether it would be right to open the letter that had come for the governor, which she imagined must be an excellent one. Don Quixote said that he would open it to give them pleasure, and so he did; and he saw that it went in this way:
Your letter I received, my Sancho of my soul, and I promise you and swear to you as a Catholic Christian that I came within two fingers of going mad with pleasure. Look, brother: when I came to hear that you are a governor, I thought I should fall down dead there of pure joy, for you know they say that sudden gladness kills as much as great grief. As for Sanchica your daughter, her waters went from her without her noticing it, out of pure contentment.
I had the suit you sent me in front of me, and the coral my lady the duchess sent me round my neck, and the letters in my hands, and the man who brought them there present; and with all that I believed and thought that everything I saw and touched was a dream. Because who could think that a goatherd would come to be governor of isles? You know, my friend, that my mother used to say that you had to live a long time to see a great deal; I say it because I expect to see more if I live longer, for I do not mean to stop until I see you a tax-farmer or an excise-man — which are offices that, though the devil carries off whoever uses them badly, still in the end always have money and handle it.
My lady the duchess will tell you the wish I have to go to the court; think it over and let me know your pleasure, for I shall try to do you honour there by going about in a coach.
The curate, the barber, the bachelor and even the sacristan cannot believe that you are a governor, and they say it is all humbug or a matter of enchantment, as everything to do with your master Don Quixote is. And Sansón says he means to go and look for you and get the government out of your head and the madness out of Don Quixote's skull; and I do nothing but laugh and look at my string and plan out the dress I am to make for our daughter out of your suit.
Some acorns I sent my lady the duchess; I wish they had been of gold. Send me some strings of pearls, if they are in use in that isle.
The news from this place is that the Berrueca woman has married her daughter to a bad painter who came to this village to paint whatever might turn up. The council ordered him to paint His Majesty's arms over the doors of the town hall; he asked two ducats, they gave them to him in advance, he worked for a week, at the end of which he had painted nothing and said he could not manage to paint so many odds and ends; he gave the money back, and even so he got married on the strength of being a good workman. It is true that he has now dropped the brush and taken up the hoe, and goes into the fields like a gentleman.
Pedro de Lobo's son has taken minor orders and the tonsure, meaning to become a priest; Minguilla, Mingo Silvato's granddaughter, got to know of it and has brought a suit against him, saying that he has given her a promise of marriage. Bad tongues will have it that she has been with child by him, but he denies it flat-footedly.
There are no olives this year, and there is not a drop of vinegar to be found in this whole village. A company of soldiers came through here; on their way they carried off three girls from this village; I do not want to tell you who they are: perhaps they will come back, and there will be no lack of men to take them for wives, with their good or bad blemishes.
Sanchica makes lace edging; she earns eight maravedís clear every day, which she keeps dropping into a money box to help with her dowry. But now that she is a governor's daughter, you will give her the dowry without her working for it. The fountain in the square dried up; lightning struck the pillory, and much I care.
I hope for an answer to this and for a decision about my going to the court; and with this, may God keep you more years than me, or as many, for I should not like to leave you in this world without me.
Your wife,
Teresa Panza.
The letters were made much of, laughed over, valued and marvelled at; and, to finish setting the seal on it, the courier arrived who was carrying the one Sancho was sending to Don Quixote, which was likewise read publicly, and which put the governor's foolishness in doubt.
The duchess withdrew to learn from the page what had happened to him in Sancho's village, which he told her at great length, without leaving out a single circumstance. He gave her the acorns, and a cheese as well that Teresa had given him for being a very good one, better than the cheeses of Tronchón. The duchess received it with the greatest pleasure — with which we shall leave her, so as to tell the end that the government of the great Sancho Panza came to, the flower and mirror of all island governors.
"To think that in this life its affairs will always stay in one state is to think the impossible. Rather it seems that it all goes round in a circle — I mean, round and round: spring follows summer, summer high summer, high summer autumn, autumn winter and winter spring, and so time goes back to travelling on this continual wheel. Only human life runs to its end, lighter than time, without hope of being renewed except in the next life, which has no bounds to limit it."
So says Cide Hamete, that Mohammedan philosopher; because this business of understanding the swiftness and instability of the present life and the everlastingness of the eternal one that is looked for has been understood by many without the light of faith, and only by the light of nature. But here our author says it because of the speed with which Sancho's government ended, was used up, was undone and went off like a shadow and a smoke.
Sancho, being in his bed on the seventh night of the days of his government — not full of bread or of wine but of judging and giving opinions and making statutes and decrees — when sleep, in spite and defiance of his hunger, was beginning to close his eyelids, heard such a great noise of bells and of voices that it sounded for all the world as though the whole isle were sinking. He sat up in bed and stayed listening attentively, to see whether he could hit on what might be the cause of such a great uproar. But not only did he not find out; on the contrary, with the noise of infinite trumpets and drums adding itself to the voices and the bells, he was left more confused and full of fear and terror.
And, getting to his feet, he put on a pair of slippers because of the damp of the floor, and, without putting on a dressing gown or anything of the kind, he went out to the door of his room, just as he saw coming along some galleries more than twenty people with lighted torches in their hands and with their swords drawn, all of them shouting at the tops of their voices:
"To arms, to arms, my lord governor, to arms! For infinite enemies have come into the isle, and we are lost if your skill and valour do not come to our help."
With this noise, fury and uproar they came to where Sancho was, astounded and dumbfounded by what he was hearing and seeing; and when they came up to him one of them said:
"Arm yourself at once, your lordship, if you do not want to be lost and this whole isle to be lost!"
"What am I to arm myself with?" answered Sancho. "And what do I know about arms or about relieving people? These things had better be left to my master Don Quixote, who will polish them off and put them out of danger in two shakes; for I, sinner that I am before God, understand nothing about these emergencies."
"Ah, my lord governor!" said another. "What slackness is this? Arm yourself, your worship, for here we bring you offensive and defensive arms; and come out into that square and be our guide and our captain, since it is your right to be so, being our governor."
"Arm me then, and welcome," replied Sancho.
And at once they brought him two pavises, which they had come provided with; and they put them over his shirt without letting him put on any other clothes, one pavise in front and another behind, and through some hollows they had made in them they pulled his arms out and tied him up very tightly with cords, so that he was left walled in and boarded up, straight as a spindle, unable to bend his knees or to stir a single step. They put a lance in his hands, which he leaned on so as to be able to keep on his feet. When they had him like this, they told him to march and to guide them all and encourage them; for, he being their pole star, their lantern and their morning star, their affairs would come to a good end.
"How am I to march, wretched man that I am," answered Sancho, "when I cannot work my kneecaps, because these boards that are stitched so tight to my flesh are stopping me? What you must do is carry me in your arms and set me, laid across or upright, in some gateway, and I shall guard it, either with this lance or with my body."
"Get on, my lord governor," said another; "it is fear more than the boards that is stopping your step. Have done and stir yourself, for it is late, and the enemies are growing, and the shouting is getting louder and the danger is pressing."
At which urgings and abuse the poor governor tried to move, and came down on the ground with such a great crash that he thought he had smashed himself to pieces. He was left like a tortoise shut up and covered by its shells, or like half a side of bacon between two troughs, or exactly like a boat run aground on the sand; and, for all their seeing him fallen, those mocking people felt no compassion for him at all. On the contrary, putting out the torches, they went back to redoubling their shouts and repeating their "to arms!" in such great haste, walking right over poor Sancho and dealing him endless sword-strokes on the pavises, that if he had not gathered himself in and shrunk up, putting his head between the pavises, the poor governor would have come off very badly. Shut up in that tightness, he sweated and sweated again, and with his whole heart commended himself to God to bring him out of that danger.
Some tripped over him, others fell down, and there was one who stood on top of him for a good while and from there, as from a watchtower, directed the armies, saying at the top of his voice:
"Here, our men — the enemy is pressing harder on this side! Let that breach be guarded, let that gate be shut, let those ladders be barred! Bring fire-pots, pitch and resin in cauldrons of boiling oil! Barricade the streets with mattresses!"
In short, he named with all earnestness all the odds and ends and instruments and engines of war with which the assault on a city is generally defended; and the battered Sancho, who was listening to it all and putting up with it all, said to himself:
"Oh, if only my Lord were pleased for this isle to be finally lost, and for me to see myself either dead or out of this great anguish!"
Heaven heard his petition, and, when he least expected it, he heard voices saying:
"Victory, victory! The enemy are beaten! Come, my lord governor, get up, your worship, and come and enjoy the victory and share out the spoils that have been taken from the enemy by the valour of that invincible arm!"
"Lift me up," said the aching Sancho in a pained voice.
They helped him up; and, on his feet, he said:
"The enemy I have conquered — I want them to nail him on my forehead. I do not want to share out spoils from any enemy, but to ask and beg some friend, if I have one, to give me a swallow of wine, for I am parched, and to dry this sweat off me, for I am turning into water."
They wiped him, brought him the wine, untied the pavises; he sat down on his bed and fainted away from the fear, the shock and the labour. The people of the trick were already sorry at having made it so heavy for him; but Sancho's coming round tempered the grief his fainting had given them. He asked what time it was; they answered that day was already breaking. He said nothing; and, without saying another word, he began to dress, buried in silence, and everybody watched him and waited to see where the haste with which he was dressing was going to end.
He dressed at last; and little by little, because he was battered and could not go very fast, he went off to the stable, followed by everybody who was there. And, coming up to the grey, he embraced him and gave him a kiss of peace on the forehead, and, not without tears in his eyes, said to him:
"Come here, my companion and my friend and the sharer of my labours and my miseries: when I got along with you and had no thoughts but those that came to me from the cares of mending your harness and keeping your little body going, my hours and my days and my years were happy ones. But since I left you and climbed up on the towers of ambition and pride, a thousand miseries, a thousand labours and four thousand disquiets have got into my soul."
And while he was saying these things he was likewise putting the pack-saddle on the donkey, without anybody saying anything to him. The grey being saddled, then, with great pain and grief he got up on him; and, directing his words and arguments to the steward, the secretary, the head steward and Pedro Recio the doctor, and to a great many others who were there present, he said:
"Make way, my dear sirs, and let me go back to my old liberty; let me go and look for my past life, so that it may raise me up from this present death. I was not born to be a governor, or to defend isles or cities from enemies who may want to attack them. I understand ploughing and digging and pruning and trimming the vines better than making laws or defending provinces or kingdoms. Saint Peter is well enough off in Rome — I mean that everybody is well enough off practising the trade he was born for. A sickle fits my hand better than a governor's sceptre; I would rather have my fill of gazpacho than be subject to the misery of an impertinent doctor who kills me with hunger; and I would rather lie down in the shade of an oak in summer and wrap myself in a shaggy sheepskin in winter, in my liberty, than go to bed under the subjection of a government between fine linen sheets and dress myself in onion-sables.
"Your worships stay with God, and tell the duke my lord that naked I was born and naked I find myself: I neither lose nor gain — I mean that I came into this government without a farthing and I go out of it without one, quite the other way round from how governors of other isles generally go out. And stand aside: let me go, for I am off to be poulticed; because I believe I have all my ribs crushed, thanks to the enemies who have been walking about on top of me tonight."
"It must not be like this, my lord governor," said Doctor Recio; "for I shall give your worship a draught against falls and bruisings that will restore you at once to your first soundness and vigour. And in the matter of food, I promise your worship to mend my ways, letting you eat plentifully of everything you like."
"Too late, chick!" answered Sancho. "I shall no more leave off going than I shall turn Turk. These jokes are not for twice over. By God, I shall stay in this government, or take another, about as soon as I shall fly to heaven without wings. I am of the line of the Panzas, who are all pig-headed; and if they once say odds, odds it has to be, even if it is evens, in spite of all the world.
"Let the ant's wings stay here in this stable — the wings that raised me into the air so that swifts and other birds could eat me — and let us go back to walking on the ground on a level foot; and if it is not adorned with pinked cordovan shoes, it will not go short of rough rope sandals. Every ewe with her own mate, and let nobody stretch his leg further than the sheet is long. And let me pass, for it is getting late for me."
To which the steward said:
"My lord governor, we would very willingly let your worship go, although it will grieve us greatly to lose you, for your wit and your Christian conduct oblige us to want you. But it is well known that every governor is obliged, before leaving the place where he has governed, first to give an account of his term: let your worship give an account of the ten days you have had the government, and go in the peace of God."
"Nobody can ask it of me," answered Sancho, "except whoever the duke my lord may order; I am going to see him, and to him I shall give it to the pattern. What is more, going out naked as I do, no other sign is needed to give it to be understood that I have governed like an angel."
"By God the great Sancho is right," said Doctor Recio, "and I am of the opinion that we should let him go, because the duke will take infinite pleasure in seeing him."
They all agreed to it and let him go, first offering him company and everything he wanted for the comfort of his person and the convenience of his journey. Sancho said he wanted no more than a little barley for the grey and half a cheese and half a loaf for himself; for, the road being so short, he had no need of a bigger or a better larder. They all embraced him, and he, weeping, embraced them all, and left them astonished, both at his words and at his decision, so resolute and so judicious.
The duke and duchess made up their minds that the challenge Don Quixote had made to their vassal, for the reason already given, should go forward. And since the young man was in Flanders, where he had gone in flight so as not to have Doña Rodríguez for a mother-in-law, they arranged to put in his place a Gascon footman called Tosilos, first coaching him very thoroughly in everything he had to do.
Two days later the duke told Don Quixote that in four days his opponent would come and present himself in the field, armed as a knight, and would maintain that the girl lied by half her beard, and even by her whole beard, if she declared that he had given her a promise of marriage. Don Quixote took great pleasure in this news, and promised himself to work marvels in the case, and counted it a great piece of luck that an occasion had offered itself where those nobles might see how far the valour of his mighty arm reached. And so, with excitement and contentment, he waited out the four days, which, by the reckoning of his eagerness, were turning into four hundred centuries.
Let us leave them to pass, as we leave other things to pass, and let us go and keep Sancho company, who came riding along on the grey, between glad and sad, to look for his master, whose company pleased him more than being governor of all the isles in the world.
It happened, then, that, not having got very far from the isle of his government — for he never set himself to find out whether what he governed was an isle, a city, a town or a village — he saw coming along the road he was travelling six pilgrims with their staves, of those foreigners who beg for alms by singing; who, on coming up to him, drew up in a line and, all raising their voices together, began to sing in their own language what Sancho could not understand, except one word he clearly made out: alms — by which he understood that it was alms they were asking for in their song.
And as he was, according to Cide Hamete, exceedingly charitable, he took half a loaf and half a cheese out of his saddlebags, which he had come provided with, and gave it them, telling them by signs that he had nothing else to give them. They took it very willingly and said:
"Gelt! Gelt!"
"I do not understand," answered Sancho, "what it is you are asking me for, good people."
Then one of them took a purse out of his bosom and showed it to Sancho, by which he understood that they were asking him for money; and he, putting his thumb to his throat and spreading his hand upwards, gave them to understand that he had not a scrap of coin; and, spurring the grey, he pushed through them. And as he passed, one of them, having been looking at him very attentively, rushed at him, throwing his arms round his waist, and said in a loud and very Castilian voice:
"God bless me! What is this I see? Is it possible that I have in my arms my dear friend, my good neighbour Sancho Panza? I have, without a doubt, because I am not asleep and I am not drunk just now."
Sancho was astonished to hear himself named by his name and to see himself embraced by the foreign pilgrim; and, after looking at him very attentively without saying a word, he could not recognise him at all. But the pilgrim, seeing his bewilderment, said to him:
"How, and is it possible, brother Sancho Panza, that you do not know your neighbour Ricote the Morisco, the shopkeeper of your village?"
Then Sancho looked at him more attentively and began to make out his features; and finally he came to know him at every point, and, without getting off the donkey, threw his arms round his neck and said:
"Who the devil would have known you, Ricote, in that mummer's dress you are wearing? Tell me: who has turned you into a Frenchy, and how do you dare to come back to Spain, where if they catch you and recognise you it will go very badly with you?"
"If you do not give me away, Sancho," answered the pilgrim, "I am safe enough that in this dress there will be nobody to recognise me. And let us turn off the road to that poplar grove over there, where my companions mean to eat and rest; and you shall eat with them there, for they are very pleasant people. I shall have room to tell you what has happened to me since I left our village, in obedience to His Majesty's edict, which threatened the unfortunate people of my nation with such severity, as you heard."
Sancho did so; and, Ricote speaking to the other pilgrims, they turned off to the poplar grove they could see, well away from the high road. They threw down their staves, took off their pilgrims' capes and were left in their shirtsleeves; and they were all young men and very fine-looking, except Ricote, who was a man already on in years. They all carried saddlebags, and all of them, by the look of it, came well provided, at least with provoking things that call up a thirst from two leagues off.
They stretched themselves out on the ground and, making tablecloths of the grass, laid out on them bread, salt, knives, walnuts, slices of cheese and bare ham bones which, if they would not let themselves be chewed, did not forbid being sucked. They also laid out a black dish they say is called caviare, made of fish eggs, a great awakener of thirst. Nor were olives wanting, though dry and without any pickle, but tasty and entertaining. But what showed most in the field of that banquet was six wineskins, each man taking his own out of his saddlebag; even good Ricote, who had transformed himself from a Morisco into a German or a High Dutchman, took his out, which in size could compete with the other five.
They began to eat with the greatest pleasure and very slowly, savouring every mouthful, which they took on the point of the knife, and very little of each thing. And then, at that instant, all together, they raised their arms and their wineskins in the air; their mouths set to the skins' mouths, their eyes fixed on the sky, they looked for all the world as if they were taking aim at it; and in this way, moving their heads from one side to the other — signs that bore witness to the pleasure they were taking — they stayed for a good while, decanting the bowels of the vessels into their stomachs.
Sancho watched it all and grieved over none of it; on the contrary, to keep the proverb he knew very well, "when you go to Rome, do as you see done," he asked Ricote for the wineskin and took his aim like the rest, and with no less pleasure than they.
Four times the wineskins allowed themselves to be tilted up; but the fifth time it was not possible, because by then they were drier and more parched than esparto grass — a thing that withered the gladness they had shown until then. From time to time one of them would join his right hand to Sancho's and say:
"Spaniard and Dutchman, all one: good companion."
And Sancho would answer: "Good companion, by God!"
And he would let off a burst of laughter that lasted him an hour, not remembering anything just then of what had happened to him in his government; because over the hour and the time when a man is eating and drinking, cares generally have very little jurisdiction.
Finally the running out of the wine was the beginning of a sleep that came over them all, and they were left asleep on the very tables and tablecloths. Only Ricote and Sancho stayed awake, because they had eaten more and drunk less; and, Ricote drawing Sancho aside, they sat down at the foot of a beech, leaving the pilgrims buried in sweet sleep. And Ricote, without stumbling at all into his Morisco tongue, in pure Castilian said him the following words:
"You know very well, Sancho Panza, my neighbour and my friend, how the proclamation and the edict His Majesty ordered published against those of my nation put terror and fright into all of us. At least it put it into me in such a way that it seemed to me that before the time allowed us for taking ourselves out of Spain, the severity of the penalty was already carried out on my person and on my children's.
"I arranged, then — prudently, to my mind, exactly like a man who knows that at a certain time they are going to take away the house he lives in and provides himself with another to move to — I arranged, I say, to leave my village alone, without my family, and go and look for somewhere to take them conveniently and without the haste with which the rest went out. Because I saw clearly, and all our elders saw, that those proclamations were not merely threats, as some said, but real laws that would be put into execution at their appointed time. And I was forced to believe this truth by knowing the base and disordered designs our people had, and such that it seems to me it was divine inspiration that moved His Majesty to put so gallant a resolution into effect — not because we were all guilty, for there were some firm and true Christians; but they were so few that they could not stand against those who were not, and it was not right to breed the serpent in the bosom, having the enemies inside the house.
"In short, we were punished with justice by the penalty of exile — mild and gentle to the mind of some, but to ours the most terrible that could be given us. Wherever we are, we weep for Spain; for in the end we were born in it and it is our natural country. Nowhere do we find the welcome our misfortune longs for; and in Barbary and in all the parts of Africa, where we hoped to be received and taken in and treated well, that is where they most offend and ill-treat us. We did not know the good until we had lost it; and the longing almost all of us have to come back to Spain is so great that most of those — and there are many — who know the language as I do come back to it and leave their wives and children over there unprotected: so great is the love they bear it. And now I know and feel by experience what is generally said: that the love of one's country is sweet.
"I left our village, as I say, and went into France; and although they gave us a good welcome there, I wanted to see everything. I crossed into Italy and got to Germany, and there it seemed to me that one could live with more freedom, because its inhabitants do not stick at a great many niceties: everybody lives as he likes, because in most of it people live with liberty of conscience. I took a house in a town near Augsburg; I joined these pilgrims, who have a habit of coming to Spain in great numbers every year to visit the shrines of it, which they take for their Indies and for the most certain source of profit and known gain. They go over almost the whole of it, and there is no village they do not come out of fed and watered, as they say, and with at least a real in money; and at the end of their journey they come out with more than a hundred crowns over, which, changed into gold — either in the hollow of their staves or among the patches of their capes or by whatever contrivance they can manage — they get out of the kingdom and carry over to their own countries, in spite of the guards at the posts and ports where they are searched.
"Now my intention, Sancho, is to dig up the treasure I left buried — which, being outside the village, I can do without danger — and to write or go over from Valencia to my daughter and my wife, who I know is in Algiers, and lay a plan to bring them to some French port and from there take them to Germany, where we shall wait for what God may be pleased to do with us. For in short, Sancho, I know for certain that Ricota my daughter and Francisca Ricota my wife are Catholic Christians; and although I am not so much of one, still I have more of the Christian in me than of the Moor, and I always pray God to open the eyes of my understanding and let me know how I am to serve Him. And what astonishes me is not knowing why my wife and my daughter went to Barbary rather than to France, where she could have lived as a Christian."
To which Sancho answered:
"Look, Ricote, that must not have been in her hands, because Juan Tiopieyo, your wife's brother, took them; and, as he must be a thorough Moor, he went where it suited him best. And I can tell you another thing: I believe you are going in vain to look for what you left hidden, because we had news that they took a great many pearls and a great deal of money in gold off your brother-in-law and your wife, which they were carrying unregistered."
"That may well be," replied Ricote, "but I know, Sancho, that they did not touch my hiding place, because I did not tell them where it was, for fear of some mishap. And so, if you, Sancho, will come with me and help me to get it out and hide it, I shall give you two hundred crowns, with which you can put your needs right; for you know that I know you have plenty of them."
"I would do it," answered Sancho, "but I am not at all greedy. If I were, I let an office go out of my hands this morning where I could have made the walls of my house of gold and been eating off silver plates within six months. And so, both for this reason and because it seems to me I should be doing my king a treason by giving help to his enemies, I would not go with you, even if instead of the two hundred crowns you promise me you gave me four hundred here in cash."
"And what office is it you have left, Sancho?" asked Ricote.
"I have left off being governor of an isle," answered Sancho, "and such a one that upon my word they will not find another like it at three tugs."
"And where is this isle?" asked Ricote.
"Where?" answered Sancho. "Two leagues from here, and it is called the isle of Barataria."
"Be quiet, Sancho," said Ricote; "isles are out there in the sea, for there are no isles on dry land."
"How not?" replied Sancho. "I tell you, Ricote my friend, that this morning I set out from it, and yesterday I was in it governing at my pleasure like a very lord of creation; but for all that I have left it, since being a governor seems to me a dangerous office."
"And what have you gained in the government?" asked Ricote.
"I have gained," answered Sancho, "the knowing that I am not good for governing anything but a flock of sheep, and that the riches that are gained in such governments are at the cost of losing your rest and your sleep and even your food; because in isles the governors must eat little, especially if they have doctors to look after their health."
"I do not understand you, Sancho," said Ricote, "but it seems to me that everything you say is nonsense. For who would give you isles to govern? Were there no abler men in the world to be governors than you are? Be quiet, Sancho, and come to your senses, and see whether you will come with me, as I have told you, to help me get out the treasure I left hidden; for truly there is so much of it that it can be called a treasure, and I shall give you enough to live on, as I have said."
"I have told you already, Ricote," replied Sancho, "that I do not want to; be content that I shall not give you away, and go on your road and good luck to you, and let me follow mine. For I know that what is well gained is lost, and what is ill gained, itself and its owner with it."
"I will not press you, Sancho," said Ricote, "but tell me: were you in our village when my wife and my daughter and my brother-in-law left it?"
"I was," answered Sancho, "and I can tell you that your daughter went out so beautiful that everybody in the village came out to see her, and they all said she was the loveliest creature in the world. She went along weeping and embracing all her friends and acquaintances and everybody who came up to see her, and asked them all to commend her to God and to Our Lady his mother; and this with so much feeling that it made me weep, and I am not generally much of a weeper. And upon my word, a good many wanted to hide her and go out and take her away from them on the road; but the fear of going against the king's order held them back.
"The one who showed himself most passionate about it was Don Gaspar Gregorio, that rich young heir you know, who they say was very much in love with her; and after she left he has never appeared again in our village, and we all think he went after her to carry her off — but up to now nothing has been heard."
"I always had a bad suspicion," said Ricote, "that that gentleman was in love with my daughter; but, trusting in my Ricota's worth, it never grieved me to know that he loved her well. For you must have heard it said, Sancho, that Morisco women seldom or never made love matches with old Christians; and my daughter, who, as I believe, attended more to being a Christian than to being in love, would not have troubled herself about that young heir's attentions."
"God grant it," replied Sancho, "for it would go badly with them both. And let me set off from here, Ricote my friend, for I want to get tonight to where my master Don Quixote is."
"God go with you, brother Sancho, for my companions are stirring already, and it is time we went on with our journey too."
And then the two of them embraced, and Sancho got up on his grey and Ricote leaned on his staff, and they parted.
Sancho's having stopped with Ricote gave him no room to reach the duke's castle that day, although he came within half a league of it, where night caught him — rather dark and thick; but, as it was summer, it did not distress him much. And so he turned off the road, meaning to wait for the morning; and his short and unfortunate luck willed that, while he was looking for a place to settle himself better, he and the grey fell into a deep and very dark pit that lay among some very ancient buildings. And as he fell he commended himself to God with all his heart, thinking he would not stop until the bottom of the abyss. And it was not so, for at a little over three times a man's height the grey struck bottom, and Sancho found himself on top of him without having taken any hurt or harm at all.
He felt himself all over his body and held his breath, to see whether he was sound or holed anywhere; and, finding himself well and whole and catholic in his health, he could not have done thanking God Our Lord enough for the kindness He had done him, for he had certainly thought he was smashed to a thousand pieces. He also felt with his hands along the walls of the pit, to see whether it would be possible to get out of it without anybody's help; but he found them all sheer and without any handhold, at which Sancho was greatly distressed, and especially when he heard the grey groaning tenderly and painfully — and no wonder, for he was not complaining out of self-indulgence, since in truth he was in a bad way.
"Oh," said Sancho Panza then, "what unthought-of things happen at every turn to those who live in this wretched world! Who would have said that the man who yesterday saw himself enthroned as governor of an isle, commanding his servants and his vassals, would today see himself buried in a pit, with nobody at all to help him and no servant or vassal to come to his rescue? Here we shall have to perish of hunger, my donkey and I — if we do not die first, he of being battered and broken and I of grief.
"At least I shall not be as lucky as my master Don Quixote of La Mancha was when he went down into the cave of that enchanted Montesinos, where he found people to treat him better than at home, so that it looks for all the world as if he went to a laid table and a made bed. There he saw beautiful and pleasant visions, and here I shall see, as I believe, toads and snakes. Unlucky man that I am, and what have my madnesses and fancies come to! From here they will take out my bones, when heaven is pleased for them to be found — bare and white and scraped, and my good grey's along with them; from which perhaps it will be made out who we are, at least by those who know that Sancho Panza never left his ass, nor his ass Sancho Panza.
"Again I say: wretched creatures that we are, whose short luck has not willed that we should die in our own country and among our own people, where, even if our misfortune found no remedy, there would be no lack of somebody to grieve over it and to close our eyes in the last hour of our passing! O my companion and my friend, what a bad return I have made you for your good services! Forgive me, and ask fortune, in the best way you know how, to bring us out of this wretched trouble the two of us are put in; for I promise to put a crown of laurel on your head, so that you shall look like nothing but a laureate poet, and to give you your rations double."
In this way Sancho Panza lamented, and his donkey listened to him without answering him a word — such was the strait and anguish the poor creature was in. Finally, having spent that whole night in wretched complaints and lamentations, the day came, by whose brightness and light Sancho saw that it was impossible with every impossibility to get out of that well without being helped; and he began to lament and to shout, to see whether anybody could hear him; but all his shouting was done in the desert, since there was nobody in all those parts who could have heard him, and then he finally gave himself up for dead.
The grey was lying on his back, and Sancho Panza arranged him in such a way that he got him on his feet, which he could hardly keep. And, taking out of the saddlebags — which had run the same fortune of the fall — a piece of bread, he gave it to his donkey, who did not find it bad. And Sancho said to him, as though he would understand:
"All sorrows are good with bread."
At this he made out at one side of the pit a hole big enough for a person to get through if he bent over and shrank himself up. Sancho Panza went to it and, crouching down, got in through it, and saw that inside it was spacious and long; and he could see it, because through what might be called the roof there came in a ray of sunlight that showed the whole of it. He saw too that it widened out and stretched away into another spacious hollow. Seeing which, he went back out to where the donkey was, and with a stone began to crumble away the earth of the hole, so that in a little while he made room for the ass to get in easily, as he did; and, taking him by the halter, he began to travel forward along that grotto, to see whether he could find some way out at the other end. Sometimes he went in the dark, and sometimes without light, but never without fear.
"God almighty help me!" he said to himself. "This, which for me is a misadventure, would be a better adventure for my master Don Quixote. He indeed would take these depths and dungeons for flowery gardens and for Galiana's palaces, and would expect to come out of this darkness and this narrowness into some flowery meadow. But I, luckless man, short of counsel and cut down in courage, at every step think another pit deeper than the last is suddenly going to open under my feet and finish swallowing me. Welcome, trouble, if you come alone!"
In this way and with these thoughts it seemed to him that he must have travelled a little over half a league, at the end of which he made out a confused brightness that seemed to be daylight and to be coming in somewhere — a sign that this road of his to the other life had an open end.
Here Cide Hamete Benengeli leaves him and goes back to dealing with Don Quixote, who, excited and contented, was waiting for the appointed time of the battle he was to fight with the robber of the honour of Doña Rodríguez's daughter, whose wrong and injury, wickedly done unto her, he meant to set right.
