DON QUIXOTE

by Miguel de Cervantes

Translated by John Ormsby

Volume I.

Ebook Editor’s Note

The book cover and spine above and the images which follow were not part
of the original Ormsby translation—they are taken from the 1880
edition of J. W. Clark, illustrated by Gustave Dore. Clark in his
edition states that, “The English text of ‘Don Quixote’ adopted in this
edition is that of Jarvis, with occasional corrections from Motteaux.”
See in the introduction below John Ormsby’s critique of both the Jarvis
and Motteaux translations. It has been elected in the present Project
Gutenberg edition to attach the famous engravings of Gustave Dore to the
Ormsby translation instead of the Jarvis/Motteaux. The detail of many of
the Dore engravings can be fully appreciated only by utilizing the “Full
Size” button to expand them to their original dimensions. Ormsby in his
Preface has criticized the fanciful nature of Dore’s illustrations;
others feel these woodcuts and steel engravings well match Quixote’s
dreams.            D.W.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I WHICH TREATS OF THE CHARACTER AND
PURSUITS OF THE FAMOUS GENTLEMAN DON QUIXOTE OF LA MANCHA

CHAPTER II WHICH TREATS OF THE FIRST SALLY THE INGENIOUS
DON QUIXOTE MADE FROM HOME

CHAPTER III
WHEREIN IS RELATED THE DROLL WAY IN WHICH DON QUIXOTE HAD HIMSELF DUBBED A
KNIGHT

CHAPTER IV OF WHAT HAPPENED TO OUR
KNIGHT WHEN HE LEFT THE INN

CHAPTER V IN
WHICH THE NARRATIVE OF OUR KNIGHT’S MISHAP IS CONTINUED

CHAPTER VI OF THE DIVERTING AND IMPORTANT SCRUTINY WHICH
THE CURATE AND THE BARBER MADE IN THE LIBRARY OF OUR INGENIOUS GENTLEMAN

CHAPTER VII OF THE SECOND SALLY OF OUR WORTHY
KNIGHT DON QUIXOTE OF LA MANCHA

CHAPTER VIII
OF THE GOOD FORTUNE WHICH THE VALIANT DON QUIXOTE HAD IN THE TERRIBLE AND
UNDREAMT-OF ADVENTURE OF THE WINDMILLS, WITH OTHER OCCURRENCES WORTHY TO
BE FITLY RECORDED

CHAPTER IX IN WHICH IS
CONCLUDED AND FINISHED THE TERRIFIC BATTLE BETWEEN THE GALLANT BISCAYAN
AND THE VALIANT MANCHEGAN

CHAPTER X OF THE
PLEASANT DISCOURSE THAT PASSED BETWEEN DON QUIXOTE AND HIS SQUIRE SANCHO
PANZA

CHAPTER XI OF WHAT BEFELL DON QUIXOTE
WITH CERTAIN GOATHERDS

CHAPTER XII OF WHAT A
GOATHERD RELATED TO THOSE WITH DON QUIXOTE

CHAPTER
XIII IN WHICH IS ENDED THE STORY OF THE SHEPHERDESS MARCELA, WITH
OTHER INCIDENTS

CHAPTER XIV WHEREIN ARE
INSERTED THE DESPAIRING VERSES OF THE DEAD SHEPHERD, TOGETHER WITH OTHER
INCIDENTS NOT LOOKED FOR

CHAPTER XV IN WHICH
IS RELATED THE UNFORTUNATE ADVENTURE THAT DON QUIXOTE FELL IN WITH WHEN HE
FELL OUT WITH CERTAIN HEARTLESS YANGUESANS

CHAPTER
XVI OF WHAT HAPPENED TO THE INGENIOUS GENTLEMAN IN THE INN WHICH HE
TOOK TO BE A CASTLE

CHAPTER XVII IN WHICH
ARE CONTAINED THE INNUMERABLE TROUBLES WHICH THE BRAVE DON QUIXOTE AND HIS
GOOD SQUIRE SANCHO PANZA ENDURED IN THE INN, WHICH TO HIS MISFORTUNE HE
TOOK TO BE A CASTLE

CHAPTER XVIII IN WHICH
IS RELATED THE DISCOURSE SANCHO PANZA HELD WITH HIS MASTER, DON QUIXOTE,
AND OTHER ADVENTURES WORTH RELATING

CHAPTER XIX
OF THE SHREWD DISCOURSE WHICH SANCHO HELD WITH HIS MASTER, AND OF THE
ADVENTURE THAT BEFELL HIM WITH A DEAD BODY, TOGETHER WITH OTHER NOTABLE
OCCURRENCES

CHAPTER XX OF THE UNEXAMPLED AND
UNHEARD-OF ADVENTURE WHICH WAS ACHIEVED BY THE VALIANT DON QUIXOTE OF LA
MANCHA WITH LESS PERIL THAN ANY EVER ACHIEVED BY ANY FAMOUS KNIGHT IN THE
WORLD

CHAPTER XXI WHICH TREATS OF THE
EXALTED ADVENTURE AND RICH PRIZE OF MAMBRINO’S HELMET, TOGETHER WITH OTHER
THINGS THAT HAPPENED TO OUR INVINCIBLE KNIGHT

CHAPTER
XXII OF THE FREEDOM DON QUIXOTE CONFERRED ON SEVERAL UNFORTUNATES WHO
AGAINST THEIR WILL WERE BEING CARRIED WHERE THEY HAD NO WISH TO GO

CHAPTER XXIII OF WHAT BEFELL DON QUIXOTE IN THE SIERRA
MORENA, WHICH WAS ONE OF THE RAREST ADVENTURES RELATED IN THIS VERACIOUS
HISTORY

CHAPTER XXIV IN WHICH IS CONTINUED
THE ADVENTURE OF THE SIERRA MORENA

CHAPTER XXV
WHICH TREATS OF THE STRANGE THINGS THAT HAPPENED TO THE STOUT KNIGHT OF LA
MANCHA IN THE SIERRA MORENA, AND OF HIS IMITATION OF THE PENANCE OF
BELTENEBROS

CHAPTER XXVI IN WHICH ARE
CONTINUED THE REFINEMENTS WHEREWITH DON QUIXOTE PLAYED THE PART OF A LOVER
IN THE SIERRA MORENA

CHAPTER XXVII OF HOW
THE CURATE AND THE BARBER PROCEEDED WITH THEIR SCHEME; TOGETHER WITH OTHER
MATTERS WORTHY OF RECORD IN THIS GREAT HISTORY

CHAPTER
XXVIII WHICH TREATS OF THE STRANGE AND DELIGHTFUL ADVENTURE THAT
BEFELL THE CURATE AND THE BARBER IN THE SAME SIERRA

CHAPTER XXIX WHICH TREATS OF THE DROLL DEVICE AND METHOD
ADOPTED TO EXTRICATE OUR LOVE-STRICKEN KNIGHT FROM THE SEVERE PENANCE HE
HAD IMPOSED UPON HIMSELF

CHAPTER XXX WHICH
TREATS OF ADDRESS DISPLAYED BY THE FAIR DOROTHEA, WITH OTHER MATTERS
PLEASANT AND AMUSING

CHAPTER XXXI OF THE
DELECTABLE DISCUSSION BETWEEN DON QUIXOTE AND SANCHO PANZA, HIS SQUIRE,
TOGETHER WITH OTHER INCIDENTS

CHAPTER XXXII
WHICH TREATS OF WHAT BEFELL DON QUIXOTE’S PARTY AT THE INN

CHAPTER XXXIII IN WHICH IS RELATED THE NOVEL OF “THE
ILL-ADVISED CURIOSITY”

CHAPTER XXXIV IN
WHICH IS CONTINUED THE NOVEL OF “THE ILL-ADVISED CURIOSITY”

CHAPTER XXXV WHICH TREATS OF THE HEROIC AND PRODIGIOUS
BATTLE DON QUIXOTE HAD WITH CERTAIN SKINS OF RED WINE, AND BRINGS THE
NOVEL OF “THE ILL-ADVISED CURIOSITY” TO A CLOSE

CHAPTER
XXXVI WHICH TREATS OF MORE CURIOUS INCIDENTS THAT OCCURRED AT THE INN

CHAPTER XXXVII IN WHICH IS CONTINUED THE
STORY OF THE FAMOUS PRINCESS MICOMICONA, WITH OTHER DROLL ADVENTURES

CHAPTER XXXVIII WHICH TREATS OF THE CURIOUS DISCOURSE DON
QUIXOTE DELIVERED ON ARMS AND LETTERS

CHAPTER
XXXIX WHEREIN THE CAPTIVE RELATES HIS LIFE AND ADVENTURES

CHAPTER XL IN WHICH THE STORY OF THE CAPTIVE IS CONTINUED

CHAPTER XLI IN WHICH THE CAPTIVE STILL
CONTINUES HIS ADVENTURES

CHAPTER XLII WHICH
TREATS OF WHAT FURTHER TOOK PLACE IN THE INN, AND OF SEVERAL OTHER THINGS
WORTH KNOWING

CHAPTER XLIII WHEREIN IS
RELATED THE PLEASANT STORY OF THE MULETEER, TOGETHER WITH OTHER STRANGE
THINGS THAT CAME TO PASS IN THE INN

CHAPTER XLIV
IN WHICH ARE CONTINUED THE UNHEARD-OF ADVENTURES OF THE INN

CHAPTER XLV IN WHICH THE DOUBTFUL QUESTION OF MAMBRINO’S
HELMET AND THE PACK-SADDLE IS FINALLY SETTLED, WITH OTHER ADVENTURES THAT
OCCURRED IN TRUTH AND EARNEST

CHAPTER XLVI
OF THE END OF THE NOTABLE ADVENTURE OF THE OFFICERS OF THE HOLY
BROTHERHOOD; AND OF THE GREAT FEROCITY OF OUR WORTHY KNIGHT, DON QUIXOTE

CHAPTER XLVII OF THE STRANGE MANNER IN WHICH
DON QUIXOTE OF LA MANCHA WAS CARRIED AWAY ENCHANTED, TOGETHER WITH OTHER
REMARKABLE INCIDENTS

CHAPTER XLVIII IN WHICH
THE CANON PURSUES THE SUBJECT OF THE BOOKS OF CHIVALRY, WITH OTHER MATTERS
WORTHY OF HIS WIT

CHAPTER XLIX WHICH TREATS
OF THE SHREWD CONVERSATION WHICH SANCHO PANZA HELD WITH HIS MASTER DON
QUIXOTE

CHAPTER L OF THE SHREWD CONTROVERSY
WHICH DON QUIXOTE AND THE CANON HELD, TOGETHER WITH OTHER INCIDENTS

CHAPTER LI WHICH DEALS WITH WHAT THE GOATHERD TOLD THOSE
WHO WERE CARRYING OFF DON QUIXOTE

CHAPTER LII
OF THE QUARREL THAT DON QUIXOTE HAD WITH THE GOATHERD, TOGETHER WITH THE
RARE ADVENTURE OF THE PENITENTS, WHICH WITH AN EXPENDITURE OF SWEAT HE
BROUGHT TO A HAPPY CONCLUSION

TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE

I: ABOUT THIS TRANSLATION

It was with considerable reluctance that I abandoned in favour of the
present undertaking what had long been a favourite project: that of a new
edition of Shelton’s “Don Quixote,” which has now become a somewhat scarce
book. There are some—and I confess myself to be one—for whom
Shelton’s racy old version, with all its defects, has a charm that no
modern translation, however skilful or correct, could possess. Shelton had
the inestimable advantage of belonging to the same generation as
Cervantes; “Don Quixote” had to him a vitality that only a contemporary
could feel; it cost him no dramatic effort to see things as Cervantes saw
them; there is no anachronism in his language; he put the Spanish of
Cervantes into the English of Shakespeare. Shakespeare himself most likely
knew the book; he may have carried it home with him in his saddle-bags to
Stratford on one of his last journeys, and under the mulberry tree at New
Place joined hands with a kindred genius in its pages.

But it was soon made plain to me that to hope for even a moderate
popularity for Shelton was vain. His fine old crusted English would, no
doubt, be relished by a minority, but it would be only by a minority. His
warmest admirers must admit that he is not a satisfactory representative
of Cervantes. His translation of the First Part was very hastily made and
was never revised by him. It has all the freshness and vigour, but also a
full measure of the faults, of a hasty production. It is often very
literal—barbarously literal frequently—but just as often very
loose. He had evidently a good colloquial knowledge of Spanish, but
apparently not much more. It never seems to occur to him that the same
translation of a word will not suit in every case.

It is often said that we have no satisfactory translation of “Don
Quixote.” To those who are familiar with the original, it savours of
truism or platitude to say so, for in truth there can be no thoroughly
satisfactory translation of “Don Quixote” into English or any other
language. It is not that the Spanish idioms are so utterly unmanageable,
or that the untranslatable words, numerous enough no doubt, are so
superabundant, but rather that the sententious terseness to which the
humour of the book owes its flavour is peculiar to Spanish, and can at
best be only distantly imitated in any other tongue.

The history of our English translations of “Don Quixote” is instructive.
Shelton’s, the first in any language, was made, apparently, about 1608,
but not published till 1612. This of course was only the First Part. It
has been asserted that the Second, published in 1620, is not the work of
Shelton, but there is nothing to support the assertion save the fact that
it has less spirit, less of what we generally understand by “go,” about it
than the first, which would be only natural if the first were the work of
a young man writing currente calamo, and the second that of a middle-aged
man writing for a bookseller. On the other hand, it is closer and more
literal, the style is the same, the very same translations, or
mistranslations, occur in it, and it is extremely unlikely that a new
translator would, by suppressing his name, have allowed Shelton to carry
off the credit.

In 1687 John Phillips, Milton’s nephew, produced a “Don Quixote” “made
English,” he says, “according to the humour of our modern language.” His
“Quixote” is not so much a translation as a travesty, and a travesty that
for coarseness, vulgarity, and buffoonery is almost unexampled even in the
literature of that day.

Ned Ward’s “Life and Notable Adventures of Don Quixote, merrily translated
into Hudibrastic Verse” (1700), can scarcely be reckoned a translation,
but it serves to show the light in which “Don Quixote” was regarded at the
time.

A further illustration may be found in the version published in 1712 by
Peter Motteux, who had then recently combined tea-dealing with literature.
It is described as “translated from the original by several hands,” but if
so all Spanish flavour has entirely evaporated under the manipulation of
the several hands. The flavour that it has, on the other hand, is
distinctly Franco-cockney. Anyone who compares it carefully with the
original will have little doubt that it is a concoction from Shelton and
the French of Filleau de Saint Martin, eked out by borrowings from
Phillips, whose mode of treatment it adopts. It is, to be sure, more
decent and decorous, but it treats “Don Quixote” in the same fashion as a
comic book that cannot be made too comic.

To attempt to improve the humour of “Don Quixote” by an infusion of
cockney flippancy and facetiousness, as Motteux’s operators did, is not
merely an impertinence like larding a sirloin of prize beef, but an
absolute falsification of the spirit of the book, and it is a proof of the
uncritical way in which “Don Quixote” is generally read that this worse
than worthless translation—worthless as failing to represent, worse
than worthless as misrepresenting—should have been favoured as it
has been.

It had the effect, however, of bringing out a translation undertaken and
executed in a very different spirit, that of Charles Jervas, the portrait
painter, and friend of Pope, Swift, Arbuthnot, and Gay. Jervas has been
allowed little credit for his work, indeed it may be said none, for it is
known to the world in general as Jarvis’s. It was not published until
after his death, and the printers gave the name according to the current
pronunciation of the day. It has been the most freely used and the most
freely abused of all the translations. It has seen far more editions than
any other, it is admitted on all hands to be by far the most faithful, and
yet nobody seems to have a good word to say for it or for its author.
Jervas no doubt prejudiced readers against himself in his preface, where
among many true words about Shelton, Stevens, and Motteux, he rashly and
unjustly charges Shelton with having translated not from the Spanish, but
from the Italian version of Franciosini, which did not appear until ten
years after Shelton’s first volume. A suspicion of incompetence, too,
seems to have attached to him because he was by profession a painter and a
mediocre one (though he has given us the best portrait we have of Swift),
and this may have been strengthened by Pope’s remark that he “translated
‘Don Quixote’ without understanding Spanish.” He has been also charged
with borrowing from Shelton, whom he disparaged. It is true that in a few
difficult or obscure passages he has followed Shelton, and gone astray
with him; but for one case of this sort, there are fifty where he is right
and Shelton wrong. As for Pope’s dictum, anyone who examines Jervas’s
version carefully, side by side with the original, will see that he was a
sound Spanish scholar, incomparably a better one than Shelton, except
perhaps in mere colloquial Spanish. He was, in fact, an honest, faithful,
and painstaking translator, and he has left a version which, whatever its
shortcomings may be, is singularly free from errors and mistranslations.

The charge against it is that it is stiff, dry—“wooden” in a word,—and
no one can deny that there is a foundation for it. But it may be pleaded
for Jervas that a good deal of this rigidity is due to his abhorrence of
the light, flippant, jocose style of his predecessors. He was one of the
few, very few, translators that have shown any apprehension of the
unsmiling gravity which is the essence of Quixotic humour; it seemed to
him a crime to bring Cervantes forward smirking and grinning at his own
good things, and to this may be attributed in a great measure the ascetic
abstinence from everything savouring of liveliness which is the
characteristic of his translation. In most modern editions, it should be
observed, his style has been smoothed and smartened, but without any
reference to the original Spanish, so that if he has been made to read
more agreeably he has also been robbed of his chief merit of fidelity.

Smollett’s version, published in 1755, may be almost counted as one of
these. At any rate it is plain that in its construction Jervas’s
translation was very freely drawn upon, and very little or probably no
heed given to the original Spanish.

The later translations may be dismissed in a few words. George Kelly’s,
which appeared in 1769, “printed for the Translator,” was an impudent
imposture, being nothing more than Motteux’s version with a few of the
words, here and there, artfully transposed; Charles Wilmot’s (1774) was
only an abridgment like Florian’s, but not so skilfully executed; and the
version published by Miss Smirke in 1818, to accompany her brother’s
plates, was merely a patchwork production made out of former translations.
On the latest, Mr. A. J. Duffield’s, it would be in every sense of the
word impertinent in me to offer an opinion here. I had not even seen it
when the present undertaking was proposed to me, and since then I may say
vidi tantum, having for obvious reasons resisted the temptation which Mr.
Duffield’s reputation and comely volumes hold out to every lover of
Cervantes.

From the foregoing history of our translations of “Don Quixote,” it will
be seen that there are a good many people who, provided they get the mere
narrative with its full complement of facts, incidents, and adventures
served up to them in a form that amuses them, care very little whether
that form is the one in which Cervantes originally shaped his ideas. On
the other hand, it is clear that there are many who desire to have not
merely the story he tells, but the story as he tells it, so far at least
as differences of idiom and circumstances permit, and who will give a
preference to the conscientious translator, even though he may have
acquitted himself somewhat awkwardly.

But after all there is no real antagonism between the two classes; there
is no reason why what pleases the one should not please the other, or why
a translator who makes it his aim to treat “Don Quixote” with the respect
due to a great classic, should not be as acceptable even to the careless
reader as the one who treats it as a famous old jest-book. It is not a
question of caviare to the general, or, if it is, the fault rests with him
who makes so. The method by which Cervantes won the ear of the Spanish
people ought, mutatis mutandis, to be equally effective with the great
majority of English readers. At any rate, even if there are readers to
whom it is a matter of indifference, fidelity to the method is as much a
part of the translator’s duty as fidelity to the matter. If he can please
all parties, so much the better; but his first duty is to those who look
to him for as faithful a representation of his author as it is in his
power to give them, faithful to the letter so long as fidelity is
practicable, faithful to the spirit so far as he can make it.

My purpose here is not to dogmatise on the rules of translation, but to
indicate those I have followed, or at least tried to the best of my
ability to follow, in the present instance. One which, it seems to me,
cannot be too rigidly followed in translating “Don Quixote,” is to avoid
everything that savours of affectation. The book itself is, indeed, in one
sense a protest against it, and no man abhorred it more than Cervantes.
For this reason, I think, any temptation to use antiquated or obsolete
language should be resisted. It is after all an affectation, and one for
which there is no warrant or excuse. Spanish has probably undergone less
change since the seventeenth century than any language in Europe, and by
far the greater and certainly the best part of “Don Quixote” differs but
little in language from the colloquial Spanish of the present day. Except
in the tales and Don Quixote’s speeches, the translator who uses the
simplest and plainest everyday language will almost always be the one who
approaches nearest to the original.

Seeing that the story of “Don Quixote” and all its characters and
incidents have now been for more than two centuries and a half familiar as
household words in English mouths, it seems to me that the old familiar
names and phrases should not be changed without good reason. Of course a
translator who holds that “Don Quixote” should receive the treatment a
great classic deserves, will feel himself bound by the injunction laid
upon the Morisco in Chap. IX not to omit or add anything.

II: ABOUT CERVANTES AND DON QUIXOTE

Four generations had laughed over “Don Quixote” before it occurred to
anyone to ask, who and what manner of man was this Miguel de Cervantes
Saavedra whose name is on the title-page; and it was too late for a
satisfactory answer to the question when it was proposed to add a life of
the author to the London edition published at Lord Carteret’s instance in
1738. All traces of the personality of Cervantes had by that time
disappeared. Any floating traditions that may once have existed,
transmitted from men who had known him, had long since died out, and of
other record there was none; for the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
were incurious as to “the men of the time,” a reproach against which the
nineteenth has, at any rate, secured itself, if it has produced no
Shakespeare or Cervantes. All that Mayans y Siscar, to whom the task was
entrusted, or any of those who followed him, Rios, Pellicer, or Navarrete,
could do was to eke out the few allusions Cervantes makes to himself in
his various prefaces with such pieces of documentary evidence bearing upon
his life as they could find.