It happened, then, that, going out one morning to train and rehearse himself in what he had to do in the pass he expected to be in the next day, giving Rocinante a sudden pull-up or charge, he came to set his feet so close to a cave that if he had not tugged strongly at the reins it would have been impossible not to fall into it. In short, he held him and did not fall; and, coming a little nearer without dismounting, he looked at that depth. And, while he was looking at it, he heard loud shouts inside; and, listening attentively, he could make out and understand that the man who was giving them was saying:
"Ho, up there! Is there any Christian who hears me, or any charitable knight who will pity a sinner buried alive, or an unfortunate ungoverned governor?"
It seemed to Don Quixote that he heard Sancho Panza's voice, at which he was bewildered and amazed; and, raising his voice as much as he could, he said:
"Who is down there? Who is complaining?"
"Who can be here, or who is to complain," they answered, "but the worn-out Sancho Panza, governor, for his sins and his ill fortune, of the isle of Barataria, and squire that was to the famous knight Don Quixote of La Mancha?"
Hearing which, Don Quixote's astonishment doubled and his amazement grew, it coming into his mind that Sancho Panza must be dead and that his soul was doing penance there; and, carried away by this idea, he said:
"I conjure you by everything I can conjure you by as a Catholic Christian, to tell me who you are; and if you are a soul in torment, tell me what you want me to do for you. For since it is my profession to favour and help those in need in this world, I shall also be ready to help and aid the needy of the other world, who cannot help themselves."
"In that case," they answered, "your worship who is speaking to me must be my master Don Quixote of La Mancha; and indeed by the organ of the voice it is nobody else, without any doubt."
"Don Quixote I am," replied Don Quixote, "who make it my profession to help and aid the living and the dead in their needs. So tell me who you are, for you have me astounded; because if you are my squire Sancho Panza and you are dead, and if the devils have not carried you off but by the mercy of God you are in purgatory, our Holy Mother the Roman Catholic Church has intercessions enough to bring you out of the pains you are in, and I, for my part, shall solicit them for you as far as my property will reach. So finish declaring yourself and tell me who you are."
"I swear," they answered, "and by the birth of whoever your worship likes, I swear, Señor Don Quixote of La Mancha, that I am your squire Sancho Panza, and that I have never died in all the days of my life. Only, having left my government for things and reasons that need more room to tell, last night I fell into this pit where I lie, and the grey with me, who will not let me lie — for, as a further sign, he is here with me."
And there is more: it looked for all the world as if the donkey understood what Sancho said, because at that moment he began to bray so loudly that the whole cave rang with it.
"A famous witness!" said Don Quixote. "I know that bray as if I had given birth to it, and I hear your voice, my Sancho. Wait for me; I shall go to the duke's castle, which is close by here, and bring somebody to get you out of this pit where your sins must have put you."
"Go, your worship," said Sancho, "and come back quickly, for the one God's sake, for I cannot bear being buried alive here any longer, and I am dying of fear."
Don Quixote left him and went to the castle to tell the duke and duchess about Sancho Panza's mishap, at which they were not a little amazed, although they understood well enough that he must have fallen in by the connection with that grotto which had been there from time immemorial; but they could not think how he had left the government without their having notice of his coming.
Finally, as they say, they brought ropes and cables; and, at the cost of a great many people and a great deal of labour, they got the grey and Sancho Panza out of that darkness into the light of the sun. A student saw him and said:
"This is how all bad governors ought to come out of their governments — as this sinner comes out of the depths of the pit: dead with hunger, colourless and without a farthing, as I believe."
Sancho heard him and said:
"Eight days or ten it is, brother gossip, since I went in to govern the isle they gave me; and in all that time I never had my fill of bread for so much as an hour. In them doctors have persecuted me and enemies have crushed my bones; and I have had no chance to take bribes or to collect fees. And this being so, as it is, I did not deserve, to my mind, to come out like this; but man proposes and God disposes, and God knows what is best and what suits each man; and as the times are, so the touch; and let nobody say 'I shall not drink of this water', for where you think there are flitches of bacon there are not even hooks. And God understands me, and that is enough, and I say no more, though I could."
"Do not be angry, Sancho, or take it hard from whatever you hear, for it would be never-ending. Come with a clear conscience and let them say what they will; and to want to tie the tongues of slanderers is the same as wanting to put doors on the open field. If the governor comes out of his government rich, they say of him that he has been a thief; and if he comes out poor, that he has been a good-for-nothing and an idiot."
"For a safe bet," answered Sancho, "this time they will take me for a fool rather than for a thief."
In this talk they came, surrounded by boys and by a great many other people, to the castle, where the duke and duchess were already waiting in a gallery for Don Quixote and Sancho. But Sancho would not go up to see the duke without first having settled the grey in the stable, because he said he had spent a very bad night at his lodging; and then he went up to see his master and mistress, before whom, on his knees, he said:
"I, my lord and lady, because your greatness willed it so and through no deserving of my own, went to govern your isle of Barataria, which I entered naked and naked I find myself: I neither lose nor gain. Whether I have governed well or badly, I have had witnesses in front of me who will say whatever they like. I have cleared up doubts and given judgement in lawsuits, always dying of hunger, because Doctor Pedro Recio, native of Get-You-Gone, an isle-and-governor doctor, willed it so.
"Enemies attacked us by night; and, having put us in a great strait, the people of the isle say they came out free and victorious by the valour of my arm — and may God give them as much health as they are telling truth.
"In short, in this time I have taken the measure of the burdens that governing brings with it, and the obligations; and I have found by my reckoning that my shoulders will not be able to carry them, that they are no weight for my ribs and no arrows for my quiver. And so, before the government pitched me over the side, I chose to pitch the government over the side myself; and yesterday morning I left the isle as I found it, with the same streets, houses and roofs it had when I went into it. I have not borrowed from anybody or got into any money-making; and although I meant to make some useful ordinances, I made none, for fear they would not be kept — which is the same as making them or not making them.
"I left the isle, as I say, with no company but my grey's; I fell into a pit, I came along it until this morning, when by the light of the sun I saw the way out — but not so easy a one that if heaven had not furnished me with my master Don Quixote I should not have stayed there until the end of the world.
"So, my lord duke and lady duchess, here is your governor Sancho Panza, who in the ten days alone that he has had the government has gained the knowledge that he would not give a farthing to be governor, not merely of an isle but of the whole world. And on this understanding, kissing your worships' feet, and copying the boys' game where they say 'You jump, and now you give it me', I jump out of the government and pass over into the service of my master Don Quixote; for with him, though I eat my bread in alarm, at least I have my fill — and for me, so long as I am full, it is all one whether it is carrots or partridges."
With this Sancho made an end of his long speech, Don Quixote all the while fearing that he was going to say thousands of absurdities in it; and, when he saw him finish with so few, he gave thanks to heaven in his heart. And the duke embraced Sancho and told him it grieved him to the soul that he had left the government so soon; but that he would arrange for him to be given some other office on his estate with less burden and more profit. The duchess embraced him likewise, and ordered him to be well looked after, since he gave signs of coming badly battered and worse used.
The duke and duchess were not left regretting the trick they had played on Sancho Panza with the government they gave him — and the more so as that very day their steward came and told them point by point almost all the words and actions Sancho had said and done in those days, and finally set out for them at length the assault on the isle and Sancho's fear and his departure, from which they took no small pleasure.
After this, the history tells that the day of the appointed battle came round; and the duke, having warned his footman Tosilos once and a great many times how he was to manage with Don Quixote so as to conquer him without killing or wounding him, ordered the heads to be taken off the lances, telling Don Quixote that the Christian charity he prided himself on did not allow that battle to be fought with so much risk and danger to their lives, and that he should be content that he was giving him a free field on his own land, although this went against the decree of the Holy Council, which forbids such challenges, and that he should not want to carry so hard a pass through in all its severity.
Don Quixote said that His Excellency might arrange the affairs of that business as he was best pleased, and that he would obey him in everything.
The dreaded day having come, then, and the duke having ordered a spacious scaffold to be built in front of the castle square, where the judges of the field and the duennas, mother and daughter, the plaintiffs, should sit, an infinite number of people had come from all the neighbouring towns and villages to see the novelty of that battle — for the like of it had never been seen or heard of in that country by those who were living or by those who had died.
The first to come into the field and the lists was the master of the ceremonies, who measured the ground and walked all over it, so that there should be no trick in it or anything hidden to trip over and fall on. Then the duennas came in and sat down in their seats, covered with their mantles up to their eyes and even up to their breasts, with signs of no small feeling.
Don Quixote being present in the lists, a little later, attended by a great many trumpets, there appeared at one side of the square, on a mighty horse, making the whole of it echo, the great footman Tosilos, his visor down and all stiffly encased in strong, shining armour. The horse looked to be a Frisian, broad and dapple-grey; from each fore and hind fetlock there hung a good bushel of hair.
The valorous combatant came well informed by the duke his master how he was to conduct himself with the valorous Don Quixote of La Mancha, warned that on no account was he to kill him but was to try to dodge the first charge, so as to escape the danger of Don Quixote's death, which was certain if he ran him full on. He rode round the square; and, coming to where the duennas were, he stopped a while to look at the one who was asking for him as a husband.
The marshal of the field called Don Quixote, who had already presented himself in the square; and, along with Tosilos, he spoke to the duennas, asking them whether they consented to Don Quixote of La Mancha's standing up for their right. They said they did, and that everything he did in that case they held for well done, for binding and for valid.
By this time the duke and duchess had taken their places in a gallery that looked over the lists, the whole of which was crowned with an infinite number of people waiting to see the severe and never-before-seen encounter. It was a condition of the combatants that if Don Quixote won, his opponent was to marry Doña Rodríguez's daughter; and if he were beaten, his adversary was free of the promise that was being demanded of him, without giving any other satisfaction.
The master of the ceremonies divided the sun between them and set each of the two in the place where they were to stand. The drums sounded, the sound of the trumpets filled the air, the earth trembled underfoot; the hearts of the watching crowd hung in suspense, some fearing and others hoping for the good or the bad outcome of that business.
Finally Don Quixote, commending himself with his whole heart to God Our Lord and to the lady Dulcinea of El Toboso, was waiting for the exact signal for the charge to be given him. But our footman had different thoughts: he was thinking of nothing but what I shall now tell.
It seems that when he stood looking at his enemy, she seemed to him the most beautiful woman he had seen in all his life; and the little blind boy, whom people up and down these streets generally call Love, did not want to lose the chance that offered itself of triumphing over a footman's soul and putting it on the list of his trophies. And so, coming up to him nicely without anybody seeing him, he ran a two-yard arrow into the poor footman's left side and pierced his heart right through; and he could do it in perfect safety, because Love is invisible and goes in and out wherever he likes, without anybody asking him to account for what he does.
I say, then, that when they gave the signal for the charge, our footman was carried away, thinking about the beauty of the woman he had already made the mistress of his liberty; and so he took no notice of the sound of the trumpet, as Don Quixote did, who had hardly heard it when he charged and, at the fastest gallop Rocinante allowed, set off against his enemy. And, his good squire Sancho seeing him set off, he said in a loud voice:
"God guide you, cream and flower of knights errant! God give you the victory, since you have right on your side!"
And, although Tosilos saw Don Quixote coming at him, he did not stir a step from his place; on the contrary, he called out loudly to the marshal of the field, who, coming to see what he wanted, was told:
"Sir, is this battle not being fought about whether I marry that lady or not?"
"That is so," he was answered.
"Well, I," said the footman, "am afraid for my conscience, and I should put a great load on it if I went on with this battle. And so I say that I give myself up as beaten, and that I want to marry that lady at once."
The marshal of the field was astonished at Tosilos's words; and, as he was one of those who were in on the machinery of that business, he did not know how to answer him a word. Don Quixote pulled up in the middle of his career, seeing that his enemy was not attacking him. The duke did not know why the battle was not going forward, but the marshal of the field went and explained to him what Tosilos was saying, at which he was left bewildered and extremely choleric.
While this was going on, Tosilos came up to where Doña Rodríguez was and said in a loud voice:
"I, madam, want to marry your daughter, and I do not want to get by lawsuits and quarrels what I can get in peace and without danger of death."
The valorous Don Quixote heard this and said:
"Since this is so, I am left free and released from my promise: let them be married and good luck to them; and since God Our Lord gave her him, let Saint Peter bless her to him."
The duke had come down into the castle square, and, coming up to Tosilos, said to him:
"Is it true, sir knight, that you give yourself up as beaten, and that, urged on by your timorous conscience, you want to marry this maiden?"
"Yes, my lord," answered Tosilos.
"He does very well," said Sancho Panza at this, "because what you are going to give the mouse, give the cat, and it will save you trouble."
Tosilos was unlacing his helmet, and begged them to help him quickly, because his breath was failing him and he could not bear to be shut up so long in the narrowness of that lodging. They took it off him quickly, and his footman's face was left uncovered and plain to see. Which Doña Rodríguez and her daughter seeing, they said in a great outcry:
"This is a fraud, this is a fraud! They have put Tosilos, the duke my lord's footman, in the place of my true husband! Justice of God and of the King on so much malice — not to say roguery!"
"Do not distress yourselves, ladies," said Don Quixote, "for this is neither malice nor roguery; and if it is, the cause has not been the duke but the wicked enchanters who persecute me, who, envious that I should attain the glory of this victory, have turned your husband's face into that of this man you say is the duke's footman. Take my advice, and, in spite of my enemies' malice, marry him, for he is undoubtedly the very man you want to get for a husband."
The duke, who heard this, was ready to break out into laughter and forget all his choler, and said:
"The things that happen to Señor Don Quixote are so extraordinary that I am inclined to believe that this footman of mine is not one. But let us use this trick and dodge: let us put off the wedding for a fortnight, if they like, and keep this personage who has us in doubt shut up; in which time it might be that he would go back to his first shape — for the enchanters' grudge against Señor Don Quixote cannot last so long, and the more so as they get so little out of using these humbugs and transformations."
"Oh, my lord," said Sancho, "these villains have it for a habit and a custom by now to change one thing into another where my master is concerned. A knight he conquered a few days ago, called the Knight of the Mirrors, they turned into the shape of the bachelor Sansón Carrasco, a native of our village and a great friend of ours; and my lady Dulcinea of El Toboso they have turned into a country wench. And so I imagine that this footman will live and die a footman all the days of his life."
To which Rodríguez's daughter said:
"Let this man who asks for me as his wife be whoever he may be, I am grateful to him for it; for I would rather be the lawful wife of a footman than the mistress of a gentleman who has made a mock of me — although the man who made a mock of me is no gentleman."
In short, all these tales and events came round to Tosilos's being shut up until it should be seen what came of his transformation. Everybody proclaimed the victory for Don Quixote, and most of them were left sad and melancholy at seeing that the two so long expected combatants had not smashed each other to pieces — exactly as the boys are sad when the hanged man they are waiting for does not come out, because either the injured party or the law has pardoned him. The people went off; the duke and Don Quixote went back to the castle; they shut Tosilos up; Doña Rodríguez and her daughter were left extremely pleased at seeing that, one way or the other, that business was going to end in a marriage; and Tosilos expected nothing less.
It now seemed to Don Quixote that it would be as well to get out of all the idleness he was living in at that castle; for he imagined that his person was greatly missed by his staying shut up and lazy among the infinite indulgences and delights those nobles gave him as a knight errant, and it seemed to him that he would have to give a strict account to heaven for that idleness and confinement. And so one day he asked the duke and duchess for leave to depart. They gave it him, with signs that it grieved them greatly that he should leave them.
The duchess gave Sancho Panza his wife's letters, over which he wept, and said:
"Who would have thought that hopes as great as those that the news of my government bred in the breast of my wife Teresa Panza should end in my going back now to the dragged-about adventures of my master Don Quixote of La Mancha? Still, I am content to see that my Teresa answered to being who she is by sending the acorns to the duchess; for if she had not sent them, I should have been grieved and she would have shown herself ungrateful.
"What consoles me is that this gift cannot be given the name of a bribe, because I already had the government when she sent them, and it stands to reason that those who receive some kindness, even if it is only trifles, should show themselves grateful. In fact I went into the government naked and I come out of it naked; and so I can say with a clear conscience — which is no small thing — 'naked I was born and naked I find myself: I neither lose nor gain'."
This is what Sancho was saying to himself on the day of their departure; and, Don Quixote coming out, having taken his leave of the duke and duchess the night before, one morning he presented himself armed in the castle square. All the people of the castle watched him from the galleries, and the duke and duchess likewise came out to see him. Sancho was on his grey with his saddlebags, his valise and his stores, extremely pleased, because the duke's steward, the man who had been the Trifaldi, had given him a little purse with two hundred gold crowns to make up for the needs of the road — and Don Quixote did not yet know about this.
While, as has been said, everybody was watching him, all at once, among the duchess's other duennas and maidens who were looking at him, the forward and witty Altisidora raised her voice and said in a mournful tone:
Listen, wicked knight; hold your reins a little; do not wear out the flanks of your badly ruled beast. Look, false man, that you are not fleeing from any fierce serpent but from a little lamb that is a long way from being a ewe. You have made a mock, hideous monster, of the loveliest maiden that Diana saw on her mountains, that Venus looked on in her woods. Cruel Bireno, fugitive Aeneas, may Barabbas go with you; settle it out there. You carry off — impious carrying! — in the claws of your hands the entrails of a girl who is humble and, being in love, tender. You carry off three headcloths and a pair of garters from legs that are a match for pure marble in smoothness, in whiteness and in blackness. You carry off two thousand sighs which, if they were of fire, could burn up two thousand Troys, if there were two thousand Troys. Cruel Bireno, fugitive Aeneas, may Barabbas go with you; settle it out there. Of that Sancho, your squire, may the bowels be so stubborn and so hard that Dulcinea never comes out of her enchantment. For the fault that is yours may the poor girl carry the penalty; for in my country the just sometimes pay for the sinners. May your finest adventures be turned into misadventures, your pastimes into dreams, your constancies into forgettings. Cruel Bireno, fugitive Aeneas, may Barabbas go with you; settle it out there. May you be held for false from Seville to Marchena, from Granada as far as Loja, from London to England. If you play at kings, or at hundreds, or at primero, may the kings run away from you; may you see neither aces nor sevens. If you cut your corns, may the cuts run blood, and may the stumps stay in you if you have your grinders pulled. Cruel Bireno, fugitive Aeneas, may Barabbas go with you; settle it out there.
While the wounded Altisidora was complaining in the way that has been described, Don Quixote stood looking at her; and, without answering her a word, he turned his face to Sancho and said to him:
"By the memory of your ancestors, my Sancho, I conjure you to tell me a truth. Tell me: do you by any chance have the three headcloths and the garters this enamoured maiden speaks of?"
To which Sancho answered:
"The three headcloths I do have; but the garters, no more than the hills of Úbeda."
The duchess was astonished at Altisidora's forwardness; for although she took her for bold, amusing and free, she did not take her for free to the point of daring such forwardnesses as these. And, since she had not been warned about this trick, her astonishment grew still greater. The duke wanted to reinforce the joke, and said:
"It does not seem well to me, sir knight, that, having received in this castle of mine the good welcome that has been given you in it, you should have dared to carry off three headcloths at the least — and at the most my maiden's garters. They are signs of a bad heart and evidences that do not answer to your fame. Give her back the garters; if not, I challenge you to mortal battle, without any fear that villainous enchanters may turn or change my face, as they have done with Tosilos my footman's, who went into battle with you."
"God forbid," answered Don Quixote, "that I should draw my sword against your most illustrious person, from whom I have received so many kindnesses. The headcloths I shall give back, because Sancho says he has them; the garters is impossible, because neither I have received them nor he either; and if this maiden of yours will look in her hiding places, it is a safe bet that she will find them. I, my lord duke, have never been a thief, nor do I mean to be one in all my life, so long as God does not take His hand off me. This maiden speaks, as she says herself, as a woman in love, for which I am not to blame; and so I have nothing to ask pardon for, either from her or from Your Excellency — whom I beg to hold me in a better opinion and to give me leave once more to follow my road."
"May God give you so good a one, Señor Don Quixote," said the duchess, "that we may always hear good news of your doings. And go with God; for the longer you stay, the more you increase the fire in the breasts of the maidens who look at you. And I shall punish my own in such a way that from now on she will not let herself go with her eyes or with her words."
"One thing more only I want you to hear from me, O valorous Don Quixote," said Altisidora then; "and it is that I ask your pardon for the theft of the garters, because, in God and in my soul, I have them on, and I have fallen into the carelessness of the man who went looking for his ass while he was riding it."
"Did I not say so?" said Sancho. "A fine one I am for hiding thefts! Why, if I had wanted to commit any, the chance came to me on a plate in my government."
Don Quixote bowed his head and made a bow to the duke and duchess and to all the bystanders; and, turning Rocinante's reins, with Sancho following him on the grey, he went out of the castle and made his way towards Saragossa.
When Don Quixote saw himself in the open country, free and disencumbered of Altisidora's love-making, it seemed to him that he was at his own centre and that his spirits were being renewed for taking up the business of his chivalries afresh; and, turning to Sancho, he said:
"Liberty, Sancho, is one of the most precious gifts heaven gave to men; with it the treasures the earth encloses and the sea covers cannot be compared. For liberty, as for honour, a man can and should venture his life; and, on the contrary, captivity is the greatest evil that can come to men.
"I say this, Sancho, because you have seen well enough the indulgence and the abundance we have had in that castle we have left; well, in the middle of those seasoned banquets and those iced drinks it seemed to me that I was in the straits of hunger, because I did not enjoy them with the freedom I should have if they had been my own. For the obligations of repaying kindnesses and favours received are bonds that do not let a free spirit range. Happy is the man to whom heaven gave a piece of bread without his being obliged to thank anybody for it but heaven itself!"
"For all that your worship has told me," said Sancho, "it is not right that we should leave without a show of gratitude the two hundred gold crowns the duke's steward gave me in a little purse, which I carry over my heart like a poultice and a cordial against whatever may turn up; for we shall not always find castles where they treat us well — sometimes we shall come across inns where they thrash us."
In these and other arguments the errants, knight and squire, were going along, when they saw, having travelled a little over a league, that on the grass of a small green meadow, on top of their cloaks, about a dozen men dressed as farm labourers were eating. Next to them they had what looked like white sheets covering something that was underneath; they were propped up and spread out and set at intervals.
Don Quixote came up to the men who were eating; and, greeting them courteously first, he asked them what those cloths were covering. One of them answered him:
"Sir, under these cloths there are some images in relief and carved work that are to serve in an altarpiece we are making in our village; we carry them covered so that they may not be rubbed, and on our shoulders so that they may not be broken."
"If you would be so good," answered Don Quixote, "I should be glad to see them; for images that are carried with so much care must undoubtedly be good ones."
"And how good they are!" said another. "If not, let the price say so; for truly there is not one of them that stands at less than fifty ducats. And so that your worship may see this truth, wait, your worship, and you shall see it with your own eyes."
And, getting up, he left off eating and went and took the covering off the first image, which turned out to be Saint George on horseback, with a serpent coiled at his feet and the lance thrust through its mouth, with the fierceness with which he is generally painted. The whole image looked like a live coal of gold, as the saying goes. Don Quixote, seeing it, said:
"This knight was one of the best errants the divine soldiery ever had: he was called Don Saint George, and he was besides a defender of maidens. Let us see this other one."
The man uncovered it, and it turned out to be Saint Martin on horseback, dividing his cloak with the poor man; and Don Quixote had hardly seen it when he said:
"This knight was also one of the Christian adventurers, and I believe he was more generous than valiant, as you can see, Sancho, from his dividing his cloak with the poor man and giving him half. And it must undoubtedly have been winter at the time, for if not he would have given him the whole of it, so charitable was he."
"That must not have been it," said Sancho, "but that he must have held to the proverb that says that for giving and keeping, brains are needed."
Don Quixote laughed and asked them to take off another cloth, under which was uncovered the image of the Patron of the Spains on horseback, his sword bloody, trampling Moors and treading on heads; and, on seeing it, Don Quixote said:
"This one is a knight indeed, and of the squadrons of Christ; this one is called Don Saint James the Moor-slayer, one of the most valiant saints and knights the world ever had and heaven has now."
Then they uncovered another cloth, and it turned out to hide Saint Paul's fall from his horse, with all the circumstances that are generally painted in the altarpiece of his conversion. When he saw it so much to the life that one would have said Christ was speaking to him and Paul answering, he said:
"This man was the greatest enemy the Church of God Our Lord had in his time, and the greatest defender of it that it will ever have: a knight errant in his life and a saint standing still in his death, a tireless labourer in the Lord's vineyard, a teacher of the nations, whose schools were the heavens and whose professor and master, to teach him, was Jesus Christ himself."
There were no more images, and so Don Quixote ordered them to cover them again, and said to the men who were carrying them:
"I have taken it for a good omen, brothers, to have seen what I have seen; because these saints and knights professed what I profess, which is the exercise of arms — only that the difference between me and them is that they were saints and fought in the divine way, and I am a sinner and fight in the human way. They conquered heaven by main force, because heaven suffers violence; and I so far do not know what I am conquering by the force of my labours. But if my Dulcinea of El Toboso were to come out of the sufferings she is in, and my fortune were to improve and my judgement be mended, it might be that I should set my steps on a better road than the one I am on."
"May God hear it and sin be deaf," said Sancho on this occasion.
The men were astonished, both at Don Quixote's figure and at his words, without understanding half of what he meant to say in them. They finished eating, took up their images and, taking their leave of Don Quixote, went on their journey.
Sancho was left once more as if he had never known his master, astonished at what he knew, since it seemed to him that there could not be a history in the world or an event that he did not have at his fingertips and nailed into his memory; and he said to him:
"Truly, sir our master, if what has happened to us today can be called an adventure, it has been one of the smoothest and sweetest that has happened to us in the whole course of our wanderings. We have come out of it without cudgellings and without a fright, and we have not laid hand to our swords or beaten the earth with our bodies, and we are not left hungry. Blessed be God, who has let me see such a thing with my own eyes."
"You speak well, Sancho," said Don Quixote; "but you must note that not all times are alike, nor do they run in the same way. And these things that the common people generally call omens, which are not founded on any natural reason, ought to be held and judged for good happenings by the man who is judicious.
"One of these omen-mongers gets up in the morning, comes out of his house and meets a friar of the order of the blessed Saint Francis; and, as though he had met a griffin, he turns his back and goes home again. Another spills the salt on the table, and melancholy is spilt over his heart — as though nature were obliged to give signs of coming misfortunes by things as trifling as the ones I have mentioned. The judicious and Christian man must not go splitting hairs over what heaven means to do.
"Scipio arrives in Africa, trips as he leaps ashore, and his soldiers take it for a bad omen; but he, embracing the ground, said: 'You shall not be able to escape me, Africa, for I have you gripped and in my arms.' So, Sancho, my having met these images has been for me a most happy happening."
"I believe so too," answered Sancho, "and I should like your worship to tell me what the reason is that the Spaniards say, when they mean to give battle and are calling on that Saint James the Moor-slayer, 'Santiago, and close, Spain!' Is Spain by any chance open, and in such a way that it needs closing? Or what ceremony is this?"
"You are the simplest of the simple, Sancho," answered Don Quixote. "Look, God has given this great knight of the red cross to Spain for her patron and protection, especially in the hard passes the Spaniards have had with the Moors; and so they call on him and invoke him as their defender in all the battles they undertake, and many times they have seen him visibly in them, knocking down, trampling, destroying and killing the squadrons of Hagar. And of this truth I could bring you a great many examples that are told in the true Spanish histories."
Sancho changed the subject and said to his master:
"I am amazed, sir, at the forwardness of Altisidora, the duchess's maiden: that fellow they call Love must have wounded and run her through bravely — the one they say is a blear-eyed little blind boy who, though he has rheumy eyes, or, better said, no sight at all, if he takes a heart for his target, however small it may be, hits it and runs it through from side to side with his arrows. I have also heard it said that on the modesty and reserve of maidens the arrows of love are blunted and dulled; but on this Altisidora it looks as though they were sharpened rather than blunted."
"Note, Sancho," said Don Quixote, "that love neither looks at rank nor keeps to the bounds of reason in its arguments, and that it has the same nature as death: that it attacks the high castles of kings just as it does the humble huts of shepherds; and when it takes complete possession of a soul, the first thing it does is take away its fear and its shame. And so, without any shame, Altisidora declared her desires — which bred in my breast confusion rather than pity."
"Notorious cruelty!" said Sancho. "Unheard-of ingratitude! For myself I can say that the least little loving word of hers would have conquered me and made me her vassal. Whoreson, and what a heart of marble, what entrails of bronze and what a soul of mortar! But I cannot think what it was this maiden saw in your worship to conquer and enslave her like that: what elegance, what spirit, what charm, what face — that any one of these things by itself, or all of them together, should have made her fall in love. Because truly and truly I often stop to look at your worship from the tip of your foot to the last hair on your head, and I see more things to frighten a woman than to make her fall in love; and, having also heard it said that beauty is the first and chief part that makes people fall in love, your worship having none at all, I do not know what the poor girl fell in love with."
"Note, Sancho," answered Don Quixote, "that there are two kinds of beauty: one of the soul and another of the body. That of the soul shows and displays itself in the understanding, in decency, in good conduct, in generosity and in good breeding; and all these qualities can fit and be found in an ugly man. And when the aim is set on this beauty and not on that of the body, love is generally born with force and with advantages. I, Sancho, see well enough that I am not handsome; but I also know that I am not deformed. And it is enough for an honest man not to be a monster to be well loved, so long as he has the gifts of the soul I have told you of."
In these words and this talk they were going into a wood that lay off the road; and all at once, without thinking about it, Don Quixote found himself tangled in some nets of green thread that were stretched from one tree to another; and, unable to imagine what that could be, he said to Sancho:
"It seems to me, Sancho, that this business of the nets must be one of the newest adventures that can be imagined. May they kill me if the enchanters who persecute me are not trying to tangle me in them and hold up my road, as revenge for the severity I have shown Altisidora. Well, I let them know that even if these nets, instead of being made of green thread, were of the hardest diamonds, or stronger than the one with which the jealous god of the blacksmiths tangled up Venus and Mars, I should break them as though they were made of sea rushes or shreds of cotton."