This, however, has been done by the last-named biographer to such good
purpose that he has superseded all predecessors. Thoroughness is the chief
characteristic of Navarrete’s work. Besides sifting, testing, and
methodising with rare patience and judgment what had been previously
brought to light, he left, as the saying is, no stone unturned under which
anything to illustrate his subject might possibly be found. Navarrete has
done all that industry and acumen could do, and it is no fault of his if
he has not given us what we want. What Hallam says of Shakespeare may be
applied to the almost parallel case of Cervantes: “It is not the register
of his baptism, or the draft of his will, or the orthography of his name
that we seek; no letter of his writing, no record of his conversation, no
character of him drawn … by a contemporary has been produced.”

It is only natural, therefore, that the biographers of Cervantes, forced
to make brick without straw, should have recourse largely to conjecture,
and that conjecture should in some instances come by degrees to take the
place of established fact. All that I propose to do here is to separate
what is matter of fact from what is matter of conjecture, and leave it to
the reader’s judgment to decide whether the data justify the inference or
not.

The men whose names by common consent stand in the front rank of Spanish
literature, Cervantes, Lope de Vega, Quevedo, Calderon, Garcilaso de la
Vega, the Mendozas, Gongora, were all men of ancient families, and,
curiously, all, except the last, of families that traced their origin to
the same mountain district in the North of Spain. The family of Cervantes
is commonly said to have been of Galician origin, and unquestionably it
was in possession of lands in Galicia at a very early date; but I think
the balance of the evidence tends to show that the “solar,” the original
site of the family, was at Cervatos in the north-west corner of Old
Castile, close to the junction of Castile, Leon, and the Asturias. As it
happens, there is a complete history of the Cervantes family from the
tenth century down to the seventeenth extant under the title of
“Illustrious Ancestry, Glorious Deeds, and Noble Posterity of the Famous
Nuno Alfonso, Alcaide of Toledo,” written in 1648 by the industrious
genealogist Rodrigo Mendez Silva, who availed himself of a manuscript
genealogy by Juan de Mena, the poet laureate and historiographer of John
II.

The origin of the name Cervantes is curious. Nuno Alfonso was almost as
distinguished in the struggle against the Moors in the reign of Alfonso
VII as the Cid had been half a century before in that of Alfonso VI, and
was rewarded by divers grants of land in the neighbourhood of Toledo. On
one of his acquisitions, about two leagues from the city, he built himself
a castle which he called Cervatos, because “he was lord of the solar of
Cervatos in the Montana,” as the mountain region extending from the Basque
Provinces to Leon was always called. At his death in battle in 1143, the
castle passed by his will to his son Alfonso Munio, who, as territorial or
local surnames were then coming into vogue in place of the simple
patronymic, took the additional name of Cervatos. His eldest son Pedro
succeeded him in the possession of the castle, and followed his example in
adopting the name, an assumption at which the younger son, Gonzalo, seems
to have taken umbrage.

Everyone who has paid even a flying visit to Toledo will remember the
ruined castle that crowns the hill above the spot where the bridge of
Alcantara spans the gorge of the Tagus, and with its broken outline and
crumbling walls makes such an admirable pendant to the square solid
Alcazar towering over the city roofs on the opposite side. It was built,
or as some say restored, by Alfonso VI shortly after his occupation of
Toledo in 1085, and called by him San Servando after a Spanish martyr, a
name subsequently modified into San Servan (in which form it appears in
the “Poem of the Cid”), San Servantes, and San Cervantes: with regard to
which last the “Handbook for Spain” warns its readers against the
supposition that it has anything to do with the author of “Don Quixote.”
Ford, as all know who have taken him for a companion and counsellor on the
roads of Spain, is seldom wrong in matters of literature or history. In
this instance, however, he is in error. It has everything to do with the
author of “Don Quixote,” for it is in fact these old walls that have given
to Spain the name she is proudest of to-day. Gonzalo, above mentioned, it
may be readily conceived, did not relish the appropriation by his brother
of a name to which he himself had an equal right, for though nominally
taken from the castle, it was in reality derived from the ancient
territorial possession of the family, and as a set-off, and to distinguish
himself (diferenciarse) from his brother, he took as a surname the name of
the castle on the bank of the Tagus, in the building of which, according
to a family tradition, his great-grandfather had a share.

Both brothers founded families. The Cervantes branch had more tenacity; it
sent offshoots in various directions, Andalusia, Estremadura, Galicia, and
Portugal, and produced a goodly line of men distinguished in the service
of Church and State. Gonzalo himself, and apparently a son of his,
followed Ferdinand III in the great campaign of 1236-48 that gave Cordova
and Seville to Christian Spain and penned up the Moors in the kingdom of
Granada, and his descendants intermarried with some of the noblest
families of the Peninsula and numbered among them soldiers, magistrates,
and Church dignitaries, including at least two cardinal-archbishops.

Of the line that settled in Andalusia, Deigo de Cervantes, Commander of
the Order of Santiago, married Juana Avellaneda, daughter of Juan Arias de
Saavedra, and had several sons, of whom one was Gonzalo Gomez, Corregidor
of Jerez and ancestor of the Mexican and Columbian branches of the family;
and another, Juan, whose son Rodrigo married Dona Leonor de Cortinas, and
by her had four children, Rodrigo, Andrea, Luisa, and Miguel, our author.

The pedigree of Cervantes is not without its bearing on “Don Quixote.” A
man who could look back upon an ancestry of genuine knights-errant
extending from well-nigh the time of Pelayo to the siege of Granada was
likely to have a strong feeling on the subject of the sham chivalry of the
romances. It gives a point, too, to what he says in more than one place
about families that have once been great and have tapered away until they
have come to nothing, like a pyramid. It was the case of his own.

He was born at Alcala de Henares and baptised in the church of Santa Maria
Mayor on the 9th of October, 1547. Of his boyhood and youth we know
nothing, unless it be from the glimpse he gives us in the preface to his
“Comedies” of himself as a boy looking on with delight while Lope de Rueda
and his company set up their rude plank stage in the plaza and acted the
rustic farces which he himself afterwards took as the model of his
interludes. This first glimpse, however, is a significant one, for it
shows the early development of that love of the drama which exercised such
an influence on his life and seems to have grown stronger as he grew
older, and of which this very preface, written only a few months before
his death, is such a striking proof. He gives us to understand, too, that
he was a great reader in his youth; but of this no assurance was needed,
for the First Part of “Don Quixote” alone proves a vast amount of
miscellaneous reading, romances of chivalry, ballads, popular poetry,
chronicles, for which he had no time or opportunity except in the first
twenty years of his life; and his misquotations and mistakes in matters of
detail are always, it may be noticed, those of a man recalling the reading
of his boyhood.

Other things besides the drama were in their infancy when Cervantes was a
boy. The period of his boyhood was in every way a transition period for
Spain. The old chivalrous Spain had passed away. The new Spain was the
mightiest power the world had seen since the Roman Empire and it had not
yet been called upon to pay the price of its greatness. By the policy of
Ferdinand and Ximenez the sovereign had been made absolute, and the Church
and Inquisition adroitly adjusted to keep him so. The nobles, who had
always resisted absolutism as strenuously as they had fought the Moors,
had been divested of all political power, a like fate had befallen the
cities, the free constitutions of Castile and Aragon had been swept away,
and the only function that remained to the Cortes was that of granting
money at the King’s dictation.

The transition extended to literature. Men who, like Garcilaso de la Vega
and Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, followed the Italian wars, had brought back
from Italy the products of the post-Renaissance literature, which took
root and flourished and even threatened to extinguish the native growths.
Damon and Thyrsis, Phyllis and Chloe had been fairly naturalised in Spain,
together with all the devices of pastoral poetry for investing with an air
of novelty the idea of a dispairing shepherd and inflexible shepherdess.
As a set-off against this, the old historical and traditional ballads, and
the true pastorals, the songs and ballads of peasant life, were being
collected assiduously and printed in the cancioneros that succeeded one
another with increasing rapidity. But the most notable consequence,
perhaps, of the spread of printing was the flood of romances of chivalry
that had continued to pour from the press ever since Garci Ordonez de
Montalvo had resuscitated “Amadis of Gaul” at the beginning of the
century.

For a youth fond of reading, solid or light, there could have been no
better spot in Spain than Alcala de Henares in the middle of the sixteenth
century. It was then a busy, populous university town, something more than
the enterprising rival of Salamanca, and altogether a very different place
from the melancholy, silent, deserted Alcala the traveller sees now as he
goes from Madrid to Saragossa. Theology and medicine may have been the
strong points of the university, but the town itself seems to have
inclined rather to the humanities and light literature, and as a producer
of books Alcala was already beginning to compete with the older presses of
Toledo, Burgos, Salamanca and Seville.

A pendant to the picture Cervantes has given us of his first playgoings
might, no doubt, have been often seen in the streets of Alcala at that
time; a bright, eager, tawny-haired boy peering into a book-shop where the
latest volumes lay open to tempt the public, wondering, it may be, what
that little book with the woodcut of the blind beggar and his boy, that
called itself “Vida de Lazarillo de Tormes, segunda impresion,” could be
about; or with eyes brimming over with merriment gazing at one of those
preposterous portraits of a knight-errant in outrageous panoply and plumes
with which the publishers of chivalry romances loved to embellish the
title-pages of their folios. If the boy was the father of the man, the
sense of the incongruous that was strong at fifty was lively at ten, and
some such reflections as these may have been the true genesis of “Don
Quixote.”

For his more solid education, we are told, he went to Salamanca. But why
Rodrigo de Cervantes, who was very poor, should have sent his son to a
university a hundred and fifty miles away when he had one at his own door,
would be a puzzle, if we had any reason for supposing that he did so. The
only evidence is a vague statement by Professor Tomas Gonzalez, that he
once saw an old entry of the matriculation of a Miguel de Cervantes. This
does not appear to have been ever seen again; but even if it had, and if
the date corresponded, it would prove nothing, as there were at least two
other Miguels born about the middle of the century; one of them, moreover,
a Cervantes Saavedra, a cousin, no doubt, who was a source of great
embarrassment to the biographers.

That he was a student neither at Salamanca nor at Alcala is best proved by
his own works. No man drew more largely upon experience than he did, and
he has nowhere left a single reminiscence of student life—for the
“Tia Fingida,” if it be his, is not one—nothing, not even “a college
joke,” to show that he remembered days that most men remember best. All
that we know positively about his education is that Juan Lopez de Hoyos, a
professor of humanities and belles-lettres of some eminence, calls him his
“dear and beloved pupil.” This was in a little collection of verses by
different hands on the death of Isabel de Valois, second queen of Philip
II, published by the professor in 1569, to which Cervantes contributed
four pieces, including an elegy, and an epitaph in the form of a sonnet.
It is only by a rare chance that a “Lycidas” finds its way into a volume
of this sort, and Cervantes was no Milton. His verses are no worse than
such things usually are; so much, at least, may be said for them.

By the time the book appeared he had left Spain, and, as fate ordered it,
for twelve years, the most eventful ones of his life. Giulio, afterwards
Cardinal, Acquaviva had been sent at the end of 1568 to Philip II by the
Pope on a mission, partly of condolence, partly political, and on his
return to Rome, which was somewhat brusquely expedited by the King, he
took Cervantes with him as his camarero (chamberlain), the office he
himself held in the Pope’s household. The post would no doubt have led to
advancement at the Papal Court had Cervantes retained it, but in the
summer of 1570 he resigned it and enlisted as a private soldier in Captain
Diego Urbina’s company, belonging to Don Miguel de Moncada’s regiment, but
at that time forming a part of the command of Marc Antony Colonna. What
impelled him to this step we know not, whether it was distaste for the
career before him, or purely military enthusiasm. It may well have been
the latter, for it was a stirring time; the events, however, which led to
the alliance between Spain, Venice, and the Pope, against the common
enemy, the Porte, and to the victory of the combined fleets at Lepanto,
belong rather to the history of Europe than to the life of Cervantes. He
was one of those that sailed from Messina, in September 1571, under the
command of Don John of Austria; but on the morning of the 7th of October,
when the Turkish fleet was sighted, he was lying below ill with fever. At
the news that the enemy was in sight he rose, and, in spite of the
remonstrances of his comrades and superiors, insisted on taking his post,
saying he preferred death in the service of God and the King to health.
His galley, the Marquesa, was in the thick of the fight, and before it was
over he had received three gunshot wounds, two in the breast and one in
the left hand or arm. On the morning after the battle, according to
Navarrete, he had an interview with the commander-in-chief, Don John, who
was making a personal inspection of the wounded, one result of which was
an addition of three crowns to his pay, and another, apparently, the
friendship of his general.

How severely Cervantes was wounded may be inferred from the fact, that
with youth, a vigorous frame, and as cheerful and buoyant a temperament as
ever invalid had, he was seven months in hospital at Messina before he was
discharged. He came out with his left hand permanently disabled; he had
lost the use of it, as Mercury told him in the “Viaje del Parnaso” for the
greater glory of the right. This, however, did not absolutely unfit him
for service, and in April 1572 he joined Manuel Ponce de Leon’s company of
Lope de Figueroa’s regiment, in which, it seems probable, his brother
Rodrigo was serving, and shared in the operations of the next three years,
including the capture of the Goletta and Tunis. Taking advantage of the
lull which followed the recapture of these places by the Turks, he
obtained leave to return to Spain, and sailed from Naples in September
1575 on board the Sun galley, in company with his brother Rodrigo, Pedro
Carrillo de Quesada, late Governor of the Goletta, and some others, and
furnished with letters from Don John of Austria and the Duke of Sesa, the
Viceroy of Sicily, recommending him to the King for the command of a
company, on account of his services; a dono infelice as events proved. On
the 26th they fell in with a squadron of Algerine galleys, and after a
stout resistance were overpowered and carried into Algiers.

By means of a ransomed fellow-captive the brothers contrived to inform
their family of their condition, and the poor people at Alcala at once
strove to raise the ransom money, the father disposing of all he
possessed, and the two sisters giving up their marriage portions. But Dali
Mami had found on Cervantes the letters addressed to the King by Don John
and the Duke of Sesa, and, concluding that his prize must be a person of
great consequence, when the money came he refused it scornfully as being
altogether insufficient. The owner of Rodrigo, however, was more easily
satisfied; ransom was accepted in his case, and it was arranged between
the brothers that he should return to Spain and procure a vessel in which
he was to come back to Algiers and take off Miguel and as many of their
comrades as possible. This was not the first attempt to escape that
Cervantes had made. Soon after the commencement of his captivity he
induced several of his companions to join him in trying to reach Oran,
then a Spanish post, on foot; but after the first day’s journey, the Moor
who had agreed to act as their guide deserted them, and they had no choice
but to return. The second attempt was more disastrous. In a garden outside
the city on the sea-shore, he constructed, with the help of the gardener,
a Spaniard, a hiding-place, to which he brought, one by one, fourteen of
his fellow-captives, keeping them there in secrecy for several months, and
supplying them with food through a renegade known as El Dorador, “the
Gilder.” How he, a captive himself, contrived to do all this, is one of
the mysteries of the story. Wild as the project may appear, it was very
nearly successful. The vessel procured by Rodrigo made its appearance off
the coast, and under cover of night was proceeding to take off the
refugees, when the crew were alarmed by a passing fishing boat, and beat a
hasty retreat. On renewing the attempt shortly afterwards, they, or a
portion of them at least, were taken prisoners, and just as the poor
fellows in the garden were exulting in the thought that in a few moments
more freedom would be within their grasp, they found themselves surrounded
by Turkish troops, horse and foot. The Dorador had revealed the whole
scheme to the Dey Hassan.

When Cervantes saw what had befallen them, he charged his companions to
lay all the blame upon him, and as they were being bound he declared aloud
that the whole plot was of his contriving, and that nobody else had any
share in it. Brought before the Dey, he said the same. He was threatened
with impalement and with torture; and as cutting off ears and noses were
playful freaks with the Algerines, it may be conceived what their tortures
were like; but nothing could make him swerve from his original statement
that he and he alone was responsible. The upshot was that the unhappy
gardener was hanged by his master, and the prisoners taken possession of
by the Dey, who, however, afterwards restored most of them to their
masters, but kept Cervantes, paying Dali Mami 500 crowns for him. He felt,
no doubt, that a man of such resource, energy, and daring, was too
dangerous a piece of property to be left in private hands; and he had him
heavily ironed and lodged in his own prison. If he thought that by these
means he could break the spirit or shake the resolution of his prisoner,
he was soon undeceived, for Cervantes contrived before long to despatch a
letter to the Governor of Oran, entreating him to send him some one that
could be trusted, to enable him and three other gentlemen, fellow-captives
of his, to make their escape; intending evidently to renew his first
attempt with a more trustworthy guide. Unfortunately the Moor who carried
the letter was stopped just outside Oran, and the letter being found upon
him, he was sent back to Algiers, where by the order of the Dey he was
promptly impaled as a warning to others, while Cervantes was condemned to
receive two thousand blows of the stick, a number which most likely would
have deprived the world of “Don Quixote,” had not some persons, who they
were we know not, interceded on his behalf.

After this he seems to have been kept in still closer confinement than
before, for nearly two years passed before he made another attempt. This
time his plan was to purchase, by the aid of a Spanish renegade and two
Valencian merchants resident in Algiers, an armed vessel in which he and
about sixty of the leading captives were to make their escape; but just as
they were about to put it into execution one Doctor Juan Blanco de Paz, an
ecclesiastic and a compatriot, informed the Dey of the plot. Cervantes by
force of character, by his self-devotion, by his untiring energy and his
exertions to lighten the lot of his companions in misery, had endeared
himself to all, and become the leading spirit in the captive colony, and,
incredible as it may seem, jealousy of his influence and the esteem in
which he was held, moved this man to compass his destruction by a cruel
death. The merchants finding that the Dey knew all, and fearing that
Cervantes under torture might make disclosures that would imperil their
own lives, tried to persuade him to slip away on board a vessel that was
on the point of sailing for Spain; but he told them they had nothing to
fear, for no tortures would make him compromise anybody, and he went at
once and gave himself up to the Dey.

As before, the Dey tried to force him to name his accomplices. Everything
was made ready for his immediate execution; the halter was put round his
neck and his hands tied behind him, but all that could be got from him was
that he himself, with the help of four gentlemen who had since left
Algiers, had arranged the whole, and that the sixty who were to accompany
him were not to know anything of it until the last moment. Finding he
could make nothing of him, the Dey sent him back to prison more heavily
ironed than before.

The poverty-stricken Cervantes family had been all this time trying once
more to raise the ransom money, and at last a sum of three hundred ducats
was got together and entrusted to the Redemptorist Father Juan Gil, who
was about to sail for Algiers. The Dey, however, demanded more than double
the sum offered, and as his term of office had expired and he was about to
sail for Constantinople, taking all his slaves with him, the case of
Cervantes was critical. He was already on board heavily ironed, when the
Dey at length agreed to reduce his demand by one-half, and Father Gil by
borrowing was able to make up the amount, and on September 19, 1580, after
a captivity of five years all but a week, Cervantes was at last set free.
Before long he discovered that Blanco de Paz, who claimed to be an officer
of the Inquisition, was now concocting on false evidence a charge of
misconduct to be brought against him on his return to Spain. To checkmate
him Cervantes drew up a series of twenty-five questions, covering the
whole period of his captivity, upon which he requested Father Gil to take
the depositions of credible witnesses before a notary. Eleven witnesses
taken from among the principal captives in Algiers deposed to all the
facts above stated and to a great deal more besides. There is something
touching in the admiration, love, and gratitude we see struggling to find
expression in the formal language of the notary, as they testify one after
another to the good deeds of Cervantes, how he comforted and helped the
weak-hearted, how he kept up their drooping courage, how he shared his
poor purse with this deponent, and how “in him this deponent found father
and mother.”

On his return to Spain he found his old regiment about to march for
Portugal to support Philip’s claim to the crown, and utterly penniless
now, had no choice but to rejoin it. He was in the expeditions to the
Azores in 1582 and the following year, and on the conclusion of the war
returned to Spain in the autumn of 1583, bringing with him the manuscript
of his pastoral romance, the “Galatea,” and probably also, to judge by
internal evidence, that of the first portion of “Persiles and Sigismunda.”
He also brought back with him, his biographers assert, an infant daughter,
the offspring of an amour, as some of them with great circumstantiality
inform us, with a Lisbon lady of noble birth, whose name, however, as well
as that of the street she lived in, they omit to mention. The sole
foundation for all this is that in 1605 there certainly was living in the
family of Cervantes a Dona Isabel de Saavedra, who is described in an
official document as his natural daughter, and then twenty years of age.

With his crippled left hand promotion in the army was hopeless, now that
Don John was dead and he had no one to press his claims and services, and
for a man drawing on to forty life in the ranks was a dismal prospect; he
had already a certain reputation as a poet; he made up his mind,
therefore, to cast his lot with literature, and for a first venture
committed his “Galatea” to the press. It was published, as Salva y Mallen
shows conclusively, at Alcala, his own birth-place, in 1585 and no doubt
helped to make his name more widely known, but certainly did not do him
much good in any other way.

While it was going through the press, he married Dona Catalina de Palacios
Salazar y Vozmediano, a lady of Esquivias near Madrid, and apparently a
friend of the family, who brought him a fortune which may possibly have
served to keep the wolf from the door, but if so, that was all. The drama
had by this time outgrown market-place stages and strolling companies, and
with his old love for it he naturally turned to it for a congenial
employment. In about three years he wrote twenty or thirty plays, which he
tells us were performed without any throwing of cucumbers or other
missiles, and ran their course without any hisses, outcries, or
disturbance. In other words, his plays were not bad enough to be hissed
off the stage, but not good enough to hold their own upon it. Only two of
them have been preserved, but as they happen to be two of the seven or
eight he mentions with complacency, we may assume they are favourable
specimens, and no one who reads the “Numancia” and the “Trato de Argel”
will feel any surprise that they failed as acting dramas. Whatever merits
they may have, whatever occasional they may show, they are, as regards
construction, incurably clumsy. How completely they failed is manifest
from the fact that with all his sanguine temperament and indomitable
perseverance he was unable to maintain the struggle to gain a livelihood
as a dramatist for more than three years; nor was the rising popularity of
Lope the cause, as is often said, notwithstanding his own words to the
contrary. When Lope began to write for the stage is uncertain, but it was
certainly after Cervantes went to Seville.

Among the “Nuevos Documentos” printed by Señor Asensio y Toledo is one
dated 1592, and curiously characteristic of Cervantes. It is an agreement
with one Rodrigo Osorio, a manager, who was to accept six comedies at
fifty ducats (about 6l.) apiece, not to be paid in any case unless it
appeared on representation that the said comedy was one of the best that
had ever been represented in Spain. The test does not seem to have been
ever applied; perhaps it was sufficiently apparent to Rodrigo Osorio that
the comedies were not among the best that had ever been represented. Among
the correspondence of Cervantes there might have been found, no doubt,
more than one letter like that we see in the “Rake’s Progress,” “Sir, I
have read your play, and it will not doo.”

He was more successful in a literary contest at Saragossa in 1595 in
honour of the canonisation of St. Jacinto, when his composition won the
first prize, three silver spoons. The year before this he had been
appointed a collector of revenues for the kingdom of Granada. In order to
remit the money he had collected more conveniently to the treasury, he
entrusted it to a merchant, who failed and absconded; and as the
bankrupt’s assets were insufficient to cover the whole, he was sent to
prison at Seville in September 1597. The balance against him, however, was
a small one, about 26l., and on giving security for it he was released at
the end of the year.

It was as he journeyed from town to town collecting the king’s taxes, that
he noted down those bits of inn and wayside life and character that abound
in the pages of “Don Quixote:” the Benedictine monks with spectacles and
sunshades, mounted on their tall mules; the strollers in costume bound for
the next village; the barber with his basin on his head, on his way to
bleed a patient; the recruit with his breeches in his bundle, tramping
along the road singing; the reapers gathered in the venta gateway
listening to “Felixmarte of Hircania” read out to them; and those little
Hogarthian touches that he so well knew how to bring in, the ox-tail
hanging up with the landlord’s comb stuck in it, the wine-skins at the
bed-head, and those notable examples of hostelry art, Helen going off in
high spirits on Paris’s arm, and Dido on the tower dropping tears as big
as walnuts. Nay, it may well be that on those journeys into remote regions
he came across now and then a specimen of the pauper gentleman, with his
lean hack and his greyhound and his books of chivalry, dreaming away his
life in happy ignorance that the world had changed since his
great-grandfather’s old helmet was new. But it was in Seville that he
found out his true vocation, though he himself would not by any means have
admitted it to be so. It was there, in Triana, that he was first tempted
to try his hand at drawing from life, and first brought his humour into
play in the exquisite little sketch of “Rinconete y Cortadillo,” the germ,
in more ways than one, of “Don Quixote.”

Where and when that was written, we cannot tell. After his imprisonment
all trace of Cervantes in his official capacity disappears, from which it
may be inferred that he was not reinstated. That he was still in Seville
in November 1598 appears from a satirical sonnet of his on the elaborate
catafalque erected to testify the grief of the city at the death of Philip
II, but from this up to 1603 we have no clue to his movements. The words
in the preface to the First Part of “Don Quixote” are generally held to be
conclusive that he conceived the idea of the book, and wrote the beginning
of it at least, in a prison, and that he may have done so is extremely
likely.

There is a tradition that Cervantes read some portions of his work to a
select audience at the Duke of Bejar’s, which may have helped to make the
book known; but the obvious conclusion is that the First Part of “Don
Quixote” lay on his hands some time before he could find a publisher bold
enough to undertake a venture of so novel a character; and so little faith
in it had Francisco Robles of Madrid, to whom at last he sold it, that he
did not care to incur the expense of securing the copyright for Aragon or
Portugal, contenting himself with that for Castile. The printing was
finished in December, and the book came out with the new year, 1605. It is
often said that “Don Quixote” was at first received coldly. The facts show
just the contrary. No sooner was it in the hands of the public than
preparations were made to issue pirated editions at Lisbon and Valencia,
and to bring out a second edition with the additional copyrights for
Aragon and Portugal, which he secured in February.

No doubt it was received with something more than coldness by certain
sections of the community. Men of wit, taste, and discrimination among the
aristocracy gave it a hearty welcome, but the aristocracy in general were
not likely to relish a book that turned their favourite reading into
ridicule and laughed at so many of their favourite ideas. The dramatists
who gathered round Lope as their leader regarded Cervantes as their common
enemy, and it is plain that he was equally obnoxious to the other clique,
the culto poets who had Gongora for their chief. Navarrete, who knew
nothing of the letter above mentioned, tries hard to show that the
relations between Cervantes and Lope were of a very friendly sort, as
indeed they were until “Don Quixote” was written. Cervantes, indeed, to
the last generously and manfully declared his admiration of Lope’s powers,
his unfailing invention, and his marvellous fertility; but in the preface
of the First Part of “Don Quixote” and in the verses of “Urganda the
Unknown,” and one or two other places, there are, if we read between the
lines, sly hits at Lope’s vanities and affectations that argue no personal
good-will; and Lope openly sneers at “Don Quixote” and Cervantes, and
fourteen years after his death gives him only a few lines of cold
commonplace in the “Laurel de Apolo,” that seem all the colder for the
eulogies of a host of nonentities whose names are found nowhere else.

In 1601 Valladolid was made the seat of the Court, and at the beginning of
1603 Cervantes had been summoned thither in connection with the balance
due by him to the Treasury, which was still outstanding. He remained at
Valladolid, apparently supporting himself by agencies and scrivener’s work
of some sort; probably drafting petitions and drawing up statements of
claims to be presented to the Council, and the like. So, at least, we
gather from the depositions taken on the occasion of the death of a
gentleman, the victim of a street brawl, who had been carried into the
house in which he lived. In these he himself is described as a man who
wrote and transacted business, and it appears that his household then
consisted of his wife, the natural daughter Isabel de Saavedra already
mentioned, his sister Andrea, now a widow, her daughter Constanza, a
mysterious Magdalena de Sotomayor calling herself his sister, for whom his
biographers cannot account, and a servant-maid.

Meanwhile “Don Quixote” had been growing in favour, and its author’s name
was now known beyond the Pyrenees. In 1607 an edition was printed at
Brussels. Robles, the Madrid publisher, found it necessary to meet the
demand by a third edition, the seventh in all, in 1608. The popularity of
the book in Italy was such that a Milan bookseller was led to bring out an
edition in 1610; and another was called for in Brussels in 1611. It might
naturally have been expected that, with such proofs before him that he had
hit the taste of the public, Cervantes would have at once set about
redeeming his rather vague promise of a second volume.

But, to all appearance, nothing was farther from his thoughts. He had
still by him one or two short tales of the same vintage as those he had
inserted in “Don Quixote” and instead of continuing the adventures of Don
Quixote, he set to work to write more of these “Novelas Exemplares” as he
afterwards called them, with a view to making a book of them.

The novels were published in the summer of 1613, with a dedication to the
Conde de Lemos, the Maecenas of the day, and with one of those chatty
confidential prefaces Cervantes was so fond of. In this, eight years and a
half after the First Part of “Don Quixote” had appeared, we get the first
hint of a forthcoming Second Part. “You shall see shortly,” he says, “the
further exploits of Don Quixote and humours of Sancho Panza.” His idea of
“shortly” was a somewhat elastic one, for, as we know by the date to
Sancho’s letter, he had barely one-half of the book completed that time
twelvemonth.

But more than poems, or pastorals, or novels, it was his dramatic ambition
that engrossed his thoughts. The same indomitable spirit that kept him
from despair in the bagnios of Algiers, and prompted him to attempt the
escape of himself and his comrades again and again, made him persevere in
spite of failure and discouragement in his efforts to win the ear of the
public as a dramatist. The temperament of Cervantes was essentially
sanguine. The portrait he draws in the preface to the novels, with the
aquiline features, chestnut hair, smooth untroubled forehead, and bright
cheerful eyes, is the very portrait of a sanguine man. Nothing that the
managers might say could persuade him that the merits of his plays would
not be recognised at last if they were only given a fair chance. The old
soldier of the Spanish Salamis was bent on being the Aeschylus of Spain.
He was to found a great national drama, based on the true principles of
art, that was to be the envy of all nations; he was to drive from the
stage the silly, childish plays, the “mirrors of nonsense and models of
folly” that were in vogue through the cupidity of the managers and
shortsightedness of the authors; he was to correct and educate the public
taste until it was ripe for tragedies on the model of the Greek drama—like
the “Numancia” for instance—and comedies that would not only amuse
but improve and instruct. All this he was to do, could he once get a
hearing: there was the initial difficulty.

He shows plainly enough, too, that “Don Quixote” and the demolition of the
chivalry romances was not the work that lay next his heart. He was,
indeed, as he says himself in his preface, more a stepfather than a father
to “Don Quixote.” Never was great work so neglected by its author. That it
was written carelessly, hastily, and by fits and starts, was not always
his fault, but it seems clear he never read what he sent to the press. He
knew how the printers had blundered, but he never took the trouble to
correct them when the third edition was in progress, as a man who really
cared for the child of his brain would have done. He appears to have
regarded the book as little more than a mere libro de entretenimiento, an
amusing book, a thing, as he says in the “Viaje,” “to divert the
melancholy moody heart at any time or season.” No doubt he had an
affection for his hero, and was very proud of Sancho Panza. It would have
been strange indeed if he had not been proud of the most humorous creation
in all fiction. He was proud, too, of the popularity and success of the
book, and beyond measure delightful is the naivete with which he shows his
pride in a dozen passages in the Second Part. But it was not the success
he coveted. In all probability he would have given all the success of “Don
Quixote,” nay, would have seen every copy of “Don Quixote” burned in the
Plaza Mayor, for one such success as Lope de Vega was enjoying on an
average once a week.

And so he went on, dawdling over “Don Quixote,” adding a chapter now and
again, and putting it aside to turn to “Persiles and Sigismunda”—which,
as we know, was to be the most entertaining book in the language, and the
rival of “Theagenes and Chariclea”—or finishing off one of his
darling comedies; and if Robles asked when “Don Quixote” would be ready,
the answer no doubt was: En breve—shortly, there was time enough for
that. At sixty-eight he was as full of life and hope and plans for the
future as a boy of eighteen.

Nemesis was coming, however. He had got as far as Chapter LIX, which at
his leisurely pace he could hardly have reached before October or November
1614, when there was put into his hand a small octave lately printed at
Tarragona, and calling itself “Second Volume of the Ingenious Gentleman
Don Quixote of La Mancha: by the Licentiate Alonso Fernandez de Avellaneda
of Tordesillas.” The last half of Chapter LIX and most of the following
chapters of the Second Part give us some idea of the effect produced upon
him, and his irritation was not likely to be lessened by the reflection
that he had no one to blame but himself. Had Avellaneda, in fact, been
content with merely bringing out a continuation to “Don Quixote,”
Cervantes would have had no reasonable grievance. His own intentions were
expressed in the very vaguest language at the end of the book; nay, in his
last words, “forse altro cantera con miglior plettro,” he seems actually
to invite some one else to continue the work, and he made no sign until
eight years and a half had gone by; by which time Avellaneda’s volume was
no doubt written.

In fact Cervantes had no case, or a very bad one, as far as the mere
continuation was concerned. But Avellaneda chose to write a preface to it,
full of such coarse personal abuse as only an ill-conditioned man could
pour out. He taunts Cervantes with being old, with having lost his hand,
with having been in prison, with being poor, with being friendless,
accuses him of envy of Lope’s success, of petulance and querulousness, and
so on; and it was in this that the sting lay. Avellaneda’s reason for this
personal attack is obvious enough. Whoever he may have been, it is clear
that he was one of the dramatists of Lope’s school, for he has the
impudence to charge Cervantes with attacking him as well as Lope in his
criticism on the drama. His identification has exercised the best critics
and baffled all the ingenuity and research that has been brought to bear
on it. Navarrete and Ticknor both incline to the belief that Cervantes
knew who he was; but I must say I think the anger he shows suggests an
invisible assailant; it is like the irritation of a man stung by a
mosquito in the dark. Cervantes from certain solecisms of language
pronounces him to be an Aragonese, and Pellicer, an Aragonese himself,
supports this view and believes him, moreover, to have been an
ecclesiastic, a Dominican probably.

Any merit Avellaneda has is reflected from Cervantes, and he is too dull
to reflect much. “Dull and dirty” will always be, I imagine, the verdict
of the vast majority of unprejudiced readers. He is, at best, a poor
plagiarist; all he can do is to follow slavishly the lead given him by
Cervantes; his only humour lies in making Don Quixote take inns for
castles and fancy himself some legendary or historical personage, and
Sancho mistake words, invert proverbs, and display his gluttony; all
through he shows a proclivity to coarseness and dirt, and he has contrived
to introduce two tales filthier than anything by the sixteenth century
novellieri and without their sprightliness.

But whatever Avellaneda and his book may be, we must not forget the debt
we owe them. But for them, there can be no doubt, “Don Quixote” would have
come to us a mere torso instead of a complete work. Even if Cervantes had
finished the volume he had in hand, most assuredly he would have left off
with a promise of a Third Part, giving the further adventures of Don
Quixote and humours of Sancho Panza as shepherds. It is plain that he had
at one time an intention of dealing with the pastoral romances as he had
dealt with the books of chivalry, and but for Avellaneda he would have
tried to carry it out. But it is more likely that, with his plans, and
projects, and hopefulness, the volume would have remained unfinished till
his death, and that we should have never made the acquaintance of the Duke
and Duchess, or gone with Sancho to Barataria.

From the moment the book came into his hands he seems to have been haunted
by the fear that there might be more Avellanedas in the field, and putting
everything else aside, he set himself to finish off his task and protect
Don Quixote in the only way he could, by killing him. The conclusion is no
doubt a hasty and in some places clumsy piece of work and the frequent
repetition of the scolding administered to Avellaneda becomes in the end
rather wearisome; but it is, at any rate, a conclusion and for that we
must thank Avellaneda.

The new volume was ready for the press in February, but was not printed
till the very end of 1615, and during the interval Cervantes put together
the comedies and interludes he had written within the last few years, and,
as he adds plaintively, found no demand for among the managers, and
published them with a preface, worth the book it introduces tenfold, in
which he gives an account of the early Spanish stage, and of his own
attempts as a dramatist. It is needless to say they were put forward by
Cervantes in all good faith and full confidence in their merits. The
reader, however, was not to suppose they were his last word or final
effort in the drama, for he had in hand a comedy called “Engano a los
ojos,” about which, if he mistook not, there would be no question.

Of this dramatic masterpiece the world has no opportunity of judging; his
health had been failing for some time, and he died, apparently of dropsy,
on the 23rd of April, 1616, the day on which England lost Shakespeare,
nominally at least, for the English calendar had not yet been reformed. He
died as he had lived, accepting his lot bravely and cheerfully.

Was it an unhappy life, that of Cervantes? His biographers all tell us
that it was; but I must say I doubt it. It was a hard life, a life of
poverty, of incessant struggle, of toil ill paid, of disappointment, but
Cervantes carried within himself the antidote to all these evils. His was
not one of those light natures that rise above adversity merely by virtue
of their own buoyancy; it was in the fortitude of a high spirit that he
was proof against it. It is impossible to conceive Cervantes giving way to
despondency or prostrated by dejection. As for poverty, it was with him a
thing to be laughed over, and the only sigh he ever allows to escape him
is when he says, “Happy he to whom Heaven has given a piece of bread for
which he is not bound to give thanks to any but Heaven itself.” Add to all
this his vital energy and mental activity, his restless invention and his
sanguine temperament, and there will be reason enough to doubt whether his
could have been a very unhappy life. He who could take Cervantes’
distresses together with his apparatus for enduring them would not make so
bad a bargain, perhaps, as far as happiness in life is concerned.

Of his burial-place nothing is known except that he was buried, in
accordance with his will, in the neighbouring convent of Trinitarian nuns,
of which it is supposed his daughter, Isabel de Saavedra, was an inmate,
and that a few years afterwards the nuns removed to another convent,
carrying their dead with them. But whether the remains of Cervantes were
included in the removal or not no one knows, and the clue to their
resting-place is now lost beyond all hope. This furnishes perhaps the
least defensible of the items in the charge of neglect brought against his
contemporaries. In some of the others there is a good deal of
exaggeration. To listen to most of his biographers one would suppose that
all Spain was in league not only against the man but against his memory,
or at least that it was insensible to his merits, and left him to live in
misery and die of want. To talk of his hard life and unworthy employments
in Andalusia is absurd. What had he done to distinguish him from thousands
of other struggling men earning a precarious livelihood? True, he was a
gallant soldier, who had been wounded and had undergone captivity and
suffering in his country’s cause, but there were hundreds of others in the
same case. He had written a mediocre specimen of an insipid class of
romance, and some plays which manifestly did not comply with the primary
condition of pleasing: were the playgoers to patronise plays that did not
amuse them, because the author was to produce “Don Quixote” twenty years
afterwards?

The scramble for copies which, as we have seen, followed immediately on
the appearance of the book, does not look like general insensibility to
its merits. No doubt it was received coldly by some, but if a man writes a
book in ridicule of periwigs he must make his account with being coldly
received by the periwig wearers and hated by the whole tribe of wigmakers.
If Cervantes had the chivalry-romance readers, the sentimentalists, the
dramatists, and the poets of the period all against him, it was because
“Don Quixote” was what it was; and if the general public did not come
forward to make him comfortable for the rest of his days, it is no more to
be charged with neglect and ingratitude than the English-speaking public
that did not pay off Scott’s liabilities. It did the best it could; it
read his book and liked it and bought it, and encouraged the bookseller to
pay him well for others.

It has been also made a reproach to Spain that she has erected no monument
to the man she is proudest of; no monument, that is to say, of him; for
the bronze statue in the little garden of the Plaza de las Cortes, a fair
work of art no doubt, and unexceptionable had it been set up to the local
poet in the market-place of some provincial town, is not worthy of
Cervantes or of Madrid. But what need has Cervantes of “such weak witness
of his name;” or what could a monument do in his case except testify to
the self-glorification of those who had put it up? Si monumentum quoeris,
circumspice. The nearest bookseller’s shop will show what bathos there
would be in a monument to the author of “Don Quixote.”

Nine editions of the First Part of “Don Quixote” had already appeared
before Cervantes died, thirty thousand copies in all, according to his own
estimate, and a tenth was printed at Barcelona the year after his death.
So large a number naturally supplied the demand for some time, but by 1634
it appears to have been exhausted; and from that time down to the present
day the stream of editions has continued to flow rapidly and regularly.
The translations show still more clearly in what request the book has been
from the very outset. In seven years from the completion of the work it
had been translated into the four leading languages of Europe. Except the
Bible, in fact, no book has been so widely diffused as “Don Quixote.” The
“Imitatio Christi” may have been translated into as many different
languages, and perhaps “Robinson Crusoe” and the “Vicar of Wakefield” into
nearly as many, but in multiplicity of translations and editions “Don
Quixote” leaves them all far behind.

Still more remarkable is the character of this wide diffusion. “Don
Quixote” has been thoroughly naturalised among people whose ideas about
knight-errantry, if they had any at all, were of the vaguest, who had
never seen or heard of a book of chivalry, who could not possibly feel the
humour of the burlesque or sympathise with the author’s purpose. Another
curious fact is that this, the most cosmopolitan book in the world, is one
of the most intensely national. “Manon Lescaut” is not more thoroughly
French, “Tom Jones” not more English, “Rob Roy” not more Scotch, than “Don
Quixote” is Spanish, in character, in ideas, in sentiment, in local
colour, in everything. What, then, is the secret of this unparalleled
popularity, increasing year by year for well-nigh three centuries? One
explanation, no doubt, is that of all the books in the world, “Don
Quixote” is the most catholic. There is something in it for every sort of
reader, young or old, sage or simple, high or low. As Cervantes himself
says with a touch of pride, “It is thumbed and read and got by heart by
people of all sorts; the children turn its leaves, the young people read
it, the grown men understand it, the old folk praise it.”

But it would be idle to deny that the ingredient which, more than its
humour, or its wisdom, or the fertility of invention or knowledge of human
nature it displays, has insured its success with the multitude, is the
vein of farce that runs through it. It was the attack upon the sheep, the
battle with the wine-skins, Mambrino’s helmet, the balsam of Fierabras,
Don Quixote knocked over by the sails of the windmill, Sancho tossed in
the blanket, the mishaps and misadventures of master and man, that were
originally the great attraction, and perhaps are so still to some extent
with the majority of readers. It is plain that “Don Quixote” was generally
regarded at first, and indeed in Spain for a long time, as little more
than a queer droll book, full of laughable incidents and absurd
situations, very amusing, but not entitled to much consideration or care.
All the editions printed in Spain from 1637 to 1771, when the famous
printer Ibarra took it up, were mere trade editions, badly and carelessly
printed on vile paper and got up in the style of chap-books intended only
for popular use, with, in most instances, uncouth illustrations and
clap-trap additions by the publisher.