And, wanting to go forward and break the whole thing, all of a sudden there appeared in front of him, coming out from among some trees, two most beautiful shepherdesses — at least dressed as shepherdesses, except that their jerkins and skirts were of fine brocade; I mean that the skirts were very rich petticoats of gold tabby. They wore their hair loose over their shoulders, which in fairness could compete with the rays of the sun itself, and it was crowned with two garlands woven of green laurel and red amaranth. Their age, to look at them, was neither under fifteen nor over eighteen.
This was a sight that astonished Sancho, bewildered Don Quixote, made the sun stop in his course to look at them, and held all four of them in a marvellous silence. Finally the one who spoke first was one of the two shepherdesses, who said to Don Quixote:
"Hold your step, sir knight, and do not break the nets; for they are stretched there not to do you any harm but for our entertainment. And, since I know you are going to ask me why they have been put there and who we are, I want to tell you in a few words.
"In a village up to two leagues from here, where there are a great many people of quality and a great many gentlemen and rich men, it was agreed among a large number of friends and relations that with their sons, wives and daughters, their neighbours, friends and relations, we should come and enjoy ourselves at this spot, which is one of the most agreeable in all these parts, forming among us all a new and pastoral Arcadia, the girls dressing as shepherdesses and the young men as shepherds. We have two eclogues by heart, one by the famous poet Garcilaso and another by the most excellent Camões in his own Portuguese tongue, which we have not yet performed.
"Yesterday was the first day we came here. We have some tents pitched among these branches — they say they are called field tents — on the bank of a plentiful stream that makes all these meadows fertile. Last night we stretched these nets from these trees to trap the simple little birds which, driven up by the noise we make, come and blunder into them. If it pleases you, sir, to be our guest, you shall be entertained generously and courteously; because for now neither heaviness nor melancholy is to come into this place."
She fell silent and said no more. To which Don Quixote answered:
"Certainly, most beautiful lady, Actaeon cannot have been left more bewildered or astonished when he suddenly saw Diana bathing in the waters than I have been left thunderstruck at seeing your beauty. I praise the design of your entertainments, and I thank you for your offers; and if I can serve you, you may command me with the certainty of being obeyed, because this is not my profession but to show myself grateful and a doer of good to every sort of person, and especially to the sort of quality your persons represent. And if these nets, which must take up some small space, took up the whole round of the earth, I should look for new worlds to pass through without breaking them. And so that you may give some credit to this exaggeration of mine, see that it is promised you, at the very least, by Don Quixote of La Mancha — if this name has reached your ears."
"Oh, friend of my soul," said the other shepherdess then, "what great good fortune has happened to us! Do you see this gentleman we have in front of us? Well, I let you know that he is the most valiant and the most in love and the most courteous man in the world, unless a history of his exploits that is in print and that I have read is lying to us and deceiving us. I would wager that this good man who comes with him is a certain Sancho Panza, his squire, whose drolleries have no equals."
"That is the truth," said Sancho: "I am that droll and that squire your worship speaks of, and this gentleman is my master, the very Don Quixote of La Mancha of the history and the report."
"Oh," said the other, "let us beg him to stay, my friend; for our fathers and our brothers will take infinite pleasure in it. For I too have heard the same of his valour and his charms as you have told me; and, above all, they say of him that he is the firmest and most loyal lover known, and that his lady is a certain Dulcinea of El Toboso, to whom in all Spain they give the palm of beauty."
"With reason they give it her," said Don Quixote, "unless your peerless beauty puts it in doubt. Do not wear yourselves out in detaining me, ladies, because the strict obligations of my profession do not let me rest anywhere."
At this there came to where the four of them were a brother of one of the two shepherdesses, dressed likewise as a shepherd, with richness and finery to match the girls'. They told him that the man who was with them was the valorous Don Quixote of La Mancha, and the other his squire Sancho, of whom he already had news through having read their history. The gallant shepherd offered his services and asked him to come with him to their tents; Don Quixote had to grant it, and so he did.
At this the beaters came up; the nets were filled with various little birds which, deceived by the colour of the nets, fell into the danger they were fleeing from. There gathered in that place more than thirty people, all of them splendidly dressed as shepherds and shepherdesses, and in an instant they were informed who Don Quixote and his squire were, at which they took no small pleasure, since they already had news of him from his history. They went to the tents, found the tables laid, rich, plentiful and clean; they honoured Don Quixote by giving him the first place at them; they all looked at him and marvelled at the sight of him.
Finally, the cloth being taken away, with great composure Don Quixote raised his voice and said:
"Among the greatest sins men commit, although some say it is pride, I say it is ingratitude, holding to what is generally said: that hell is full of the ungrateful. This sin, as far as it has been possible for me, I have tried to run from ever since I had the use of reason. And if I cannot repay the good works done me with other works, I put in their place the wish to do them; and when these are not enough, I publish them abroad — because the man who tells and publishes the good works he receives would also repay them with others if he could, since for the most part those who receive are inferior to those who give. And so God is above all, because He is the giver above all; and man's gifts cannot answer to God's on equal terms, by an infinite distance; and this narrowness and shortness is in a certain way made up for by gratitude.
"I, then, being grateful for the kindness that has been done me here, and unable to answer it in the same measure, keeping myself within the narrow limits of my power, offer what I can and what I have of my own growing. And so I say that for two whole days I shall maintain in the middle of that royal road that goes to Saragossa that these ladies here, counterfeit shepherdesses, are the most beautiful and the most courteous maidens in the world, excepting only the peerless Dulcinea of El Toboso, the sole lady of my thoughts — be it said without offence to all the men and women who hear me."
Hearing which, Sancho, who had been listening to him with great attention, said in a great shout:
"Is it possible that there are people in the world who dare to say and swear that this master of mine is mad? Say, your worships, gentlemen shepherds: is there a village curate, however judicious and however much of a student he may be, who could say what my master has said? Or is there a knight errant, however great a reputation for valour he may have, who could offer what my master has offered here?"
Don Quixote turned to Sancho and, his face fired up and choleric, said to him:
"Is it possible, Sancho, that there is anybody in the whole globe who says you are not a fool, lined with the same and with I do not know what trimmings of the malicious and the rogue? Who brings you into my affairs, and into establishing whether I am judicious or an idiot? Be quiet and do not answer me back, but saddle Rocinante if he is unsaddled: let us go and put my offer into effect; for, with the right that is on my side, you may count as beaten all those who may want to contradict it."
And with great fury and signs of anger he got up from his chair, leaving the bystanders astonished and making them doubt whether they should take him for mad or for sane. Finally, having urged him not to put himself to such a demand, since they took his grateful good will as well enough known and there was no need of fresh demonstrations to know his valorous spirit, since those reported in the history of his deeds were enough — for all that, Don Quixote carried out his intention; and, set on Rocinante, gripping his shield and taking his lance, he placed himself in the middle of a royal road that lay not far from the green meadow. Sancho followed him on his grey, along with all the people of the pastoral flock, eager to see where his arrogant and never-before-seen offer would end.
Don Quixote, then, being placed in the middle of the road, as I have told you, struck the air with words like these:
"O you travellers and wayfarers, knights, squires, people on foot and on horseback who pass along this road, or are to pass along it in these next two days! Know that Don Quixote of La Mancha, knight errant, is placed here to maintain that all the beauties and courtesies of the world are surpassed by those shut up in the nymphs who inhabit these meadows and woods, leaving aside the lady of my soul, Dulcinea of El Toboso. Therefore let anybody who is of a contrary opinion come, for here I wait for him."
Twice he repeated these same words, and twice they were heard by no adventurer. But fortune, which was directing his affairs from better to better, arranged that a little later there should appear along the road a multitude of men on horseback, a great many of them with lances in their hands, all travelling packed together in a troop and in great haste.
Those who were with Don Quixote had hardly seen them when, turning their backs, they got well away from the road, because they knew that if they waited some danger might come to them. Only Don Quixote, with a fearless heart, stood still, and Sancho Panza sheltered himself behind Rocinante's hindquarters.
The troop of lancers arrived, and one of them, who came in front, began to say to Don Quixote at the top of his voice:
"Get out of the road, man of the devil, for these bulls will smash you to pieces!"
"Come, you rabble," answered Don Quixote, "for me there are no bulls worth anything, even if they are the fiercest that the Jarama breeds on its banks! Confess, you villains, all together and without more ado, that what I have published here is true; if not, you have me to fight with."
The herdsman had no room to answer, and Don Quixote had none to get out of the way even if he had wanted to; and so the troop of fierce bulls and of tame lead-oxen, with the multitude of herdsmen and other people who were taking them to be penned in a place where they were to be run the next day, went over Don Quixote and over Sancho, Rocinante and the grey, bringing them all to the ground and sending them rolling over the earth.
Sancho was left battered, Don Quixote terrified, the grey pounded and Rocinante not very catholic in his health; but in the end they all got up, and Don Quixote in great haste, tripping here and falling there, began to run after the herd, calling out:
"Stop and wait, you villainous rabble, for a single knight is waiting for you — one who is not of the nature or the opinion of those who say that for the enemy who flees you should build a bridge of silver!"
But the hurrying runners did not stop for that, nor did they take any more notice of his threats than of last year's clouds. Weariness stopped Don Quixote; and, more angry than avenged, he sat down in the road waiting for Sancho, Rocinante and the grey to come up. They came, master and man got up again, and, without going back to take their leave of the pretended or counterfeit Arcadia, and with more shame than pleasure, they went on their road.
The dust and the weariness that Don Quixote and Sancho carried away from the bulls' rudeness were relieved by a clear, clean spring they found among a cool grove of trees; on whose bank, leaving the grey and Rocinante free, without halter or bridle, the two worn-out master and man sat down. Sancho went to the larder of his saddlebags and took out of them what he generally called his victuals; he rinsed out his mouth, Don Quixote washed his face, and with this refreshment their fainting spirits took heart again.
Don Quixote did not eat, out of pure grief, and Sancho did not dare to touch the food he had in front of him, out of pure politeness, and waited for his master to taste it first. But, seeing that, carried away by his imaginings, he did not remember to lift the bread to his mouth, Sancho did not open his own; and, trampling on every kind of good breeding, he began to pack into his stomach the bread and cheese that offered itself.
"Eat, Sancho my friend," said Don Quixote; "keep life going, for it matters more to you than to me, and let me die at the hands of my thoughts and by the force of my misfortunes. I, Sancho, was born to live dying, and you to die eating. And, so that you may see I am telling you the truth in this, consider me: in print in histories, famous in arms, courteous in my actions, respected by princes, courted by maidens; and in the end, when I was expecting palms and triumphs and crowns earned and deserved by my valorous exploits, this morning I have seen myself trodden on and kicked and battered by the feet of filthy and vulgar animals. This thought sets my teeth on edge, dulls my grinders, numbs my hands and takes away my appetite altogether — so that I mean to let myself die of hunger: the cruellest of all deaths."
"In that case," said Sancho without leaving off chewing hard, "your worship will not approve that proverb they say: 'let Martha die, and die full'. I at least do not mean to kill myself; on the contrary, I mean to do like the cobbler, who pulls the leather with his teeth until he makes it stretch where he wants it. I shall stretch my life by eating until it reaches the end heaven has settled for it. And let me tell you, sir, that there is no greater madness than the one that touches on wanting to give oneself up to despair, as your worship does. Believe me, and after you have eaten, lie down and sleep a little on the green mattresses of this grass, and you will see how when you wake you find yourself somewhat relieved."
Don Quixote did so, since it seemed to him that Sancho's arguments were more a philosopher's than an idiot's, and he said to him:
"If you, Sancho, would do for me what I shall tell you now, my reliefs would be more certain and my griefs not so great. And it is that, while I sleep, obeying your advice, you should go off a little way from here and, with Rocinante's reins, throwing your flesh open to the air, give yourself three or four hundred lashes on account of the three thousand and more you have to give yourself for Dulcinea's disenchantment; for it is no small pity that that poor lady should be enchanted through your carelessness and neglect."
"There is a great deal to say about that," said Sancho. "Let us both sleep for now, and afterwards God has said what will be. Let your worship know that this business of a man whipping himself in cold blood is a hard thing, and the more so if the lashes fall on a badly kept and worse fed body. Let my lady Dulcinea have patience, for when she least expects it she will see me riddled like a sieve with lashes; and until death, it is all life — I mean that I still have mine, along with the wish to carry out what I have promised."
Don Quixote thanked him for it, ate a little and Sancho a great deal, and they both lay down to sleep, leaving those two constant companions and friends Rocinante and the grey to graze at their own will and without any restraint on the plentiful grass that meadow was full of.
They woke rather late, mounted again and went on their road, hurrying to reach an inn that could be made out, apparently a league from there. I say it was an inn because Don Quixote called it so, outside his habit of calling all inns castles.
They came to it, then, and asked the host whether there was lodging. They were answered that there was, with all the comfort and indulgence they could have found in Saragossa. They dismounted, and Sancho put away his stores in a room, of which the host gave him the key; he took the beasts to the stable and gave them their feeds; he came out to see what Don Quixote, who was sitting on a stone bench, wanted of him, giving particular thanks to heaven that this inn had not seemed a castle to his master.
Supper time came round; they went to their room; Sancho asked the host what he had to give them for supper. To which the host answered that his mouth should be the measure; and so let him ask for whatever he wanted, for that inn was provided with the little birds of the air, the fowls of the earth and the fishes of the sea.
"There is no need for so much," answered Sancho; "with a couple of chickens roasted for us we shall have enough, because my master is delicate and eats little, and I am not excessively much of a glutton."
The host answered him that he had no chickens, because the kites had cleaned him out of them.
"Then let the master host," said Sancho, "have a pullet roasted, a tender one."
"A pullet? My father!" answered the host. "Truly and truly, I sent more than fifty to the city yesterday to be sold; but apart from pullets, let your worship ask for whatever you like."
"In that case," said Sancho, "there will be no lack of veal or kid."
"In the house just now," answered the host, "there is none, because it has run out; but next week there will be plenty."
"We are in a fine way with that!" answered Sancho. "I will wager that all these shortages come round to being made up by the plenty there must be of bacon and eggs."
"By God," answered the host, "my guest is a nice slow one! Why, I have told him that I have neither pullets nor hens, and he wants me to have eggs? Range over other dainties, if you like, and leave off asking for hens."
"Let us settle it, body of me," said Sancho, "and tell me finally what you have, and leave off ranging, master host."
The innkeeper said:
"What I really and truly have is a couple of cow-heels that look like calves' feet, or a couple of calves' feet that look like cow-heels; they are boiled with their chickpeas, onions and bacon, and at this hour they are saying, 'Eat me! Eat me!'"
"I mark them as mine from here," said Sancho; "and let nobody touch them, for I shall pay better than anybody else for them, because for me nothing else could be looked for that would be more to my taste; and it would not matter to me at all whether they were feet, so long as they were heels."
"Nobody will touch them," said the innkeeper, "because other guests I have, being of such quality, bring a cook and a steward and their own larder with them."
"If it is a matter of quality," said Sancho, "nobody has more than my master; but the office he follows does not allow larders or wine cellars: we stretch ourselves out in the middle of a meadow and fill ourselves with acorns or medlars."
This was the conversation Sancho had with the innkeeper, without Sancho wanting to go any further in answering him; for he had already asked him what office or what employment his master's was.
Supper time came round, then; Don Quixote went to his room; the host brought the pot just as it was, and sat down to sup very much in earnest. It seems that in another room next to Don Quixote's, divided from it by nothing but a thin partition, Don Quixote heard somebody say:
"On your life, Señor Don Jerónimo, while they are bringing the supper let us read another chapter of the second part of Don Quixote of La Mancha."
Don Quixote had hardly heard his own name when he got to his feet and listened with an alert ear to what they were saying about him; and he heard this same Don Jerónimo answer:
"Why does your worship want us to read this nonsense, Señor Don Juan? Anybody who has read the first part of the history of Don Quixote of La Mancha cannot possibly take any pleasure in reading this second one."
"For all that," said Don Juan, "it will be as well to read it, since there is no book so bad that it has not something good in it. What displeases me most in this one is that it paints Don Quixote as having fallen out of love with Dulcinea of El Toboso."
Hearing which, Don Quixote, full of anger and indignation, raised his voice and said:
"Whoever says that Don Quixote of La Mancha has forgotten, or can forget, Dulcinea of El Toboso, I shall make him understand with equal arms that he is very far from the truth; because the peerless Dulcinea of El Toboso can neither be forgotten, nor can forgetfulness find room in Don Quixote. His blazon is constancy, and his profession is to keep it gently and without doing himself any violence."
"Who is it that answers us?" they answered from the other room.
"Who should it be," answered Sancho, "but the very Don Quixote of La Mancha, who will make good everything he has said, and everything he may say? For a good payer does not mind pledges."
Sancho had hardly said this when in at the door of their room came two gentlemen — for such they looked — and one of them, throwing his arms round Don Quixote's neck, said to him:
"Neither can your presence give the lie to your name, nor can your name fail to bear out your presence: undoubtedly you, sir, are the true Don Quixote of La Mancha, pole star and morning star of knight-errantry, in spite and in defiance of the man who has tried to usurp your name and annihilate your exploits, as the author of this book I hand you here has done."
And, putting into his hands a book his companion was carrying, Don Quixote took it, and without answering a word began to leaf through it; and a little later he handed it back, saying:
"In this little I have seen, I have found three things in this author deserving reproof. The first is some words I have read in the prologue; the second, that the language is Aragonese, since he sometimes writes without articles; and the third, which most confirms him for an ignorant man, is that he goes wrong and departs from the truth in the chief matter of the history — because here he says that the wife of Sancho Panza my squire is called Mari Gutiérrez, and she is not called that at all but Teresa Panza. And a man who goes wrong in so chief a matter as this may well be feared to go wrong in all the rest of the history."
To this Sancho said:
"A pretty sort of historian! Certainly he must be well up in the tale of our doings, since he calls Teresa Panza, my wife, Mari Gutiérrez! Take the book again, sir, and see whether I go about in it and whether he has changed my name too."
"From hearing you talk, my friend," said Don Jerónimo, "you must undoubtedly be Sancho Panza, Señor Don Quixote's squire."
"I am," answered Sancho, "and I pride myself on it."
"Well, upon my word," said the gentleman, "this modern author does not treat you with the cleanness your person shows: he paints you as a great eater, and simple, and not at all amusing, and quite another Sancho from the one described in the first part of your master's history."
"God forgive him," said Sancho. "He should have left me in my corner without remembering me; because let him play the tune who knows it, and Saint Peter is well enough off in Rome."
The two gentlemen asked Don Quixote to come over to their room to have supper with them, since they well knew that in that inn there was nothing suitable for his person. Don Quixote, who was always courteous, gave in to their request and had supper with them. Sancho stayed behind with the stew, with full and mixed jurisdiction over it; he sat down at the head of the table, and with him the innkeeper, who was no less fond than Sancho of his feet and his heels.
In the course of the supper Don Juan asked Don Quixote what news he had of the lady Dulcinea of El Toboso: whether she had married, whether she had been brought to bed or was with child, or whether, being still whole, she remembered — keeping her decency and good decorum — the loving thoughts of Señor Don Quixote. To which he answered:
"Dulcinea is still whole, and my thoughts are firmer than ever; our dealings are in their old dryness; her beauty is transformed into that of a coarse country wench."
And then he went on telling them point by point about the lady Dulcinea's enchantment, and what had happened to him in the cave of Montesinos, along with the orders the wise Merlin had given him for disenchanting her, which were the lashes for Sancho.
The two gentlemen took the greatest pleasure in hearing Don Quixote tell the strange events of his history, and they were as astonished by his absurdities as by the elegant manner in which he told them. Here they took him for judicious, and there he slipped away from them into an idiot, without their being able to settle what degree they should give him between judgement and madness.
Sancho finished his supper; and, leaving the innkeeper making X's with his legs, he went over to his master's room; and, on coming in, he said:
"May they kill me, gentlemen, if the author of that book your worships have does not mean that we shall not eat off the same dish; and I should like it that, since he calls me a glutton, as your worships say, he should not call me a drunkard too."
"He does call you one," said Don Jerónimo, "but I do not remember in what way — although I know the words are ill-sounding, and, what is more, lies, as I can see from the physiognomy of the good Sancho here present."
"Believe me, your worships," said Sancho, "that the Sancho and the Don Quixote of that history must be different men from the ones who go about in the one Cide Hamete Benengeli composed, which are us: my master valiant, judicious and in love; and I simple and amusing, and neither a great eater nor a drunkard."
"So I believe," said Don Juan; "and if it were possible, an order ought to be given that nobody should dare to deal with the affairs of the great Don Quixote except Cide Hamete, his first author — exactly as Alexander ordered that nobody should dare to paint his portrait except Apelles."
"Let anybody who likes paint me," said Don Quixote, "but let him not maul me; for patience often falls down when it is loaded with insults."
"None," said Don Juan, "can be offered to Señor Don Quixote that he cannot avenge, if he does not fend it off on the shield of his patience — which, to my mind, is strong and great."
In these and other talks a great part of the night went by; and, although Don Juan would have liked Don Quixote to read more of the book, to see what he carped at, they could not bring him to it, for he said that he counted it as read and confirmed it as wholly foolish, and that he did not want its author, if it should come to his notice that he had had it in his hands, to be pleased with thinking that he had read it; for from obscene and filthy things one's thoughts must be kept away, and still more one's eyes.
They asked him where he had decided to take his journey. He answered that it was to Saragossa, to be present at the jousts for the suit of armour that are generally held in that city every year. Don Juan told him that that new history related how Don Quixote — whoever he might be — had been present at a ring-tilting there, short of invention, poor in mottoes, extremely poor in liveries, though rich in silliness.
"For that very reason," answered Don Quixote, "I shall not set foot in Saragossa; and so I shall bring out into the open square of the world the lie of that modern historian, and people will see that I am not the Don Quixote he speaks of."
"You will do very well," said Don Jerónimo, "and there are other jousts at Barcelona where Señor Don Quixote can show his valour."
"That is what I mean to do," said Don Quixote; "and let your worships give me leave, for it is time for me to go to bed; and hold me and set me in the number of your greatest friends and servants."
"And me too," said Sancho: "perhaps I may be good for something."
With this they took their leave, and Don Quixote and Sancho withdrew to their room, leaving Don Juan and Don Jerónimo astonished at seeing the mixture he had made of his good sense and his madness; and they truly believed that these were the true Don Quixote and Sancho, and not the ones the Aragonese author described.
Don Quixote got up early and, knocking on the partition of the other room, took his leave of his fellow guests. Sancho paid the innkeeper magnificently, and advised him either to praise the provisions of his inn less or to keep it better provided.
The morning was cool, and gave signs that the day would be so too, when Don Quixote left the inn, first finding out which was the straightest road to go to Barcelona without touching Saragossa: such was his eagerness to give the lie to that new historian who they said abused him so much.
It happened, then, that for more than six days nothing occurred to him worth putting in writing; at the end of which, going off the road, night caught him among some thick oaks or cork trees — for in this Cide Hamete does not keep the exactness he generally keeps in other things.
Master and man dismounted from their beasts; and, settling themselves against the trunks of the trees, Sancho, who had had his snack that day, let himself go headlong in at the gates of sleep. But Don Quixote, whom his imaginings kept awake much more than hunger, could not close his eyes; instead his thoughts came and went over a thousand kinds of places. Now it seemed to him that he was in the cave of Montesinos; now that he saw Dulcinea, turned into a peasant girl, jump and spring up onto her ass; now that the words of the wise Merlin were ringing in his ears, telling him the conditions and the steps that were to be taken and kept for Dulcinea's disenchantment.
He was in despair at seeing the slackness and the small charity of Sancho his squire, since, as far as he believed, he had given himself only five lashes — an uneven and small number for the infinite ones he still owed. And at this he took such distress and annoyance that he made this argument:
"If the great Alexander cut the Gordian knot, saying, 'Cutting is as good as untying,' and did not for that reason stop being universal lord of all Asia, the same might happen now in Dulcinea's disenchantment if I whipped Sancho in spite of himself. Because if the condition of this remedy lies in Sancho's receiving the three thousand and more lashes, what does it matter to me whether he gives them to himself or somebody else gives them to him, since the substance of it lies in his receiving them, from wherever they come?"
With this idea he went up to Sancho, having first taken Rocinante's reins and arranged them in such a way that he could whip him with them, and began to undo the laces — for it is held that he had only the front one, which held up his breeches. But he had hardly got there when Sancho woke up in full possession of his senses and said:
"What is this? Who is touching me and unlacing me?"
"It is I," answered Don Quixote, "who come to make up your shortcomings and to relieve my own troubles. I come to whip you, Sancho, and to discharge in part the debt you bound yourself to. Dulcinea is perishing; you live in carelessness; I am dying with longing; and so unlace yourself of your own free will, for mine is to give you, in this solitude, at least two thousand lashes."
"Not that," said Sancho. "Let your worship keep still; if not, by the true God the deaf shall hear us. The lashes I bound myself to must be voluntary and not forced, and just now I have no fancy to whip myself. It is enough that I give your worship my word to flog myself and swat myself whenever I feel like it."
"There is no leaving it to your courtesy, Sancho," said Don Quixote, "because you are hard of heart and, peasant though you are, soft of flesh."
And so he kept trying and struggling to unlace him. Which Sancho Panza seeing, he got to his feet and, rushing at his master, grappled with him at close quarters; and, tripping him up, brought him down on the ground on his back. He set his right knee on his chest and held his hands with his own hands, so that he let him neither turn over nor breathe. Don Quixote said to him:
"How, traitor? Do you rebel against your master and natural lord? Do you set on the man who gives you his bread?"
"I neither unmake a king nor make one," answered Sancho, "but only help myself, who am my own lord. Let your worship promise me that you will keep still and will not try to whip me for now, and I shall leave you free and unencumbered; if not,
Here shall you die, traitor, enemy of Doña Sancha."
Don Quixote promised it him, and swore by the life of his thoughts not to touch him on a hair of his clothes, and to leave the whipping entirely to his own will and choice, whenever he liked.
Sancho got up and moved a good way off from that place; and, going to lean against another tree, he felt something touch him on the head and, putting up his hands, came upon two human feet with shoes and stockings on them. He shook with fear; he made for another tree, and the same thing happened to him. He shouted, calling on Don Quixote to help him. Don Quixote did so; and, asking him what had happened to him and what he was afraid of, Sancho answered that all those trees were full of human feet and legs. Don Quixote felt them and tumbled at once to what it could be, and said to Sancho:
"You have nothing to be afraid of, because these feet and legs you are feeling and cannot see are undoubtedly those of some outlaws and bandits who are hanged on these trees; for the law generally hangs them about here when it catches them, twenty at a time and thirty at a time. From which I give myself to understand that I must be near Barcelona."
And it was the truth, as he had imagined it.
At daybreak they raised their eyes and saw the clusters on those trees, which were the bodies of bandits. Day was breaking by now; and if the dead had frightened them, they were no less troubled by more than forty living bandits who suddenly surrounded them, telling them in the Catalan language to keep still and to stop until their captain came.
Don Quixote found himself on foot, his horse without a bridle, his lance leaning against a tree and, in short, without any defence at all; and so he thought it well to fold his arms and bow his head, keeping himself for a better season and conjunction.
The bandits set about picking the grey clean and leaving him nothing of everything he was carrying in the saddlebags and the valise; and it turned out well for Sancho that the duke's crowns, and the ones they had brought from home, were in a belt he had girt round him — and even so those good people would have weeded him out and looked even at what he had hidden between his skin and his flesh if their captain had not arrived at that moment.
He looked to be about thirty-four years old, robust, more than middling in height, with a grave look and a dark complexion. He came on a mighty horse, wearing a steel coat of mail, and with four pistols — which in that country they call flintlocks — at his sides. He saw that his squires, for so they call those who follow that trade, were about to strip Sancho Panza; he ordered them not to, and was obeyed at once; and so the money belt escaped.
He was astonished to see a lance leaning against the tree, a shield on the ground, and Don Quixote armed and thoughtful, with the saddest and most melancholy figure that sadness itself could have made. He came up to him, saying:
"Do not be so sad, good man, because you have not fallen into the hands of any cruel Busiris but into those of Roque Guinart, which have more of the compassionate about them than of the severe."
"My sadness," answered Don Quixote, "is not at having fallen into your power, O valorous Roque, whose fame there are no limits on earth to enclose; but at having been so careless that your soldiers have caught me without my bridle, when I am obliged, by the order of knight-errantry that I profess, to live constantly on the alert, being at all hours my own sentinel. Because I let you know, O great Roque, that if they had found me on my horse with my lance and with my shield, it would not have been very easy for them to overcome me; for I am Don Quixote of La Mancha, the man who has filled the whole globe with his exploits."
Roque Guinart at once knew that Don Quixote's disease touched more on madness than on valour; and, although he had heard him named a few times, he had never held his deeds for true, and could not persuade himself that such a humour could reign in a man's heart. And he was extremely glad to have met him, so as to touch close up what he had heard of him at a distance; and so he said to him:
"Valorous knight, do not despair or take this state you find yourself in for ill fortune; for it might be that in these stumblings your twisted luck may come straight. For heaven, by strange and never-before-seen roundabouts that men never imagine, generally raises up the fallen and enriches the poor."
Don Quixote was about to thank him when they heard behind them a noise like a troop of horses — and it was only one, on which there came at full fury a young man of, apparently, about twenty, dressed in green damask with gold braid, in wide breeches and an overjacket, with a hat cocked in the Walloon fashion, waxed boots fitting close, spurs, a gilded dagger and sword, a small musket in his hands and two pistols at his sides. At the noise Roque turned his head and saw this handsome figure, who, on coming up to him, said:
"I was coming to look for you, O valorous Roque, to find in you, if not a remedy, at least a relief in my misfortune. And, so as not to keep you in suspense — for I know you have not recognised me — I want to tell you who I am. I am Claudia Jerónima, daughter of Simón Forte, your particular friend and the particular enemy of Clauquel Torrellas, who is likewise yours, being one of the men of the opposite faction. And you know that this Torrellas has a son called Don Vicente Torrellas — or at least he was called that not two hours ago.
"This man, then — to shorten the tale of my misfortune, I shall tell you in a few words what has caused it. He saw me, he courted me, I listened to him, I fell in love with him, without my father's knowledge; for there is no woman, however sheltered and however careful she may be, who has not time enough to put her headlong desires into execution and effect. Finally he promised to be my husband, and I gave him my word to be his, without our going any further in deeds.
"Yesterday I learnt that, forgetting what he owed me, he was marrying another woman, and that this morning he was to be betrothed — news that disturbed my senses and made an end of my patience. And, my father not being in the place, I had to put myself into the dress you see; and, urging on this horse, I caught up with Don Vicente about a league from here. And, without stopping to make complaints or to hear excuses, I fired these muskets at him and, into the bargain, these two pistols; and, as I believe, I must have shut more than two bullets in his body, opening doors for my honour to come out of, wrapped in his blood. I left him there among his servants, who neither dared nor were able to come to his defence.