To England belongs the credit of having been the first country to
recognise the right of “Don Quixote” to better treatment than this. The
London edition of 1738, commonly called Lord Carteret’s from having been
suggested by him, was not a mere edition de luxe. It produced “Don
Quixote” in becoming form as regards paper and type, and embellished with
plates which, if not particularly happy as illustrations, were at least
well intentioned and well executed, but it also aimed at correctness of
text, a matter to which nobody except the editors of the Valencia and
Brussels editions had given even a passing thought; and for a first
attempt it was fairly successful, for though some of its emendations are
inadmissible, a good many of them have been adopted by all subsequent
editors.

The zeal of publishers, editors, and annotators brought about a remarkable
change of sentiment with regard to “Don Quixote.” A vast number of its
admirers began to grow ashamed of laughing over it. It became almost a
crime to treat it as a humorous book. The humour was not entirely denied,
but, according to the new view, it was rated as an altogether secondary
quality, a mere accessory, nothing more than the stalking-horse under the
presentation of which Cervantes shot his philosophy or his satire, or
whatever it was he meant to shoot; for on this point opinions varied. All
were agreed, however, that the object he aimed at was not the books of
chivalry. He said emphatically in the preface to the First Part and in the
last sentence of the Second, that he had no other object in view than to
discredit these books, and this, to advanced criticism, made it clear that
his object must have been something else.

One theory was that the book was a kind of allegory, setting forth the
eternal struggle between the ideal and the real, between the spirit of
poetry and the spirit of prose; and perhaps German philosophy never
evolved a more ungainly or unlikely camel out of the depths of its inner
consciousness. Something of the antagonism, no doubt, is to be found in
“Don Quixote,” because it is to be found everywhere in life, and Cervantes
drew from life. It is difficult to imagine a community in which the
never-ceasing game of cross-purposes between Sancho Panza and Don Quixote
would not be recognized as true to nature. In the stone age, among the
lake dwellers, among the cave men, there were Don Quixotes and Sancho
Panzas; there must have been the troglodyte who never could see the facts
before his eyes, and the troglodyte who could see nothing else. But to
suppose Cervantes deliberately setting himself to expound any such idea in
two stout quarto volumes is to suppose something not only very unlike the
age in which he lived, but altogether unlike Cervantes himself, who would
have been the first to laugh at an attempt of the sort made by anyone
else.

The extraordinary influence of the romances of chivalry in his day is
quite enough to account for the genesis of the book. Some idea of the
prodigious development of this branch of literature in the sixteenth
century may be obtained from the scrutiny of Chapter VII, if the reader
bears in mind that only a portion of the romances belonging to by far the
largest group are enumerated. As to its effect upon the nation, there is
abundant evidence. From the time when the Amadises and Palmerins began to
grow popular down to the very end of the century, there is a steady stream
of invective, from men whose character and position lend weight to their
words, against the romances of chivalry and the infatuation of their
readers. Ridicule was the only besom to sweep away that dust.

That this was the task Cervantes set himself, and that he had ample
provocation to urge him to it, will be sufficiently clear to those who
look into the evidence; as it will be also that it was not chivalry itself
that he attacked and swept away. Of all the absurdities that, thanks to
poetry, will be repeated to the end of time, there is no greater one than
saying that “Cervantes smiled Spain’s chivalry away.” In the first place
there was no chivalry for him to smile away. Spain’s chivalry had been
dead for more than a century. Its work was done when Granada fell, and as
chivalry was essentially republican in its nature, it could not live under
the rule that Ferdinand substituted for the free institutions of mediaeval
Spain. What he did smile away was not chivalry but a degrading mockery of
it.

The true nature of the “right arm” and the “bright array,” before which,
according to the poet, “the world gave ground,” and which Cervantes’
single laugh demolished, may be gathered from the words of one of his own
countrymen, Don Felix Pacheco, as reported by Captain George Carleton, in
his “Military Memoirs from 1672 to 1713.” “Before the appearance in the
world of that labour of Cervantes,” he said, “it was next to an
impossibility for a man to walk the streets with any delight or without
danger. There were seen so many cavaliers prancing and curvetting before
the windows of their mistresses, that a stranger would have imagined the
whole nation to have been nothing less than a race of knight-errants. But
after the world became a little acquainted with that notable history, the
man that was seen in that once celebrated drapery was pointed at as a Don
Quixote, and found himself the jest of high and low. And I verily believe
that to this, and this only, we owe that dampness and poverty of spirit
which has run through all our councils for a century past, so little
agreeable to those nobler actions of our famous ancestors.”

To call “Don Quixote” a sad book, preaching a pessimist view of life,
argues a total misconception of its drift. It would be so if its moral
were that, in this world, true enthusiasm naturally leads to ridicule and
discomfiture. But it preaches nothing of the sort; its moral, so far as it
can be said to have one, is that the spurious enthusiasm that is born of
vanity and self-conceit, that is made an end in itself, not a means to an
end, that acts on mere impulse, regardless of circumstances and
consequences, is mischievous to its owner, and a very considerable
nuisance to the community at large. To those who cannot distinguish
between the one kind and the other, no doubt “Don Quixote” is a sad book;
no doubt to some minds it is very sad that a man who had just uttered so
beautiful a sentiment as that “it is a hard case to make slaves of those
whom God and Nature made free,” should be ungratefully pelted by the
scoundrels his crazy philanthropy had let loose on society; but to others
of a more judicial cast it will be a matter of regret that reckless
self-sufficient enthusiasm is not oftener requited in some such way for
all the mischief it does in the world.

A very slight examination of the structure of “Don Quixote” will suffice
to show that Cervantes had no deep design or elaborate plan in his mind
when he began the book. When he wrote those lines in which “with a few
strokes of a great master he sets before us the pauper gentleman,” he had
no idea of the goal to which his imagination was leading him. There can be
little doubt that all he contemplated was a short tale to range with those
he had already written, a tale setting forth the ludicrous results that
might be expected to follow the attempt of a crazy gentleman to act the
part of a knight-errant in modern life.

It is plain, for one thing, that Sancho Panza did not enter into the
original scheme, for had Cervantes thought of him he certainly would not
have omitted him in his hero’s outfit, which he obviously meant to be
complete. Him we owe to the landlord’s chance remark in Chapter III that
knights seldom travelled without squires. To try to think of a Don Quixote
without Sancho Panza is like trying to think of a one-bladed pair of
scissors.

The story was written at first, like the others, without any division and
without the intervention of Cid Hamete Benengeli; and it seems not
unlikely that Cervantes had some intention of bringing Dulcinea, or
Aldonza Lorenzo, on the scene in person. It was probably the ransacking of
the Don’s library and the discussion on the books of chivalry that first
suggested it to him that his idea was capable of development. What, if
instead of a mere string of farcical misadventures, he were to make his
tale a burlesque of one of these books, caricaturing their style,
incidents, and spirit?

In pursuance of this change of plan, he hastily and somewhat clumsily
divided what he had written into chapters on the model of “Amadis,”
invented the fable of a mysterious Arabic manuscript, and set up Cid
Hamete Benengeli in imitation of the almost invariable practice of the
chivalry-romance authors, who were fond of tracing their books to some
recondite source. In working out the new ideas, he soon found the value of
Sancho Panza. Indeed, the keynote, not only to Sancho’s part, but to the
whole book, is struck in the first words Sancho utters when he announces
his intention of taking his ass with him. “About the ass,” we are told,
“Don Quixote hesitated a little, trying whether he could call to mind any
knight-errant taking with him an esquire mounted on ass-back; but no
instance occurred to his memory.” We can see the whole scene at a glance,
the stolid unconsciousness of Sancho and the perplexity of his master,
upon whose perception the incongruity has just forced itself. This is
Sancho’s mission throughout the book; he is an unconscious Mephistopheles,
always unwittingly making mockery of his master’s aspirations, always
exposing the fallacy of his ideas by some unintentional ad absurdum,
always bringing him back to the world of fact and commonplace by force of
sheer stolidity.

By the time Cervantes had got his volume of novels off his hands, and
summoned up resolution enough to set about the Second Part in earnest, the
case was very much altered. Don Quixote and Sancho Panza had not merely
found favour, but had already become, what they have never since ceased to
be, veritable entities to the popular imagination. There was no occasion
for him now to interpolate extraneous matter; nay, his readers told him
plainly that what they wanted of him was more Don Quixote and more Sancho
Panza, and not novels, tales, or digressions. To himself, too, his
creations had become realities, and he had become proud of them,
especially of Sancho. He began the Second Part, therefore, under very
different conditions, and the difference makes itself manifest at once.
Even in translation the style will be seen to be far easier, more flowing,
more natural, and more like that of a man sure of himself and of his
audience. Don Quixote and Sancho undergo a change also. In the First Part,
Don Quixote has no character or individuality whatever. He is nothing more
than a crazy representative of the sentiments of the chivalry romances. In
all that he says and does he is simply repeating the lesson he has learned
from his books; and therefore, it is absurd to speak of him in the gushing
strain of the sentimental critics when they dilate upon his nobleness,
disinterestedness, dauntless courage, and so forth. It was the business of
a knight-errant to right wrongs, redress injuries, and succour the
distressed, and this, as a matter of course, he makes his business when he
takes up the part; a knight-errant was bound to be intrepid, and so he
feels bound to cast fear aside. Of all Byron’s melodious nonsense about
Don Quixote, the most nonsensical statement is that “‘t is his virtue
makes him mad!” The exact opposite is the truth; it is his madness makes
him virtuous.

In the Second Part, Cervantes repeatedly reminds the reader, as if it was
a point upon which he was anxious there should be no mistake, that his
hero’s madness is strictly confined to delusions on the subject of
chivalry, and that on every other subject he is discreto, one, in fact,
whose faculty of discernment is in perfect order. The advantage of this is
that he is enabled to make use of Don Quixote as a mouthpiece for his own
reflections, and so, without seeming to digress, allow himself the relief
of digression when he requires it, as freely as in a commonplace book.

It is true the amount of individuality bestowed upon Don Quixote is not
very great. There are some natural touches of character about him, such as
his mixture of irascibility and placability, and his curious affection for
Sancho together with his impatience of the squire’s loquacity and
impertinence; but in the main, apart from his craze, he is little more
than a thoughtful, cultured gentleman, with instinctive good taste and a
great deal of shrewdness and originality of mind.

As to Sancho, it is plain, from the concluding words of the preface to the
First Part, that he was a favourite with his creator even before he had
been taken into favour by the public. An inferior genius, taking him in
hand a second time, would very likely have tried to improve him by making
him more comical, clever, amiable, or virtuous. But Cervantes was too true
an artist to spoil his work in this way. Sancho, when he reappears, is the
old Sancho with the old familiar features; but with a difference; they
have been brought out more distinctly, but at the same time with a careful
avoidance of anything like caricature; the outline has been filled in
where filling in was necessary, and, vivified by a few touches of a
master’s hand, Sancho stands before us as he might in a character portrait
by Velazquez. He is a much more important and prominent figure in the
Second Part than in the First; indeed, it is his matchless mendacity about
Dulcinea that to a great extent supplies the action of the story.

His development in this respect is as remarkable as in any other. In the
First Part he displays a great natural gift of lying. His lies are not of
the highly imaginative sort that liars in fiction commonly indulge in;
like Falstaff’s, they resemble the father that begets them; they are
simple, homely, plump lies; plain working lies, in short. But in the
service of such a master as Don Quixote he develops rapidly, as we see
when he comes to palm off the three country wenches as Dulcinea and her
ladies in waiting. It is worth noticing how, flushed by his success in
this instance, he is tempted afterwards to try a flight beyond his powers
in his account of the journey on Clavileno.

In the Second Part it is the spirit rather than the incidents of the
chivalry romances that is the subject of the burlesque. Enchantments of
the sort travestied in those of Dulcinea and the Trifaldi and the cave of
Montesinos play a leading part in the later and inferior romances, and
another distinguishing feature is caricatured in Don Quixote’s blind
adoration of Dulcinea. In the romances of chivalry love is either a mere
animalism or a fantastic idolatry. Only a coarse-minded man would care to
make merry with the former, but to one of Cervantes’ humour the latter was
naturally an attractive subject for ridicule. Like everything else in
these romances, it is a gross exaggeration of the real sentiment of
chivalry, but its peculiar extravagance is probably due to the influence
of those masters of hyperbole, the Provencal poets. When a troubadour
professed his readiness to obey his lady in all things, he made it
incumbent upon the next comer, if he wished to avoid the imputation of
tameness and commonplace, to declare himself the slave of her will, which
the next was compelled to cap by some still stronger declaration; and so
expressions of devotion went on rising one above the other like biddings
at an auction, and a conventional language of gallantry and theory of love
came into being that in time permeated the literature of Southern Europe,
and bore fruit, in one direction in the transcendental worship of Beatrice
and Laura, and in another in the grotesque idolatry which found exponents
in writers like Feliciano de Silva. This is what Cervantes deals with in
Don Quixote’s passion for Dulcinea, and in no instance has he carried out
the burlesque more happily. By keeping Dulcinea in the background, and
making her a vague shadowy being of whose very existence we are left in
doubt, he invests Don Quixote’s worship of her virtues and charms with an
additional extravagance, and gives still more point to the caricature of
the sentiment and language of the romances.

One of the great merits of “Don Quixote,” and one of the qualities that
have secured its acceptance by all classes of readers and made it the most
cosmopolitan of books, is its simplicity. There are, of course, points
obvious enough to a Spanish seventeenth century audience which do not
immediately strike a reader now-a-days, and Cervantes often takes it for
granted that an allusion will be generally understood which is only
intelligible to a few. For example, on many of his readers in Spain, and
most of his readers out of it, the significance of his choice of a country
for his hero is completely lost. It would be going too far to say that no
one can thoroughly comprehend “Don Quixote” without having seen La Mancha,
but undoubtedly even a glimpse of La Mancha will give an insight into the
meaning of Cervantes such as no commentator can give. Of all the regions
of Spain it is the last that would suggest the idea of romance. Of all the
dull central plateau of the Peninsula it is the dullest tract. There is
something impressive about the grim solitudes of Estremadura; and if the
plains of Leon and Old Castile are bald and dreary, they are studded with
old cities renowned in history and rich in relics of the past. But there
is no redeeming feature in the Manchegan landscape; it has all the
sameness of the desert without its dignity; the few towns and villages
that break its monotony are mean and commonplace, there is nothing
venerable about them, they have not even the picturesqueness of poverty;
indeed, Don Quixote’s own village, Argamasilla, has a sort of oppressive
respectability in the prim regularity of its streets and houses;
everything is ignoble; the very windmills are the ugliest and shabbiest of
the windmill kind.

To anyone who knew the country well, the mere style and title of “Don
Quixote of La Mancha” gave the key to the author’s meaning at once. La
Mancha as the knight’s country and scene of his chivalries is of a piece
with the pasteboard helmet, the farm-labourer on ass-back for a squire,
knighthood conferred by a rascally ventero, convicts taken for victims of
oppression, and the rest of the incongruities between Don Quixote’s world
and the world he lived in, between things as he saw them and things as
they were.

It is strange that this element of incongruity, underlying the whole
humour and purpose of the book, should have been so little heeded by the
majority of those who have undertaken to interpret “Don Quixote.” It has
been completely overlooked, for example, by the illustrators. To be sure,
the great majority of the artists who illustrated “Don Quixote” knew
nothing whatever of Spain. To them a venta conveyed no idea but the
abstract one of a roadside inn, and they could not therefore do full
justice to the humour of Don Quixote’s misconception in taking it for a
castle, or perceive the remoteness of all its realities from his ideal.
But even when better informed they seem to have no apprehension of the
full force of the discrepancy. Take, for instance, Gustave Dore’s drawing
of Don Quixote watching his armour in the inn-yard. Whether or not the
Venta de Quesada on the Seville road is, as tradition maintains, the inn
described in “Don Quixote,” beyond all question it was just such an
inn-yard as the one behind it that Cervantes had in his mind’s eye, and it
was on just such a rude stone trough as that beside the primitive
draw-well in the corner that he meant Don Quixote to deposit his armour.
Gustave Dore makes it an elaborate fountain such as no arriero ever
watered his mules at in the corral of any venta in Spain, and thereby
entirely misses the point aimed at by Cervantes. It is the mean, prosaic,
commonplace character of all the surroundings and circumstances that gives
a significance to Don Quixote’s vigil and the ceremony that follows.

Cervantes’ humour is for the most part of that broader and simpler sort,
the strength of which lies in the perception of the incongruous. It is the
incongruity of Sancho in all his ways, words, and works, with the ideas
and aims of his master, quite as much as the wonderful vitality and truth
to nature of the character, that makes him the most humorous creation in
the whole range of fiction. That unsmiling gravity of which Cervantes was
the first great master, “Cervantes’ serious air,” which sits naturally on
Swift alone, perhaps, of later humourists, is essential to this kind of
humour, and here again Cervantes has suffered at the hands of his
interpreters. Nothing, unless indeed the coarse buffoonery of Phillips,
could be more out of place in an attempt to represent Cervantes, than a
flippant, would-be facetious style, like that of Motteux’s version for
example, or the sprightly, jaunty air, French translators sometimes adopt.
It is the grave matter-of-factness of the narrative, and the apparent
unconsciousness of the author that he is saying anything ludicrous,
anything but the merest commonplace, that give its peculiar flavour to the
humour of Cervantes. His, in fact, is the exact opposite of the humour of
Sterne and the self-conscious humourists. Even when Uncle Toby is at his
best, you are always aware of “the man Sterne” behind him, watching you
over his shoulder to see what effect he is producing. Cervantes always
leaves you alone with Don Quixote and Sancho. He and Swift and the great
humourists always keep themselves out of sight, or, more properly
speaking, never think about themselves at all, unlike our latter-day
school of humourists, who seem to have revived the old horse-collar
method, and try to raise a laugh by some grotesque assumption of
ignorance, imbecility, or bad taste.

It is true that to do full justice to Spanish humour in any other language
is well-nigh an impossibility. There is a natural gravity and a sonorous
stateliness about Spanish, be it ever so colloquial, that make an
absurdity doubly absurd, and give plausibility to the most preposterous
statement. This is what makes Sancho Panza’s drollery the despair of the
conscientious translator. Sancho’s curt comments can never fall flat, but
they lose half their flavour when transferred from their native Castilian
into any other medium. But if foreigners have failed to do justice to the
humour of Cervantes, they are no worse than his own countrymen. Indeed,
were it not for the Spanish peasant’s relish of “Don Quixote,” one might
be tempted to think that the great humourist was not looked upon as a
humourist at all in his own country.

The craze of Don Quixote seems, in some instances, to have communicated
itself to his critics, making them see things that are not in the book and
run full tilt at phantoms that have no existence save in their own
imaginations. Like a good many critics now-a-days, they forget that
screams are not criticism, and that it is only vulgar tastes that are
influenced by strings of superlatives, three-piled hyperboles, and pompous
epithets. But what strikes one as particularly strange is that while they
deal in extravagant eulogies, and ascribe all manner of imaginary ideas
and qualities to Cervantes, they show no perception of the quality that
ninety-nine out of a hundred of his readers would rate highest in him, and
hold to be the one that raises him above all rivalry.

To speak of “Don Quixote” as if it were merely a humorous book would be a
manifest misdescription. Cervantes at times makes it a kind of commonplace
book for occasional essays and criticisms, or for the observations and
reflections and gathered wisdom of a long and stirring life. It is a mine
of shrewd observation on mankind and human nature. Among modern novels
there may be, here and there, more elaborate studies of character, but
there is no book richer in individualised character. What Coleridge said
of Shakespeare in minimis is true of Cervantes; he never, even for the
most temporary purpose, puts forward a lay figure. There is life and
individuality in all his characters, however little they may have to do,
or however short a time they may be before the reader. Samson Carrasco,
the curate, Teresa Panza, Altisidora, even the two students met on the
road to the cave of Montesinos, all live and move and have their being;
and it is characteristic of the broad humanity of Cervantes that there is
not a hateful one among them all. Even poor Maritornes, with her
deplorable morals, has a kind heart of her own and “some faint and distant
resemblance to a Christian about her;” and as for Sancho, though on
dissection we fail to find a lovable trait in him, unless it be a sort of
dog-like affection for his master, who is there that in his heart does not
love him?

But it is, after all, the humour of “Don Quixote” that distinguishes it
from all other books of the romance kind. It is this that makes it, as one
of the most judicial-minded of modern critics calls it, “the best novel in
the world beyond all comparison.” It is its varied humour, ranging from
broad farce to comedy as subtle as Shakespeare’s or Moliere’s that has
naturalised it in every country where there are readers, and made it a
classic in every language that has a literature.

SOME COMMENDATORY VERSES

URGANDA THE UNKNOWN

To the book of Don Quixote of la Mancha

If to be welcomed by the good,
    O Book! thou make thy steady aim,
No empty chatterer will dare
    To question or dispute thy claim.
But if perchance thou hast a mind
    To win of idiots approbation,
Lost labour will be thy reward,
    Though they’ll pretend appreciation.

They say a goodly shade he finds
    Who shelters ’neath a goodly tree;
And such a one thy kindly star
    In Bejar bath provided thee:
A royal tree whose spreading boughs
    A show of princely fruit display;
A tree that bears a noble Duke,
    The Alexander of his day.

Of a Manchegan gentleman
    Thy purpose is to tell the story,
Relating how he lost his wits
    O’er idle tales of love and glory,
Of “ladies, arms, and cavaliers:”
    A new Orlando Furioso—
Innamorato, rather—who
    Won Dulcinea del Toboso.

Put no vain emblems on thy shield;
    All figures—that is bragging play.
A modest dedication make,
    And give no scoffer room to say,
“What! Álvaro de Luna here?
    Or is it Hannibal again?
Or does King Francis at Madrid
    Once more of destiny complain?”

Since Heaven it hath not pleased on thee
    Deep erudition to bestow,
Or black Latino’s gift of tongues,
    No Latin let thy pages show.
Ape not philosophy or wit,
    Lest one who cannot comprehend,
Make a wry face at thee and ask,
    “Why offer flowers to me, my friend?”

Be not a meddler; no affair
    Of thine the life thy neighbours lead:
Be prudent; oft the random jest
    Recoils upon the jester’s head.
Thy constant labour let it be
    To earn thyself an honest name,
For fooleries preserved in print
    Are perpetuity of shame.

A further counsel bear in mind:
    If that thy roof be made of glass,
It shows small wit to pick up stones
    To pelt the people as they pass.
Win the attention of the wise,
    And give the thinker food for thought;
Whoso indites frivolities,
    Will but by simpletons be sought.

AMADIS OF GAUL

To Don Quixote of la Mancha

SONNET

Thou that didst imitate that life of mine
    When I in lonely sadness on the great
    Rock Peña Pobre sat disconsolate,
In self-imposed penance there to pine;
Thou, whose sole beverage was the bitter brine
    Of thine own tears, and who withouten plate
    Of silver, copper, tin, in lowly state
Off the bare earth and on earth’s fruits didst dine;
Live thou, of thine eternal glory sure.
    So long as on the round of the fourth sphere
    The bright Apollo shall his coursers steer,
In thy renown thou shalt remain secure,
Thy country’s name in story shall endure,
    And thy sage author stand without a peer.

DON BELIANIS OF GREECE

To Don Quixote of la Mancha

SONNET

In slashing, hewing, cleaving, word and deed,
    I was the foremost knight of chivalry,
    Stout, bold, expert, as e’er the world did see;
Thousands from the oppressor’s wrong I freed;
Great were my feats, eternal fame their meed;
    In love I proved my truth and loyalty;
    The hugest giant was a dwarf for me;
Ever to knighthood’s laws gave I good heed.
My mastery the Fickle Goddess owned,
    And even Chance, submitting to control,
        Grasped by the forelock, yielded to my will.
Yet—though above yon horned moon enthroned
        My fortune seems to sit—great Quixote, still
    Envy of thy achievements fills my soul.

THE LADY OF ORIANA

To Dulcinea del Toboso

SONNET

Oh, fairest Dulcinea, could it be!
    It were a pleasant fancy to suppose so—
    Could Miraflores change to El Toboso,
And London’s town to that which shelters thee!
Oh, could mine but acquire that livery
    Of countless charms thy mind and body show so!
    Or him, now famous grown—thou mad’st him grow so—
Thy knight, in some dread combat could I see!
Oh, could I be released from Amadis
    By exercise of such coy chastity
As led thee gentle Quixote to dismiss!
        Then would my heavy sorrow turn to joy;
    None would I envy, all would envy me,
        And happiness be mine without alloy.

GANDALIN, SQUIRE OF AMADIS OF GAUL,

To Sancho Panza, squire of Don Quixote

SONNET

All hail, illustrious man! Fortune, when she
    Bound thee apprentice to the esquire trade,
    Her care and tenderness of thee displayed,
Shaping thy course from misadventure free.
No longer now doth proud knight-errantry
    Regard with scorn the sickle and the spade;
    Of towering arrogance less count is made
Than of plain esquire-like simplicity.
I envy thee thy Dapple, and thy name,
    And those alforjas thou wast wont to stuff
With comforts that thy providence proclaim.
        Excellent Sancho! hail to thee again!
        To thee alone the Ovid of our Spain
    Does homage with the rustic kiss and cuff.

FROM EL DONOSO, THE MOTLEY POET,

On Sancho Panza and Rocinante

ON SANCHO

I am the esquire Sancho Pan—
Who served Don Quixote of La Man—;
But from his service I retreat—,
Resolved to pass my life discreet—;
For Villadiego, called the Si—,
Maintained that only in reti—
Was found the secret of well-be—,
According to the “Celesti—:”
A book divine, except for sin—
By speech too plain, in my opin—

ON ROCINANTE

I am that Rocinante fa—,
Great-grandson of great Babie—,
Who, all for being lean and bon—,
Had one Don Quixote for an own—;
But if I matched him well in weak—,
I never took short commons meek—,
But kept myself in corn by steal—,
A trick I learned from Lazaril—,
When with a piece of straw so neat—
The blind man of his wine he cheat—.

ORLANDO FURIOSO

To Don Quixote of La Mancha

SONNET

If thou art not a Peer, peer thou hast none;
    Among a thousand Peers thou art a peer;
    Nor is there room for one when thou art near,
Unvanquished victor, great unconquered one!
Orlando, by Angelica undone,
    Am I; o’er distant seas condemned to steer,
    And to Fame’s altars as an offering bear
Valour respected by Oblivion.
I cannot be thy rival, for thy fame
    And prowess rise above all rivalry,
        Albeit both bereft of wits we go.
But, though the Scythian or the Moor to tame
    Was not thy lot, still thou dost rival me:
        Love binds us in a fellowship of woe.

THE KNIGHT OF PHŒBUS

To Don Quixote of La Mancha

My sword was not to be compared with thine
    Phœbus of Spain, marvel of courtesy,
Nor with thy famous arm this hand of mine
    That smote from east to west as lightnings fly.
    I scorned all empire, and that monarchy
The rosy east held out did I resign
    For one glance of Claridiana’s eye,
The bright Aurora for whose love I pine.
A miracle of constancy my love;
    And banished by her ruthless cruelty,
        This arm had might the rage of Hell to tame.
But, Gothic Quixote, happier thou dost prove,
        For thou dost live in Dulcinea’s name,
    And famous, honoured, wise, she lives in thee.

FROM SOLISDAN

To Don Quixote of La Mancha

SONNET

Your fantasies, Sir Quixote, it is true,
    That crazy brain of yours have quite upset,
    But aught of base or mean hath never yet
Been charged by any in reproach to you.
Your deeds are open proof in all men’s view;
    For you went forth injustice to abate,
    And for your pains sore drubbings did you get
From many a rascally and ruffian crew.
If the fair Dulcinea, your heart’s queen,
    Be unrelenting in her cruelty,
        If still your woe be powerless to move her,
    In such hard case your comfort let it be
That Sancho was a sorry go-between:
        A booby he, hard-hearted she, and you no lover.

DIALOGUE

Between Babieca and Rocinante

SONNET

B. “How comes it, Rocinante, you’re so lean?”
R.     “I’m underfed, with overwork I’m worn.”
B.     “But what becomes of all the hay and corn?”
R. “My master gives me none; he’s much too mean.”
B. “Come, come, you show ill-breeding, sir, I ween;
    ’Tis like an ass your master thus to scorn.”
R.     He is an ass, will die an ass, an ass was born;
Why, he’s in love; what’s plainer to be seen?”
B. “To be in love is folly?”—R. “No great sense.”
B.     “You’re metaphysical.”—R. “From want of food.”
B.     “Rail at the squire, then.”—R. “Why, what’s the good?
    I might indeed complain of him, I grant ye,
But, squire or master, where’s the difference?
    They’re both as sorry hacks as Rocinante.”

THE AUTHOR’S PREFACE

Idle reader: thou mayest believe me without any oath that I would this
book, as it is the child of my brain, were the fairest, gayest, and
cleverest that could be imagined. But I could not counteract Nature’s law
that everything shall beget its like; and what, then, could this sterile,
illtilled wit of mine beget but the story of a dry, shrivelled, whimsical
offspring, full of thoughts of all sorts and such as never came into any
other imagination—just what might be begotten in a prison, where
every misery is lodged and every doleful sound makes its dwelling?
Tranquillity, a cheerful retreat, pleasant fields, bright skies, murmuring
brooks, peace of mind, these are the things that go far to make even the
most barren muses fertile, and bring into the world births that fill it
with wonder and delight. Sometimes when a father has an ugly, loutish son,
the love he bears him so blindfolds his eyes that he does not see his
defects, or, rather, takes them for gifts and charms of mind and body, and
talks of them to his friends as wit and grace. I, however—for though
I pass for the father, I am but the stepfather to “Don Quixote”—have
no desire to go with the current of custom, or to implore thee, dearest
reader, almost with tears in my eyes, as others do, to pardon or excuse
the defects thou wilt perceive in this child of mine. Thou art neither its
kinsman nor its friend, thy soul is thine own and thy will as free as any
man’s, whate’er he be, thou art in thine own house and master of it as
much as the king of his taxes and thou knowest the common saying, “Under
my cloak I kill the king;” all which exempts and frees thee from every
consideration and obligation, and thou canst say what thou wilt of the
story without fear of being abused for any ill or rewarded for any good
thou mayest say of it.

My wish would be simply to present it to thee plain and unadorned, without
any embellishment of preface or uncountable muster of customary sonnets,
epigrams, and eulogies, such as are commonly put at the beginning of
books. For I can tell thee, though composing it cost me some labour, I
found none greater than the making of this Preface thou art now reading.
Many times did I take up my pen to write it, and many did I lay it down
again, not knowing what to write. One of these times, as I was pondering
with the paper before me, a pen in my ear, my elbow on the desk, and my
cheek in my hand, thinking of what I should say, there came in
unexpectedly a certain lively, clever friend of mine, who, seeing me so
deep in thought, asked the reason; to which I, making no mystery of it,
answered that I was thinking of the Preface I had to make for the story of
“Don Quixote,” which so troubled me that I had a mind not to make any at
all, nor even publish the achievements of so noble a knight.

“For, how could you expect me not to feel uneasy about what that ancient
lawgiver they call the Public will say when it sees me, after slumbering
so many years in the silence of oblivion, coming out now with all my years
upon my back, and with a book as dry as a rush, devoid of invention,
meagre in style, poor in thoughts, wholly wanting in learning and wisdom,
without quotations in the margin or annotations at the end, after the
fashion of other books I see, which, though all fables and profanity, are
so full of maxims from Aristotle, and Plato, and the whole herd of
philosophers, that they fill the readers with amazement and convince them
that the authors are men of learning, erudition, and eloquence. And then,
when they quote the Holy Scriptures!—anyone would say they are St.
Thomases or other doctors of the Church, observing as they do a decorum so
ingenious that in one sentence they describe a distracted lover and in the
next deliver a devout little sermon that it is a pleasure and a treat to
hear and read. Of all this there will be nothing in my book, for I have
nothing to quote in the margin or to note at the end, and still less do I
know what authors I follow in it, to place them at the beginning, as all
do, under the letters A, B, C, beginning with Aristotle and ending with
Xenophon, or Zoilus, or Zeuxis, though one was a slanderer and the other a
painter. Also my book must do without sonnets at the beginning, at least
sonnets whose authors are dukes, marquises, counts, bishops, ladies, or
famous poets. Though if I were to ask two or three obliging friends, I
know they would give me them, and such as the productions of those that
have the highest reputation in our Spain could not equal.

“In short, my friend,” I continued, “I am determined that Señor Don
Quixote shall remain buried in the archives of his own La Mancha until
Heaven provide some one to garnish him with all those things he stands in
need of; because I find myself, through my shallowness and want of
learning, unequal to supplying them, and because I am by nature shy and
careless about hunting for authors to say what I myself can say without
them. Hence the cogitation and abstraction you found me in, and reason
enough, what you have heard from me.”

Hearing this, my friend, giving himself a slap on the forehead and
breaking into a hearty laugh, exclaimed, “Before God, Brother, now am I
disabused of an error in which I have been living all this long time I
have known you, all through which I have taken you to be shrewd and
sensible in all you do; but now I see you are as far from that as the
heaven is from the earth. Is it possible that things of so little moment
and so easy to set right can occupy and perplex a ripe wit like yours, fit
to break through and crush far greater obstacles? By my faith, this comes,
not of any want of ability, but of too much indolence and too little
knowledge of life. Do you want to know if I am telling the truth? Well,
then, attend to me, and you will see how, in the opening and shutting of
an eye, I sweep away all your difficulties, and supply all those
deficiencies which you say check and discourage you from bringing before
the world the story of your famous Don Quixote, the light and mirror of
all knight-errantry.”

“Say on,” said I, listening to his talk; “how do you propose to make up
for my diffidence, and reduce to order this chaos of perplexity I am in?”

To which he made answer, “Your first difficulty about the sonnets,
epigrams, or complimentary verses which you want for the beginning, and
which ought to be by persons of importance and rank, can be removed if you
yourself take a little trouble to make them; you can afterwards baptise
them, and put any name you like to them, fathering them on Prester John of
the Indies or the Emperor of Trebizond, who, to my knowledge, were said to
have been famous poets: and even if they were not, and any pedants or
bachelors should attack you and question the fact, never care two
maravedis for that, for even if they prove a lie against you they cannot
cut off the hand you wrote it with.

“As to references in the margin to the books and authors from whom you
take the aphorisms and sayings you put into your story, it is only
contriving to fit in nicely any sentences or scraps of Latin you may
happen to have by heart, or at any rate that will not give you much
trouble to look up; so as, when you speak of freedom and captivity, to
insert

Non bene pro toto libertas venditur auro;

and then refer in the margin to Horace, or whoever said it; or, if you
allude to the power of death, to come in with—

Pallida mors Aequo pulsat pede pauperum tabernas,
Regumque
turres.

“If it be friendship and the love God bids us bear to our enemy, go at
once to the Holy Scriptures, which you can do with a very small amount of
research, and quote no less than the words of God himself: Ego autem dico
vobis: diligite inimicos vestros. If you speak of evil thoughts, turn to
the Gospel: De corde exeunt cogitationes malae. If of the fickleness of
friends, there is Cato, who will give you his distich:

Donec eris felix multos numerabis amicos,
Tempora si fuerint
nubila, solus eris.

“With these and such like bits of Latin they will take you for a
grammarian at all events, and that now-a-days is no small honour and
profit.

“With regard to adding annotations at the end of the book, you may safely
do it in this way. If you mention any giant in your book contrive that it
shall be the giant Goliath, and with this alone, which will cost you
almost nothing, you have a grand note, for you can put—The giant
Golias or Goliath was a Philistine whom the shepherd David slew by a
mighty stone-cast in the Terebinth valley, as is related in the Book of
Kings—in the chapter where you find it written.

“Next, to prove yourself a man of erudition in polite literature and
cosmography, manage that the river Tagus shall be named in your story, and
there you are at once with another famous annotation, setting forth—The
river Tagus was so called after a King of Spain: it has its source in such
and such a place and falls into the ocean, kissing the walls of the famous
city of Lisbon, and it is a common belief that it has golden sands, etc.
If you should have anything to do with robbers, I will give you the story
of Cacus, for I have it by heart; if with loose women, there is the Bishop
of Mondonedo, who will give you the loan of Lamia, Laida, and Flora, any
reference to whom will bring you great credit; if with hard-hearted ones,
Ovid will furnish you with Medea; if with witches or enchantresses, Homer
has Calypso, and Virgil Circe; if with valiant captains, Julius Caesar
himself will lend you himself in his own ‘Commentaries,’ and Plutarch will
give you a thousand Alexanders. If you should deal with love, with two
ounces you may know of Tuscan you can go to Leon the Hebrew, who will
supply you to your heart’s content; or if you should not care to go to
foreign countries you have at home Fonseca’s ‘Of the Love of God,’ in
which is condensed all that you or the most imaginative mind can want on
the subject. In short, all you have to do is to manage to quote these
names, or refer to these stories I have mentioned, and leave it to me to
insert the annotations and quotations, and I swear by all that’s good to
fill your margins and use up four sheets at the end of the book.

“Now let us come to those references to authors which other books have,
and you want for yours. The remedy for this is very simple: You have only
to look out for some book that quotes them all, from A to Z as you say
yourself, and then insert the very same alphabet in your book, and though
the imposition may be plain to see, because you have so little need to
borrow from them, that is no matter; there will probably be some simple
enough to believe that you have made use of them all in this plain,
artless story of yours. At any rate, if it answers no other purpose, this
long catalogue of authors will serve to give a surprising look of
authority to your book. Besides, no one will trouble himself to verify
whether you have followed them or whether you have not, being no way
concerned in it; especially as, if I mistake not, this book of yours has
no need of any one of those things you say it wants, for it is, from
beginning to end, an attack upon the books of chivalry, of which Aristotle
never dreamt, nor St. Basil said a word, nor Cicero had any knowledge; nor
do the niceties of truth nor the observations of astrology come within the
range of its fanciful vagaries; nor have geometrical measurements or
refutations of the arguments used in rhetoric anything to do with it; nor
does it mean to preach to anybody, mixing up things human and divine, a
sort of motley in which no Christian understanding should dress itself. It
has only to avail itself of truth to nature in its composition, and the
more perfect the imitation the better the work will be. And as this piece
of yours aims at nothing more than to destroy the authority and influence
which books of chivalry have in the world and with the public, there is no
need for you to go a-begging for aphorisms from philosophers, precepts
from Holy Scripture, fables from poets, speeches from orators, or miracles
from saints; but merely to take care that your style and diction run
musically, pleasantly, and plainly, with clear, proper, and well-placed
words, setting forth your purpose to the best of your power, and putting
your ideas intelligibly, without confusion or obscurity. Strive, too, that
in reading your story the melancholy may be moved to laughter, and the
merry made merrier still; that the simple shall not be wearied, that the
judicious shall admire the invention, that the grave shall not despise it,
nor the wise fail to praise it. Finally, keep your aim fixed on the
destruction of that ill-founded edifice of the books of chivalry, hated by
some and praised by many more; for if you succeed in this you will have
achieved no small success.”

In profound silence I listened to what my friend said, and his
observations made such an impression on me that, without attempting to
question them, I admitted their soundness, and out of them I determined to
make this Preface; wherein, gentle reader, thou wilt perceive my friend’s
good sense, my good fortune in finding such an adviser in such a time of
need, and what thou hast gained in receiving, without addition or
alteration, the story of the famous Don Quixote of La Mancha, who is held
by all the inhabitants of the district of the Campo de Montiel to have
been the chastest lover and the bravest knight that has for many years
been seen in that neighbourhood. I have no desire to magnify the service I
render thee in making thee acquainted with so renowned and honoured a
knight, but I do desire thy thanks for the acquaintance thou wilt make
with the famous Sancho Panza, his squire, in whom, to my thinking, I have
given thee condensed all the squirely drolleries that are scattered
through the swarm of the vain books of chivalry. And so—may God give
thee health, and not forget me. Vale.

DEDICATION OF PART I

TO THE DUKE OF BEJAR, MARQUIS OF GIBRALEON, COUNT OF BENALCAZAR AND
BANARES, VICECOUNT OF THE PUEBLA DE ALCOCER, MASTER OF THE TOWNS OF
CAPILLA, CURIEL AND BURGUILLOS

In belief of the good reception and honours that Your Excellency bestows
on all sort of books, as prince so inclined to favor good arts, chiefly
those who by their nobleness do not submit to the service and bribery of
the vulgar, I have determined bringing to light The Ingenious Gentleman
Don Quixote of la Mancha, in shelter of Your Excellency’s glamorous name,
to whom, with the obeisance I owe to such grandeur, I pray to receive it
agreeably under his protection, so that in this shadow, though deprived of
that precious ornament of elegance and erudition that clothe the works
composed in the houses of those who know, it dares appear with assurance
in the judgment of some who, trespassing the bounds of their own
ignorance, use to condemn with more rigour and less justice the writings
of others. It is my earnest hope that Your Excellency’s good counsel in
regard to my honourable purpose, will not disdain the littleness of so
humble a service.

Miguel de Cervantes

CHAPTER I.

WHICH TREATS OF THE CHARACTER AND PURSUITS OF THE FAMOUS GENTLEMAN DON
QUIXOTE OF LA MANCHA

In a village of La Mancha, the name of which I have no desire to call to
mind, there lived not long since one of those gentlemen that keep a lance
in the lance-rack, an old buckler, a lean hack, and a greyhound for
coursing. An olla of rather more beef than mutton, a salad on most nights,
scraps on Saturdays, lentils on Fridays, and a pigeon or so extra on
Sundays, made away with three-quarters of his income. The rest of it went
in a doublet of fine cloth and velvet breeches and shoes to match for
holidays, while on week-days he made a brave figure in his best homespun.
He had in his house a housekeeper past forty, a niece under twenty, and a
lad for the field and market-place, who used to saddle the hack as well as
handle the bill-hook. The age of this gentleman of ours was bordering on
fifty; he was of a hardy habit, spare, gaunt-featured, a very early riser
and a great sportsman. They will have it his surname was Quixada or
Quesada (for here there is some difference of opinion among the authors
who write on the subject), although from reasonable conjectures it seems
plain that he was called Quexana. This, however, is of but little
importance to our tale; it will be enough not to stray a hair’s breadth
from the truth in the telling of it.