"I come to look for you so that you may take me over into France, where I have relations to live with, and likewise to beg you to defend my father, so that Don Vicente's many kinsmen may not dare to take an outrageous revenge on him."
Roque, amazed at the gallantry, the dash, the fine figure and the adventure of the beautiful Claudia, said to her:
"Come, lady, and let us go and see whether your enemy is dead; and afterwards we shall see what matters most to you."
Don Quixote, who was listening attentively to what Claudia had said and what Roque Guinart answered, said:
"Nobody need take any trouble to defend this lady, for I take it upon myself. Give me my horse and my arms and wait for me here, and I shall go and look for this knight; and, dead or alive, I shall make him keep the word he promised to so much beauty."
"Let nobody doubt it," said Sancho, "because my master has a very good hand at matchmaking; for it is not many days since he made another man marry who was also denying his word to another maiden. And if it had not been that the enchanters who persecute him changed his true shape into a footman's, by this hour that maiden would be one no longer."
Roque, who was attending more to thinking about the business of the beautiful Claudia than to the words of master and man, did not take them in; and, ordering his squires to give Sancho back everything they had taken off the grey, ordering them likewise to withdraw to the place where they had been lodged that night, he set off at once in great haste with Claudia to look for the wounded — or dead — Don Vicente.
They came to the place where Claudia had met him, and found nothing there but freshly spilt blood. But, casting their eyes in every direction, they made out some people up a slope, and gave themselves to understand — as was the truth — that it must be Don Vicente, whom his servants were carrying, dead or alive, either to treat him or to bury him. They made haste to catch them up; and, as they were going slowly, they easily did.
They found Don Vicente in his servants' arms, and he was begging them in a weary, weakened voice to let him die there, because the pain of his wounds would not let him go any further.
Claudia and Roque threw themselves off their horses and came up to him; the servants were afraid at Roque's presence, and Claudia was thrown into confusion at seeing Don Vicente's. And so, between tenderness and severity, she came up to him and, taking him by the hands, said to him:
"If you had given me these, according to our agreement, you would never have found yourself in this pass."
The wounded knight opened his almost closed eyes, and, recognising Claudia, said to her:
"I see well enough, beautiful and deceived lady, that you have been the one to kill me — a punishment neither deserved nor owing to my desires, with which, or with my deeds, I never wished or knew how to offend you."
"Then is it not true," said Claudia, "that you were going this morning to be married to Leonora, the daughter of the rich Balvastro?"
"Certainly not," answered Don Vicente. "My bad fortune must have brought you this news so that, out of jealousy, you should take my life away — which, since I leave it in your hands and in your arms, I count my lot fortunate. And, to assure you of this truth, press my hand and take me for your husband, if you will; for I have no greater satisfaction to give you for the wrong you think you have received from me."
Claudia pressed his hand, and her heart was pressed so hard that she fell in a faint on Don Vicente's blood and breast; and a mortal spasm took hold of him. Roque was confused and did not know what to do. The servants ran to look for water to throw in their faces, and brought it and bathed them. Claudia came out of her faint, but Don Vicente did not come out of his spasm, because his life ended.
Which Claudia seeing, and having made certain that her sweet husband was no longer alive, she broke the air with sighs, struck the heavens with her cries, mistreated her hair, giving it to the wind, disfigured her face with her own hands, with all the signs of grief and feeling that could be imagined from a wounded breast.
"O cruel and thoughtless woman," she said, "how easily you were moved to put so bad a thought into execution! O raging power of jealousy, to what a desperate end you lead the man who gives you room in his breast! O husband of mine, whose unfortunate lot, for being my possession, has carried you from the marriage bed to the grave!"
Such and so mournful were Claudia's cries that they drew tears out of Roque's eyes, which were not used to shedding them on any occasion. The servants wept; Claudia fainted away at every step; and that whole circuit looked like a field of sadness and a place of misfortune.
Finally Roque Guinart ordered Don Vicente's servants to carry his body to his father's village, which was close by, so that they might give it burial. Claudia told Roque that she would like to go to a convent where an aunt of hers was abbess, in which she meant to end her life, accompanied by another and a better and more everlasting husband. Roque praised her good resolution and offered to go with her wherever she liked and to defend her father from Don Vicente's relations and from all the world, if they should want to harm him. Claudia would not have his company on any account; and, thanking him for his offers in the best words she knew, she took her leave of him in tears.
Don Vicente's servants carried away his body, and Roque went back to his men; and this was the end that the loves of Claudia Jerónima came to. But what wonder, when the invincible and severe forces of jealousy wove the plot of her lamentable history?
Roque Guinart found his squires in the place where he had ordered them, and Don Quixote among them, on Rocinante, making them a speech in which he urged them to leave that way of life, so dangerous both for the soul and for the body; but, as most of them were Gascons, rough and disorderly people, Don Quixote's speech did not go into them very well.
When Roque arrived, he asked Sancho Panza whether they had given him back and restored the goods and valuables that his men had taken off the grey. Sancho answered that they had, except that he was short of three headcloths that were worth three cities.
"What are you saying, man?" said one of those present. "I have them, and they are not worth three reals."
"That is so," said Don Quixote, "but my squire values them at what he has said, on account of the person who gave them to me."
Roque Guinart ordered them given back to him at once; and, ordering his men to draw up in line, he ordered all the clothes, jewels and money to be brought there in front of him, and everything they had robbed since the last division. And, making the reckoning quickly, giving back what could not be divided and turning it into money, he divided it out among the whole company with such fairness and prudence that he did not go a point beyond distributive justice or defraud it in anything.
This done, at which they were all left contented, satisfied and paid, Roque said to Don Quixote:
"If this exactness were not kept with these men, it would be impossible to live with them."
To which Sancho said:
"By what I have seen here, justice is such a good thing that it must be used even among thieves themselves."
One of the squires heard him and raised the butt of a harquebus, with which he would undoubtedly have split Sancho's head open if Roque Guinart had not shouted to him to stop. Sancho was thunderstruck, and resolved not to unstitch his lips as long as he was among those people.
At this there came up one, or some, of those squires who were posted as sentries along the roads to see the people who came along them and give notice to their chief of what was afoot, and this one said:
"Sir, not far from here, along the road that goes to Barcelona, there comes a great troop of people."
To which Roque answered:
"Have you seen whether they are of those who are looking for us, or of those we are looking for?"
"No, but of those we are looking for," answered the squire.
"Then all of you go out," replied Roque, "and bring them here to me at once, and let none of them escape you."
They did so; and, Don Quixote, Sancho and Roque being left alone, they waited to see what the squires would bring. And in the meantime Roque said to Don Quixote:
"Our way of life must seem a new one to Señor Don Quixote — new adventures, new events, and all of them dangerous; and I do not wonder that it should seem so, because I really confess to you that there is no way of living more restless or more full of alarms than ours. What has put me into it is a certain desire for revenge, which has the power to trouble the quietest hearts; I am by nature compassionate and well-meaning, but, as I have said, the wanting to avenge myself for a wrong that was done me throws all my good inclinations so completely to the ground that I persevere in this state in spite and in defiance of what I understand. And, as one abyss calls to another and one sin to another sin, the revenges have linked themselves together in such a way that I take on not only my own but other people's. But God is pleased that, although I see myself in the middle of the labyrinth of my confusions, I do not lose the hope of coming out of it into a safe harbour."
Don Quixote was astonished at hearing Roque speak such good and orderly words, because he had thought that among men of trades like robbing, killing and holding up travellers there could be nobody with good judgement; and he answered him:
"Señor Roque, the beginning of health lies in knowing the disease and in the sick man's being willing to take the medicines the doctor orders him. Your worship is sick; you know your ailment; and heaven — or God, better said, who is our doctor — will apply medicines to you that will heal you, which generally heal little by little and not suddenly and by a miracle. And besides, judicious sinners are nearer to mending than simple ones; and, since your worship has shown your prudence in your words, there is nothing for it but to have good courage and hope for an improvement in the disease of your conscience. And if your worship wants to save the journey and set yourself easily on the road to your salvation, come with me, and I shall teach you to be a knight errant, in which one goes through so many labours and misfortunes that, taking them as penance, they will put you in heaven in two shakes."
Roque laughed at Don Quixote's advice; and, changing the subject, he told him the tragic business of Claudia Jerónima, which grieved Sancho extremely, for the girl's beauty, dash and spirit had not seemed bad to him.
At this the squires of the raid came up, bringing with them two gentlemen on horseback and two pilgrims on foot, and a coach of women with about six servants who were attending them on foot and on horseback, along with two mule-boys the gentlemen had brought. The squires took them into their midst, conquered and conquerors keeping a great silence, waiting for the great Roque Guinart to speak. And he asked the gentlemen who they were and where they were going and how much money they were carrying. One of them answered him:
"Sir, we are two captains of Spanish infantry; we have our companies in Naples and we are going to embark on four galleys which they say are at Barcelona with orders to cross to Sicily. We are carrying about two or three hundred crowns, with which, to our mind, we go rich and contented, since the ordinary tightness of soldiers does not allow greater treasures."
Roque asked the pilgrims the same as the captains; he was answered that they were going to embark to cross to Rome, and that between the two of them they might have about sixty reals. He also wanted to know who was going in the coach and where, and the money they were carrying; and one of the men on horseback said:
"My lady Doña Guiomar de Quiñones, wife of the regent of the Vicarial Court of Naples, with a small daughter, a maid and a duenna, are the ones going in the coach; six servants attend her, and the money is six hundred crowns."
"So that," said Roque Guinart, "we now have here nine hundred crowns and sixty reals; my soldiers must be about sixty; let it be worked out how much falls to each one, because I am a bad accountant."
The highwaymen, hearing this said, raised their voices, saying:
"Long live Roque Guinart for many years, in spite of the lladres — the thieves — who seek his ruin!"
The captains showed themselves distressed, the lady regent's wife was saddened, and the pilgrims were not at all pleased at seeing their goods confiscated. Roque kept them like this in suspense for a while; but he did not want their sadness to go any further, for by now it could be seen from a harquebus-shot away; and, turning to the captains, he said:
"Your worships, gentlemen captains, be so good as to lend me sixty crowns out of courtesy, and the lady regent's wife eighty, to content this squadron that goes with me — for the abbot dines on what he sings — and then you may go your way freely and unhindered with a safe conduct I shall give you, so that if you come across other squadrons of mine that I have divided about these parts, they may do you no harm; for it is not my intention to wrong soldiers or any woman, especially women of quality."
Infinite and well-spoken were the words with which the captains thanked Roque for his courtesy and generosity — for such they held it — in leaving them their own money. The lady Doña Guiomar de Quiñones wanted to throw herself out of the coach to kiss the great Roque's feet and hands, but he would not consent to it on any account; on the contrary, he asked her pardon for the wrong he was doing her, forced to it by the strict obligations of his bad trade. The lady regent's wife ordered a servant of hers to hand over at once the eighty crowns that had been assessed on her, and the captains had already paid out the sixty. The pilgrims were about to hand over all their poor pittance, but Roque told them to keep still; and, turning to his men, he said:
"Of these crowns two fall to each man, and twenty are left over: let ten be given to these pilgrims, and the other ten to this good squire, so that he may speak well of this adventure."
And, being brought writing materials, with which he always went provided, Roque gave them in writing a safe conduct for the chiefs of his squadrons; and, taking his leave of them, he let them go free, astonished at his nobility, his gallant bearing and his strange conduct, and holding him rather for an Alexander the Great than for a known thief. One of the squires said in his mixed Gascon and Catalan:
"This captain of ours is more fit to be a friar than a bandit: if from now on he wants to show himself generous, let him be so with his own property and not with ours."
The unlucky man did not say it so softly that Roque did not hear it; and he, laying hand to his sword, split his head almost in two, saying to him:
"This is how I punish loose-tongued and impudent men."
They were all thunderstruck, and none of them dared to say him a word: so great was the obedience they had for him.
Roque drew aside and wrote a letter to a friend of his in Barcelona, letting him know that the famous Don Quixote of La Mancha was with him — that knight errant of whom so many things were said; and letting him know that he was the most amusing and the most understanding man in the world, and that in four days' time, which would be the day of Saint John the Baptist, he would set him down in the middle of the city beach, armed in all his arms, on Rocinante his horse, and his squire Sancho on an ass; and that he should give notice of this to his friends the Niarros, so that they might amuse themselves with him. He wished that his enemies the Cadells could be deprived of this pleasure, but that this was impossible, because Don Quixote's madnesses and judicious speeches and his squire Sancho Panza's charms could not fail to give general pleasure to all the world.
He sent these letters off by one of his squires who, changing the bandit's dress for a farm labourer's, went into Barcelona and gave it to the man it was going to.
Three days and three nights Don Quixote spent with Roque; and if he had spent three hundred years, he would not have run out of things to watch and marvel at in his way of life. They woke up in one place and dined in another; sometimes they fled without knowing from whom, and other times they waited without knowing for whom. They slept standing up, breaking off their sleep and shifting from one place to another. It was all posting spies, listening to sentries, blowing on the matches of the harquebuses — though they carried few, because they all used flintlocks.
Roque spent the nights away from his men, in parts and places where they could not know where he was; because the many proclamations the viceroy of Barcelona had issued against his life kept him uneasy and afraid, and he did not dare to trust anybody, fearing that his own men would either kill him or hand him over to the law: a wretched and tiresome life, certainly.
Finally, by unused roads, by short cuts and hidden paths, Roque, Don Quixote and Sancho set off for Barcelona with six other squires. They reached its beach on the eve of Saint John at night; and, Roque embracing Don Quixote and Sancho — to whom he gave the ten promised crowns, for until then he had not given them him — he left them, with a thousand offers made on both sides.
Roque went back. Don Quixote stayed waiting for the day just as he was, on horseback; and it was not long before there began to appear over the balconies of the East the face of the white dawn, gladdening the grass and the flowers instead of gladdening the ear — although at that very moment the ear was gladdened too by the sound of a great many shawms and kettledrums, the noise of little bells, the "tramp, tramp, out of the way, out of the way!" of runners who seemed to be coming out of the city. The dawn gave place to the sun, which, with a face bigger than a buckler, was little by little rising up over the lowest horizon.
Don Quixote and Sancho cast their eyes in every direction: they saw the sea, which they had never seen until then; it seemed to them extremely spacious and long, a great deal more so than the Lagoons of Ruidera they had seen in La Mancha. They saw the galleys that were on the beach, which, dropping their awnings, showed themselves full of pennants and streamers that fluttered in the wind and kissed and swept the water; inside them sounded clarions, trumpets and shawms, which near and far filled the air with sweet and warlike notes.
They began to move and to make a kind of skirmish over the quiet waters, matched in almost the same way by an infinite number of knights who came out of the city on beautiful horses and in showy liveries. The soldiers of the galleys fired off endless artillery, which was answered by those on the walls and forts of the city; and the heavy artillery broke the winds with a terrible uproar, which was answered by the gangway cannon of the galleys. The sea glad, the earth joyful, the air clear — only now and then clouded by the smoke of the artillery — it all seemed to be pouring in and breeding a sudden pleasure in everybody.
Sancho could not imagine how those hulks that moved over the sea could have so many feet. At this, the men in liveries came running up, with shouting and cries and uproar, to where Don Quixote stood bewildered and astounded; and one of them, the man Roque had written to, said to Don Quixote in a loud voice:
"Welcome to our city, the mirror, the lantern, the star and the pole star of all knight-errantry, as far as it is contained anywhere. Welcome, I say, to the valorous Don Quixote of La Mancha: not the false one, not the fictitious one, not the apocryphal one that false histories have shown us these last days, but the true, the lawful and the faithful one that Cide Hamete Benengeli, the flower of historians, described to us."
Don Quixote answered not a word, and the knights did not wait for him to answer; instead, wheeling and rewheeling with the rest who followed them, they began to make a tangled caracole round Don Quixote. And he, turning to Sancho, said:
"These men have recognised us well enough: I would wager they have read our history, and even the Aragonese one that has just been printed."
The knight who had spoken to Don Quixote came back again and said to him:
"Let your worship, Señor Don Quixote, come with us; for we are all your servants and great friends of Roque Guinart."
To which Don Quixote answered:
"If courtesies breed courtesies, yours, sir knight, is the daughter or a very near relation of the great Roque's. Take me wherever you like, for I shall have no will but yours — and the more so if you want to employ it in your service."
With words no less civil than these the knight answered him; and, closing him in among them all, to the sound of the shawms and the kettledrums they made their way with him to the city. At the entrance of which, the Evil One — who arranges all evil — and boys, who are worse than the Evil One, two mischievous and daring ones of them pushed in through all the people; and, lifting the tail of the grey and the other the tail of Rocinante, they put and stuck a bunch of gorse under each.
The poor animals felt these new spurs and, clamping their tails down, increased their distress in such a way that, giving a thousand bucks, they brought their owners down on the ground. Don Quixote, put out and affronted, ran to take the plumage off his nag's tail, and Sancho off his grey's. Those who were guiding Don Quixote would have liked to punish the boys' impudence, and it was not possible, because they got away among more than a thousand others who were following them.
Don Quixote and Sancho got up again, and with the same applause and music they came to their guide's house, which was large and of good quality — in short, like a rich gentleman's; where we shall leave him for now, because that is what Cide Hamete wants.
Don Antonio Moreno was the name of Don Quixote's host, a rich and judicious gentleman who was fond of amusing himself in a decent and agreeable way; and, seeing Don Quixote in his house, he went about looking for ways to bring his madnesses out into the open without harming him — because jokes that hurt are no jokes, and there are no entertainments worth anything if they are at a third party's expense.
The first thing he did was to have Don Quixote unarmed and to bring him out to be seen in that narrow chamois suit of his — as we have described and painted him at other times — on a balcony that looked out on one of the chief streets of the city, in view of the people and of the boys, who looked at him as at an ape. Once again the men in liveries rode past in front of him, as though they had put them on for him alone and not to make that festive day merry; and Sancho was extremely pleased, since it seemed to him that he had found, without knowing how or why, another wedding of Camacho's, another house like Don Diego de Miranda's and another castle like the duke's.
Some of Don Antonio's friends dined with him that day, all of them honouring Don Quixote and treating him as a knight errant; at which he, puffed up and pompous, could not contain himself for contentment. Sancho's drolleries were so many that all the servants of the house and everybody who heard him hung on his mouth. Sitting at table, Don Antonio said to Sancho:
"We have news here, good Sancho, that you are so fond of blancmange and little meatballs that if you have any left over you keep them in your bosom for the next day."
"No, sir, it is not so," answered Sancho, "because I have more of the clean about me than of the greedy; and my master Don Quixote here present knows very well that the two of us generally get by for a week on a handful of acorns or walnuts. It is true that if it sometimes happens that they give me the heifer, I run with the halter — I mean that I eat what is given me and use the times as I find them. And whoever has said that I am an outstanding eater and not clean may take it as said that he is wrong; and I should say this in another way if I were not looking at the honourable beards at this table."
"Certainly," said Don Quixote, "the sparingness and cleanness with which Sancho eats could be written and engraved on plates of bronze, to stay in the everlasting memory of the ages to come. It is true that when he is hungry he looks something of a glutton, because he eats fast and chews on both sides of his mouth; but he always keeps his cleanness at its height; and in the time when he was a governor he learnt to eat so fastidiously that he ate grapes, and even pomegranate seeds, with a fork."
"What!" said Don Antonio. "Has Sancho been a governor?"
"Yes," answered Sancho, "and of an isle called Barataria. Ten days I governed it exactly as I pleased; in them I lost my peace of mind and learnt to despise all the governments in the world. I ran away from it, I fell into a cave where I gave myself up for dead, and I came out of it alive by a miracle."
Don Quixote told in detail the whole business of Sancho's government, at which he gave the listeners great pleasure.
The cloth being taken away, and Don Antonio taking Don Quixote by the hand, he went with him into a room set apart, in which there was no other ornament but a table apparently of jasper, held up on a foot of the same, on which there stood — in the manner of the busts of the Roman emperors, from the chest up — one that seemed to be of bronze. Don Antonio walked about the whole room with Don Quixote, going round the table many times, after which he said:
"Now, Señor Don Quixote, that I have made certain that nobody hears or listens to us and the door is shut, I want to tell your worship about one of the rarest adventures, or, better said, novelties, that can be imagined — on condition that what I tell your worship you are to lay up in the deepest chambers of secrecy."
"So I swear," answered Don Quixote, "and I shall even put a tombstone on top of it, for greater security; because I want your worship to know, Señor Don Antonio" — for he already knew his name — "that you are speaking to a man who, although he has ears to hear, has no tongue to speak with. So your worship may safely transfer what you have in your breast into mine, and reckon that you have thrown it into the depths of silence."
"On the strength of that promise," answered Don Antonio, "I want to fill your worship with astonishment at what you shall see and hear, and to give myself some relief from the pain it causes me to have nobody to share my secrets with, since they are not to be trusted to everybody."
Don Quixote was bewildered, waiting to see where so many preparations were going to end. At this, Don Antonio, taking his hand, ran it over the bronze head and over the whole table and over the jasper foot that held it up, and then said:
"This head, Señor Don Quixote, has been made and manufactured by one of the greatest enchanters and sorcerers the world has ever had — a Pole, I believe, by nation, and a disciple of the famous Escotillo, of whom so many marvels are told. He was here in my house, and for the price of a thousand crowns that I gave him he wrought this head, which has the property and virtue of answering whatever anybody asks it in its ear. He kept the bearings, drew characters, observed the stars, watched the points, and finally brought it out with the perfection we shall see tomorrow — because on Fridays it is dumb, and today, being one, it will make us wait until tomorrow. In this time your worship may prepare what you will want to ask, for I know by experience that it tells the truth in everything it answers."
Don Quixote was amazed at the head's virtue and property, and was inclined not to believe Don Antonio; but, seeing how little time there was before the test, he did not want to say anything to him except that he thanked him for having revealed so great a secret to him. They came out of the room, Don Antonio locked the door, and they went off to the hall where the other gentlemen were. In this time Sancho had told them a good many of the adventures and events that had happened to his master.
That afternoon they took Don Quixote out for a ride — not armed but in walking dress, wearing a long gown of tawny cloth which in that season could have made the ice itself sweat. They arranged with their servants to keep Sancho occupied so that they should not let him leave the house. Don Quixote went, not on Rocinante, but on a great smooth-paced mule, very well harnessed. They put the gown on him; and on his back, without his seeing it, they sewed a parchment on which they wrote in large letters: This is Don Quixote of La Mancha.
As soon as the ride began, the placard drew the eyes of everybody who came to see him; and as they read This is Don Quixote of La Mancha, Don Quixote was astonished to see that everybody who looked at him named him and knew him; and, turning to Don Antonio, who was riding at his side, he said:
"Great is the prerogative that knight-errantry contains in itself, since it makes the man who professes it known and famous through all the bounds of the earth. If not, look, your worship, Señor Don Antonio, how even the boys of this city, who have never seen me, know me."
"That is so, Señor Don Quixote," answered Don Antonio; "for just as fire cannot be hidden and shut up, virtue cannot fail to be known — and the virtue that is attained by the profession of arms shines and shows itself above all the rest."
It happened, then, that as Don Quixote was going along with the applause that has been described, a Castilian who read the placard on his back raised his voice, saying:
"The devil take you for Don Quixote of La Mancha! How is it that you have got this far without the endless beatings you have on your back having killed you? You are mad; and if you were mad by yourself and inside the doors of your madness it would be less bad; but you have the property of turning everybody who deals with you and talks to you mad and idiotic — if not, let them look at these gentlemen who are with you. Go home, you idiot, and see to your property, to your wife and your children, and leave off these emptinesses that are gnawing away your brains and skimming the cream off your understanding."
"Brother," said Don Antonio, "go your own way and do not give advice to people who do not ask you for it. Señor Don Quixote of La Mancha is very sane, and we who go with him are not fools; virtue is to be honoured wherever it is found; and be off with you, and do not meddle where you are not called."
"By God, your worship is right," answered the Castilian; "for advising this good man is kicking against the pricks. But for all that, it gives me very great sorrow that the good wits this idiot is said to have in everything should be drained away down the gutter of his knight-errantry. And the bad luck your worship has wished me be on me and on all my descendants if from this day on, even if I lived more years than Methuselah, I ever give advice to anybody again, even if they ask me for it."
The adviser moved off; the ride went on. But such was the eagerness of the boys and all the people to read the placard that Don Antonio had to take it off, as though he were taking off something else.
Night came and they went back home; there was a ladies' evening party, because Don Antonio's wife, who was a lady of quality and cheerful, beautiful and judicious, invited other friends of hers to come and do honour to her guest and enjoy his never-before-seen madnesses. Some came; they had a splendid supper, and the party began at about ten at night.
Among the ladies there were two of a mischievous and joking humour; and, though they were very decent, they were rather free, so as to give room for the jokes to make merry without annoyance. These two were so eager in pulling Don Quixote out to dance that they wore out not only his body but his soul. It was a thing to see, Don Quixote's figure — long, stretched out, lean, yellow, tight in his clothes, awkward and, above all, not at all nimble. The young ladies made love to him as though on the sly, and he, likewise as though on the sly, disdained them; but, finding himself hard pressed with compliments, he raised his voice and said:
"Fugite, partes adversae! Leave me in my quiet, ill-come thoughts. Settle your desires elsewhere, ladies; for she who is queen of mine, the peerless Dulcinea of El Toboso, does not allow any but her own to enslave and conquer me."
And, saying this, he sat down in the middle of the hall on the floor, battered and broken by so much dancing exercise. Don Antonio had him carried bodily to his bed, and the first man to lay hold of him was Sancho, saying to him:
"In a bad hour, sir our master, you have danced it! Do you think all brave men are dancers and all knights errant ball-room performers? I say that if you do think so, you are mistaken; there are men who would sooner venture to kill a giant than cut a caper. If you had to do clog-dancing, I would make up for your shortcomings, for I clog-dance like a gerfalcon; but in this business of dancing I do not put a stitch in."
With these and other words Sancho gave the people of the party something to laugh at, and got his master into bed, wrapping him up so that he should sweat out the chill of his dancing.
The next day it seemed to Don Antonio a good idea to make the experiment of the enchanted head; and with Don Quixote, Sancho and two other friends, along with the two ladies who had worn Don Quixote out with dancing and who had stayed that night with Don Antonio's wife, he shut himself up in the room where the head was. He told them the property it had, charged them with the secret and told them that this was the first day on which the virtue of that enchanted head was to be tested; and apart from Don Antonio's two friends, nobody else knew the crux of the enchantment — and indeed if Don Antonio had not disclosed it first to his friends, they too would have fallen into the astonishment the rest fell into, and could not possibly have done otherwise: with such contrivance and such order was it made.
The first to come up to the head's ear was Don Antonio himself, and he said to it in a low voice, but not so low that everybody did not hear it:
"Tell me, head, by the virtue that is shut up in you: what thoughts have I now?"
And the head answered him, without moving its lips, in a clear and distinct voice, so that everybody heard it, these words:
"I do not judge of thoughts."
Hearing which, they were all astounded, and still more at seeing that in the whole room and round the table there was no human being who could have answered.
"How many of us are here?" Don Antonio asked again.
And he was answered in the same tenor, softly:
"There are you and your wife, with two friends of yours and two friends of hers, and a famous knight called Don Quixote of La Mancha, and a squire of his who has Sancho Panza for his name."
Here indeed was fresh astonishment; here indeed did everybody's hair stand on end with pure terror! And Don Antonio, moving away from the head, said:
"This is enough to give me to understand that I was not cheated by the man who sold you to me, O wise head, talking head, answering head and admirable head! Let somebody else come and ask it whatever they like."
And, as women are generally in a hurry and fond of knowing things, the first to come up was one of the two friends of Don Antonio's wife, and what she asked it was:
"Tell me, head: what shall I do to be very beautiful?"
And she was answered:
"Be very virtuous."
"I ask you no more," said the questioner.
Then her companion came and said:
"I should like to know, head, whether my husband loves me or not."
And they answered her:
"Look at what he does for you, and you will see it."
The married woman moved away, saying:
"That answer did not need a question, because in fact the deeds a man does declare the will of the man who does them."
Then one of Don Antonio's two friends came up and asked it:
"Who am I?"
And he was answered:
"You know."
"That is not what I am asking," answered the gentleman, "but that you should tell me whether you know me."
"I do know you," they answered him: "you are Don Pedro Noriz."
"I want to know no more, since this is enough to make me understand, O head, that you know everything."
And, moving away, the other friend came up and asked it:
"Tell me, head: what desires has my son the heir?"
"I have already said," they answered him, "that I do not judge of desires; but for all that, I can tell you that those your son has are of burying you."
"That is it," said the gentleman: "what I see with my eyes, I point at with my finger."
And he asked no more. Don Antonio's wife came up and said:
"I do not know what to ask you, head; I should only like to know from you whether I shall have my good husband for many years."
And they answered her:
"You shall, because his health and his temperance in his living promise many years of life, which many men shorten by their intemperance."
Then Don Quixote came up and said:
"Tell me, you who answer: was it truth or was it a dream, what I tell of what happened to me in the cave of Montesinos? Will Sancho my squire's lashes be certain? Will Dulcinea's disenchantment be carried out?"
"As to the cave," they answered, "there is a great deal to say: it has something of both. Sancho's lashes will go slowly; Dulcinea's disenchantment will come to its due execution."
"I want to know no more," said Don Quixote; "for so long as I see Dulcinea disenchanted, I shall reckon that all the good fortune I could wish for has come at one stroke."
The last questioner was Sancho, and what he asked was:
"By any chance, head, shall I have another government? Shall I get out of the tightness of being a squire? Shall I see my wife and my children again?"
To which they answered him:
"You shall govern in your own house; and if you go back to it, you shall see your wife and your children; and, leaving off service, you shall leave off being a squire."
"Good, by God!" said Sancho Panza. "I could have told myself that: the prophet Truism himself could have said no more."
"You beast," said Don Quixote, "what do you want them to answer you? Is it not enough that the answers this head has given match what it is asked?"
"Yes, it is enough," answered Sancho, "but I should have liked it to explain itself more and tell me more."
With this the questions and answers came to an end, but not the astonishment they were all left in — except Don Antonio's two friends, who knew the business.