You must know, then, that the above-named gentleman whenever he was at
leisure (which was mostly all the year round) gave himself up to reading
books of chivalry with such ardour and avidity that he almost entirely
neglected the pursuit of his field-sports, and even the management of his
property; and to such a pitch did his eagerness and infatuation go that he
sold many an acre of tillageland to buy books of chivalry to read, and
brought home as many of them as he could get. But of all there were none
he liked so well as those of the famous Feliciano de Silva’s composition,
for their lucidity of style and complicated conceits were as pearls in his
sight, particularly when in his reading he came upon courtships and
cartels, where he often found passages like “the reason of the unreason
with which my reason is afflicted so weakens my reason that with reason I
murmur at your beauty;” or again, “the high heavens, that of your divinity
divinely fortify you with the stars, render you deserving of the desert
your greatness deserves.” Over conceits of this sort the poor gentleman
lost his wits, and used to lie awake striving to understand them and worm
the meaning out of them; what Aristotle himself could not have made out or
extracted had he come to life again for that special purpose. He was not
at all easy about the wounds which Don Belianis gave and took, because it
seemed to him that, great as were the surgeons who had cured him, he must
have had his face and body covered all over with seams and scars. He
commended, however, the author’s way of ending his book with the promise
of that interminable adventure, and many a time was he tempted to take up
his pen and finish it properly as is there proposed, which no doubt he
would have done, and made a successful piece of work of it too, had not
greater and more absorbing thoughts prevented him.

Many an argument did he have with the curate of his village (a learned
man, and a graduate of Siguenza) as to which had been the better knight,
Palmerin of England or Amadis of Gaul. Master Nicholas, the village
barber, however, used to say that neither of them came up to the Knight of
Phoebus, and that if there was any that could compare with him it was Don
Galaor, the brother of Amadis of Gaul, because he had a spirit that was
equal to every occasion, and was no finikin knight, nor lachrymose like
his brother, while in the matter of valour he was not a whit behind him.
In short, he became so absorbed in his books that he spent his nights from
sunset to sunrise, and his days from dawn to dark, poring over them; and
what with little sleep and much reading his brains got so dry that he lost
his wits. His fancy grew full of what he used to read about in his books,
enchantments, quarrels, battles, challenges, wounds, wooings, loves,
agonies, and all sorts of impossible nonsense; and it so possessed his
mind that the whole fabric of invention and fancy he read of was true,
that to him no history in the world had more reality in it. He used to say
the Cid Ruy Diaz was a very good knight, but that he was not to be
compared with the Knight of the Burning Sword who with one back-stroke cut
in half two fierce and monstrous giants. He thought more of Bernardo del
Carpio because at Roncesvalles he slew Roland in spite of enchantments,
availing himself of the artifice of Hercules when he strangled Antaeus the
son of Terra in his arms. He approved highly of the giant Morgante,
because, although of the giant breed which is always arrogant and
ill-conditioned, he alone was affable and well-bred. But above all he
admired Reinaldos of Montalban, especially when he saw him sallying forth
from his castle and robbing everyone he met, and when beyond the seas he
stole that image of Mahomet which, as his history says, was entirely of
gold. To have a bout of kicking at that traitor of a Ganelon he would have
given his housekeeper, and his niece into the bargain.

In short, his wits being quite gone, he hit upon the strangest notion that
ever madman in this world hit upon, and that was that he fancied it was
right and requisite, as well for the support of his own honour as for the
service of his country, that he should make a knight-errant of himself,
roaming the world over in full armour and on horseback in quest of
adventures, and putting in practice himself all that he had read of as
being the usual practices of knights-errant; righting every kind of wrong,
and exposing himself to peril and danger from which, in the issue, he was
to reap eternal renown and fame. Already the poor man saw himself crowned
by the might of his arm Emperor of Trebizond at least; and so, led away by
the intense enjoyment he found in these pleasant fancies, he set himself
forthwith to put his scheme into execution.

The first thing he did was to clean up some armour that had belonged to
his great-grandfather, and had been for ages lying forgotten in a corner
eaten with rust and covered with mildew. He scoured and polished it as
best he could, but he perceived one great defect in it, that it had no
closed helmet, nothing but a simple morion. This deficiency, however, his
ingenuity supplied, for he contrived a kind of half-helmet of pasteboard
which, fitted on to the morion, looked like a whole one. It is true that,
in order to see if it was strong and fit to stand a cut, he drew his sword
and gave it a couple of slashes, the first of which undid in an instant
what had taken him a week to do. The ease with which he had knocked it to
pieces disconcerted him somewhat, and to guard against that danger he set
to work again, fixing bars of iron on the inside until he was satisfied
with its strength; and then, not caring to try any more experiments with
it, he passed it and adopted it as a helmet of the most perfect
construction.

He next proceeded to inspect his hack, which, with more quartos than a
real and more blemishes than the steed of Gonela, that “tantum pellis et
ossa fuit,” surpassed in his eyes the Bucephalus of Alexander or the
Babieca of the Cid. Four days were spent in thinking what name to give
him, because (as he said to himself) it was not right that a horse
belonging to a knight so famous, and one with such merits of his own,
should be without some distinctive name, and he strove to adapt it so as
to indicate what he had been before belonging to a knight-errant, and what
he then was; for it was only reasonable that, his master taking a new
character, he should take a new name, and that it should be a
distinguished and full-sounding one, befitting the new order and calling
he was about to follow. And so, after having composed, struck out,
rejected, added to, unmade, and remade a multitude of names out of his
memory and fancy, he decided upon calling him Rocinante, a name, to his
thinking, lofty, sonorous, and significant of his condition as a hack
before he became what he now was, the first and foremost of all the hacks
in the world.

Having got a name for his horse so much to his taste, he was anxious to
get one for himself, and he was eight days more pondering over this point,
till at last he made up his mind to call himself “Don Quixote,” whence, as
has been already said, the authors of this veracious history have inferred
that his name must have been beyond a doubt Quixada, and not Quesada as
others would have it. Recollecting, however, that the valiant Amadis was
not content to call himself curtly Amadis and nothing more, but added the
name of his kingdom and country to make it famous, and called himself
Amadis of Gaul, he, like a good knight, resolved to add on the name of
his, and to style himself Don Quixote of La Mancha, whereby, he
considered, he described accurately his origin and country, and did honour
to it in taking his surname from it.

So then, his armour being furbished, his morion turned into a helmet, his
hack christened, and he himself confirmed, he came to the conclusion that
nothing more was needed now but to look out for a lady to be in love with;
for a knight-errant without love was like a tree without leaves or fruit,
or a body without a soul. As he said to himself, “If, for my sins, or by
my good fortune, I come across some giant hereabouts, a common occurrence
with knights-errant, and overthrow him in one onslaught, or cleave him
asunder to the waist, or, in short, vanquish and subdue him, will it not
be well to have some one I may send him to as a present, that he may come
in and fall on his knees before my sweet lady, and in a humble, submissive
voice say, ‘I am the giant Caraculiambro, lord of the island of
Malindrania, vanquished in single combat by the never sufficiently
extolled knight Don Quixote of La Mancha, who has commanded me to present
myself before your Grace, that your Highness dispose of me at your
pleasure’?” Oh, how our good gentleman enjoyed the delivery of this
speech, especially when he had thought of some one to call his Lady! There
was, so the story goes, in a village near his own a very good-looking
farm-girl with whom he had been at one time in love, though, so far as is
known, she never knew it nor gave a thought to the matter. Her name was
Aldonza Lorenzo, and upon her he thought fit to confer the title of Lady
of his Thoughts; and after some search for a name which should not be out
of harmony with her own, and should suggest and indicate that of a
princess and great lady, he decided upon calling her Dulcinea del Toboso—she
being of El Toboso—a name, to his mind, musical, uncommon, and
significant, like all those he had already bestowed upon himself and the
things belonging to him.

CHAPTER II.

WHICH TREATS OF THE FIRST SALLY THE INGENIOUS DON QUIXOTE MADE FROM HOME

These preliminaries settled, he did not care to put off any longer the
execution of his design, urged on to it by the thought of all the world
was losing by his delay, seeing what wrongs he intended to right,
grievances to redress, injustices to repair, abuses to remove, and duties
to discharge. So, without giving notice of his intention to anyone, and
without anybody seeing him, one morning before the dawning of the day
(which was one of the hottest of the month of July) he donned his suit of
armour, mounted Rocinante with his patched-up helmet on, braced his
buckler, took his lance, and by the back door of the yard sallied forth
upon the plain in the highest contentment and satisfaction at seeing with
what ease he had made a beginning with his grand purpose. But scarcely did
he find himself upon the open plain, when a terrible thought struck him,
one all but enough to make him abandon the enterprise at the very outset.
It occurred to him that he had not been dubbed a knight, and that
according to the law of chivalry he neither could nor ought to bear arms
against any knight; and that even if he had been, still he ought, as a
novice knight, to wear white armour, without a device upon the shield
until by his prowess he had earned one. These reflections made him waver
in his purpose, but his craze being stronger than any reasoning, he made
up his mind to have himself dubbed a knight by the first one he came
across, following the example of others in the same case, as he had read
in the books that brought him to this pass. As for white armour, he
resolved, on the first opportunity, to scour his until it was whiter than
an ermine; and so comforting himself he pursued his way, taking that which
his horse chose, for in this he believed lay the essence of adventures.

Thus setting out, our new-fledged adventurer paced along, talking to
himself and saying, “Who knows but that in time to come, when the
veracious history of my famous deeds is made known, the sage who writes
it, when he has to set forth my first sally in the early morning, will do
it after this fashion? ‘Scarce had the rubicund Apollo spread o’er the
face of the broad spacious earth the golden threads of his bright hair,
scarce had the little birds of painted plumage attuned their notes to hail
with dulcet and mellifluous harmony the coming of the rosy Dawn, that,
deserting the soft couch of her jealous spouse, was appearing to mortals
at the gates and balconies of the Manchegan horizon, when the renowned
knight Don Quixote of La Mancha, quitting the lazy down, mounted his
celebrated steed Rocinante and began to traverse the ancient and famous
Campo de Montiel;’” which in fact he was actually traversing. “Happy the
age, happy the time,” he continued, “in which shall be made known my deeds
of fame, worthy to be moulded in brass, carved in marble, limned in
pictures, for a memorial for ever. And thou, O sage magician, whoever thou
art, to whom it shall fall to be the chronicler of this wondrous history,
forget not, I entreat thee, my good Rocinante, the constant companion of
my ways and wanderings.” Presently he broke out again, as if he were
love-stricken in earnest, “O Princess Dulcinea, lady of this captive
heart, a grievous wrong hast thou done me to drive me forth with scorn,
and with inexorable obduracy banish me from the presence of thy beauty. O
lady, deign to hold in remembrance this heart, thy vassal, that thus in
anguish pines for love of thee.”

So he went on stringing together these and other absurdities, all in the
style of those his books had taught him, imitating their language as well
as he could; and all the while he rode so slowly and the sun mounted so
rapidly and with such fervour that it was enough to melt his brains if he
had any. Nearly all day he travelled without anything remarkable happening
to him, at which he was in despair, for he was anxious to encounter some
one at once upon whom to try the might of his strong arm.

Writers there are who say the first adventure he met with was that of
Puerto Lapice; others say it was that of the windmills; but what I have
ascertained on this point, and what I have found written in the annals of
La Mancha, is that he was on the road all day, and towards nightfall his
hack and he found themselves dead tired and hungry, when, looking all
around to see if he could discover any castle or shepherd’s shanty where
he might refresh himself and relieve his sore wants, he perceived not far
out of his road an inn, which was as welcome as a star guiding him to the
portals, if not the palaces, of his redemption; and quickening his pace he
reached it just as night was setting in. At the door were standing two
young women, girls of the district as they call them, on their way to
Seville with some carriers who had chanced to halt that night at the inn;
and as, happen what might to our adventurer, everything he saw or imaged
seemed to him to be and to happen after the fashion of what he read of,
the moment he saw the inn he pictured it to himself as a castle with its
four turrets and pinnacles of shining silver, not forgetting the
drawbridge and moat and all the belongings usually ascribed to castles of
the sort. To this inn, which to him seemed a castle, he advanced, and at a
short distance from it he checked Rocinante, hoping that some dwarf would
show himself upon the battlements, and by sound of trumpet give notice
that a knight was approaching the castle. But seeing that they were slow
about it, and that Rocinante was in a hurry to reach the stable, he made
for the inn door, and perceived the two gay damsels who were standing
there, and who seemed to him to be two fair maidens or lovely ladies
taking their ease at the castle gate.

At this moment it so happened that a swineherd who was going through the
stubbles collecting a drove of pigs (for, without any apology, that is
what they are called) gave a blast of his horn to bring them together, and
forthwith it seemed to Don Quixote to be what he was expecting, the signal
of some dwarf announcing his arrival; and so with prodigious satisfaction
he rode up to the inn and to the ladies, who, seeing a man of this sort
approaching in full armour and with lance and buckler, were turning in
dismay into the inn, when Don Quixote, guessing their fear by their
flight, raising his pasteboard visor, disclosed his dry dusty visage, and
with courteous bearing and gentle voice addressed them, “Your ladyships
need not fly or fear any rudeness, for that it belongs not to the order of
knighthood which I profess to offer to anyone, much less to highborn
maidens as your appearance proclaims you to be.” The girls were looking at
him and straining their eyes to make out the features which the clumsy
visor obscured, but when they heard themselves called maidens, a thing so
much out of their line, they could not restrain their laughter, which made
Don Quixote wax indignant, and say, “Modesty becomes the fair, and
moreover laughter that has little cause is great silliness; this, however,
I say not to pain or anger you, for my desire is none other than to serve
you.”

The incomprehensible language and the unpromising looks of our cavalier
only increased the ladies’ laughter, and that increased his irritation,
and matters might have gone farther if at that moment the landlord had not
come out, who, being a very fat man, was a very peaceful one. He, seeing
this grotesque figure clad in armour that did not match any more than his
saddle, bridle, lance, buckler, or corselet, was not at all indisposed to
join the damsels in their manifestations of amusement; but, in truth,
standing in awe of such a complicated armament, he thought it best to
speak him fairly, so he said, “Señor Caballero, if your worship wants
lodging, bating the bed (for there is not one in the inn) there is plenty
of everything else here.” Don Quixote, observing the respectful bearing of
the Alcaide of the fortress (for so innkeeper and inn seemed in his eyes),
made answer, “Sir Castellan, for me anything will suffice, for

The host fancied he called him Castellan because he took him for a “worthy
of Castile,” though he was in fact an Andalusian, and one from the strand
of San Lucar, as crafty a thief as Cacus and as full of tricks as a
student or a page. “In that case,” said he,

and if so, you may dismount and safely reckon upon any quantity of
sleeplessness under this roof for a twelvemonth, not to say for a single
night.” So saying, he advanced to hold the stirrup for Don Quixote, who
got down with great difficulty and exertion (for he had not broken his
fast all day), and then charged the host to take great care of his horse,
as he was the best bit of flesh that ever ate bread in this world. The
landlord eyed him over but did not find him as good as Don Quixote said,
nor even half as good; and putting him up in the stable, he returned to
see what might be wanted by his guest, whom the damsels, who had by this
time made their peace with him, were now relieving of his armour. They had
taken off his breastplate and backpiece, but they neither knew nor saw how
to open his gorget or remove his make-shift helmet, for he had fastened it
with green ribbons, which, as there was no untying the knots, required to
be cut. This, however, he would not by any means consent to, so he
remained all the evening with his helmet on, the drollest and oddest
figure that can be imagined; and while they were removing his armour,
taking the baggages who were about it for ladies of high degree belonging
to the castle, he said to them with great sprightliness:

—or Rocinante, for that, ladies mine, is my horse’s name, and Don
Quixote of La Mancha is my own; for though I had no intention of declaring
myself until my achievements in your service and honour had made me known,
the necessity of adapting that old ballad of Lancelot to the present
occasion has given you the knowledge of my name altogether prematurely. A
time, however, will come for your ladyships to command and me to obey, and
then the might of my arm will show my desire to serve you.”

The girls, who were not used to hearing rhetoric of this sort, had nothing
to say in reply; they only asked him if he wanted anything to eat. “I
would gladly eat a bit of something,” said Don Quixote, “for I feel it
would come very seasonably.” The day happened to be a Friday, and in the
whole inn there was nothing but some pieces of the fish they call in
Castile “abadejo,” in Andalusia “bacallao,” and in some places
“curadillo,” and in others “troutlet;” so they asked him if he thought he
could eat troutlet, for there was no other fish to give him. “If there be
troutlets enough,” said Don Quixote, “they will be the same thing as a
trout; for it is all one to me whether I am given eight reals in small
change or a piece of eight; moreover, it may be that these troutlets are
like veal, which is better than beef, or kid, which is better than goat.
But whatever it be let it come quickly, for the burden and pressure of
arms cannot be borne without support to the inside.” They laid a table for
him at the door of the inn for the sake of the air, and the host brought
him a portion of ill-soaked and worse cooked stockfish, and a piece of
bread as black and mouldy as his own armour; but a laughable sight it was
to see him eating, for having his helmet on and the beaver up, he could
not with his own hands put anything into his mouth unless some one else
placed it there, and this service one of the ladies rendered him. But to
give him anything to drink was impossible, or would have been so had not
the landlord bored a reed, and putting one end in his mouth poured the
wine into him through the other; all which he bore with patience rather
than sever the ribbons of his helmet.

While this was going on there came up to the inn a sowgelder, who, as he
approached, sounded his reed pipe four or five times, and thereby
completely convinced Don Quixote that he was in some famous castle, and
that they were regaling him with music, and that the stockfish was trout,
the bread the whitest, the wenches ladies, and the landlord the castellan
of the castle; and consequently he held that his enterprise and sally had
been to some purpose. But still it distressed him to think he had not been
dubbed a knight, for it was plain to him he could not lawfully engage in
any adventure without receiving the order of knighthood.

CHAPTER III.

WHEREIN IS RELATED THE DROLL WAY IN WHICH DON QUIXOTE HAD HIMSELF DUBBED A
KNIGHT

Harassed by this reflection, he made haste with his scanty pothouse
supper, and having finished it called the landlord, and shutting himself
into the stable with him, fell on his knees before him, saying, “From this
spot I rise not, valiant knight, until your courtesy grants me the boon I
seek, one that will redound to your praise and the benefit of the human
race.” The landlord, seeing his guest at his feet and hearing a speech of
this kind, stood staring at him in bewilderment, not knowing what to do or
say, and entreating him to rise, but all to no purpose until he had agreed
to grant the boon demanded of him. “I looked for no less, my lord, from
your High Magnificence,” replied Don Quixote, “and I have to tell you that
the boon I have asked and your liberality has granted is that you shall
dub me knight to-morrow morning, and that to-night I shall watch my arms
in the chapel of this your castle; thus to-morrow, as I have said, will be
accomplished what I so much desire, enabling me lawfully to roam through
all the four quarters of the world seeking adventures on behalf of those
in distress, as is the duty of chivalry and of knights-errant like myself,
whose ambition is directed to such deeds.”

The landlord, who, as has been mentioned, was something of a wag, and had
already some suspicion of his guest’s want of wits, was quite convinced of
it on hearing talk of this kind from him, and to make sport for the night
he determined to fall in with his humour. So he told him he was quite
right in pursuing the object he had in view, and that such a motive was
natural and becoming in cavaliers as distinguished as he seemed and his
gallant bearing showed him to be; and that he himself in his younger days
had followed the same honourable calling, roaming in quest of adventures
in various parts of the world, among others the Curing-grounds of Malaga,
the Isles of Riaran, the Precinct of Seville, the Little Market of
Segovia, the Olivera of Valencia, the Rondilla of Granada, the Strand of
San Lucar, the Colt of Cordova, the Taverns of Toledo, and divers other
quarters, where he had proved the nimbleness of his feet and the lightness
of his fingers, doing many wrongs, cheating many widows, ruining maids and
swindling minors, and, in short, bringing himself under the notice of
almost every tribunal and court of justice in Spain; until at last he had
retired to this castle of his, where he was living upon his property and
upon that of others; and where he received all knights-errant of whatever
rank or condition they might be, all for the great love he bore them and
that they might share their substance with him in return for his
benevolence. He told him, moreover, that in this castle of his there was
no chapel in which he could watch his armour, as it had been pulled down
in order to be rebuilt, but that in a case of necessity it might, he knew,
be watched anywhere, and he might watch it that night in a courtyard of
the castle, and in the morning, God willing, the requisite ceremonies
might be performed so as to have him dubbed a knight, and so thoroughly
dubbed that nobody could be more so. He asked if he had any money with
him, to which Don Quixote replied that he had not a farthing, as in the
histories of knights-errant he had never read of any of them carrying any.
On this point the landlord told him he was mistaken; for, though not
recorded in the histories, because in the author’s opinion there was no
need to mention anything so obvious and necessary as money and clean
shirts, it was not to be supposed therefore that they did not carry them,
and he might regard it as certain and established that all knights-errant
(about whom there were so many full and unimpeachable books) carried
well-furnished purses in case of emergency, and likewise carried shirts
and a little box of ointment to cure the wounds they received. For in
those plains and deserts where they engaged in combat and came out
wounded, it was not always that there was some one to cure them, unless
indeed they had for a friend some sage magician to succour them at once by
fetching through the air upon a cloud some damsel or dwarf with a vial of
water of such virtue that by tasting one drop of it they were cured of
their hurts and wounds in an instant and left as sound as if they had not
received any damage whatever. But in case this should not occur, the
knights of old took care to see that their squires were provided with
money and other requisites, such as lint and ointments for healing
purposes; and when it happened that knights had no squires (which was
rarely and seldom the case) they themselves carried everything in cunning
saddle-bags that were hardly seen on the horse’s croup, as if it were
something else of more importance, because, unless for some such reason,
carrying saddle-bags was not very favourably regarded among
knights-errant. He therefore advised him (and, as his godson so soon to
be, he might even command him) never from that time forth to travel
without money and the usual requirements, and he would find the advantage
of them when he least expected it.