Which Cide Hamete Benengeli decided to explain at once, so as not to keep the world in suspense, believing that some sorcerous and extraordinary mystery was shut up in that head. And so he says that Don Antonio Moreno, in imitation of another head he had seen in Madrid made by a print-seller, made this one in his house to entertain himself and to astonish the ignorant. And the making of it was in this way: the top of the table was of wood, painted and varnished like jasper, and the foot it stood on was of the same, with four eagle's claws coming out of it for greater firmness under the weight. The head, which looked like a medallion and a figure of a Roman emperor and was bronze in colour, was entirely hollow, and so was the top of the table, into which it fitted so exactly that no sign of a join showed. The foot of the table was likewise hollow and answered to the throat and chest of the head, and all of this came out into another room that lay below the room of the head. Through this whole hollow of foot, table, throat and chest of the said medallion and figure there ran a tube of tinplate, fitted very exactly, which nobody could see. In the room below, matching the one above, was placed the man who was to answer, his mouth glued to that same tube, so that, like a blowpipe, the voice went from above to below and from below to above in articulate and clear words; and in this way it was not possible to know the trick.
A nephew of Don Antonio's, a sharp and judicious student, was the answerer; and, having been told by his uncle who would be coming in with him that day into the room of the head, it was easy for him to answer the first question quickly and exactly; the rest he answered by conjecture, and, being judicious, judiciously.
And Cide Hamete says more: that this marvellous machine lasted some ten or twelve days; but that, it being noised about the city that Don Antonio had an enchanted head in his house that answered everybody who asked it, and fearing that it might come to the ears of the wakeful sentinels of our Faith, he explained the business to the lords inquisitors, who ordered him to take it apart and go no further with it, so that the ignorant crowd should not be scandalised. But in Don Quixote's and Sancho Panza's opinion the head remained enchanted and answering, more to Don Quixote's satisfaction than to Sancho's.
The gentlemen of the city, to please Don Antonio and to entertain Don Quixote and give him room to show his silliness, arranged to hold a ring-tilting six days later; which did not come off, for the reason that will be told further on.
Don Quixote took a fancy to walk about the city plainly and on foot, fearing that if he went on horseback the boys would chase him; and so he and Sancho, with two other servants Don Antonio gave him, went out for a walk.
It happened, then, that, going along a street, Don Quixote raised his eyes and saw written over a door in very large letters: Books printed here. At which he was much pleased, because until then he had never seen a printing house and wanted to know what one was like. He went inside with his whole retinue and saw them pulling in one place, correcting in another, setting up here and revising there — in short, all that machinery that shows itself in great printing houses. Don Quixote would go up to one case and ask what it was they were doing there; the workmen would give him an account of it; he would be astonished and pass on.
He came up to one of them and asked him what he was doing. The workman answered him:
"Sir, this gentleman here" — and he showed him a man of very good figure and appearance and of some gravity — "has translated a Tuscan book into our Castilian language, and I am setting it up to give it to the press."
"What title has the book?" asked Don Quixote.
To which the author answered:
"Sir, the book in Tuscan is called Le Bagatelle."
"And what does Le Bagatelle answer to in our Castilian?" asked Don Quixote.
"Le Bagatelle," said the author, "is as though in Castilian we said The Trifles; and although this book is humble in its name, it holds and shuts up in itself very good and substantial things."
"I," said Don Quixote, "know something of Tuscan, and I pride myself on singing some stanzas of Ariosto. But tell me, your worship, my dear sir — and I do not say this because I want to examine your worship's wit, but out of curiosity and no more: have you ever found the word pignatta in your writing?"
"Yes, many times," answered the author.
"And how does your worship translate it into Castilian?" asked Don Quixote.
"How should I translate it," replied the author, "except by saying pot?"
"Body of me," said Don Quixote, "how far advanced your worship is in the Tuscan tongue! I would lay a good wager that where the Tuscan says piace, your worship says in Castilian pleases; and where it says più, you say more; and su you set out as up and giù as down."
"I do set them out so, certainly," said the author, "because those are their proper equivalents."
"I would dare to swear," said Don Quixote, "that your worship is not known in the world, which is always an enemy to rewarding flowering wits and praiseworthy labours. What abilities are lost about the place! What wits are cornered! What virtues are despised!
"But for all that, it seems to me that translating from one language into another, unless it is from the queens of languages, Greek and Latin, is like looking at Flemish tapestries from the wrong side: for although the figures can be seen, they are full of threads that darken them, and they are not seen with the smoothness and colour of the right side. And translating from easy languages argues neither wit nor eloquence, any more than it is argued by the man who transcribes or copies one paper from another paper. And I do not want to infer by this that this exercise of translating is not praiseworthy; because a man could employ himself on worse things and ones that brought him less profit.
"Outside this reckoning stand the two famous translators: the one, Doctor Cristóbal de Figueroa in his Pastor Fido, and the other, Don Juan de Jáuregui in his Aminta, where they happily put it in doubt which is the translation and which the original. But tell me, your worship: is this book being printed at your own expense, or have you already sold the licence to some bookseller?"
"At my own expense I am printing it," answered the author, "and I expect to make a thousand ducats at least with this first printing, which is to be of two thousand copies, and they will go off at six reals each in a trice."
"Your worship is well up in your reckoning!" answered Don Quixote. "It is plain enough that you do not know the ins and outs of printers and the understandings there are between one and another. I promise you that when you find yourself loaded with two thousand copies of a book, you will find your own body so battered that it will frighten you — and the more so if the book is a little crooked and not at all spicy."
"Why, then," said the author, "does your worship want me to give it to a bookseller who will give me three maravedís for the licence and even thinks he is doing me a kindness in giving them me? I do not print my books to win fame in the world, since I am already known in it by my works: it is profit I want, for without it a good name is not worth a farthing."
"God give your worship good luck," answered Don Quixote.
And he went on to another case, where he saw that they were correcting a sheet of a book entitled The Light of the Soul; and, on seeing it, he said:
"Books like these — although there are a great many of the kind — are the ones that ought to be printed; because there are a great many sinners about, and infinite lights are needed for so many people in the dark."
He went on and saw that they were likewise correcting another book; and, asking its title, he was answered that it was called The Second Part of The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha, composed by a certain man of Tordesillas.
"I already have news of this book," said Don Quixote, "and truly and in my conscience I thought it was burnt and turned to powder by now for its impertinence. But its Martinmas will come to it, as it does to every pig; for invented histories are good and delightful just so far as they come near the truth or the likeness of it, and true ones are the better the truer they are."
And, saying this, with signs of some indignation, he went out of the printing house. And that same day Don Antonio arranged to take him to see the galleys that were on the beach, at which Sancho was much delighted, since he had never seen any in his life. Don Antonio let the commander of the galleys know that he was to bring his guest, the famous Don Quixote of La Mancha, to see them that afternoon — of whom the commander and all the inhabitants of the city already had news; and what happened to him on board them will be told in the following chapter.
Great were the arguments Don Quixote made about the enchanted head's answer, without any of them hitting on the trick, and they all ended in the promise — which he took for certain — of Dulcinea's disenchantment. There he went to and fro and was glad within himself, believing that he was soon to see it carried out. And Sancho, although he loathed being a governor, as has been said, still wanted to go back to giving orders and being obeyed; for this is the bad luck that command brings with it, even if it is only in jest.
In short, that afternoon Don Antonio Moreno his host and his two friends, with Don Quixote and Sancho, went to the galleys. The commander, who had been warned of their welcome coming so that he might see the two so famous men Quixote and Sancho, had hardly seen them reach the shore when all the galleys dropped their awnings and the shawms sounded. Then they threw the skiff into the water, covered with rich carpets and with cushions of crimson velvet; and, the moment Don Quixote set foot in it, the flagship fired her gangway cannon and the other galleys did the same; and, as Don Quixote came up the starboard ladder, the whole rowing crew saluted him as is the custom when a person of quality comes aboard a galley, saying "Hu, hu, hu!" three times.
The general — for by this name we shall call him — gave him his hand; he was a gentleman of quality from Valencia, and he embraced Don Quixote, saying to him:
"I shall mark this day with a white stone, for being one of the best I expect to have in my life, having seen Señor Don Quixote of La Mancha: a time and a token that shows us that in him is shut up and summed all the worth of knight-errantry."
With no less courteous words Don Quixote answered him, extremely glad to see himself treated so much like a great lord. They all went into the stern gallery, which was very well fitted out, and sat down along the benches; the boatswain passed along the gangway and gave the signal with his whistle for the crew to strip, which was done in an instant.
Sancho, seeing so many men naked, was thunderstruck, and still more when he saw them rig the awning so fast that it seemed to him that all the devils were at work there. But all this was cakes and fancy bread compared with what I shall now tell.
Sancho was sitting on the stern post next to the aftermost rower on the right-hand side, who, having been warned what he was to do, took hold of Sancho and, lifting him in his arms — the whole crew being on their feet and on the alert — beginning from the starboard side, went passing and rolling him along on the crew's arms from bench to bench with such speed that the poor Sancho lost the sight of his eyes and undoubtedly thought the very demons were carrying him off; and they did not stop with him until they had brought him back along the port side and set him down in the stern. The poor man was left battered and panting and sweating all over, unable to imagine what had happened to him.
Don Quixote, who saw Sancho's flight without wings, asked the general whether these were ceremonies used with those who came aboard galleys for the first time; because if by any chance they were, he, having no intention of taking his vows in them, did not want to perform exercises of the kind; and he swore to God that if anybody came to lay hold of him to roll him about, he would kick the soul out of him. And, saying this, he got to his feet and gripped his sword.
At this instant they dropped the awning, and with an enormous noise let the yard fall from top to bottom. Sancho thought the sky was coming off its hinges and about to fall on his head; and, bending it down, full of fear, he put it between his legs. Don Quixote was not altogether easy either, for he too shuddered and hunched his shoulders and lost the colour in his face.
The crew hoisted the yard with the same speed and noise with which they had lowered it, and all this in silence, as though they had neither voice nor breath. The boatswain gave the signal to weigh anchor and, leaping into the middle of the gangway with his lash, began to swat the backs of the crew and to stand out little by little to sea.
When Sancho saw so many red feet moving at once — for such he thought the oars were — he said to himself:
"These really are enchanted things, and not the ones my master talks about. What have these wretched men done to be whipped like this, and how does this one man who goes about here whistling dare to whip so many people? Now I say that this is hell — or at least purgatory."
Don Quixote, who saw the attention with which Sancho was watching what was going on, said to him:
"Ah, Sancho my friend, how quickly and at how little cost you could, if you wanted, strip yourself from the waist up and place yourself among these gentlemen and make an end of Dulcinea's disenchantment! For with the misery and the pain of so many, you would not feel your own much; and what is more, it might be that the wise Merlin would count each one of these lashes, for being given by a good hand, as ten of the ones you must in the end give yourself."
The general was about to ask what lashes these were, or what disenchantment of Dulcinea, when the seaman said:
"Montjuïc is signalling that there is an oared vessel on the coast on the western side."
Hearing this, the general leapt into the gangway and said:
"Come, my sons, do not let her get away from us! This must be some brigantine of Algerine corsairs that the lookout is signalling to us."
The other three galleys came up at once to the flagship to learn what they were ordered. The general ordered two of them to stand out to sea, and he with the other would go along close in to land, so that in this way the vessel should not escape them. The crew pulled hard at the oars, driving the galleys on with such fury that they seemed to fly.
The two that stood out to sea, at about two miles, made out a vessel which by eye they marked at some fourteen or fifteen benches — and so it was. This vessel, when she made out the galleys, made off, meaning and hoping to escape by her speed; but it went badly for her, because the flagship was one of the swiftest vessels that sailed the sea, and she gained on her so fast that those on the brigantine plainly knew they could not escape. And so the captain would have had them drop their oars and give themselves up, so as not to provoke the commander of our galleys into anger.
But fortune, which was guiding it another way, arranged that, just as the flagship came so close that those on the vessel could hear the voices from her calling on them to surrender, two toraquis — which is as much as to say two drunken Turks — who were on the brigantine among these twelve, fired two muskets and killed two soldiers who were on our forecastle. Seeing which, the general swore to leave nobody alive of all he took on that vessel; and, coming on to ram her at full fury, she slipped away under his oars.
The galley went on a good way ahead; those on the vessel saw themselves lost, made sail while the galley was coming round, and once more, under sail and oar, made off; but their diligence did not help them as much as their boldness harmed them, because the flagship caught them up at a little over half a mile, laid her oars over them and took them all alive.
At this the other two galleys came up, and all four with the prize went back to the beach, where an infinite number of people were waiting for them, eager to see what they had brought. The general anchored near land and saw that the viceroy of the city was on the shore. He ordered the skiff to be let down to bring him, and ordered the yard to be lowered so as to hang at once the captain and the rest of the Turks he had taken on the vessel, who would be about thirty-six persons, all of them fine-looking men and most of them Turkish musketeers.
The general asked who the captain of the brigantine was, and he was answered by one of the prisoners in the Castilian tongue, who afterwards proved to be a Spanish renegade:
"This young man you see here, sir, is our captain."
And he showed him one of the loveliest and most gallant young men that human imagination could paint. His age, to look at him, did not reach twenty. The general asked him:
"Tell me, you ill-advised dog, what moved you to kill my soldiers, when you saw that it was impossible for you to escape? Is this the respect that is kept for flagships? Do you not know that rashness is not valour? Doubtful hopes ought to make men bold, but not foolhardy."
The captain was about to answer, but the general could not hear the answer just then, having to go and receive the viceroy, who was already coming aboard the galley, and with whom there came some of his servants and some people of the town.
"The hunting has been good, my lord general!" said the viceroy.
"And so good," answered the general, "that Your Excellency shall see it hanging from this yard in a moment."
"How so?" replied the viceroy.
"Because they have killed me," answered the general, "against all law and against all reason and usage of war, two of the best soldiers in these galleys; and I have sworn to hang all those I have taken prisoner, and chiefly this young man, who is the captain of the brigantine."
And he showed him the young man, who already had his hands tied and the cord round his throat, waiting for death.
The viceroy looked at him; and, seeing him so beautiful and so gallant and so humble — his beauty giving him at that instant a letter of recommendation — he was seized with a desire to save him from death; and so he asked him:
"Tell me, captain: are you a Turk by nation, or a Moor, or a renegade?"
To which the young man answered, likewise in the Castilian tongue:
"I am neither a Turk by nation, nor a Moor, nor a renegade."
"Well, what are you?" replied the viceroy.
"A Christian woman," answered the young man.
"A woman and a Christian, and in such a dress and in such a pass? That is a thing more to be marvelled at than believed."
"Suspend, gentlemen," said the young man, "the carrying out of my death; for not much will be lost by your revenge being put off while I tell you my life."
Who could have had a heart so hard as not to be softened by these words — or at least to wait to hear what the sad and wounded young person wanted to say? The general told him to say whatever he liked, but not to expect to obtain any pardon for his known guilt. With this leave, the young man began to speak in this way:
"Of that nation more unfortunate than prudent, on whom a sea of misfortunes has rained down these last days, I was born, engendered by Morisco parents. In the current of their misfortune I was taken to Barbary by two uncles of mine, and it did me no good to say that I was a Christian, as in fact I am — and not one of the pretended or apparent ones but one of the true and Catholic ones. It did not help me, with those who had charge of our wretched exile, to tell this truth; nor would my uncles believe it; on the contrary, they took it for a lie and an invention for staying in the land where I had been born, and so, more by force than by good will, they brought me with them.
"I had a Christian mother and a judicious and Christian father, neither more nor less; I sucked in the Catholic faith with my milk; I was brought up with good habits; and neither in my speech nor in them did I ever, as I believe, give signs of being a Morisco. Alongside and in step with these virtues — for I believe they are virtues — my beauty grew, if I have any; and, although my reserve and my seclusion were great, they must not have been so great that a young gentleman called Don Gaspar Gregorio, the eldest son of a gentleman who has an estate of his own next to our village, did not have a chance to see me.
"How he saw me, how we spoke to each other, how he was lost for me and how I was not much won by him would be long to tell, and the more so at a time when I am afraid that between my tongue and my throat the harsh cord that threatens me is going to come across. And so I shall only say how Don Gregorio chose to go with me into our exile. He mixed with the Moriscos who came out of other places, because he knew the language very well, and on the journey he made friends with two uncles of mine who were bringing me with them.
"Because my father, prudent and provident, as soon as he heard the first edict of our exile, left the village and went to look for somewhere in foreign kingdoms to take us in. He left shut up and buried, in a place that only I know of, a great many pearls and stones of great value, along with some money in gold crusadoes and doubloons. He ordered me on no account to touch the treasure he was leaving, if we were exiled before he came back.
"I did so; and with my uncles, as I have said, and other relations and connections we crossed to Barbary; and the place where we settled was Algiers, as though we had settled in hell itself. The king got to hear of my beauty, and rumour told him of my riches — which in part was my good fortune. He called me before him, asked me what part of Spain I was from and what money and what jewels I had brought. I told him the place, and that the jewels and the money had been left buried in it, but that they could easily be got if I myself went back for them. All this I told him, fearing that it would not be my beauty that blinded him but his own greed.
"While he was in this talk with me, they came and told him that there was travelling with me one of the most gallant and beautiful young men that could be imagined. At once I understood that they were speaking of Don Gaspar Gregorio, whose beauty leaves behind the greatest that can be extolled. I was thrown into confusion, considering the danger Don Gregorio was running; because among those barbarous Turks a beautiful boy or youth is held and valued more than a woman, however lovely.
"The king ordered at once that he should be brought there in front of him so that he might see him, and asked me whether what they told him about that youth was true. Then I, almost as though warned by heaven, told him that it was; but that I would let him know that it was not a man but a woman like myself; and that I begged him to let me go and dress her in her natural clothes, so that she might show her beauty entirely and appear before him with less embarrassment. He told me to go and welcome, and that the next day we would talk about the way of arranging for me to go back to Spain to get out the hidden treasure.
"I spoke to Don Gaspar; I told him the danger he ran in showing himself to be a man; I dressed him as a Moorish woman, and that same afternoon brought him into the king's presence; who, on seeing him, was astonished and formed the design of keeping her to make a present of her to the Grand Turk. And, to escape the danger he might have in his own harem and to fear from himself, he ordered her to be put in the house of some Moorish ladies of quality to guard her and serve her, where they took her at once.
"What the two of us felt — for I cannot deny that I love him — let it be left to the thoughts of those who part when they love each other well. Then the king laid the plan for me to come back to Spain in this brigantine and for two Turks by nation to go with me, who were the ones who killed your soldiers. This Spanish renegade also came with me" — and she pointed at the man who had spoken first — "of whom I know very well that he is a Christian in secret and comes with more wish to stay in Spain than to go back to Barbary. The rest of the crew of the brigantine are Moors and Turks, who serve for nothing but to pull at the oar.
"The two Turks, greedy and insolent, without keeping to the orders we had that they should put me and this renegade ashore on the first part of Spain in Christian dress, which we came provided with, chose first to sweep this coast and make some prize if they could, fearing that if they put us ashore first, through some accident that might happen to the two of us we might reveal that the brigantine was at sea; and if there happened to be galleys along this coast, they might be caught.
"Last night we made out this beach and, without knowing about these four galleys, we were made out ourselves, and there has happened to us what you have seen. In short: Don Gregorio remains in woman's dress among women, in plain danger of being lost, and I see my hands tied, waiting — or, better said, fearing — to lose my life, which by now wearies me.
"This, gentlemen, is the end of my lamentable history, as true as it is unfortunate. What I beg of you is that you let me die as a Christian; for, as I have said, in nothing have I been guilty of the guilt into which those of my nation have fallen."
And then she fell silent, her eyes swollen with tender tears, which were joined by a great many from those who were present. The viceroy, tender and compassionate, without saying her a word, came up to her and with his own hands took off the cord that bound the beautiful hands of the Moorish girl.
While the Morisco Christian woman was telling her strange history, an old pilgrim who had come aboard the galley when the viceroy came had kept his eyes fixed on her; and the Morisco girl had hardly finished her speech when he threw himself at her feet and, embracing them, with words broken by a thousand sobs and sighs, said to her:
"O Ana Félix, my unfortunate daughter! I am your father Ricote, who was coming back to look for you, unable to live without you, since you are my soul."
At which words Sancho opened his eyes and raised his head, which he had been keeping bowed, thinking about the misfortune of his ride; and, looking at the pilgrim, he knew him to be the same Ricote he had met on the day he left his government, and he confirmed that this was his daughter — who, being untied by now, embraced her father, mixing her tears with his. And Ricote said to the general and the viceroy:
"This, gentlemen, is my daughter, more unfortunate in her doings than in her name. Ana Félix she is called, with the surname of Ricote, famous as much for her beauty as for my riches. I left my country to look in foreign kingdoms for somebody to shelter and take us in; and, having found it in Germany, I came back in this pilgrim's dress in the company of some Germans to look for my daughter and to dig up a great deal of wealth I had left hidden. I did not find my daughter; I found the treasure, which I carry with me; and now, by the strange roundabout you have seen, I have found the treasure that most enriches me, which is my beloved daughter.
"If our small guilt and her tears and mine can, by the integrity of your justice, open doors to mercy, use it with us; for we never had any thought of offending you, nor did we agree in any way with the intentions of our people, who have been justly exiled."
Then Sancho said:
"I know Ricote well, and I know that what he says is true as far as Ana Félix's being his daughter goes; as to these other odds and ends of coming and going and having good or bad intentions, I do not meddle."
Everybody present being amazed at the strange business, the general said:
"Come what may, your tears will not let me keep my oath: live, beautiful Ana Félix, the years of life that heaven has settled for you, and let the insolent, reckless men who committed the offence carry the penalty of their guilt."
And he ordered at once that the two Turks who had killed his two soldiers should be hanged from the yard; but the viceroy begged him earnestly not to hang them, since what they had done had been madness rather than valour. The general did what the viceroy asked, because revenge is not well carried out in cold blood.
Then they set about laying a plan for getting Don Gaspar Gregorio out of the danger he was left in. Ricote offered for it more than two thousand ducats that he had in pearls and jewels. A great many ways were suggested, but none was as good as the one given by the Spanish renegade already mentioned, who offered to go back to Algiers in some small boat of about six benches, manned by Christian rowers; because he knew where and how and when he could and should land, and likewise he was not ignorant of the house where Don Gaspar was left.
The general and the viceroy doubted about trusting the renegade, or trusting the Christians who were to pull at the oar; Ana Félix went surety for him, and Ricote her father said he would come forward to pay the ransom of the Christians if they should happen to be lost.
Being settled, then, in this opinion, the viceroy went ashore, and Don Antonio Moreno took the Morisco girl and her father home with him, the viceroy charging him to treat them well and make much of them as far as he could; and for his own part he offered whatever there was in his house for their entertainment. So great was the good will and charity that Ana Félix's beauty poured into his breast.
Don Antonio Moreno's wife, the history tells, was extremely pleased to see Ana Félix in her house. She received her with a great deal of graciousness, being as taken with her beauty as with her good sense — for in both the one and the other the Morisco girl was outstanding; and all the people of the city came to see her as though a bell had been rung.
Don Quixote told Don Antonio that the plan they had settled on for Don Gregorio's freeing was not a good one, because it had more of the dangerous in it than of the convenient, and that it would be better to put him ashore in Barbary with his arms and his horse; for he would bring him out in spite of all the Moors, as Don Gaiferos had done with his wife Melisendra.
"Let your worship note," said Sancho, hearing this, "that Señor Don Gaiferos brought his wife out of dry land and took her to France over dry land; but here, if we do bring Don Gregorio out, we have no way of bringing him to Spain, since the sea lies between."
"There is a remedy for everything except death," answered Don Quixote; "for, the boat coming to the shore, we can embark on it though all the world should stop us."
"Your worship paints it and makes it easy very well," said Sancho, "but from saying to doing is a long way; and I hold by the renegade, who seems to me a very honest man with very good bowels in him."
Don Antonio said that if the renegade did not come well out of the business, the expedient would be taken of the great Don Quixote's crossing over to Barbary.
Two days later the renegade set off in a swift boat of six oars a side, manned by the most valiant of crews; and two days after that the galleys sailed for the Levant, the general having asked the viceroy to be so good as to let him know what happened in Don Gregorio's freeing and in Ana Félix's case; the viceroy undertook to do it as he asked.
And one morning, Don Quixote going out to ride along the beach armed in all his arms — because, as he often said, arms were his adornment and fighting his rest, and he never found himself without them for a moment — he saw coming towards him a knight likewise armed cap-a-pie, who carried a shining moon painted on his shield; who, coming within a distance at which he could be heard, addressed his words to Don Quixote and said in a loud voice:
"Distinguished knight and never-sufficiently-praised Don Quixote of La Mancha, I am the Knight of the White Moon, whose unheard-of exploits will perhaps have brought me back to your memory. I come to contend with you and to try the strength of your arms, so as to make you know and confess that my lady, be she who she may, is beyond comparison more beautiful than your Dulcinea of El Toboso. Which truth, if you confess it plainly and openly, you will save yourself from death and me from the labour I must take in giving it you.
"And if you fight and I conquer you, I want no other satisfaction than that, laying down your arms and holding off from looking for adventures, you should gather yourself in and withdraw to your village for the space of a year, where you are to live without laying hand to your sword, in quiet peace and profitable rest, since this is what best suits the increase of your property and the salvation of your soul. And if you conquer me, my head shall be at your discretion, and the spoils of my arms and my horse shall be yours, and the fame of my exploits shall pass to yours. Consider which is best for you, and answer me at once, because I have all today as my term for despatching this business."
Don Quixote was bewildered and astounded, as much by the Knight of the White Moon's arrogance as by the cause for which he was challenging him; and with composure and a severe air he answered him:
"Knight of the White Moon, whose exploits have not so far come to my notice, I would dare to swear that you have never seen the illustrious Dulcinea; for if you had seen her, I know you would have tried not to put yourself to this demand, because the sight of her would have undeceived you of there ever having been or ever being able to be any beauty that could be compared with hers.
"And so, not telling you that you lie but that you are wrong in what you propose, I accept your challenge with the conditions you have named, and at once, so that the day you have appointed may not go by; and I except from the conditions only that of the fame of your exploits passing to me, because I do not know what they are or of what kind: with my own I am content, such as they are. Take, then, whichever part of the field you like, for I shall do the same; and whoever God gives it to, Saint Peter bless it to him."
They had made out the Knight of the White Moon from the city and told the viceroy, who was talking with Don Quixote of La Mancha. The viceroy, believing it would be some new adventure got up by Don Antonio Moreno or by some other gentleman of the city, went out at once to the beach with Don Antonio and with a great many other gentlemen who accompanied him, just as Don Quixote was turning Rocinante's reins to take as much of the field as he needed.
The viceroy, then, seeing that the two of them were giving signs of turning to charge each other, placed himself between them, asking them what the cause was that moved them to give battle so suddenly. The Knight of the White Moon answered that it was precedence in beauty, and in a few words said him the same things he had said to Don Quixote, along with the acceptance of the conditions of the challenge made by both sides.
The viceroy came up to Don Antonio and asked him softly whether he knew who this Knight of the White Moon was, or whether it was some trick they meant to play on Don Quixote. Don Antonio answered him that he neither knew who he was nor whether the challenge was in jest or in earnest. This answer left the viceroy perplexed as to whether or not he should let them go on with the battle; but, being unable to persuade himself that it was anything but a joke, he stepped aside, saying:
"Gentlemen knights, if there is no remedy here but confessing or dying, and Señor Don Quixote sticks at his thirteen and your worship of the White Moon at your fourteen, then into the hand of God, and have at it."
The Knight of the White Moon thanked the viceroy in courteous and judicious words for the leave that was given them, and Don Quixote did the same; and he, commending himself to heaven with all his heart and to his Dulcinea — as was his custom at the beginning of the battles that offered themselves — went and took a little more of the field, because he saw that his opponent was doing the same. And, without a trumpet sounding or any other warlike instrument giving them the signal to charge, both of them at the same moment turned their horses' reins.
And, as the White Moon's horse was the swifter, he reached Don Quixote when two thirds of the course had been run, and there he met him with such mighty force, without touching him with his lance — which he raised, apparently on purpose — that he brought Rocinante and Don Quixote down in a dangerous fall. He was on top of him at once and, setting his lance on his visor, said to him:
"You are conquered, knight, and dead too, if you do not confess the conditions of our challenge."
Don Quixote, battered and stunned, without raising his visor, as though he were speaking from inside a tomb, said in a weakened and sickly voice:
"Dulcinea of El Toboso is the most beautiful woman in the world, and I the most unfortunate knight on earth; and it is not right that my weakness should defraud this truth. Press home the lance, knight, and take my life, since you have taken my honour."
"That I shall not do, certainly," said the Knight of the White Moon. "Let the fame of the lady Dulcinea of El Toboso's beauty live and live entire; I am content only that the great Don Quixote should withdraw to his village for a year, or for such time as I may order him, as we agreed before going into this battle."
All this the viceroy and Don Antonio heard, along with a great many others who were there; and they heard likewise that Don Quixote answered that, so long as he was not asked for anything that would be to Dulcinea's damage, he would carry out all the rest as an exact and truthful knight.
This confession made, the Knight of the White Moon turned his reins and, bowing his head to the viceroy, went at a half gallop into the city.
The viceroy ordered Don Antonio to go after him and by all means to find out who he was. They lifted Don Quixote up, uncovered his face and found him without colour and sweating all over. Rocinante, out of pure ill usage, could not stir for the moment.
Sancho, all sad, all grieved, did not know what to say or what to do: it seemed to him that this whole business was happening in a dream and that all that machinery was a matter of enchantment. He saw his master conquered and bound not to take up arms for a year; he imagined the light of the glory of his exploits darkened, the hopes of his fresh promises undone as smoke is undone by the wind. He was afraid that Rocinante might be left crippled, and his master's bones out of joint — though it would have been no small piece of luck if it had been his madness that came out of joint.
Finally, in a sedan chair the viceroy ordered to be brought, they carried him to the city; and the viceroy went back to it too, wanting to know who the Knight of the White Moon might be, who had left Don Quixote in such a bad way.
Don Antonio Moreno followed the Knight of the White Moon, and a great many boys followed him too — and even chased him — until they shut him up in an inn inside the city. Don Antonio went in, wanting to know him; a squire came out to receive him and to disarm him; he shut himself up in a room on the ground floor, and Don Antonio with him, whose bread would not bake until he knew who he was. The Knight of the White Moon, seeing, then, that this gentleman would not leave him, said to him:
"I know very well, sir, what you have come for, which is to find out who I am; and, since there is no reason to deny it you, while this servant of mine disarms me I shall tell you, without falling a point short of the truth of the case.
"Know, sir, that they call me the bachelor Sansón Carrasco. I am from the same village as Don Quixote of La Mancha, whose madness and folly move all of us who know him to pity him; and among those who have pitied him most I have been one. And, believing that his health lies in his rest and in his staying in his own country and his own house, I laid a plan to make him stay in it.
"And so, three months ago I came out onto the road as a knight errant, calling myself the Knight of the Mirrors, meaning to fight him and conquer him without doing him any harm, laying it down as a condition of our fight that the beaten man should be at the winner's discretion. And what I meant to ask of him — for I already judged him beaten — was that he should go back to his village and not leave it for a whole year, in which time he might be cured.
"But fortune arranged it otherwise, because he conquered me and knocked me off my horse, and so my plan came to nothing. He went on his way and I came back, beaten, put out and battered by the fall, which was besides a dangerous one. But this did not take away my wish to go back and look for him and conquer him, as has been seen today. And, as he is so exact in keeping the orders of knight-errantry, he will beyond any doubt keep the one I have given him, in fulfilment of his word.
"This, sir, is what is afoot, and I have nothing else at all to tell you. I beg you not to give me away or to tell Don Quixote who I am, so that my good intentions may take effect and a man may recover his judgement who has an excellent one, if only the follies of chivalry would leave him alone."
"Oh, sir," said Don Antonio, "God forgive you the wrong you have done all the world in trying to make the most amusing madman in it sane! Do you not see, sir, that the good that Don Quixote's sanity may do cannot come near the pleasure he gives with his ravings? But I imagine that all the master bachelor's contrivance will not be enough to make a man so utterly mad sane again; and if it were not against charity, I should say: let Don Quixote never get well, because with his health we lose not only his own charms but Sancho Panza his squire's, any one of which could gladden melancholy itself again. For all that, I shall be quiet and shall say nothing to him, to see whether I turn out right in suspecting that the pains taken by Señor Carrasco will have no effect."
Carrasco answered that as things stood the business was at a good point, and that he hoped for a happy outcome from it. And, Don Antonio offering to do whatever else he might order, he took his leave of him; and, having had his arms tied up on a mule, that very instant, on the horse he had gone into the battle with, he left the city that same day and went back to his own country, without anything happening to him that obliges us to tell it in this true history.
Don Antonio told the viceroy everything Carrasco had told him, at which the viceroy took no great pleasure, because in Don Quixote's retirement everybody who had news of his madnesses lost the pleasure they might have had of them.
Six days Don Quixote spent in bed, downcast, sad, thoughtful and in a bad way, his imagination coming and going over the unfortunate business of his defeat. Sancho consoled him, and among other things said to him:
"My dear sir, let your worship lift up your head and be glad if you can, and give thanks to heaven that, since it threw you down on the ground, you did not come out of it with a broken rib. And, since you know that where they give they take, and that there are not always flitches of bacon where there are hooks, snap your fingers at the doctor, for you do not need him to cure you of this illness. Let us go back home and leave off going about looking for adventures in lands and places we do not know.
"And if it is properly considered, I am the greatest loser here, although your worship is the worst used. I, who left with the government the wish to be a governor again, did not leave the wish to be a count — which will never come off if your worship leaves off being a king by leaving the exercise of your chivalry; and so my hopes come to turn into smoke."
"Be quiet, Sancho, since you see that my seclusion and retirement is not to go beyond a year; for then I shall go back to my honourable exercises, and I shall not lack a kingdom to win and an earldom to give you."
"May God hear it," said Sancho, "and sin be deaf; for I have always heard it said that a good hope is worth more than a poor possession."
They were at this when Don Antonio came in, saying with signs of the greatest contentment:
"A reward, Señor Don Quixote! Don Gregorio and the renegade who went for him are on the beach! What am I saying, on the beach? They are already at the viceroy's house, and will be here in a moment."
Don Quixote cheered up somewhat and said:
"Truly I am half inclined to say that I should have been glad if it had all turned out the other way round, because it would have obliged me to cross over into Barbary, where with the strength of my arm I should have given liberty not only to Don Gregorio but to all the Christian captives there are in Barbary. But what am I saying, wretched man? Am I not the one who has been beaten? Am I not the one who has been thrown down? Am I not the one who cannot take up arms for a year? Then what am I promising? What am I boasting of, when the distaff suits me better than the sword?"
"Leave that alone, sir," said Sancho. "Long live the hen, even with her pip; for today it is your turn and tomorrow mine; and in these matters of encounters and knocks there is no taking any measure of them, since the man who falls today can get up tomorrow — unless he wants to stay in bed; I mean unless he lets himself faint away without gathering fresh spirit for fresh quarrels. And let your worship get up now to receive Don Gregorio, for it seems to me that the people are in a stir and he must be in the house by now."
And it was the truth; because, Don Gregorio and the renegade having already given the viceroy an account of their going and coming, Don Gregorio, eager to see Ana Félix, came with the renegade to Don Antonio's house. And although Don Gregorio, when they brought him out of Algiers, was in woman's clothes, in the boat he exchanged them for those of a captive who came out with him; but in whatever he had come, he would have shown himself a person to be coveted and served and valued, because he was extremely beautiful, and his age to look at him was seventeen or eighteen.
Ricote and his daughter came out to receive him: the father in tears and the daughter with modesty. They did not embrace one another, because where there is much love there is generally not much freedom. The two beauties of Don Gregorio and Ana Félix together particularly amazed all those who were present. Silence was what spoke there for the two lovers, and their eyes were the tongues that revealed their glad and modest thoughts.
The renegade told the contrivance and the means he had used to get Don Gregorio out; Don Gregorio told the dangers and the straits he had been in with the women he had been left with — not in a long speech but in a few words, in which he showed that his judgement went ahead of his years. Finally Ricote paid and satisfied both the renegade and those who had pulled at the oar generously. The renegade was reincorporated and reconciled with the Church, and from a rotten limb came back clean and sound with penance and repentance.
Two days later the viceroy discussed with Don Antonio what way they might have of getting Ana Félix and her father allowed to stay in Spain, since it seemed to them no drawback at all that so Christian a daughter and so apparently well-meaning a father should stay in it. Don Antonio offered to come to the court to negotiate it, where he had of necessity to come on other business, giving it to be understood that there, by means of favour and gifts, a great many difficult things are brought off.
"There is no hoping," said Ricote, who was present at this talk, "in favours or in gifts, because with the great Don Bernardino de Velasco, Count of Salazar, to whom His Majesty gave charge of our expulsion, entreaties are worth nothing, nor promises, nor gifts, nor pity. Because although it is true that he mixes mercy with justice, since he sees that the whole body of our nation is contaminated and rotten, he uses on it the cautery that burns rather than the ointment that softens.
"And so, with prudence, with shrewdness, with diligence and with the fears he sets up, he has carried on his strong shoulders the weight of this great machine to its due execution, without our contrivances, stratagems, entreaties and frauds having been able to dazzle his eyes of Argus, which he keeps constantly on the alert so that none of our people may stay behind or be hidden — like a hidden root that with time may afterwards come to sprout and put out poisonous fruits in Spain, now clean and now rid of the fears our numbers held it in. A heroic resolution of the great Philip the Third, and unheard-of prudence in having entrusted it to that same Don Bernardino de Velasco!"
"Come what may, I shall take what steps I can once I am there, and let heaven do what it is best pleased to do," said Don Antonio. "Don Gregorio shall go with me to console the grief his parents must be feeling for his absence; Ana Félix shall stay with my wife in my house, or in a convent; and I know that the lord viceroy will be glad for good Ricote to stay in his, until we see how I get on."
The viceroy consented to everything proposed; but Don Gregorio, learning what was afoot, said that on no account could he or would he leave Doña Ana Félix. But, meaning to see his parents and to lay a plan for coming back for her, he agreed to the settled arrangement. Ana Félix stayed with Don Antonio's wife, and Ricote in the viceroy's house.
The day of Don Antonio's departure came, and that of Don Quixote and Sancho, which was two days later — for the fall did not let him take the road any sooner. There were tears, there were sighs, faintings and sobs when Don Gregorio took his leave of Ana Félix. Ricote offered Don Gregorio a thousand crowns if he wanted them; but he took none, only five that Don Antonio lent him, promising to repay them at court. With this the two of them set off, and Don Quixote and Sancho afterwards, as has been said: Don Quixote unarmed and in travelling dress, Sancho on foot, because the grey was loaded with the arms.
On leaving Barcelona, Don Quixote turned to look at the place where he had fallen, and said:
"Here Troy was! Here my ill luck, and not my cowardice, carried off the glories I had won; here fortune used her turns and returns on me; here my exploits were darkened; here, in short, my good fortune fell, never to rise again!"
Hearing which, Sancho said:
"It is as much the part of valiant hearts, my dear sir, to have patience in misfortunes as gladness in prosperity; and this I judge by myself, for if I was glad when I was a governor, now that I am a squire on foot I am not sad. Because I have heard it said that this thing they call Fortune about the place is a drunken, whimsical woman and, above all, blind, and so she does not see what she is doing, and does not know whom she is throwing down or whom she is raising up."
"You are very philosophical, Sancho," answered Don Quixote; "you speak very judiciously — I do not know who teaches you. What I can tell you is that there is no fortune in the world, and that the things that happen in it, good or bad as they may be, do not come by chance but by the particular providence of heaven; and from this comes what is generally said, that every man is the maker of his own fortune.
"I have been the maker of mine, but not with the necessary prudence, and so my presumptions have cost me dear; for I ought to have thought that the mighty bulk of the White Moon's horse could not be resisted by Rocinante's weakness. I ventured, in short; I did what I could; they knocked me down; and, although I lost my honour, I did not lose, and cannot lose, the virtue of keeping my word. When I was a knight errant, bold and valiant, with my deeds and my hands I gave credit to my doings; and now, when I am a squire on foot, I shall give credit to my words by keeping the one I gave in my promise. Walk on, then, Sancho my friend, and let us go and spend the year of our novitiate in our own country; in which seclusion we shall gain fresh strength for going back to the exercise of arms, which I never forget."
"Sir," answered Sancho, "travelling on foot is not such a delightful thing that it moves and stirs me to make long stages. Let us leave these arms hanging on some tree in place of a hanged man; and, with me astride the grey and my feet up off the ground, we shall make the stages as your worship asks and measures them; for to think that I am to travel on foot and make them long ones is to think the impossible."
"You have spoken well, Sancho," answered Don Quixote. "Let my arms be hung up for a trophy, and at the foot of them, or round about them, we shall carve on the trees what was written on the trophy of Roland's arms:
Let nobody move these who cannot stand the test with Roland."
"That all seems to me of pearl," answered Sancho; "and if it were not for the want Rocinante would be to us on the road, it would be as well to leave him hanging too."
"Neither he nor the arms," replied Don Quixote, "do I want hanged, so that it may not be said that for good service, bad reward!"
"Your worship speaks very well," answered Sancho, "because, in the opinion of judicious men, the ass's fault is not to be laid on the pack-saddle; and, since your worship has the blame for this business, punish yourself and do not let your anger burst out on the already broken and bloody arms, or on Rocinante's gentleness, or on the softness of my feet, by wanting them to walk more than is fair."
In these arguments and this talk that whole day went by for them, and four more, without anything happening to hold up their road. And on the fifth day, at the entrance of a village, they found a great many people at the door of an inn who, it being a holiday, were amusing themselves there. As Don Quixote came up to them, a farm labourer raised his voice, saying:
"One of these two gentlemen coming here, who do not know the parties, shall say what is to be done about our wager."
"I shall say it, certainly," answered Don Quixote, "with all uprightness, if I can manage to understand it."
"The case is this, then, my good sir," said the labourer. "A neighbour of this village, so fat that he weighs eleven arrobas — an arroba being twenty-five pounds — challenged another neighbour of his, who weighs no more than five, to a race. It was the condition that they should run a course of a hundred paces with equal weights; and, the challenger having been asked how the weight was to be made equal, he said that the challenged man, who weighs five arrobas, should put six of iron on his back, and in this way the thin man's eleven arrobas would be equal to the fat man's eleven."
"Not that," said Sancho at this point, before Don Quixote could answer. "And it falls to me, who left off being a governor and a judge a few days ago, as all the world knows, to settle these doubts and give an opinion in every suit."
"Answer and welcome, Sancho my friend," said Don Quixote, "for I am not fit to give crumbs to a cat, my judgement being so disturbed and turned upside down."
With this leave, Sancho said to the labourers, a good many of whom stood round him with their mouths open, waiting for the sentence to come out of his:
"Brothers, what the fat man asks does not stand up, and it has not the shadow of any justice in it; because if it is true what is said, that the challenged man may choose the weapons, it is not right that this man should choose such as would hinder him and stop him from coming out the winner. And so it is my opinion that the fat challenger should prune, peel, thin out, polish and trim himself, and take six arrobas of his flesh off from here or there on his body, wherever seems best and suits him. And in this way, being left at five arrobas of weight, he will be even and level with his opponent's five, and so they will be able to run equally."
"I swear," said a labourer who had heard Sancho's sentence, "that this gentleman has spoken like a blessed saint and given sentence like a canon! But it is a safe bet that the fat man will not want to take an ounce off his flesh, let alone six arrobas."
"The best thing is for them not to run at all," answered another, "so that the thin man is not ground down by the weight and the fat man is not carved up. And let half the wager go on wine, and let us take these gentlemen to the tavern for the good stuff — and on my back be the cloak when it rains."
"I, gentlemen," answered Don Quixote, "am grateful to you, but I cannot stop for a moment, because sad thoughts and events make me look discourteous and travel faster than at a walk."
And so, giving Rocinante the spurs, he passed on, leaving them astonished at having seen and noted both his strange figure and his servant's good sense — for such they judged Sancho's. And another of the labourers said:
"If the servant is so judicious, what must the master be? I would wager that if they go and study at Salamanca, in no time at all they will come to be judges of the court; for it is all a joke but studying and more studying, and having favour and luck; and when a man least expects it, he finds himself with a magistrate's rod in his hand or a mitre on his head."
That night master and man spent in the middle of the fields under the bare, uncovered sky; and the next day, following their road, they saw coming towards them a man on foot with saddlebags round his neck and a javelin or pike in his hand, exactly the figure of a foot courier. Who, on coming up to Don Quixote, quickened his step and came at a half run and, embracing him round the right thigh, since he could reach no higher, said to him with signs of great gladness:
"O my lord Don Quixote of La Mancha, what great contentment must reach my lord the duke's heart when he learns that your worship is coming back to his castle — for he is still there with my lady the duchess!"
"I do not know you, my friend," answered Don Quixote, "and I do not know who you are, unless you tell me."
"I, Señor Don Quixote," answered the courier, "am Tosilos, the duke my lord's footman, who would not fight with your worship over the marriage of Doña Rodríguez's daughter."
"God bless me!" said Don Quixote. "Is it possible that you are the man whom my enemies the enchanters transformed into that footman you speak of, to cheat me of the honour of that battle?"
"Be quiet, my good sir," replied the letter-carrier, "for there was no enchantment at all and no change of face at all: I went into the lists as much Tosilos the footman as I came out of them Tosilos the footman. I thought I would get married without fighting, because the girl had taken my fancy; but my idea turned out backwards, for as soon as your worship left our castle the duke my lord had me given a hundred strokes for having gone against the orders he had given me before going into the battle. And it has all ended in the girl's being a nun by now, and Doña Rodríguez's having gone back to Castile, and my going now to Barcelona to take a packet of letters to the viceroy that my master is sending him. If your worship would like a little drop — warm, but neat — I have a gourd full of the good stuff here, with I do not know how many little slices of Tronchón cheese, which will serve as a call and an awakener to thirst, if by any chance it is asleep."
"I take up the invitation," said Sancho, "and let the rest of the courtesies go hang, and let good Tosilos pour out, in spite and defiance of all the enchanters there are in the Indies."
"In short," said Don Quixote, "you, Sancho, are the greatest glutton in the world and the greatest ignoramus on earth, since you cannot persuade yourself that this courier is enchanted and this Tosilos a counterfeit. Stay with him and fill yourself, and I shall go on ahead slowly, waiting for you to come."
The footman laughed, unsheathed his gourd, unbagged his slices, and, taking out a small loaf, he and Sancho sat down on the green grass and in good peace and fellowship polished off and struck bottom in the whole store of the saddlebags, with such good appetite that they licked the packet of letters simply because it smelt of cheese. Tosilos said to Sancho:
"Without any doubt this master of yours, Sancho my friend, must be a madman."
"Must he?" answered Sancho. "He is in no man's debt, for he pays for everything, and the more so when the coin is madness. I see it well enough, and I tell him so well enough; but what good does it do? And the more so now that he is finished off, because he has been beaten by the Knight of the White Moon."
Tosilos begged him to tell him what had happened, but Sancho answered him that it was discourteous to leave his master waiting for him; that another day, if they met, there would be room for it. And, getting up after shaking his coat and the crumbs out of his beard, he drove the grey on ahead and, saying goodbye, left Tosilos and caught up with his master, who was waiting for him in the shade of a tree.
If a great many thoughts wore at Don Quixote before he was knocked down, a great many more wore at him after his fall. He was in the shade of the tree, as has been said, and there, like flies to honey, thoughts came at him and stung him: some went to Dulcinea's disenchantment and others to the life he would have to lead in his forced retirement. Sancho came up and praised the generous nature of Tosilos the footman.
"Is it possible," Don Quixote said to him, "that you still think, Sancho, that that man is a real footman? It seems to have gone out of your mind that you have seen Dulcinea turned and transformed into a country girl, and the Knight of the Mirrors into the bachelor Carrasco — all of them the works of the enchanters who persecute me. But tell me now: did you ask this Tosilos of yours what God has done with Altisidora? Whether she has wept for my absence, or whether she has already left in the hands of forgetfulness the loving thoughts that wore at her in my presence?"
"The thoughts I had," answered Sancho, "were not such as to give me room to ask foolish questions. Body of me, sir, is your worship now in a state to inquire into other people's thoughts, and especially loving ones?"
"Look, Sancho," said Don Quixote, "there is a great difference between the works that are done out of love and those that are done out of gratitude. It may very well be that a knight is unloving, but it cannot be, strictly speaking, that he is ungrateful. Altisidora loved me, apparently; she gave me the three headcloths you know about; she wept at my going; she cursed me, abused me, complained, in spite of shame, in public: all signs that she adored me, for lovers' angers generally end in curses.
"I had no hopes to give her and no treasures to offer her, because mine are made over to Dulcinea, and knights errant's treasures are, like goblins', apparent and false; and I can only give her these memories I have of her — without prejudice, though, to those I have of Dulcinea, whom you wrong by the slackness you show in whipping yourself and in punishing that flesh of yours, which I should like to see eaten by wolves, since it prefers to keep itself for the worms rather than for that poor lady's relief."
"Sir," answered Sancho, "if the truth is to be told, I cannot persuade myself that the lashes on my backside have anything to do with the disenchanting of the enchanted, which is as if we said: 'If your head aches, rub ointment on your knees.' At least I would dare to swear that in all the histories your worship has read that deal with knight-errantry you have never seen anybody disenchanted by lashes; but, one way or the other, I shall give them to myself when I feel like it and the time gives me a convenient chance to punish myself."
"God grant it," answered Don Quixote, "and may the heavens give you grace to grasp the obligation that lies on you to help my lady — who is yours too, since you are mine."
In this talk they were going along their road when they came to the very spot and place where they had been trampled by the bulls. Don Quixote recognised it and said to Sancho:
"This is the meadow where we came across those splendid shepherdesses and gallant shepherds who wanted to renew and imitate the pastoral Arcadia in it — an idea as new as it was judicious. In imitation of which, if it seems good to you, I should like us, Sancho, to turn ourselves into shepherds, at least for the time I have to be in retirement.
"I shall buy some sheep and all the other things necessary to the pastoral exercise; and, calling myself the shepherd Quixotize and you the shepherd Panzino, we shall go about the mountains, the woods and the meadows, singing here and lamenting there, drinking the liquid crystal of the springs, or of the clean little brooks, or of the great rivers. The oaks will give us with a most plentiful hand their sweetest fruit; the trunks of the hardest cork trees a seat; the willows shade; the roses scent; the wide meadows carpets tinted with a thousand colours; the clear, pure air breath; the moon and the stars light in spite of the darkness of the night; singing pleasure; weeping gladness; Apollo verses; love conceits — with which we shall be able to make ourselves everlasting and famous not only in the present but in the ages to come."
"By God," said Sancho, "that kind of life squares with me, and even corners with me. And what is more, the bachelor Sansón Carrasco and Master Nicolás the barber will hardly have got a good look at it before they will want to follow it and turn shepherds with us; and God grant the curate does not take it into his head to come into the fold too, being as cheerful as he is and as fond of a good time."
"You have spoken very well," said Don Quixote. "And the bachelor Sansón Carrasco, if he comes into the pastoral guild — as he undoubtedly will — can be called the shepherd Sansonino, or else the shepherd Carrascón; Nicolás the barber can call himself Miculoso, as the old Boscán called himself Nemoroso; for the curate I do not know what name to give, unless it is some derivative of his own, calling him the shepherd Curiambro. As for the shepherdesses whose lovers we are to be, we can pick their names as though out of a basket of pears; and, since my lady's suits a shepherdess as well as a princess, there is no call for me to wear myself out looking for another that would suit her better. You, Sancho, may give yours whatever name you like."
"I do not mean," answered Sancho, "to give her any but Teresona, which will suit her well with her fatness and with the name she has already, since she is called Teresa; and what is more, by celebrating her in my verses I come to reveal my chaste desires, since I do not go looking for better bread than wheaten in other people's houses. It will not be well for the curate to have a shepherdess, for the sake of good example; and if the bachelor wants to have one, his soul is in his own palm."
"God bless me," said Don Quixote, "what a life we shall lead, Sancho my friend! What pipes shall come to our ears, what Zamoran bagpipes, what little drums, and what jingles, and what rebecks! And then, what if among these different kinds of music the sound of the albogues rings out? There you will see almost all the pastoral instruments."
"What are albogues?" asked Sancho. "For I have never heard them named or seen them in all my life."
"Albogues," answered Don Quixote, "are certain brass plates in the shape of candlesticks which, being struck one against the other on the hollow side, make a sound that, if not very agreeable or harmonious, is not displeasing, and goes well with the rusticity of the bagpipe and the little drum. And this word albogues is Moorish, as are all those in our Castilian tongue that begin with al — that is to say, almohaza, a currycomb; almorzar, to take lunch; alhombra, a carpet; alguacil, a constable; alhucema, lavender; almacén, a storehouse; alcancía, a money-box; and others like them, which must be only a few more. And our language has only three that are Moorish and end in i, and they are borceguí, a buskin; zaquizamí, a garret; and maravedí, a coin. Alhelí, the gillyflower, and alfaquí, a Moorish doctor of the law, are known for Arabic both by the al they begin with and by the i they end in.
"This I have told you in passing, because the occasion of having named albogues brought it back to my memory. And what will help us a great deal to bring this exercise to look perfect is my being something of a poet, as you know, and the bachelor Sansón Carrasco's being one in the extreme. Of the curate I say nothing; but I would wager he must have his points and edgings of a poet; and that Master Nicolás has them too I do not doubt, because all of them, or most, are guitarists and versifiers. I shall complain of absence; you shall boast of being a constant lover; the shepherd Carrascón of being scorned; and the curate Curiambro of whatever he can best make use of — and so the thing will go along with nothing left to wish for."
To which Sancho answered:
"I am so unlucky, sir, that I am afraid the day will never come when I see myself in such an exercise. Oh, what neat spoons I shall make when I see myself a shepherd! What sops, what creams, what garlands and what pastoral odds and ends — which, if they do not earn me the name of a judicious man, will not fail to earn me the name of an ingenious one!
"Sanchica my daughter shall bring us our dinner out to the flock. But look out! For she is good-looking, and there are shepherds who are more malicious than simple, and I should not like her to go out for wool and come back shorn; and loves and unwholesome desires generally go about the fields as much as the cities, and about the shepherds' huts as much as the royal palaces; and take away the cause and you take away the sin; and eyes that do not see, a heart that does not break; and a leap over the hedge is worth more than good men's prayers."
"No more proverbs, Sancho," said Don Quixote, "since any one of those you have said is enough to give your idea to be understood. And many times I have advised you not to be so lavish with proverbs and to hold yourself back in saying them; but it seems to me it is preaching in the desert, and 'my mother beats me and I spin my top'."
"It seems to me," answered Sancho, "that your worship is like the saying: 'The frying pan said to the kettle, get away from here, black-face.' You are reproving me for saying proverbs, and your worship threads them two at a time."
"Look, Sancho," answered Don Quixote: "I bring in proverbs to the point, and when I say them they come like a ring on a finger; but you bring them in so much by the hair that you drag them rather than lead them. And if I do not remember wrongly, I have told you before that proverbs are short judgements drawn from the experience and the reflection of our wise men of old; and the proverb that does not come to the point is nonsense rather than a judgement. But let us leave this; and, since night is coming on, let us withdraw some way from the high road, where we shall spend the night — and God knows what tomorrow will be."
They withdrew, they supped late and badly, much against Sancho's will, to whom there presented themselves the hardships of knight-errantry practised in the woods and the mountains — although sometimes abundance had shown itself in castles and houses, both Don Diego de Miranda's and the wedding of the rich Camacho and Don Antonio Moreno's. But he considered that it was not possible for it to be always day or always night, and so he spent that night sleeping, and his master keeping watch.
The night was rather dark, though the moon was in the sky — but not in a part where it could be seen; for sometimes the lady Diana goes off to take a walk among the antipodes and leaves the mountains black and the valleys dark. Don Quixote satisfied nature by sleeping his first sleep, without giving room to a second — quite the other way from Sancho, who never had a second, because his sleep lasted him from the night until the morning, which showed his good constitution and his few cares.
Don Quixote's cares kept him awake in such a way that he woke Sancho and said to him:
"I am amazed, Sancho, at the freedom of your nature: I imagine you are made of marble or of hard bronze, in which there is no room for any movement or feeling. I keep watch while you sleep; I weep while you sing; I faint with fasting while you are lazy and out of breath from pure fullness. It is the part of good servants to share their masters' pains and to feel their feelings, if only for the look of it. Look at the serenity of this night, at the solitude we are in, which invites us to put some waking in among our sleep.
"Get up, on your life, and go some way off from here, and with good courage and a grateful boldness give yourself three or four hundred lashes on account of the ones for Dulcinea's disenchantment. And I beg and entreat you to do it, for I do not want to come to grips with you as I did the other time, because I know your arms are heavy. After you have given them to yourself, we shall spend what is left of the night singing, I of my absence and you of your constancy, making a beginning from now on the pastoral exercise we are to have in our village."
"Sir," answered Sancho, "I am no monk, that I should get up in the middle of my sleep and flog myself; nor does it seem to me that a man can pass from the extreme of the pain of lashes to that of music. Let your worship let me sleep and not press me about the whipping; for you will make me take an oath never to touch a hair of my coat, let alone of my flesh."
"O hardened soul! O squire without pity! O bread badly bestowed and ill-considered favours that I have done you and mean to do you! Through me you have seen yourself a governor, and through me you see yourself with hopes close at hand of being a count, or of having some equivalent title; and the fulfilling of them will take no longer than it takes for this year to go by — for I, post tenebras spero lucem."
"I do not understand that," replied Sancho. "I only understand that while I am asleep I have neither fear nor hope, neither labour nor glory. And blessings on the man who invented sleep — the cloak that covers all human thoughts, the food that takes away hunger, the water that drives off thirst, the fire that warms the cold, the cold that tempers the heat, and, in short, the general coin with which all things are bought, the balance and the weight that makes the shepherd equal to the king and the simple man to the judicious. Sleep has only one bad thing about it, so I have heard it said, and that is that it is like death, since between a sleeping man and a dead one there is very little difference."
"I have never heard you speak, Sancho," said Don Quixote, "as elegantly as now; from which I come to see that the proverb you sometimes say is true: 'Not who you are born with, but who you graze with.'"
"Ah, confound it, sir our master," replied Sancho, "I am not the one who is threading proverbs now; for they fall out of your worship's mouth two at a time better than they do out of mine. Only there must be this difference between mine and yours: that your worship's come in season and mine out of season — but in fact they are all proverbs."
They were at this when they heard a dull uproar and a harsh noise that spread over all those valleys. Don Quixote got to his feet and laid hand to his sword, and Sancho crouched under the grey, putting the bundle of arms on one side of him and his donkey's pack-saddle on the other, shaking with fear as much as Don Quixote was startled. From moment to moment the noise kept growing and coming nearer to the two frightened men — or at least to the one, for the other's valour is well known by now.
The case is that some men were taking more than six hundred pigs to sell at a fair, and were travelling with them at that hour; and such was the noise they made and the grunting and the snorting that they deafened the ears of Don Quixote and of Sancho, who could not make out what it could be.
The spread-out, grunting herd came up in a troop and, with no respect for Don Quixote's authority or for Sancho's, went right over the two of them, undoing Sancho's trenches and knocking down not only Don Quixote but carrying off Rocinante into the bargain. The rush, the grunting, the speed with which the filthy animals arrived, threw into confusion and onto the ground the pack-saddle, the arms, the grey, Rocinante, Sancho and Don Quixote.
Sancho got up as best he could and asked his master for his sword, telling him that he wanted to kill half a dozen of those gentlemanly and ill-mannered pigs, for by now he had made out that that was what they were. Don Quixote said to him:
"Let them alone, my friend; for this affront is the punishment of my sin, and it is heaven's just chastisement that a beaten knight errant should be eaten by jackals and stung by wasps and trampled by pigs."
"It must also be heaven's punishment," answered Sancho, "that the squires of beaten knights should be pricked by flies and eaten by lice and set on by hunger. If we squires were the sons of the knights we serve, or very near relations of theirs, it would be no great matter that the penalty of their sins should reach us to the fourth generation; but what have the Panzas to do with the Quixotes? Well now: let us settle ourselves again and sleep the little that is left of the night, and God will send the morning and we shall get on."
"Sleep, Sancho," answered Don Quixote, "for you were born to sleep; and I, who was born to keep watch, in the time that is left from now until daybreak shall give rein to my thoughts and vent them in a little madrigal that, without your knowing it, I composed in my memory last night."
"It seems to me," answered Sancho, "that thoughts that leave room for making verses cannot be very many. Let your worship versify as much as you like, and I shall sleep as much as I can."