Don Quixote promised to follow his advice scrupulously, and it was
arranged forthwith that he should watch his armour in a large yard at one
side of the inn; so, collecting it all together, Don Quixote placed it on
a trough that stood by the side of a well, and bracing his buckler on his
arm he grasped his lance and began with a stately air to march up and down
in front of the trough, and as he began his march night began to fall.

The landlord told all the people who were in the inn about the craze of
his guest, the watching of the armour, and the dubbing ceremony he
contemplated. Full of wonder at so strange a form of madness, they flocked
to see it from a distance, and observed with what composure he sometimes
paced up and down, or sometimes, leaning on his lance, gazed on his armour
without taking his eyes off it for ever so long; and as the night closed
in with a light from the moon so brilliant that it might vie with his that
lent it, everything the novice knight did was plainly seen by all.

Meanwhile one of the carriers who were in the inn thought fit to water his
team, and it was necessary to remove Don Quixote’s armour as it lay on the
trough; but he seeing the other approach hailed him in a loud voice, “O
thou, whoever thou art, rash knight that comest to lay hands on the armour
of the most valorous errant that ever girt on sword, have a care what thou
dost; touch it not unless thou wouldst lay down thy life as the penalty of
thy rashness.” The carrier gave no heed to these words (and he would have
done better to heed them if he had been heedful of his health), but
seizing it by the straps flung the armour some distance from him. Seeing
this, Don Quixote raised his eyes to heaven, and fixing his thoughts,
apparently, upon his lady Dulcinea, exclaimed, “Aid me, lady mine, in this
the first encounter that presents itself to this breast which thou holdest
in subjection; let not thy favour and protection fail me in this first
jeopardy;” and, with these words and others to the same purpose, dropping
his buckler he lifted his lance with both hands and with it smote such a
blow on the carrier’s head that he stretched him on the ground, so stunned
that had he followed it up with a second there would have been no need of
a surgeon to cure him. This done, he picked up his armour and returned to
his beat with the same serenity as before.

Shortly after this, another, not knowing what had happened (for the
carrier still lay senseless), came with the same object of giving water to
his mules, and was proceeding to remove the armour in order to clear the
trough, when Don Quixote, without uttering a word or imploring aid from
anyone, once more dropped his buckler and once more lifted his lance, and
without actually breaking the second carrier’s head into pieces, made more
than three of it, for he laid it open in four. At the noise all the people
of the inn ran to the spot, and among them the landlord. Seeing this, Don
Quixote braced his buckler on his arm, and with his hand on his sword
exclaimed, “O Lady of Beauty, strength and support of my faint heart, it
is time for thee to turn the eyes of thy greatness on this thy captive
knight on the brink of so mighty an adventure.” By this he felt himself so
inspired that he would not have flinched if all the carriers in the world
had assailed him. The comrades of the wounded perceiving the plight they
were in began from a distance to shower stones on Don Quixote, who
screened himself as best he could with his buckler, not daring to quit the
trough and leave his armour unprotected. The landlord shouted to them to
leave him alone, for he had already told them that he was mad, and as a
madman he would not be accountable even if he killed them all. Still
louder shouted Don Quixote, calling them knaves and traitors, and the lord
of the castle, who allowed knights-errant to be treated in this fashion, a
villain and a low-born knight whom, had he received the order of
knighthood, he would call to account for his treachery. “But of you,” he
cried, “base and vile rabble, I make no account; fling, strike, come on,
do all ye can against me, ye shall see what the reward of your folly and
insolence will be.” This he uttered with so much spirit and boldness that
he filled his assailants with a terrible fear, and as much for this reason
as at the persuasion of the landlord they left off stoning him, and he
allowed them to carry off the wounded, and with the same calmness and
composure as before resumed the watch over his armour.

But these freaks of his guest were not much to the liking of the landlord,
so he determined to cut matters short and confer upon him at once the
unlucky order of knighthood before any further misadventure could occur;
so, going up to him, he apologised for the rudeness which, without his
knowledge, had been offered to him by these low people, who, however, had
been well punished for their audacity. As he had already told him, he
said, there was no chapel in the castle, nor was it needed for what
remained to be done, for, as he understood the ceremonial of the order,
the whole point of being dubbed a knight lay in the accolade and in the
slap on the shoulder, and that could be administered in the middle of a
field; and that he had now done all that was needful as to watching the
armour, for all requirements were satisfied by a watch of two hours only,
while he had been more than four about it. Don Quixote believed it all,
and told him he stood there ready to obey him, and to make an end of it
with as much despatch as possible; for, if he were again attacked, and
felt himself to be dubbed knight, he would not, he thought, leave a soul
alive in the castle, except such as out of respect he might spare at his
bidding.

Thus warned and menaced, the castellan forthwith brought out a book in
which he used to enter the straw and barley he served out to the carriers,
and, with a lad carrying a candle-end, and the two damsels already
mentioned, he returned to where Don Quixote stood, and bade him kneel
down. Then, reading from his account-book as if he were repeating some
devout prayer, in the middle of his delivery he raised his hand and gave
him a sturdy blow on the neck, and then, with his own sword, a smart slap
on the shoulder, all the while muttering between his teeth as if he was
saying his prayers. Having done this, he directed one of the ladies to
gird on his sword, which she did with great self-possession and gravity,
and not a little was required to prevent a burst of laughter at each stage
of the ceremony; but what they had already seen of the novice knight’s
prowess kept their laughter within bounds. On girding him with the sword
the worthy lady said to him, “May God make your worship a very fortunate
knight, and grant you success in battle.” Don Quixote asked her name in
order that he might from that time forward know to whom he was beholden
for the favour he had received, as he meant to confer upon her some
portion of the honour he acquired by the might of his arm. She answered
with great humility that she was called La Tolosa, and that she was the
daughter of a cobbler of Toledo who lived in the stalls of Sanchobienaya,
and that wherever she might be she would serve and esteem him as her lord.
Don Quixote said in reply that she would do him a favour if thenceforward
she assumed the “Don” and called herself Dona Tolosa. She promised she
would, and then the other buckled on his spur, and with her followed
almost the same conversation as with the lady of the sword. He asked her
name, and she said it was La Molinera, and that she was the daughter of a
respectable miller of Antequera; and of her likewise Don Quixote requested
that she would adopt the “Don” and call herself Dona Molinera, making
offers to her further services and favours.

Having thus, with hot haste and speed, brought to a conclusion these
never-till-now-seen ceremonies, Don Quixote was on thorns until he saw
himself on horseback sallying forth in quest of adventures; and saddling
Rocinante at once he mounted, and embracing his host, as he returned
thanks for his kindness in knighting him, he addressed him in language so
extraordinary that it is impossible to convey an idea of it or report it.
The landlord, to get him out of the inn, replied with no less rhetoric
though with shorter words, and without calling upon him to pay the
reckoning let him go with a Godspeed.

CHAPTER IV.

OF WHAT HAPPENED TO OUR KNIGHT WHEN HE LEFT THE INN

Day was dawning when Don Quixote quitted the inn, so happy, so gay, so
exhilarated at finding himself now dubbed a knight, that his joy was like
to burst his horse-girths. However, recalling the advice of his host as to
the requisites he ought to carry with him, especially that referring to
money and shirts, he determined to go home and provide himself with all,
and also with a squire, for he reckoned upon securing a farm-labourer, a
neighbour of his, a poor man with a family, but very well qualified for
the office of squire to a knight. With this object he turned his horse’s
head towards his village, and Rocinante, thus reminded of his old
quarters, stepped out so briskly that he hardly seemed to tread the earth.

He had not gone far, when out of a thicket on his right there seemed to
come feeble cries as of some one in distress, and the instant he heard
them he exclaimed, “Thanks be to heaven for the favour it accords me, that
it so soon offers me an opportunity of fulfilling the obligation I have
undertaken, and gathering the fruit of my ambition. These cries, no doubt,
come from some man or woman in want of help, and needing my aid and
protection;” and wheeling, he turned Rocinante in the direction whence the
cries seemed to proceed. He had gone but a few paces into the wood, when
he saw a mare tied to an oak, and tied to another, and stripped from the
waist upwards, a youth of about fifteen years of age, from whom the cries
came. Nor were they without cause, for a lusty farmer was flogging him
with a belt and following up every blow with scoldings and commands,
repeating, “Your mouth shut and your eyes open!” while the youth made
answer, “I won’t do it again, master mine; by God’s passion I won’t do it
again, and I’ll take more care of the flock another time.”

Seeing what was going on, Don Quixote said in an angry voice,
“Discourteous knight, it ill becomes you to assail one who cannot defend
himself; mount your steed and take your lance” (for there was a lance
leaning against the oak to which the mare was tied), “and I will make you
know that you are behaving as a coward.” The farmer, seeing before him
this figure in full armour brandishing a lance over his head, gave himself
up for dead, and made answer meekly, “Sir Knight, this youth that I am
chastising is my servant, employed by me to watch a flock of sheep that I
have hard by, and he is so careless that I lose one every day, and when I
punish him for his carelessness and knavery he says I do it out of
niggardliness, to escape paying him the wages I owe him, and before God,
and on my soul, he lies.”

“Lies before me, base clown!” said Don Quixote. “By the sun that shines on
us I have a mind to run you through with this lance. Pay him at once
without another word; if not, by the God that rules us I will make an end
of you, and annihilate you on the spot; release him instantly.”

The farmer hung his head, and without a word untied his servant, of whom
Don Quixote asked how much his master owed him.

He replied, nine months at seven reals a month. Don Quixote added it up,
found that it came to sixty-three reals, and told the farmer to pay it
down immediately, if he did not want to die for it.

The trembling clown replied that as he lived and by the oath he had sworn
(though he had not sworn any) it was not so much; for there were to be
taken into account and deducted three pairs of shoes he had given him, and
a real for two blood-lettings when he was sick.

“All that is very well,” said Don Quixote; “but let the shoes and the
blood-lettings stand as a setoff against the blows you have given him
without any cause; for if he spoiled the leather of the shoes you paid
for, you have damaged that of his body, and if the barber took blood from
him when he was sick, you have drawn it when he was sound; so on that
score he owes you nothing.”

“The difficulty is, Sir Knight, that I have no money here; let Andres come
home with me, and I will pay him all, real by real.”

“I go with him!” said the youth. “Nay, God forbid! No, señor, not for the
world; for once alone with me, he would flay me like a Saint Bartholomew.”

“He will do nothing of the kind,” said Don Quixote; “I have only to
command, and he will obey me; and as he has sworn to me by the order of
knighthood which he has received, I leave him free, and I guarantee the
payment.”

“Consider what you are saying, señor,” said the youth; “this master of
mine is not a knight, nor has he received any order of knighthood; for he
is Juan Haldudo the Rich, of Quintanar.”

“That matters little,” replied Don Quixote; “there may be Haldudos
knights; moreover, everyone is the son of his works.”

“That is true,” said Andres; “but this master of mine—of what works
is he the son, when he refuses me the wages of my sweat and labour?”

“I do not refuse, brother Andres,” said the farmer, “be good enough to
come along with me, and I swear by all the orders of knighthood there are
in the world to pay you as I have agreed, real by real, and perfumed.”

“For the perfumery I excuse you,” said Don Quixote; “give it to him in
reals, and I shall be satisfied; and see that you do as you have sworn; if
not, by the same oath I swear to come back and hunt you out and punish
you; and I shall find you though you should lie closer than a lizard. And
if you desire to know who it is lays this command upon you, that you be
more firmly bound to obey it, know that I am the valorous Don Quixote of
La Mancha, the undoer of wrongs and injustices; and so, God be with you,
and keep in mind what you have promised and sworn under those penalties
that have been already declared to you.”

So saying, he gave Rocinante the spur and was soon out of reach. The
farmer followed him with his eyes, and when he saw that he had cleared the
wood and was no longer in sight, he turned to his boy Andres, and said,
“Come here, my son, I want to pay you what I owe you, as that undoer of
wrongs has commanded me.”

“My oath on it,” said Andres, “your worship will be well advised to obey
the command of that good knight—may he live a thousand years—for,
as he is a valiant and just judge, by Roque, if you do not pay me, he will
come back and do as he said.”

“My oath on it, too,” said the farmer; “but as I have a strong affection
for you, I want to add to the debt in order to add to the payment;” and
seizing him by the arm, he tied him up again, and gave him such a flogging
that he left him for dead.

“Now, Master Andres,” said the farmer, “call on the undoer of wrongs; you
will find he won’t undo that, though I am not sure that I have quite done
with you, for I have a good mind to flay you alive.” But at last he untied
him, and gave him leave to go look for his judge in order to put the
sentence pronounced into execution.

Andres went off rather down in the mouth, swearing he would go to look for
the valiant Don Quixote of La Mancha and tell him exactly what had
happened, and that all would have to be repaid him sevenfold; but for all
that, he went off weeping, while his master stood laughing.

Thus did the valiant Don Quixote right that wrong, and, thoroughly
satisfied with what had taken place, as he considered he had made a very
happy and noble beginning with his knighthood, he took the road towards
his village in perfect self-content, saying in a low voice, “Well mayest
thou this day call thyself fortunate above all on earth, O Dulcinea del
Toboso, fairest of the fair! since it has fallen to thy lot to hold
subject and submissive to thy full will and pleasure a knight so renowned
as is and will be Don Quixote of La Mancha, who, as all the world knows,
yesterday received the order of knighthood, and hath to-day righted the
greatest wrong and grievance that ever injustice conceived and cruelty
perpetrated: who hath to-day plucked the rod from the hand of yonder
ruthless oppressor so wantonly lashing that tender child.”

He now came to a road branching in four directions, and immediately he was
reminded of those cross-roads where knights-errant used to stop to
consider which road they should take. In imitation of them he halted for a
while, and after having deeply considered it, he gave Rocinante his head,
submitting his own will to that of his hack, who followed out his first
intention, which was to make straight for his own stable. After he had
gone about two miles Don Quixote perceived a large party of people, who,
as afterwards appeared, were some Toledo traders, on their way to buy silk
at Murcia. There were six of them coming along under their sunshades, with
four servants mounted, and three muleteers on foot. Scarcely had Don
Quixote descried them when the fancy possessed him that this must be some
new adventure; and to help him to imitate as far as he could those
passages he had read of in his books, here seemed to come one made on
purpose, which he resolved to attempt. So with a lofty bearing and
determination he fixed himself firmly in his stirrups, got his lance
ready, brought his buckler before his breast, and planting himself in the
middle of the road, stood waiting the approach of these knights-errant,
for such he now considered and held them to be; and when they had come
near enough to see and hear, he exclaimed with a haughty gesture, “All the
world stand, unless all the world confess that in all the world there is
no maiden fairer than the Empress of La Mancha, the peerless Dulcinea del
Toboso.”

The traders halted at the sound of this language and the sight of the
strange figure that uttered it, and from both figure and language at once
guessed the craze of their owner; they wished, however, to learn quietly
what was the object of this confession that was demanded of them, and one
of them, who was rather fond of a joke and was very sharp-witted, said to
him, “Sir Knight, we do not know who this good lady is that you speak of;
show her to us, for, if she be of such beauty as you suggest, with all our
hearts and without any pressure we will confess the truth that is on your
part required of us.”

“If I were to show her to you,” replied Don Quixote, “what merit would you
have in confessing a truth so manifest? The essential point is that
without seeing her you must believe, confess, affirm, swear, and defend
it; else ye have to do with me in battle, ill-conditioned, arrogant rabble
that ye are; and come ye on, one by one as the order of knighthood
requires, or all together as is the custom and vile usage of your breed,
here do I bide and await you relying on the justice of the cause I
maintain.”

“Sir Knight,” replied the trader, “I entreat your worship in the name of
this present company of princes, that, to save us from charging our
consciences with the confession of a thing we have never seen or heard of,
and one moreover so much to the prejudice of the Empresses and Queens of
the Alcarria and Estremadura, your worship will be pleased to show us some
portrait of this lady, though it be no bigger than a grain of wheat; for
by the thread one gets at the ball, and in this way we shall be satisfied
and easy, and you will be content and pleased; nay, I believe we are
already so far agreed with you that even though her portrait should show
her blind of one eye, and distilling vermilion and sulphur from the other,
we would nevertheless, to gratify your worship, say all in her favour that
you desire.”

“She distils nothing of the kind, vile rabble,” said Don Quixote, burning
with rage, “nothing of the kind, I say, only ambergris and civet in
cotton; nor is she one-eyed or humpbacked, but straighter than a
Guadarrama spindle: but ye must pay for the blasphemy ye have uttered
against beauty like that of my lady.”

And so saying, he charged with levelled lance against the one who had
spoken, with such fury and fierceness that, if luck had not contrived that
Rocinante should stumble midway and come down, it would have gone hard
with the rash trader. Down went Rocinante, and over went his master,
rolling along the ground for some distance; and when he tried to rise he
was unable, so encumbered was he with lance, buckler, spurs, helmet, and
the weight of his old armour; and all the while he was struggling to get
up he kept saying, “Fly not, cowards and caitiffs! stay, for not by my
fault, but my horse’s, am I stretched here.”

One of the muleteers in attendance, who could not have had much good nature in
him, hearing the poor prostrate man blustering in this style, was unable to
refrain from giving him an answer on his ribs; and coming up to him he seized
his lance, and having broken it in pieces, with one of them he began so to
belabour our Don Quixote that, notwithstanding and in spite of his armour, he
milled him like a measure of wheat. His masters called out not to lay on so
hard and to leave him alone, but the muleteer’s blood was up, and he did
not care to drop the game until he had vented the rest of his wrath, and
gathering up the remaining fragments of the lance he finished with a discharge
upon the unhappy victim, who all through the storm of sticks that rained on him
never ceased threatening heaven, and earth, and the brigands, for such they
seemed to him. At last the muleteer was tired, and the traders continued their
journey, taking with them matter for talk about the poor fellow who had been
cudgelled. He when he found himself alone made another effort to rise; but if
he was unable when whole and sound, how was he to rise after having been
thrashed and well-nigh knocked to pieces? And yet he esteemed himself
fortunate, as it seemed to him that this was a regular knight-errant’s
mishap, and entirely, he considered, the fault of his horse. However, battered
in body as he was, to rise was beyond his power.

CHAPTER V.

IN WHICH THE NARRATIVE OF OUR KNIGHT’S MISHAP IS CONTINUED

Finding, then, that, in fact he could not move, he thought himself of
having recourse to his usual remedy, which was to think of some passage in
his books, and his craze brought to his mind that about Baldwin and the
Marquis of Mantua, when Carloto left him wounded on the mountain side, a
story known by heart by the children, not forgotten by the young men, and
lauded and even believed by the old folk; and for all that not a whit
truer than the miracles of Mahomet. This seemed to him to fit exactly the
case in which he found himself, so, making a show of severe suffering, he
began to roll on the ground and with feeble breath repeat the very words
which the wounded knight of the wood is said to have uttered:

And so he went on with the ballad as far as the lines:

As chance would have it, when he had got to this line there happened to
come by a peasant from his own village, a neighbour of his, who had been
with a load of wheat to the mill, and he, seeing the man stretched there,
came up to him and asked him who he was and what was the matter with him
that he complained so dolefully.

Don Quixote was firmly persuaded that this was the Marquis of Mantua, his
uncle, so the only answer he made was to go on with his ballad, in which
he told the tale of his misfortune, and of the loves of the Emperor’s son
and his wife all exactly as the ballad sings it.

The peasant stood amazed at hearing such nonsense, and relieving him of
the visor, already battered to pieces by blows, he wiped his face, which
was covered with dust, and as soon as he had done so he recognised him and
said, “Señor Quixada” (for so he appears to have been called when he was
in his senses and had not yet changed from a quiet country gentleman into
a knight-errant), “who has brought your worship to this pass?” But to all
questions the other only went on with his ballad.

Seeing this, the good man removed as well as he could his breastplate and
backpiece to see if he had any wound, but he could perceive no blood nor
any mark whatever. He then contrived to raise him from the ground, and
with no little difficulty hoisted him upon his ass, which seemed to him to
be the easiest mount for him; and collecting the arms, even to the
splinters of the lance, he tied them on Rocinante, and leading him by the
bridle and the ass by the halter he took the road for the village, very
sad to hear what absurd stuff Don Quixote was talking.

Nor was Don Quixote less so, for what with blows and bruises he could not
sit upright on the ass, and from time to time he sent up sighs to heaven,
so that once more he drove the peasant to ask what ailed him. And it could
have been only the devil himself that put into his head tales to match his
own adventures, for now, forgetting Baldwin, he bethought himself of the
Moor Abindarraez, when the Alcaide of Antequera, Rodrigo de Narvaez, took
him prisoner and carried him away to his castle; so that when the peasant
again asked him how he was and what ailed him, he gave him for reply the
same words and phrases that the captive Abindarraez gave to Rodrigo de
Narvaez, just as he had read the story in the “Diana” of Jorge de
Montemayor where it is written, applying it to his own case so aptly that
the peasant went along cursing his fate that he had to listen to such a
lot of nonsense; from which, however, he came to the conclusion that his
neighbour was mad, and so made all haste to reach the village to escape
the wearisomeness of this harangue of Don Quixote’s; who, at the end of
it, said, “Señor Don Rodrigo de Narvaez, your worship must know that this
fair Xarifa I have mentioned is now the lovely Dulcinea del Toboso, for
whom I have done, am doing, and will do the most famous deeds of chivalry
that in this world have been seen, are to be seen, or ever shall be seen.”