And then, taking as much ground as he wanted, he curled up and slept a loose sleep, without sureties or debts or any pain hindering him. Don Quixote, leaning against the trunk of a beech or a cork tree — for Cide Hamete Benengeli does not distinguish which tree it was — to the sound of his own sighs, sang in this way:
Love, when I think on the ill you give me, terrible and strong, I go running to death, thinking so to end my immense ill; but, on reaching that pass which is the harbour in this sea of my torment, I feel such gladness that life gathers strength and I do not pass through. So living kills me, since death gives me back my life again. O unheard-of condition, that death and life should deal with me like this!
Each of these lines he accompanied with a great many sighs and not a few tears, exactly like a man whose heart was pierced through with the pain of his defeat and with Dulcinea's absence.
At this daylight came, the sun struck Sancho's eyes with its rays, he woke and stretched, shaking and pulling out his lazy limbs; he looked at the havoc the pigs had made of his stores and cursed the herd and something beyond it.
Finally the two of them went back to the road they had begun; and as the afternoon was drawing in they saw coming towards them some ten men on horseback and four or five on foot. Don Quixote's heart gave a jump and Sancho's was startled, because the people who were coming up to them carried lances and shields and came very much ready for war. Don Quixote turned to Sancho and said to him:
"If I could, Sancho, use my arms, and if my promise had not tied my hands, I should count this machine that is coming at us for cakes and fancy bread; but it might be something other than what we fear."
At this the men on horseback came up and, levelling their lances, without saying a word surrounded Don Quixote and set them at his back and his chest, threatening him with death. One of the men on foot, with a finger on his lips as a sign for him to be quiet, took hold of Rocinante's bridle and drew him off the road; and the rest of those on foot, driving Sancho and the grey ahead of them, all of them keeping a marvellous silence, followed the steps of the man who was leading Don Quixote.
Two or three times Don Quixote tried to ask where they were taking him or what they wanted; but he had hardly begun to move his lips when they came to close them with the heads of the lances. And the same thing happened to Sancho, because he had hardly given signs of speaking when one of the men on foot pricked him with a goad, and the grey neither more nor less, as though he too had wanted to speak.
Night closed in, they quickened their pace, and the fear grew in the two prisoners, and the more so when they heard them saying from time to time:
"Walk on, troglodytes!"
"Be quiet, barbarians!"
"Pay up, anthropophagi!"
"Do not complain, Scythians, and do not open your eyes, you murdering Polyphemuses, you butchering lions!"
And other names like these, with which they tormented the ears of the wretched master and man. Sancho went along saying to himself:
"Us, turtle-doves? Us, barbers, or pot-scourers? Us, little dogs that they call 'sic 'em, sic 'em' to? These names do not please me at all: this heap is being winnowed in a bad wind; all the trouble comes on us at once, as the beatings do to the dog — and I only hope what this most unfortunate adventure threatens stops at that!"
Don Quixote went along dumbfounded, unable, for all the reasonings he made, to hit on what those names full of abuse might be that they were putting on them, out of which he gathered plainly that they were to expect no good and to fear a great deal of harm. At this, almost an hour into the night, they came to a castle which Don Quixote knew very well to be the duke's, where they had been not long before.
"God bless me!" he said as soon as he recognised the place. "And what will this be? Why, in this house everything is courtesy and good civility; but for the conquered, good turns into bad and bad into worse."
They came into the chief courtyard of the castle and saw it fitted out and arranged in a way that increased their astonishment and doubled their fear, as will be seen in the following chapter.
The men on horseback dismounted; and, along with those on foot, taking Sancho and Don Quixote up bodily and in a rush, they carried them into the courtyard, round which nearly a hundred torches were burning in their sconces, and along the galleries of the courtyard more than five hundred lamps; so that, in spite of the night, which showed itself rather dark, the lack of daylight was not noticed.
In the middle of the courtyard rose a catafalque some two yards from the ground, covered all over with an enormous canopy of black velvet, round which, on its steps, white wax candles were burning on more than a hundred silver candlesticks. On top of this catafalque was displayed the dead body of a maiden so beautiful that her beauty made death itself look beautiful. She had her head on a brocade cushion, crowned with a garland woven of various sweet-smelling flowers, her hands crossed on her breast and, between them, a branch of yellow, conquering palm.
At one side of the courtyard a stage was set up, and on it, seated in two chairs, two personages who, by having crowns on their heads and sceptres in their hands, gave signs of being some kings, either real or pretended. At the side of this stage, which was reached by some steps, were two other chairs, on which the men who had brought the prisoners set Don Quixote and Sancho — all this in silence and giving the two of them to understand by signs that they should be silent too. But without being signed to, they were silent themselves, because astonishment at what they were looking at had their tongues tied.
At this there came up onto the stage, with a great retinue, two chief personages, whom Don Quixote at once recognised to be the duke and duchess, his hosts, and who sat down in two very rich chairs next to the two who looked like kings. Who would not have been astonished at this, with the addition that Don Quixote recognised that the dead body on the catafalque was that of the beautiful Altisidora?
As the duke and duchess came up onto the stage, Don Quixote and Sancho got to their feet and made them a deep bow, and the duke and duchess did the same, inclining their heads a little.
At this an officer came out from the side and, coming up to Sancho, threw over him a gown of black buckram, all painted with flames of fire; and, taking off his cap, put on his head a mitre like those the Holy Office puts on penitents; and he told him in his ear not to unstitch his lips, because they would clap a gag on him or take his life.
Sancho looked himself up and down; he saw himself burning in flames; but, as they did not burn him, he did not value them at two farthings. He took off the mitre, saw it painted with devils, and put it back on, saying to himself:
"Well and good — the flames do not burn me and the devils do not carry me off."
Don Quixote was looking at him too; and, although fear had his senses in suspense, he could not help laughing to see Sancho's figure.
At this there began to come, apparently from under the catafalque, a soft and agreeable sound of flutes which, not being interrupted by any human voice — because in that place silence itself kept silence to itself — showed itself gentle and loving. Then there suddenly showed himself, next to the pillow of the apparent corpse, a beautiful young man dressed in the Roman fashion who, to the sound of a harp that he played himself, sang in a most sweet and clear voice these two stanzas:
While Altisidora comes back to herself, dead through Don Quixote's cruelty, and while in this enchanted court the ladies dress themselves in haircloth, and while my lady clothes her duennas in baize and in serge, I shall sing her beauty and her misfortune with a better quill than the singer of Thrace. And I do not think that this office falls to me in life alone; but, with my tongue dead and cold in my mouth, I mean to move my voice as is your due. My soul, freed from its narrow rock and carried over the Stygian lake, shall go on celebrating you, and that sound shall make the waters of oblivion stand still.
"No more," said one of the two who looked like kings at this point; "no more, divine singer; for it would be to go on for ever to set out for us now the death and the graces of the peerless Altisidora — not dead, as the ignorant world thinks, but alive on the tongues of Fame and in the penance that Sancho Panza, who is here present, must go through to bring her back to the light she has lost.
"And so, O Rhadamanthus, who judge with me in the gloomy caverns of Dis: since you know everything that is settled in the inscrutable fates about this maiden's coming back to herself, say it and declare it at once, so that the good we hope for from her fresh return may not be put off for us."
Minos, judge and companion of Rhadamanthus, had hardly said this when Rhadamanthus, getting to his feet, said:
"Come, you officers of this house, high and low, great and small, come one after another and seal Sancho's face with twenty-four chucks under the chin, and twelve pinches and six pinprickings on his arms and his back; for in this ceremony lies Altisidora's health!"
Hearing which, Sancho Panza broke his silence and said:
"I swear I shall let my face be sealed or my cheeks be handled about as soon as I shall turn Turk! Body of me! What has handling my face got to do with this maiden's resurrection? The old woman got a taste for the greens. They enchant Dulcinea and they whip me so that she may be disenchanted; Altisidora dies of ills God chose to give her, and to bring her back to life they must give me twenty-four chucks under the chin and riddle my body with pinpricks and bruise my arms with pinches. Try those jokes on your brother-in-law, for I am an old dog and there is no 'here, boy' with me!"
"You shall die!" said Rhadamanthus in a loud voice. "Soften, you tiger; humble yourself, proud Nimrod; and suffer and be quiet, since they are not asking you for impossibilities. And do not go into establishing the difficulties of this business: chucked you must be, riddled you must find yourself, pinched you must groan. Come, I say, officers, carry out my order; if not, by the faith of an honest man, you shall see what you were born for!"
At this there appeared to be coming across the courtyard some six duennas in procession, one after another, four of them with spectacles, and all of them with their right hands raised high, with four fingers of wrist showing to make their hands look longer, as is now the fashion. Sancho had no sooner seen them than, bellowing like a bull, he said:
"I might well let myself be handled by everybody in the world; but to consent to being touched by duennas — that, no! Let them claw my face as they did my master's in this same castle; let them run my body through with the points of sharpened daggers; let them grip my arms with red-hot pincers, and I shall bear it patiently, or serve these gentlefolk; but that duennas should touch me I shall not consent to, if the devil carries me off for it."
Don Quixote broke his silence too, saying to Sancho:
"Have patience, my son, and give these lords and ladies pleasure, and give many thanks to heaven for having put such a virtue in your person that by the martyrdom of it you disenchant the enchanted and raise the dead."
The duennas were close to Sancho by now, when he, softened and more persuaded, settling himself well in his chair, gave his face and his beard to the first of them, who gave him a chuck under the chin very well sealed, and then a great curtsey.
"Less courtesy, and fewer face-washes, madam duenna," said Sancho; "for by God your hands smell of vinegar-water!"
Finally all the duennas sealed him, and a great many other people of the house pinched him; but what he could not put up with was the pricking of the pins. And so he got up out of his chair, apparently vexed, and, seizing a lighted torch that was next to him, went at the duennas and at all his executioners, saying:
"Away, you infernal ministers, for I am not made of bronze, that I should not feel such extraordinary martyrdoms!"
At this Altisidora, who must have been tired from having lain so long on her back, turned on her side; seeing which, the bystanders almost all said with one voice:
"Altisidora is alive! Altisidora lives!"
Rhadamanthus ordered Sancho to lay aside his anger, since the purpose they were after had been achieved.
As soon as Don Quixote saw Altisidora stir, he went and knelt down in front of Sancho, saying to him:
"Now is the time, son of my entrails — not merely my squire — for you to give yourself some of the lashes you are bound to give for Dulcinea's disenchantment. Now, I say, is the time when your virtue is ripened, and effectual for working the good that is hoped from you."
To which Sancho answered:
"This seems to me trick on top of trick, and not honey on pancakes. It would be a fine thing if after pinches and chucks and pinpricks the lashes came now. They have nothing else to do but take a great stone and tie it round my neck and pitch me into a well — which would not grieve me much, if to cure other people's ills I have to be the cow at the wedding. Leave me alone; if not, by God I shall throw it all up and let everything go at thirteen even if it does not sell."
By this time Altisidora had sat up on the catafalque, and at the same instant the shawms sounded, joined by the flutes and by everybody's voices, all calling out:
"Long live Altisidora! Altisidora lives!"
The duke and duchess and the kings Minos and Rhadamanthus got up, and all of them together with Don Quixote and Sancho went to receive Altisidora and to bring her down from the catafalque; and she, playing the woman recovering from a faint, bowed to the duke and duchess and to the kings, and, looking sideways at Don Quixote, said to him:
"God forgive you, unloving knight, for through your cruelty I have been in the other world, as it seemed to me, for more than a thousand years. And you, O most compassionate squire the globe contains, I thank for the life I have. From today on, Sancho my friend, dispose of six shifts of mine that I make over to you, to make yourself six shirts of them; and if they are not all sound, at least they are all clean."
Sancho kissed her hands for it, with the mitre in his hand and his knees on the ground. The duke ordered them to take it off him and give him back his cap and put on his coat and take off the gown of flames. Sancho begged the duke to let him keep the gown and the mitre, for he wanted to take them back to his own country as a sign and a memorial of that never-before-seen business. The duchess answered that they would let him keep them, since he knew what a great friend of his she was. The duke ordered the courtyard cleared, and that everybody should withdraw to their rooms, and that Don Quixote and Sancho should be taken to the ones they already knew.
Sancho slept that night on a truckle bed in Don Quixote's own room — a thing he would have excused himself from if he could, because he knew very well that his master would not let him sleep for questions and answers, and he was in no condition to talk much, since the pains of his past martyrdoms were still with him and did not leave his tongue free; and it would have suited him better to sleep alone in a hut than in that rich chamber in company.
His fear turned out so true and his suspicion so certain that his master had hardly got into bed when he said:
"What do you think, Sancho, of tonight's business? Great and mighty is the force of unloving scorn, since with your own eyes you have seen Altisidora dead — not by any arrows, or by any sword, or by any other warlike instrument, or by deadly poisons, but by the thought of the severity and the scorn with which I have always treated her."
"She might have died in her own good time as much and how she liked," answered Sancho, "and left me at home; for I never made her fall in love or scorned her in my life. I do not know and cannot think how the health of Altisidora, a maiden more whimsical than judicious, has anything to do — as I have said before — with the martyrdoms of Sancho Panza. Now indeed I come to know clearly and distinctly that there are enchanters and enchantments in the world, from whom may God deliver me, since I cannot deliver myself. And with all this, I beg your worship to let me sleep and not to ask me any more, unless you want me to throw myself out of a window."
"Sleep, Sancho my friend," answered Don Quixote, "if the pinpricks and the pinches you have received and the chucks under the chin that have been given you leave you room for it."
"No pain," replied Sancho, "came up to the affront of the chucks — for no other reason than their having been given me by duennas, confound them. And I beg your worship again to let me sleep, because sleep is a relief from the miseries of those who suffer them awake."
"Be it so," said Don Quixote, "and God be with you."
The two of them fell asleep; and in this time Cide Hamete, the author of this great history, chose to write and give an account of what moved the duke and duchess to raise the structure of the machinery just described.
And he says that the bachelor Sansón Carrasco had not forgotten how the Knight of the Mirrors was conquered and knocked down by Don Quixote, which conquest and fall rubbed out and undid all his designs; and he wanted to try his hand again, hoping for a better outcome than the last. And so, learning from the page who took the letter and present to Teresa Panza, Sancho's wife, where Don Quixote was, he looked for fresh arms and a horse and put the white moon on his shield, carrying it all on a mule led by a farm labourer, and not by Tomé Cecial his old squire, so that he should not be recognised by Sancho or by Don Quixote.
He came, then, to the duke's castle, and the duke told him the road and the course Don Quixote was taking, meaning to be present at the jousts at Saragossa. He told him likewise the tricks he had played on him with the contrivance of Dulcinea's disenchantment, which was to be at the expense of Sancho's backside. In short, he gave him an account of the trick Sancho had played on his master, giving him to understand that Dulcinea was enchanted and transformed into a country girl, and how the duchess his wife had given Sancho to understand that he was the one who was deceived, because Dulcinea really was enchanted; at which the bachelor laughed and marvelled not a little, considering Sancho's sharpness and simplicity as much as the extreme of Don Quixote's madness.
The duke asked him that if he found him, and whether he conquered him or not, he should come back that way and give him an account of what happened. The bachelor did so; he set off in search of him; he did not find him at Saragossa; he went on and there happened to him what has already been related.
He came back by the duke's castle and told him it all, along with the conditions of the battle, and that Don Quixote was already on his way back to keep, like a good knight errant, his word to withdraw to his village for a year — in which time it might be, said the bachelor, that he would be cured of his madness; for this was the intention that had moved him to make those transformations, since it was a thing to be pitied that a gentleman of such good understanding as Don Quixote should be mad. With this he took his leave of the duke and went back to his village, waiting there for Don Quixote, who was coming after him.
From this the duke took the occasion for playing him that trick — so great was the pleasure he took in Sancho's and Don Quixote's doings. And, having the roads near and far from the castle watched on every side by which he imagined Don Quixote might come back, with a great many of his servants on foot and on horseback, so that by force or by good will they might bring him to the castle if they found him. They did find him and sent word to the duke, who, being already prepared with everything he had to do, as soon as he had news of his coming ordered the torches and the lamps of the courtyard to be lit and Altisidora laid on the catafalque, with all the apparatus that has been told, so much to the life and so well done that between the truth and it there was very little difference.
And Cide Hamete says more: that he holds for himself that the jokers are as mad as the joked-with, and that the duke and duchess were not two fingers away from looking like fools, since they took such pains to make fools of two fools.
Of whom, one sleeping a loose sleep and the other lying awake with unleashed thoughts, the day and the wish to get up caught both — for idle feather beds, whether beaten or victorious, never gave Don Quixote any pleasure.
Altisidora — in Don Quixote's opinion, brought back from death to life — following her master and mistress's humour, crowned with the same garland she had worn on the catafalque and dressed in a tunic of white taffeta sown with golden flowers, her hair loose over her shoulders, leaning on a staff of black and very fine ebony, came into Don Quixote's room. At whose presence he, troubled and confused, shrank down and covered himself almost entirely with the sheets and coverlets of the bed, his tongue dumb, unable to manage any courtesy to her.
Altisidora sat down in a chair next to his pillow, and, after giving a great sigh, said to him in a tender and weakened voice:
"When women of quality and modest maidens trample on their honour and give their tongues leave to break through every obstacle, publicly giving notice of the secrets their hearts hold, they are in a narrow strait. I, Señor Don Quixote of La Mancha, am one of these — pressed, conquered and in love; but for all that, patient and modest, so much so that, by being so much so, my soul burst through my silence and I lost my life. Two days ago, with the thought of the severity with which you have treated me,
O harder than marble to my complaints, you stony-hearted knight! —
I have been dead, or at least judged so by those who have seen me; and if it had not been that Love, taking pity on me, laid up my remedy in the martyrdoms of this good squire, I should have stayed over there in the other world."
"Love could very well," said Sancho, "have laid it up in my donkey's, and I should have been grateful to him for it. But tell me, madam — and so may heaven fit you out with a softer lover than my master — what did you see in the other world? What is there in hell? For whoever dies in despair must of necessity have that for his lodging."
"To tell you the truth," answered Altisidora, "I cannot have died altogether, since I did not go into hell; for if I had gone in there, once I was in I could not have come out again even if I had wanted to. The truth is that I got to the gate, where about a dozen devils were playing at tennis, all of them in hose and doublet, with falling bands trimmed with Flemish lace edging and with cuffs of the same, with four fingers of arm showing so that their hands should look longer, and in them they had rackets of fire.
"And what astonished me most was that instead of balls they were using books, apparently full of wind and flock — a marvellous and new thing. But this did not astonish me as much as seeing that, whereas it is natural for gamblers that the winners are glad and the losers sad, there in that game they were all growling, all snarling and all cursing one another."
"That is no wonder," answered Sancho, "because devils, whether they play or do not play, can never be contented, whether they win or do not win."
"That must be so," answered Altisidora; "but there is another thing that also astonishes me — I mean that astonished me then — and it was that at the first volley there was not a ball left standing or fit to be used a second time. And so they went through new books and old ones one after another, which was a marvel. To one of them, new and shining and well bound, they gave such a stroke that they knocked its guts out and scattered its leaves. One devil said to another: 'Look what book that is.' And the devil answered him: 'This is the Second Part of the History of Don Quixote of La Mancha — not composed by Cide Hamete, its first author, but by an Aragonese who says he is a native of Tordesillas.' 'Take it away from there,' answered the other devil, 'and put it in the depths of hell: let my eyes never see it again.' 'Is it as bad as that?' answered the other. 'So bad,' replied the first, 'that if I set myself on purpose to make it worse, I should not manage it.'
"They went on with their game, batting other books about; and I, from having heard the name of Don Quixote, whom I love and am so fond of, took care to keep this vision in my memory."
"A vision it must undoubtedly have been," said Don Quixote, "because there is no other me in the world; and that history goes about here from hand to hand, but it stops in nobody's, because everybody gives it a kick. I have not been upset at hearing that I walk like a fanciful body through the darkness of the abyss, or through the brightness of the earth, because I am not the man that history deals with. If it is good, faithful and true, it will have centuries of life; but if it is bad, from its birth to its grave the road will not be very long."
Altisidora was going to go on complaining of Don Quixote when Don Quixote said to her:
"Many times I have told you, madam, that it grieves me that you should have placed your thoughts on me, since from mine they can sooner be thanked than remedied. I was born to be Dulcinea of El Toboso's, and the fates, if there are any, dedicated me to her; and to think that any other beauty is to take the place she has in my soul is to think the impossible. This is disillusionment enough for you to withdraw within the limits of your modesty, since nobody can be bound to the impossible."
Hearing which, Altisidora, showing herself angry and upset, said to him:
"By the Lord, Sir Codfish, soul of a mortar, date-stone, more stubborn and hard than a peasant who has been begged and has his own way — if I come at you, I shall tear your eyes out! Do you think, by any chance, Sir Beaten and Sir Cudgelled, that I died for you? Everything you have seen tonight has been pretended; for I am not the woman to let a black speck of a fingernail ache for camels of that sort, let alone to die."
"That I believe very well," said Sancho; "for this business of lovers dying is a laughing matter: they may well say it, but as for doing it — let Judas believe it."
While they were in this talk, the musician, singer and poet came in who had sung the two stanzas already given; and, making Don Quixote a great bow, he said:
"Let your worship, sir knight, count me and hold me in the number of your greatest servants, for it is many days now that I have been very fond of you, both for your fame and for your exploits."
Don Quixote answered him:
"Let your worship tell me who you are, so that my courtesy may answer to your deserts."
The young man answered that he was the musician and panegyrist of the night before.
"Certainly," replied Don Quixote, "your worship has an outstanding voice; but what you sang did not seem to me very much to the point — for what have the stanzas of Garcilaso to do with this lady's death?"
"Let your worship not marvel at that," answered the musician; "for among the unshorn poets of our age it is now the custom for everybody to write as he likes and steal from whoever he likes, whether or not it comes to the point of what he means; and by now there is no foolishness they sing or write that is not put down to poetic licence."
Don Quixote would have liked to answer, but he was prevented by the duke and duchess, who came in to see him; among whom there passed a long and pleasant talk, in which Sancho said so many droll and so many malicious things that he left the duke and duchess astonished afresh, both at his simplicity and at his sharpness.
Don Quixote begged them to give him leave to set off that same day, since for beaten knights like himself it was more fitting to live in a pigsty than in royal palaces. They gave it him very willingly, and the duchess asked him whether Altisidora was still in his good graces. He answered her:
"My lady, let Your Ladyship know that all this maiden's trouble comes from idleness, whose remedy is decent and continual occupation. She has told me here that they use lace in hell; and, since she must know how to make it, let her not let it out of her hands, for while she is busy working the bobbins, the image or images of what she loves will not be working in her imagination. And this is the truth, and this is my opinion and this is my advice."
"And mine," added Sancho; "for I have never in my life seen a lacemaker die of love; girls who are busy set their thoughts more on finishing their tasks than on thinking about their loves. I speak from my own case; for while I am digging I do not remember my missus — I mean my Teresa Panza, whom I love more than the lashes of my eyes."
"You speak very well, Sancho," said the duchess, "and I shall see that my Altisidora busies herself from now on with some white work, which she knows how to do outstandingly well."
"There is no need, my lady," answered Altisidora, "to use that remedy, since the thought of the cruelties this stray villain has used on me will rub him out of my memory without any other contrivance. And, with your greatness's leave, I want to get away from here, so as not to see before my eyes any longer his sorrowful countenance — no, his ugly and abominable face."
"That seems to me," said the duke, "like what is generally said:
For the man who speaks abuse is not far off from forgiving."
Altisidora made a show of drying her tears with a handkerchief, and, curtseying to her master and mistress, went out of the room.
"I wish you," said Sancho, "poor maiden — I wish you, I say, bad luck, since you have had to do with a soul of esparto grass and a heart of oak. Upon my word, if you had had to do with me, another cock would have crowed for you!"
The talk came to an end, Don Quixote dressed, dined with the duke and duchess, and set off that afternoon.
The beaten and worn-out Don Quixote went along extremely thoughtful on the one hand and very glad on the other. His sadness was caused by his defeat, and his gladness by considering the virtue that was in Sancho, as he had shown it in Altisidora's resurrection — although with some scruple he persuaded himself that the enamoured maiden had really been dead.
Sancho went along not at all glad, because it saddened him to see that Altisidora had not kept her word about giving him the shifts; and, coming and going over this, he said to his master:
"Truly, sir, I am the unluckiest doctor to be found in the world, in which there are physicians who, after killing the patient they are treating, want to be paid for their labour — which is nothing but signing a little slip for some medicines that they do not make themselves but the apothecary makes, and there is the trick done. And to me, whose other people's health costs me drops of blood, chucks under the chin, pinches, pinpricks and lashes, they do not give a farthing.
"Well, I swear that if they bring me another patient into my hands, they will have to grease mine before I cure him; for the abbot dines on what he sings, and I do not want to believe that heaven has given me the virtue I have so that I should pass it on to other people for nothing."
"You are right, Sancho my friend," answered Don Quixote, "and Altisidora has done very badly in not giving you the promised shifts. And, granting that your virtue is gratis data — since it has cost you no study — it is more than study to receive martyrdoms in your own person. For myself I can tell you that if you wanted payment for the lashes of Dulcinea's disenchantment, I should have given it you already and a good one; but I do not know whether payment will go well with the cure, and I should not like the reward to hinder the medicine. For all that, it seems to me that nothing will be lost by trying it. Look, Sancho, what you want, and whip yourself at once, and pay yourself in cash and with your own hand, since you have money of mine."
At these offers Sancho opened his eyes and his ears a hand's breadth, and in his heart consented to whip himself willingly; and he said to his master:
"Well now, sir, I am willing to get myself ready to give your worship the pleasure you want, with profit to myself; for the love of my children and my wife makes me show myself grasping. Tell me, your worship: how much will you give me for every lash I give myself?"
"If I had to pay you, Sancho," answered Don Quixote, "according to what the greatness and the quality of this remedy deserves, the treasure of Venice and the mines of Potosí would be too little to pay you. Take the measure of what you have of mine, and set the price on each lash."
"They are," answered Sancho, "three thousand three hundred and so many; of them I have given myself about five: the rest are still to come. Let these five come in among the 'so many', and let us come to the three thousand three hundred — which at a quarter-real each, and I shall not take less if the whole world ordered me to, come to three thousand three hundred quarter-reals; which is, for the three thousand, one thousand five hundred half-reals, making seven hundred and fifty reals; and the three hundred make one hundred and fifty half-reals, which come to seventy-five reals; which, added to the seven hundred and fifty, make eight hundred and twenty-five reals in all. These I shall deduct from what I have of your worship's, and I shall go into my house rich and contented, though well whipped; because you do not catch trout... and I say no more."
"O blessed Sancho! O lovable Sancho!" answered Don Quixote. "How bound Dulcinea and I shall be to serve you all the days heaven gives us of life! If she comes back to the being she has lost — as it is not possible but that she will — her misfortune will have been good fortune, and my defeat a most happy triumph. And see, Sancho, when you want to begin the discipline; for I shall add a hundred reals so that you may cut it short."
"When?" replied Sancho. "Tonight, without fail. Let your worship arrange for us to have it out in the fields, under the open sky, and I shall open up my flesh."
Night came, waited for by Don Quixote with the greatest anxiety in the world, since it seemed to him that the wheels of Apollo's chariot had broken and that the day was drawing itself out longer than usual — exactly as happens to lovers, who never make the reckoning of their desires come out.
Finally they went in among some pleasant trees that stood a little way off the road, where, leaving Rocinante's saddle and the grey's pack-saddle empty, they stretched themselves out on the green grass and supped from Sancho's store. And he, making a mighty and flexible whip out of the grey's halter and headstall, withdrew some twenty paces from his master among some beeches. Don Quixote, who saw him go with boldness and spirit, said to him:
"Look, my friend, do not smash yourself to pieces; give room for one lash to wait for another; do not try to hurry so much in the race that in the middle of it your breath fails you. I mean, do not lay it on so hard that your life fails you before you reach the desired number. And, so that you may not lose by a card too many or too few, I shall stand aside counting on this rosary of mine the lashes you give yourself. May heaven favour you as your good intention deserves."
"A good payer does not mind pledges," answered Sancho. "I mean to lay it on in such a way that, without killing me, it hurts; for in this the substance of this miracle must consist."
He at once stripped himself from the waist up and, snatching up the cord, began to lay on, and Don Quixote began to count the lashes.
Sancho would have given himself six or eight when the joke began to seem to him a heavy one and the price of it very cheap; and, stopping a little, he told his master that he cried off, because each of those lashes deserved to be paid at half a real and not at a quarter.
"Go on, Sancho my friend, and do not lose heart," Don Quixote said to him, "for I double the stake on the price."
"In that case," said Sancho, "into the hand of God, and let lashes rain!"
But the sly fellow left off laying them on his back and laid them on the trees, with a sigh from time to time such that it seemed as if with every one of them his soul was being torn out. Don Quixote's soul being tender and afraid that his life would come to an end and that he would not get his wish through Sancho's imprudence, he said to him:
"On your life, my friend, let this business rest at this point; for this medicine seems to me a very harsh one, and it will be as well to give time to time; for Zamora was not won in an hour. More than a thousand lashes, if I have not counted wrong, you have given yourself: they are enough for now; for the ass, to speak coarsely, bears the load but not the overload."
"No, no, sir," answered Sancho, "it shall not be said of me: 'money paid, arms broken'. Let your worship stand aside a little more and let me give myself another thousand lashes at least; for at two goes like this we shall have finished this instalment, and there will even be cloth to spare."
"Since you find yourself in such a good disposition," said Don Quixote, "may heaven help you; lay on, and I shall stand aside."
Sancho went back to his task with such boldness that he had already taken the bark off a good many trees: such was the severity with which he whipped himself. And, raising his voice once and giving a monstrous lash to a beech, he said:
"Here shall you die, Samson, and all who are with him!"
Don Quixote ran up at once at the sound of the pained voice and of the blow of that harsh lash; and, taking hold of the twisted halter that served Sancho for a scourge, he said to him:
"Fate forbid, Sancho my friend, that for my pleasure you should lose your life, which is to serve for keeping your wife and your children. Let Dulcinea wait for a better conjunction, and I shall hold myself within the limits of a hope close at hand and wait for you to gather fresh strength, so that this business may be concluded to everybody's satisfaction."
"Since your worship wants it so, my dear sir," answered Sancho, "so be it and welcome; and throw your cloak over these shoulders of mine, for I am sweating and I should not like to catch a chill — for new penitents run that risk."
Don Quixote did so, and, staying in his shirt, he wrapped up Sancho, who slept until the sun woke him; and then they went on with their road, which they brought to an end for the time being at a place three leagues from there.
They dismounted at an inn, which Don Quixote recognised for such, and not for a castle with a deep moat, towers, portcullises and a drawbridge; for since he had been beaten he reasoned more soundly in everything, as will now be told. They lodged him in a low room, whose gilt leather hangings were some old painted serges, as they use in the villages. On one of them there was painted by a very bad hand the rape of Helen, when the bold guest carried her off from Menelaus, and on another was the history of Dido and Aeneas — she on a high tower, as though she were making signals with half a sheet to the fugitive guest, who was fleeing over the sea in a frigate or brigantine.
He noticed in the two stories that Helen did not go very unwillingly, because she was laughing on the sly and slyly; but the beautiful Dido showed herself shedding tears the size of walnuts out of her eyes. Which Don Quixote seeing, he said:
"These two ladies were extremely unfortunate in not having been born in this age, and I above all unfortunate in not having been born in theirs. If I had met these gentlemen, Troy would not have been burnt nor Carthage destroyed, since merely by my killing Paris so many misfortunes would have been avoided."
"I would wager," said Sancho, "that before long there will not be a tavern or an inn or a lodging house or a barber's shop where the history of our exploits is not painted up. But I should like it painted by the hands of a better painter than the one who painted these."
"You are right, Sancho," said Don Quixote, "because this painter is like Orbaneja, a painter who lived at Úbeda; who, when they asked him what he was painting, would answer: 'Whatever comes out.' And if by any chance he painted a cock, he would write under it, 'This is a cock,' so that people should not think it was a fox. In this way, it seems to me, Sancho, must be the painter or the writer — for it is all one — who brought out into the light the history of this new Don Quixote that has appeared: he painted or wrote whatever came out.
"Or else he must have been like a poet who went about the court in years past called Mauleón, who answered on the spot whatever he was asked; and, somebody asking him what Deum de Deo meant, he answered: 'Let it strike where it may' — for that is what the Latin sounds like in our Castilian. But, leaving this aside, tell me whether you mean, Sancho, to give yourself another round tonight, and whether you want it to be under a roof or under the open sky."
"By God, sir," answered Sancho, "for what I mean to give myself, it is all one to me indoors or in the fields; but for all that, I should like it to be among trees, for they seem to keep me company and to help me carry my labour marvellously."
"Then it must not be so, Sancho my friend," answered Don Quixote; "for so that you may gather your strength, we shall keep it for our village, where we shall arrive at the latest the day after tomorrow."
Sancho answered that he should do as he pleased, but that he himself would like to finish that business quickly in hot blood and while the mill was freshly dressed, because in delay there is often danger; and pray to God and keep hammering; and one 'here you are' is worth more than two 'I'll give you'; and the bird in the hand is worth more than the vulture on the wing.
"No more proverbs, Sancho, for the one God's sake," said Don Quixote, "for it seems that you are going back to your sicut erat. Speak plainly, smoothly, without tangles, as I have told you many times, and you will see how it is worth a hundredfold to you."
"I do not know what bad luck this is of mine," answered Sancho, "that I cannot say a sensible thing without a proverb, or a proverb that does not seem to me a sensible thing; but I shall mend my ways, if I can."
And with this their talk stopped for the time being.
Don Quixote and Sancho spent that whole day in that village and that inn, waiting for the night: the one to finish the round of his discipline out in the open country, and the other to see the end of it, in which the end of his desire lay.
At this there came to the inn a traveller on horseback with three or four servants, one of whom said to the man who seemed to be their master:
"Here your worship, Señor Don Álvaro Tarfe, may spend today's siesta: the lodging looks clean and cool."
Hearing this, Don Quixote said to Sancho:
"Look, Sancho: when I leafed through that book of the second part of my history, it seems to me that in passing I came across this name of Don Álvaro Tarfe there."
"It may very well be," answered Sancho. "Let us let him dismount, and afterwards we shall ask him."
The gentleman dismounted, and, opposite Don Quixote's room, the hostess gave him a low room hung with other painted serges like those in Don Quixote's chamber. The newly arrived gentleman put on summer clothes; and, coming out into the porch of the inn, which was spacious and cool, along which Don Quixote was walking, he asked him:
"Where away are you travelling, sir gentleman?"
And Don Quixote answered him:
"To a village near here that I come from. And your worship, where are you travelling?"
"I, sir," answered the gentleman, "am going to Granada, which is my own country."
"And a good country!" replied Don Quixote. "But tell me, your worship, out of courtesy, your name; for it seems to me it will matter to me to know it more than I can readily say."
"My name is Don Álvaro Tarfe," answered the guest.
To which Don Quixote replied:
"Without any doubt I think your worship must be that Don Álvaro Tarfe who goes about in print in the Second Part of the History of Don Quixote of La Mancha, lately printed and given to the light of the world by a modern author."
"The very man," answered the gentleman; "and that Don Quixote, the chief subject of that history, was a very great friend of mine, and I was the man who took him out of his own country — or at least moved him to come to some jousts that were being held at Saragossa, where I was going. And truly and truly I did him a great many friendly services, and I kept the hangman from combing his shoulders for him, for being excessively bold."
"And tell me, your worship, Señor Don Álvaro: do I look at all like that Don Quixote your worship speaks of?"
"Certainly not," answered the guest: "in no way at all."
"And that Don Quixote," said ours, "did he have with him a squire called Sancho Panza?"
"He did," answered Don Álvaro; "and, although he had a name for being very amusing, I never heard him say a droll thing that had any drollery in it."
"That I believe very well," said Sancho at this, "because saying droll things is not for everybody; and that Sancho your worship speaks of, sir gentleman, must be some very great rogue, dull and a thief into the bargain. For the true Sancho Panza is me, and I have more drolleries than raindrops; and if you doubt it, let your worship make the experiment and go about after me for at least a year, and you will see that they fall out of me at every step, and such and so many that, without my knowing most of the time what I am saying, I make everybody who hears me laugh.
"And the true Don Quixote of La Mancha — the famous, the valiant and the judicious, the lover, the undoer of wrongs, the guardian of wards and orphans, the protection of widows, the slayer of maidens, the man who has for his one lady the peerless Dulcinea of El Toboso — is this gentleman here present, who is my master. Any other Don Quixote and any other Sancho Panza is a joke and a thing of dreams."
"By God, I believe it!" answered Don Álvaro; "because you have said more droll things, my friend, in four sentences you have spoken than the other Sancho Panza in all I ever heard him say, and that was a great deal. He had more of the great eater about him than of the good talker, and more of the fool than of the wit; and I hold it for certain that the enchanters who persecute Don Quixote the good have chosen to persecute me with Don Quixote the bad.
"But I do not know what to say; for I would dare to swear that I left him shut up in the madhouse at Toledo to be cured — and now here another Don Quixote turns up, though a very different one from mine."
"I," said Don Quixote, "do not know whether I am the good one; but I can say that I am not the bad one. As proof of which I want your worship, my lord Don Álvaro Tarfe, to know that in all the days of my life I have never been in Saragossa; on the contrary, because I was told that this fanciful Don Quixote had been present at the jousts of that city, I chose not to go into it, so as to bring out his lie in the face of the world.
"And so I passed straight on to Barcelona: the storehouse of courtesy, the shelter of strangers, the hospital of the poor, the country of the valiant, the avenger of the injured, the pleasant correspondence of firm friendships, and, in its situation and in its beauty, unique. And, although the things that have happened to me in it are not much to my pleasure but much to my grief, I carry them without grief simply for having seen the place.
"Finally, Señor Don Álvaro Tarfe, I am Don Quixote of La Mancha, the very man fame speaks of, and not that unfortunate creature who has tried to usurp my name and honour himself with my thoughts. I beg your worship, by what you owe to being a gentleman, to be so good as to make a declaration before the magistrate of this place that your worship has never in all the days of your life seen me until now, and that I am not the Don Quixote printed in the second part, and that this Sancho Panza my squire is not the one your worship knew."
"I shall do that very willingly," answered Don Álvaro, "although it causes astonishment to see two Don Quixotes and two Sanchos at one and the same time, as alike in their names as they are different in their actions; and I say again and affirm that I have not seen what I have seen, and that what has happened to me has not happened."
"Without a doubt," said Sancho, "your worship must be enchanted, like my lady Dulcinea of El Toboso; and would to heaven that your worship's disenchantment lay in giving me another three thousand and so many lashes like the ones I am giving myself for her, for I would give them to myself without any interest at all."
"I do not understand this about lashes," said Don Álvaro.
And Sancho answered him that it was long to tell, but that he would tell him if by any chance they were going the same road.
At this the dinner hour came round; Don Quixote and Don Álvaro dined together. The magistrate of the village happened to come into the inn with a clerk, before which magistrate Don Quixote put in a petition that it was to his right's advantage that Don Álvaro Tarfe, that gentleman who was there present, should declare before his worship that he did not know Don Quixote of La Mancha, who was likewise there present, and that he was not the one who went about in print in a history entitled The Second Part of Don Quixote of La Mancha, composed by one Avellaneda, a native of Tordesillas.
Finally the magistrate gave his ruling in due form; the declaration was made with all the force that ought to be used in such cases; with which Don Quixote and Sancho were left very glad, as though such a declaration mattered a great deal to them and their deeds and their words did not plainly show the difference between the two Don Quixotes and the two Sanchos.
A great many courtesies and offers of service passed between Don Álvaro and Don Quixote, in which the great Manchegan showed his good sense, so that he undeceived Don Álvaro Tarfe of the error he was in; who gave himself to understand that he must be enchanted, since he had touched with his hand two such opposite Don Quixotes.
Evening came, they set out from that place, and about half a league on two different roads parted, one leading to Don Quixote's village and the other the one Don Álvaro was to take. In this short space Don Quixote told him the misfortune of his defeat and Dulcinea's enchantment and its remedy — all of which put Don Álvaro into fresh astonishment; and, embracing Don Quixote and Sancho, he went his road and Don Quixote his.
That night he spent among some more trees, so as to give Sancho room to carry out his penance, which he carried out in the same way as the night before, at the expense of the beeches' bark far more than of his own shoulders — which he guarded so well that the lashes could not have knocked a fly off them if there had been one on top.
The deceived Don Quixote did not lose a single stroke of the count, and found that with those of the night before they came to three thousand and twenty-nine. It seems that the sun had got up early to see the sacrifice, by whose light they went on with their road, the two of them talking about Don Álvaro's mistake and how well advised it had been to take his declaration before the law, and so authentically.
That day and that night they travelled without anything happening to them worth telling, except that in the night Sancho finished his task — at which Don Quixote was contented beyond measure; and he waited for the day, to see whether on the road he would come across his lady Dulcinea already disenchanted. And, going along his road, he did not come across a single woman without going to see whether she was Dulcinea of El Toboso, holding it for infallible that Merlin's promises could not lie.
With these thoughts and these desires they climbed up a hill from which they made out their village; which, on seeing, Sancho went down on his knees and said:
"Open your eyes, longed-for country, and see that Sancho Panza your son is coming back to you — if not very rich, then very well whipped. Open your arms and receive your son Don Quixote too, who, if he comes beaten by another man's arms, comes the conqueror of himself; which, as he has told me, is the greatest conquest that can be desired. I am bringing money, for if they gave me good lashes, I was riding well mounted."
"Leave off this foolishness," said Don Quixote, "and let us go in with the right foot to enter our village, where we shall give vent to our imaginings and to the plan we mean to carry out for the pastoral life."
With this they came down the hill and went to their village.
At the entrance of it, according to Cide Hamete, Don Quixote saw that on the threshing floors of the village two boys were quarrelling, and one said to the other:
"Do not wear yourself out, Periquillo, for you shall not see her in all the days of your life."
Don Quixote heard him and said to Sancho:
"Do you not notice, my friend, what that boy said: 'You shall not see her in all the days of your life'?"
"Well then, what does it matter," answered Sancho, "that the boy said that?"
"What?" replied Don Quixote. "Do you not see that, applying those words to my own purpose, it means that I am not to see Dulcinea any more?"
Sancho was about to answer him when he was prevented by seeing a hare come running across that field in flight, followed by a good many greyhounds and hunters; and the hare, terrified, came and took shelter and crouched down under the grey's feet. Sancho caught it with his bare hand and presented it to Don Quixote, who was saying:
"Malum signum! Malum signum! A hare flees, greyhounds follow her: Dulcinea does not appear!"
"Your worship is a strange man," said Sancho. "Let us suppose that this hare is Dulcinea of El Toboso and these greyhounds that are chasing her are the villainous enchanters who turned her into a country girl: she flees, I catch her and put her into your worship's power, and you have her in your arms and make much of her. What bad sign is this, and what ill omen can be taken from it?"
The two boys who had been quarrelling came up to see the hare, and Sancho asked one of them why they were quarrelling. And he was answered by the one who had said "you shall not see her again in all your life" that he had taken a cricket cage from the other boy and did not mean to give it back to him in all his life. Sancho took four coppers out of his pocket and gave them to the boy for the cage, and put it into Don Quixote's hands, saying:
"Here, sir, these omens are broken and undone, and they have no more to do with our affairs — as I imagine, fool though I am — than with last year's clouds. And if I do not remember wrongly, I have heard our village curate say that it is not the part of Christian or judicious people to stick at these childish things; and your worship yourself told me so a few days ago, giving me to understand that all those Christians who stuck at omens were fools. And there is no need to press the point: let us go on and go into our village."
The hunters came up, asked for their hare, and Don Quixote gave it them; they went on and, at the entrance of the village, came across the curate and the bachelor Carrasco saying their prayers in a little meadow.
And it is to be known that Sancho Panza had thrown over the grey and over the bundle of arms, to serve as a saddlecloth, the buckram gown painted with flames of fire that they had put on him at the duke's castle on the night when Altisidora came round. He had also fitted the mitre on the donkey's head, which was the newest transformation and adornment that any donkey in the world was ever seen in.
The two of them were at once recognised by the curate and the bachelor, who came to them with open arms. Don Quixote dismounted and embraced them tightly; and the boys, who are lynxes there is no escaping, made out the mitre on the donkey and came running to see him, saying to one another:
"Come along, boys, and you shall see Sancho Panza's ass finer than Mingo, and Don Quixote's beast thinner today than on the first day."
Finally, surrounded by boys and accompanied by the curate and the bachelor, they went into the village and made their way to Don Quixote's house, and found the housekeeper and his niece at the door, for the news of his coming had already reached them.
News of it had likewise reached Teresa Panza, Sancho's wife, who, tousled and half undressed, leading Sanchica her daughter by the hand, came running to see her husband; and, seeing him not so well got up as she thought a governor ought to be, she said to him:
"How is it you come like this, my husband? For it seems to me that you come on foot and footsore, and you have more the look of an un-governor than of a governor."
"Be quiet, Teresa," answered Sancho, "for many times where there are hooks there is no bacon; and let us go to our house, and there you shall hear marvels. I am bringing money, which is what matters, earned by my own industry and without harm to anybody."
"Bring the money, my good husband," said Teresa, "and let it be earned here or there; for however you have earned it, you will not have brought in a new custom into the world."
Sanchica embraced her father and asked him whether he was bringing anything, for she had been waiting for him like the rain in May; and, holding on to one side of his belt, with his wife on his hand and her daughter pulling the grey, they went off to their house, leaving Don Quixote at his, in the power of his niece and his housekeeper and in the company of the curate and the bachelor.
Don Quixote, without keeping to terms or hours, at that very moment drew the bachelor and the curate aside on their own, and in a few words told them of his defeat and of the obligation he was left under not to leave his village for a year — which he meant to keep to the letter, without going a hair's breadth beyond it, exactly like a knight errant bound by the exactness and the order of knight-errantry; and that he had thought of becoming a shepherd for that year and entertaining himself in the solitude of the fields, where at a loose rein he could give vent to his loving thoughts, exercising himself in the pastoral and virtuous exercise.
And he begged them, if they had not a great deal to do and were not held up by more important business, to be so good as to be his companions; for he would buy sheep and stock enough to give them the name of shepherds. And he let them know that the chief part of that business was done, because he had given them their names, which would fit them as though cast in the mould. The curate asked him to say them. Don Quixote answered that he himself was to be called the shepherd Quixotize; and the bachelor the shepherd Carrascón; and the curate the shepherd Curiambro; and Sancho Panza the shepherd Panzino.
They were all thunderstruck at seeing Don Quixote's new madness; but, so that he should not get away from the village again to his chivalries, and hoping that in that year he might be cured, they agreed to his new intention and approved his madness as judicious, offering themselves as his companions in his exercise.
"And what is more," said Sansón Carrasco, "as everybody already knows, I am a most celebrated poet, and at every turn I shall compose pastoral verses, or courtly ones, or whatever comes best to the point, so that we may entertain ourselves along those out-of-the-way places where we are to go. And what is most needed, my dear sirs, is that each of us should choose the name of the shepherdess he means to celebrate in his verses, and that we should not leave a tree, however hard it may be, without labelling it and carving her name on it, as is the use and custom of shepherds in love."
"That is exactly right," answered Don Quixote, "although I am free of having to look for the name of a pretended shepherdess, since there stands the peerless Dulcinea of El Toboso, the glory of these banks, the adornment of these meadows, the mainstay of beauty, the cream of all charms, and, in short, a subject on whom every praise can well be settled, however hyperbolical."
"That is true," said the curate; "but we shall look about for some handy shepherdesses, who if they do not square with us will corner us."
To which Sansón Carrasco added:
"And when they run short, we shall give them the names of the stamped and printed ones that the world is full of: Phyllises, Amaryllises, Dianas, Fléridas, Galateas and Belisardas; for, since they sell them in the market squares, we can very well buy them and hold them for our own. If my lady — or, better said, my shepherdess — happens to be called Ana, I shall celebrate her under the name of Anarda; and if Francisca, I shall call her Francenia; and if Lucía, Lucinda, for it all comes out the same way. And Sancho Panza, if he is to come into this brotherhood, can celebrate his wife Teresa Panza under the name of Teresaina."
Don Quixote laughed at the fitting of the name, and the curate praised his decent and honourable resolution infinitely and offered himself again to keep him company all the time he had free from attending to his necessary obligations. With this they took their leave of him, and begged and advised him to look after his health with anything that might be good for him.
Fortune willed that his niece and the housekeeper had heard the talk of the three of them; and, as soon as they had gone, both of them went in to Don Quixote, and his niece said to him:
"What is this, my lord uncle? Now that we thought your worship was coming back to settle down in his house and to live a quiet and honourable life in it, do you want to get yourself into new labyrinths, turning yourself into
Little shepherd, you who come, little shepherd, you who go?
Why, truly, the green barley is too tough now for making pipes."
To which the housekeeper added:
"And will your worship be able to bear out in the fields the summer noons, the winter night airs and the howling of wolves? Certainly not; for that is an exercise and an office for robust men, tanned and bred for such a ministry almost from their swaddling clothes. Even taking one evil with another, it is better to be a knight errant than a shepherd.
"Look, sir, take my advice — and I do not give it you on a full belly of bread and wine but fasting, and on the strength of the fifty years of age I have: stay in your house, attend to your property, confess often, favour the poor; and on my soul be it if any harm comes to you."
"Be quiet, my daughters," Don Quixote answered them, "for I know very well what suits me. Take me to bed, for I do not think I am very well; and hold it for certain that, whether I am a knight errant now or a shepherd yet to set out, I shall never leave off seeing to whatever you may need, as you shall see by the deed."
And the good daughters — for such the housekeeper and the niece undoubtedly were — took him to bed, where they gave him something to eat and looked after him as well as they could.
Since human things are not everlasting, always going downhill from their beginnings until they reach their last end — and especially the lives of men — and since Don Quixote's had no privilege from heaven to hold up the course of its own, his end and finish came when he least expected it. Because, whether it was from the melancholy caused him by seeing himself beaten, or by the disposition of heaven that ordered it so, a fever settled on him that kept him six days in bed, in which he was visited many times by the curate, the bachelor and the barber, his friends, and Sancho Panza his good squire never left his pillow.
These, believing that the grief of seeing himself beaten and of not seeing his desire fulfilled in Dulcinea's freedom and disenchantment kept him in that state, tried by every possible means to cheer him up, the bachelor telling him to take heart and get up so as to begin their pastoral exercise, for which he had already composed an eclogue that would put in the shade all those Sannazaro ever composed; and that he had already bought with his own money two famous dogs to guard the flock, one called Barcino and the other Butrón, which a stockman of Quintanar had sold him. But for all that Don Quixote did not leave off his sadness.
His friends called the doctor; he felt his pulse and was not much pleased with it, and said that, one way or the other, he should see to the health of his soul, because his body's was in danger. Don Quixote heard it with a quiet mind; but his housekeeper, his niece and his squire did not hear it so, and they began to weep tenderly, as though they already had him dead in front of them. The doctor's opinion was that melancholy and low spirits were making an end of him.
Don Quixote begged them to leave him alone, because he wanted to sleep a little. They did so, and he slept at a stretch, as they say, for more than six hours — so much so that the housekeeper and the niece thought he would stay in that sleep. He woke at the end of the said time, and, letting out a great cry, said:
"Blessed be almighty God, who has done me so much good! In short, his mercies have no limit, and the sins of men do not shorten them or hinder them."
The niece listened attentively to her uncle's words, and they seemed to her better ordered than he usually said them — at least in that illness — and she asked him:
"What is your worship saying, sir? Have we something new? What mercies are these, or what sins of men?"
"The mercies, niece," answered Don Quixote, "are those God has used with me at this moment; whom, as I said, my sins do not hinder. I have my judgement now, free and clear, without the murky shadows of ignorance that my bitter and constant reading of those detestable books of chivalry cast over it. Now I know their absurdities and their deceptions, and the only thing that grieves me is that this coming to my senses has arrived so late that it leaves me no time to make any amends by reading others that might be a light to my soul.
"I feel myself, niece, at the point of death; I should like to make it in such a way as to give it to be understood that my life had not been so bad as to leave me the name of a madman; for although I have been one, I should not like to confirm that truth in my death. Call me, my dear, my good friends: the curate, the bachelor Sansón Carrasco and Master Nicolás the barber, for I want to make my confession and to make my will."
But the niece was spared this labour by the coming in of the three. Don Quixote had hardly seen them when he said:
"Give me joy, good gentlemen, that I am no longer Don Quixote of La Mancha but Alonso Quixano, whom my habits gave the name of the Good. Now I am an enemy of Amadís of Gaul and of the whole infinite herd of his line; now all the profane histories of knight-errantry are hateful to me; now I know my own foolishness and the danger that reading them put me in; now, by God's mercy, having learnt at my own cost, I abominate them."
When the three heard him say this, they undoubtedly believed that some new madness had taken hold of him. And Sansón said to him:
"Now, Señor Don Quixote, when we have news that the lady Dulcinea is disenchanted, does your worship come out with this? And now that we are so near to being shepherds and passing our lives singing like so many princes, does your worship want to turn hermit? Be quiet, on your life; come to yourself and leave off these tales."
"Those I have told until now," replied Don Quixote, "which have been true to my own harm, my death shall turn, with heaven's help, to my profit. I, gentlemen, feel myself dying in great haste; let all jokes be set aside, and bring me a confessor to confess me and a notary to make my will; for at such passes as this a man must not play games with his soul. And so I beg that, while the curate confesses me, you should go for the notary."
They looked at one another, astonished at Don Quixote's words; and, although in doubt, they chose to believe him. And one of the signs by which they guessed that he was dying was his having come back so easily from mad to sane, because to the words already spoken he added a great many others so well said, so Christian and so orderly that they finally took away their doubt and made them believe that he was sane.
The curate had everybody sent out and stayed alone with him and confessed him.
The bachelor went for the notary and came back a little later with him and with Sancho Panza; which Sancho, who already knew from the bachelor's news what state his master was in, finding the housekeeper and the niece in tears, began to pull faces and to shed tears himself. The confession was finished, and the curate came out, saying:
"Truly he is dying, and truly Alonso Quixano the Good is sane; we may well go in for him to make his will."
This news gave a terrible push to the swollen eyes of the housekeeper, the niece and Sancho Panza his good squire, in such a way that it burst the tears out of their eyes and a thousand deep sighs out of their breasts. Because truly, as has been said at some point, all the time Don Quixote was Alonso Quixano the Good, plain and simple, and all the time he was Don Quixote of La Mancha, he was always of a gentle nature and agreeable in his dealings; and for this reason he was well loved not only by the people of his house but by everybody who knew him.
The notary came in with the rest; and, having drawn up the head of the will and Don Quixote having settled his soul with all those Christian circumstances that are required, coming to the bequests, he said:
"Item, it is my will that of certain moneys Sancho Panza has, whom in my madness I made my squire — since there have been between him and me certain accounts and givings and takings — he shall not be charged with them and no account shall be asked of him. But if anything should be left over after he has paid himself what I owe him, the remainder shall be his, and it will be very little, and much good may it do him. And if, when I was mad, I had a part in giving him the government of the isle, now that I am sane I would give him that of a kingdom if I could, because the plainness of his nature and the faithfulness of his dealings deserve it."
And, turning to Sancho, he said to him:
"Forgive me, my friend, for the occasion I have given you of seeming as mad as I was, by making you fall into the error I fell into, that there have been and are knights errant in the world."
"Ah," answered Sancho, weeping, "do not die, your worship, my dear sir; take my advice and live many years, because the greatest madness a man can commit in this life is to let himself die without any more ado, without anybody killing him and with no other hands making an end of him but melancholy's.
"Look, do not be lazy; get up out of that bed and let us go out into the fields dressed as shepherds, as we have arranged: perhaps behind some bush we shall find the lady Doña Dulcinea disenchanted, and there will be nothing more to see. If it is that you are dying of grief at being beaten, put the blame on me and say that they knocked you down because I had girthed Rocinante badly; and what is more, your worship will have seen in his books of chivalry that it is an ordinary thing for one knight to knock down another, and for the man who is beaten today to be the winner tomorrow."
"That is so," said Sansón, "and good Sancho Panza is very much in the right of these cases."
"Gentlemen," said Don Quixote, "let us go gently, for in last year's nests there are no birds this year. I was mad and now I am sane; I was Don Quixote of La Mancha and I am now, as I have said, Alonso Quixano the Good. May my repentance and my truthfulness bring me back with your worships to the esteem I was held in; and let the notary go on.
"Item, I bequeath my whole estate, behind closed doors, to Antonia Quixana my niece, who is here present, having first taken out of the soundest part of it what is needed to carry out the bequests I have made. And the first satisfaction I want made is the paying of the wages I owe for the time my housekeeper has served me, and twenty ducats besides for a dress. I leave as my executors the curate and the bachelor Sansón Carrasco, who are here present.
"Item, it is my will that if Antonia Quixana my niece wants to marry, she should marry a man of whom it has first been established that he does not know what books of chivalry are; and in case it should be found that he does know, and my niece should still want to marry him and should marry him, she shall lose everything I have left her, which my executors may distribute in works of charity as they please.
"Item, I beg the said gentlemen my executors that if good fortune should bring them to know the author who they say composed a history that goes about with the title of The Second Part of the Exploits of Don Quixote of La Mancha, they should on my behalf beg him, as earnestly as may be, to forgive the occasion I gave him, without thinking of it, of having written so many and such great absurdities as he writes in it; because I depart this life with a scruple at having given him a motive for writing them."
With this he closed the will; and, a fainting fit taking him, he stretched himself out at full length on the bed. Everybody was thrown into an uproar and ran to help him; and in the three days he lived after the one on which he made his will, he fainted very often. The house was in an uproar; but for all that, the niece ate, the housekeeper drank healths and Sancho Panza was merry — for this business of inheriting something rubs out or tempers in the heir the memory of the grief that it is right the dead man should leave.
In the end Don Quixote's last day came, after he had received all the sacraments and after he had abominated the books of chivalry with many and forcible arguments. The notary was present, and said that he had never read in any book of chivalry of a knight errant dying in his bed so quietly and so like a Christian as Don Quixote; who, among the compassion and the tears of those who were there, gave up his spirit — I mean that he died.
Seeing which, the curate asked the notary to give him a certificate that Alonso Quixano the Good, commonly called Don Quixote of La Mancha, had passed out of this present life and had died naturally; and he asked for such a certificate so as to take away the chance of any author other than Cide Hamete Benengeli falsely raising him from the dead and making endless histories of his exploits.
This was the end of the Ingenious Gentleman of La Mancha, whose village Cide Hamete would not name exactly, so as to leave all the towns and villages of La Mancha to contend among themselves to adopt him and claim him for their own, as the seven cities of Greece contended over Homer.
The weeping of Sancho and of Don Quixote's niece and housekeeper is left out here, and the fresh epitaphs on his tomb — although Sansón Carrasco set this one on it:
Here lies the mighty gentleman who came to such an extreme of valour that it may be noted that death did not triumph over his life by his death. He held the whole world cheap; he was the scarecrow and the bogey of the world, at such a juncture that his good fortune was made good by dying sane and living mad.
And the most prudent Cide Hamete said to his pen:
"Here you shall stay, hung on this rack and this brass wire, my quill — I do not know whether well cut or badly trimmed — where you shall live for long ages, if presumptuous and villainous historians do not take you down to profane you. But before they reach you, you can warn them and say to them in the best way you can:
Softly, softly, little poltroons! Let her be touched by nobody; for this enterprise, good king, was kept for me alone.
"For me alone Don Quixote was born, and I for him: he knew how to act and I to write; the two of us alone are made for one another, in spite and in defiance of that pretended writer of Tordesillas who dared, or shall dare, to write with a coarse and badly trimmed ostrich quill the exploits of my valorous knight — for it is no load for his shoulders and no subject for his frozen wit.
"And you shall warn him, if by any chance you come to know him, to let the weary and by now rotted bones of Don Quixote rest in the grave, and not to try to carry him off, against all the laws of death, to Old Castile, making him come out of the tomb where he really and truly lies stretched at full length, unable to make a third expedition and a new sally. For, to make a mock of all the many that so many knights errant made, the two he did make are enough — so much to the taste and good pleasure of the people whose notice they came to, in this kingdom as in foreign ones.
"And with this you will fulfil your Christian profession by giving good advice to the man who wishes you ill; and I shall be left satisfied and proud at having been the first to enjoy the fruit of his writings entirely, as I wished — since my desire has been no other than to make men loathe the invented and preposterous histories of the books of chivalry, which, thanks to those of my true Don Quixote, are already stumbling and will beyond any doubt fall altogether. Vale."