To this the peasant answered, “Señor—sinner that I am!—cannot
your worship see that I am not Don Rodrigo de Narvaez nor the Marquis of
Mantua, but Pedro Alonso your neighbour, and that your worship is neither
Baldwin nor Abindarraez, but the worthy gentleman Señor Quixada?”

“I know who I am,” replied Don Quixote, “and I know that I may be not only
those I have named, but all the Twelve Peers of France and even all the
Nine Worthies, since my achievements surpass all that they have done all
together and each of them on his own account.”

With this talk and more of the same kind they reached the village just as
night was beginning to fall, but the peasant waited until it was a little
later that the belaboured gentleman might not be seen riding in such a
miserable trim. When it was what seemed to him the proper time he entered
the village and went to Don Quixote’s house, which he found all in
confusion, and there were the curate and the village barber, who were
great friends of Don Quixote, and his housekeeper was saying to them in a
loud voice, “What does your worship think can have befallen my master,
Señor Licentiate Pero Perez?” for so the curate was called; “it is three
days now since anything has been seen of him, or the hack, or the buckler,
lance, or armour. Miserable me! I am certain of it, and it is as true as
that I was born to die, that these accursed books of chivalry he has, and
has got into the way of reading so constantly, have upset his reason; for
now I remember having often heard him saying to himself that he would turn
knight-errant and go all over the world in quest of adventures. To the
devil and Barabbas with such books, that have brought to ruin in this way
the finest understanding there was in all La Mancha!”

The niece said the same, and, more: “You must know, Master Nicholas”—for
that was the name of the barber—“it was often my uncle’s way to stay
two days and nights together poring over these unholy books of
misventures, after which he would fling the book away and snatch up his
sword and fall to slashing the walls; and when he was tired out he would
say he had killed four giants like four towers; and the sweat that flowed
from him when he was weary he said was the blood of the wounds he had
received in battle; and then he would drink a great jug of cold water and
become calm and quiet, saying that this water was a most precious potion
which the sage Esquife, a great magician and friend of his, had brought
him. But I take all the blame upon myself for never having told your
worships of my uncle’s vagaries, that you might put a stop to them before
things had come to this pass, and burn all these accursed books—for
he has a great number—that richly deserve to be burned like
heretics.”

“So say I too,” said the curate, “and by my faith to-morrow shall not pass
without public judgment upon them, and may they be condemned to the flames
lest they lead those that read to behave as my good friend seems to have
behaved.”

All this the peasant heard, and from it he understood at last what was the
matter with his neighbour, so he began calling aloud, “Open, your
worships, to Señor Baldwin and to Señor the Marquis of Mantua, who comes
badly wounded, and to Señor Abindarraez, the Moor, whom the valiant
Rodrigo de Narvaez, the Alcaide of Antequera, brings captive.”

At these words they all hurried out, and when they recognised their
friend, master, and uncle, who had not yet dismounted from the ass because
he could not, they ran to embrace him.

“Hold!” said he, “for I am badly wounded through my horse’s fault; carry
me to bed, and if possible send for the wise Urganda to cure and see to my
wounds.”

“See there! plague on it!” cried the housekeeper at this: “did not my
heart tell the truth as to which foot my master went lame of? To bed with
your worship at once, and we will contrive to cure you here without
fetching that Hurgada. A curse I say once more, and a hundred times more,
on those books of chivalry that have brought your worship to such a pass.”

They carried him to bed at once, and after searching for his wounds could
find none, but he said they were all bruises from having had a severe fall
with his horse Rocinante when in combat with ten giants, the biggest and
the boldest to be found on earth.

“So, so!” said the curate, “are there giants in the dance? By the sign of
the Cross I will burn them to-morrow before the day is over.”

They put a host of questions to Don Quixote, but his only answer to all
was—give him something to eat, and leave him to sleep, for that was
what he needed most. They did so, and the curate questioned the peasant at
great length as to how he had found Don Quixote. He told him, and the
nonsense he had talked when found and on the way home, all which made the
licentiate the more eager to do what he did the next day, which was to
summon his friend the barber, Master Nicholas, and go with him to Don
Quixote’s house.

CHAPTER VI.

OF THE DIVERTING AND IMPORTANT SCRUTINY WHICH THE CURATE AND THE BARBER
MADE IN THE LIBRARY OF OUR INGENIOUS GENTLEMAN

He was still sleeping; so the curate asked the niece for the keys of the
room where the books, the authors of all the mischief, were, and right
willingly she gave them. They all went in, the housekeeper with them, and
found more than a hundred volumes of big books very well bound, and some
other small ones. The moment the housekeeper saw them she turned about and
ran out of the room, and came back immediately with a saucer of holy water
and a sprinkler, saying, “Here, your worship, señor licentiate, sprinkle
this room; don’t leave any magician of the many there are in these books
to bewitch us in revenge for our design of banishing them from the world.”

The simplicity of the housekeeper made the licentiate laugh, and he
directed the barber to give him the books one by one to see what they were
about, as there might be some to be found among them that did not deserve
the penalty of fire.

“No,” said the niece, “there is no reason for showing mercy to any of
them; they have every one of them done mischief; better fling them out of
the window into the court and make a pile of them and set fire to them; or
else carry them into the yard, and there a bonfire can be made without the
smoke giving any annoyance.” The housekeeper said the same, so eager were
they both for the slaughter of those innocents, but the curate would not
agree to it without first reading at any rate the titles.

The first that Master Nicholas put into his hand was “The four books of
Amadis of Gaul.” “This seems a mysterious thing,” said the curate, “for,
as I have heard say, this was the first book of chivalry printed in Spain,
and from this all the others derive their birth and origin; so it seems to
me that we ought inexorably to condemn it to the flames as the founder of
so vile a sect.”

“Nay, sir,” said the barber, “I too, have heard say that this is the best
of all the books of this kind that have been written, and so, as something
singular in its line, it ought to be pardoned.”

“True,” said the curate; “and for that reason let its life be spared for
the present. Let us see that other which is next to it.”

“It is,” said the barber, “the ‘Sergas de Esplandian,’ the lawful son of
Amadis of Gaul.”

“Then verily,” said the curate, “the merit of the father must not be put
down to the account of the son. Take it, mistress housekeeper; open the
window and fling it into the yard and lay the foundation of the pile for
the bonfire we are to make.”

The housekeeper obeyed with great satisfaction, and the worthy
“Esplandian” went flying into the yard to await with all patience the fire
that was in store for him.

“Proceed,” said the curate.

“This that comes next,” said the barber, “is ‘Amadis of Greece,’ and,
indeed, I believe all those on this side are of the same Amadis lineage.”

“Then to the yard with the whole of them,” said the curate; “for to have
the burning of Queen Pintiquiniestra, and the shepherd Darinel and his
eclogues, and the bedevilled and involved discourses of his author, I
would burn with them the father who begot me if he were going about in the
guise of a knight-errant.”

“I am of the same mind,” said the barber.

“And so am I,” added the niece.

“In that case,” said the housekeeper, “here, into the yard with them!”

They were handed to her, and as there were many of them, she spared
herself the staircase, and flung them down out of the window.

“Who is that tub there?” said the curate.

“This,” said the barber, “is ‘Don Olivante de Laura.’”

“The author of that book,” said the curate, “was the same that wrote ‘The
Garden of Flowers,’ and truly there is no deciding which of the two books
is the more truthful, or, to put it better, the less lying; all I can say
is, send this one into the yard for a swaggering fool.”

“This that follows is ‘Florismarte of Hircania,’” said the barber.

“Señor Florismarte here?” said the curate; “then by my faith he must take
up his quarters in the yard, in spite of his marvellous birth and
visionary adventures, for the stiffness and dryness of his style deserve
nothing else; into the yard with him and the other, mistress housekeeper.”

“With all my heart, señor,” said she, and executed the order with great
delight.

“This,” said the barber, “is The Knight Platir.’”

“An old book that,” said the curate, “but I find no reason for clemency in
it; send it after the others without appeal;” which was done.

Another book was opened, and they saw it was entitled, “The Knight of the
Cross.”

“For the sake of the holy name this book has,” said the curate, “its
ignorance might be excused; but then, they say, ‘behind the cross there’s
the devil; to the fire with it.”

Taking down another book, the barber said, “This is ‘The Mirror of
Chivalry.’”

“I know his worship,” said the curate; “that is where Señor Reinaldos of
Montalvan figures with his friends and comrades, greater thieves than
Cacus, and the Twelve Peers of France with the veracious historian Turpin;
however, I am not for condemning them to more than perpetual banishment,
because, at any rate, they have some share in the invention of the famous
Matteo Boiardo, whence too the Christian poet Ludovico Ariosto wove his
web, to whom, if I find him here, and speaking any language but his own, I
shall show no respect whatever; but if he speaks his own tongue I will put
him upon my head.”

“Well, I have him in Italian,” said the barber, “but I do not understand
him.”

“Nor would it be well that you should understand him,” said the curate,
“and on that score we might have excused the Captain if he had not brought
him into Spain and turned him into Castilian. He robbed him of a great
deal of his natural force, and so do all those who try to turn books
written in verse into another language, for, with all the pains they take
and all the cleverness they show, they never can reach the level of the
originals as they were first produced. In short, I say that this book, and
all that may be found treating of those French affairs, should be thrown
into or deposited in some dry well, until after more consideration it is
settled what is to be done with them; excepting always one ‘Bernardo del
Carpio’ that is going about, and another called ‘Roncesvalles;’ for these,
if they come into my hands, shall pass at once into those of the
housekeeper, and from hers into the fire without any reprieve.”

To all this the barber gave his assent, and looked upon it as right and
proper, being persuaded that the curate was so staunch to the Faith and
loyal to the Truth that he would not for the world say anything opposed to
them. Opening another book he saw it was “Palmerin de Oliva,” and beside
it was another called “Palmerin of England,” seeing which the licentiate
said, “Let the Olive be made firewood of at once and burned until no ashes
even are left; and let that Palm of England be kept and preserved as a
thing that stands alone, and let such another case be made for it as that
which Alexander found among the spoils of Darius and set aside for the
safe keeping of the works of the poet Homer. This book, gossip, is of
authority for two reasons, first because it is very good, and secondly
because it is said to have been written by a wise and witty king of
Portugal. All the adventures at the Castle of Miraguarda are excellent and
of admirable contrivance, and the language is polished and clear, studying
and observing the style befitting the speaker with propriety and judgment.
So then, provided it seems good to you, Master Nicholas, I say let this
and ‘Amadis of Gaul’ be remitted the penalty of fire, and as for all the
rest, let them perish without further question or query.”

“Nay, gossip,” said the barber, “for this that I have here is the famous
‘Don Belianis.’”

“Well,” said the curate, “that and the second, third, and fourth parts all
stand in need of a little rhubarb to purge their excess of bile, and they
must be cleared of all that stuff about the Castle of Fame and other
greater affectations, to which end let them be allowed the over-seas term,
and, according as they mend, so shall mercy or justice be meted out to
them; and in the mean time, gossip, do you keep them in your house and let
no one read them.”

“With all my heart,” said the barber; and not caring to tire himself with
reading more books of chivalry, he told the housekeeper to take all the
big ones and throw them into the yard. It was not said to one dull or
deaf, but to one who enjoyed burning them more than weaving the broadest
and finest web that could be; and seizing about eight at a time, she flung
them out of the window.

In carrying so many together she let one fall at the feet of the barber,
who took it up, curious to know whose it was, and found it said, “History
of the Famous Knight, Tirante el Blanco.”

“God bless me!” said the curate with a shout, “‘Tirante el Blanco’ here!
Hand it over, gossip, for in it I reckon I have found a treasury of
enjoyment and a mine of recreation. Here is Don Kyrieleison of Montalvan,
a valiant knight, and his brother Thomas of Montalvan, and the knight
Fonseca, with the battle the bold Tirante fought with the mastiff, and the
witticisms of the damsel Placerdemivida, and the loves and wiles of the
widow Reposada, and the empress in love with the squire Hipolito—in
truth, gossip, by right of its style it is the best book in the world.
Here knights eat and sleep, and die in their beds, and make their wills
before dying, and a great deal more of which there is nothing in all the
other books. Nevertheless, I say he who wrote it, for deliberately
composing such fooleries, deserves to be sent to the galleys for life.
Take it home with you and read it, and you will see that what I have said
is true.”

“As you will,” said the barber; “but what are we to do with these little
books that are left?”

“These must be, not chivalry, but poetry,” said the curate; and opening
one he saw it was the “Diana” of Jorge de Montemayor, and, supposing all
the others to be of the same sort, “these,” he said, “do not deserve to be
burned like the others, for they neither do nor can do the mischief the
books of chivalry have done, being books of entertainment that can hurt no
one.”

“Ah, señor!” said the niece, “your worship had better order these to be
burned as well as the others; for it would be no wonder if, after being
cured of his chivalry disorder, my uncle, by reading these, took a fancy
to turn shepherd and range the woods and fields singing and piping; or,
what would be still worse, to turn poet, which they say is an incurable
and infectious malady.”

“The damsel is right,” said the curate, “and it will be well to put this
stumbling-block and temptation out of our friend’s way. To begin, then,
with the ‘Diana’ of Montemayor. I am of opinion it should not be burned,
but that it should be cleared of all that about the sage Felicia and the
magic water, and of almost all the longer pieces of verse: let it keep,
and welcome, its prose and the honour of being the first of books of the
kind.”

“This that comes next,” said the barber, “is the ‘Diana,’ entitled the
‘Second Part, by the Salamancan,’ and this other has the same title, and
its author is Gil Polo.”

“As for that of the Salamancan,” replied the curate, “let it go to swell
the number of the condemned in the yard, and let Gil Polo’s be preserved
as if it came from Apollo himself: but get on, gossip, and make haste, for
it is growing late.”

“This book,” said the barber, opening another, “is the ten books of the
‘Fortune of Love,’ written by Antonio de Lofraso, a Sardinian poet.”

“By the orders I have received,” said the curate, “since Apollo has been
Apollo, and the Muses have been Muses, and poets have been poets, so droll
and absurd a book as this has never been written, and in its way it is the
best and the most singular of all of this species that have as yet
appeared, and he who has not read it may be sure he has never read what is
delightful. Give it here, gossip, for I make more account of having found
it than if they had given me a cassock of Florence stuff.”

He put it aside with extreme satisfaction, and the barber went on, “These
that come next are ‘The Shepherd of Iberia,’ ‘Nymphs of Henares,’ and ‘The
Enlightenment of Jealousy.’”

“Then all we have to do,” said the curate, “is to hand them over to the
secular arm of the housekeeper, and ask me not why, or we shall never have
done.”

“This next is the ‘Pastor de Filida.’”

“No Pastor that,” said the curate, “but a highly polished courtier; let it
be preserved as a precious jewel.”

“This large one here,” said the barber, “is called ‘The Treasury of
various Poems.’”

“If there were not so many of them,” said the curate, “they would be more
relished: this book must be weeded and cleansed of certain vulgarities
which it has with its excellences; let it be preserved because the author
is a friend of mine, and out of respect for other more heroic and loftier
works that he has written.”

“This,” continued the barber, “is the ‘Cancionero’ of Lopez de Maldonado.”

“The author of that book, too,” said the curate, “is a great friend of
mine, and his verses from his own mouth are the admiration of all who hear
them, for such is the sweetness of his voice that he enchants when he
chants them: it gives rather too much of its eclogues, but what is good
was never yet plentiful: let it be kept with those that have been set
apart. But what book is that next it?”

“The ‘Galatea’ of Miguel de Cervantes,” said the barber.

“That Cervantes has been for many years a great friend of mine, and to my
knowledge he has had more experience in reverses than in verses. His book
has some good invention in it, it presents us with something but brings
nothing to a conclusion: we must wait for the Second Part it promises:
perhaps with amendment it may succeed in winning the full measure of grace
that is now denied it; and in the mean time do you, señor gossip, keep it
shut up in your own quarters.”

“Very good,” said the barber; “and here come three together, the
‘Araucana’ of Don Alonso de Ercilla, the ‘Austriada’ of Juan Rufo, Justice
of Cordova, and the ‘Montserrate’ of Christobal de Virues, the Valencian
poet.”

“These three books,” said the curate, “are the best that have been written
in Castilian in heroic verse, and they may compare with the most famous of
Italy; let them be preserved as the richest treasures of poetry that Spain
possesses.”

The curate was tired and would not look into any more books, and so he
decided that, “contents uncertified,” all the rest should be burned; but
just then the barber held open one, called “The Tears of Angelica.”

“I should have shed tears myself,” said the curate when he heard the
title, “had I ordered that book to be burned, for its author was one of
the famous poets of the world, not to say of Spain, and was very happy in
the translation of some of Ovid’s fables.”

CHAPTER VII.

OF THE SECOND SALLY OF OUR WORTHY KNIGHT DON QUIXOTE OF LA MANCHA

At this instant Don Quixote began shouting out, “Here, here, valiant
knights! here is need for you to put forth the might of your strong arms,
for they of the Court are gaining the mastery in the tourney!” Called away
by this noise and outcry, they proceeded no farther with the scrutiny of
the remaining books, and so it is thought that “The Carolea,” “The Lion of
Spain,” and “The Deeds of the Emperor,” written by Don Luis de Avila, went
to the fire unseen and unheard; for no doubt they were among those that
remained, and perhaps if the curate had seen them they would not have
undergone so severe a sentence.

When they reached Don Quixote he was already out of bed, and was still
shouting and raving, and slashing and cutting all round, as wide awake as
if he had never slept.

They closed with him and by force got him back to bed, and when he had
become a little calm, addressing the curate, he said to him, “Of a truth,
Señor Archbishop Turpin, it is a great disgrace for us who call ourselves
the Twelve Peers, so carelessly to allow the knights of the Court to gain
the victory in this tourney, we the adventurers having carried off the
honour on the three former days.”

“Hush, gossip,” said the curate; “please God, the luck may turn, and what
is lost to-day may be won to-morrow; for the present let your worship have
a care of your health, for it seems to me that you are over-fatigued, if
not badly wounded.”

“Wounded no,” said Don Quixote, “but bruised and battered no doubt, for
that bastard Don Roland has cudgelled me with the trunk of an oak tree,
and all for envy, because he sees that I alone rival him in his
achievements. But I should not call myself Reinaldos of Montalvan did he
not pay me for it in spite of all his enchantments as soon as I rise from
this bed. For the present let them bring me something to eat, for that, I
feel, is what will be more to my purpose, and leave it to me to avenge
myself.”

They did as he wished; they gave him something to eat, and once more he
fell asleep, leaving them marvelling at his madness.

That night the housekeeper burned to ashes all the books that were in the
yard and in the whole house; and some must have been consumed that
deserved preservation in everlasting archives, but their fate and the
laziness of the examiner did not permit it, and so in them was verified
the proverb that the innocent suffer for the guilty.

One of the remedies which the curate and the barber immediately applied to
their friend’s disorder was to wall up and plaster the room where the
books were, so that when he got up he should not find them (possibly the
cause being removed the effect might cease), and they might say that a
magician had carried them off, room and all; and this was done with all
despatch. Two days later Don Quixote got up, and the first thing he did
was to go and look at his books, and not finding the room where he had
left it, he wandered from side to side looking for it. He came to the
place where the door used to be, and tried it with his hands, and turned
and twisted his eyes in every direction without saying a word; but after a
good while he asked his housekeeper whereabouts was the room that held his
books.

The housekeeper, who had been already well instructed in what she was to
answer, said, “What room or what nothing is it that your worship is
looking for? There are neither room nor books in this house now, for the
devil himself has carried all away.”

“It was not the devil,” said the niece, “but a magician who came on a
cloud one night after the day your worship left this, and dismounting from
a serpent that he rode he entered the room, and what he did there I know
not, but after a little while he made off, flying through the roof, and
left the house full of smoke; and when we went to see what he had done we
saw neither book nor room: but we remember very well, the housekeeper and
I, that on leaving, the old villain said in a loud voice that, for a
private grudge he owed the owner of the books and the room, he had done
mischief in that house that would be discovered by-and-by: he said too
that his name was the Sage Munaton.”

“He must have said Friston,” said Don Quixote.

“I don’t know whether he called himself Friston or Friton,” said the
housekeeper, “I only know that his name ended with ‘ton.’”

“So it does,” said Don Quixote, “and he is a sage magician, a great enemy
of mine, who has a spite against me because he knows by his arts and lore
that in process of time I am to engage in single combat with a knight whom
he befriends and that I am to conquer, and he will be unable to prevent
it; and for this reason he endeavours to do me all the ill turns that he
can; but I promise him it will be hard for him to oppose or avoid what is
decreed by Heaven.”

“Who doubts that?” said the niece; “but, uncle, who mixes you up in these
quarrels? Would it not be better to remain at peace in your own house
instead of roaming the world looking for better bread than ever came of
wheat, never reflecting that many go for wool and come back shorn?”

“Oh, niece of mine,” replied Don Quixote, “how much astray art thou in thy
reckoning: ere they shear me I shall have plucked away and stripped off
the beards of all who dare to touch only the tip of a hair of mine.”

The two were unwilling to make any further answer, as they saw that his
anger was kindling.

In short, then, he remained at home fifteen days very quietly without
showing any signs of a desire to take up with his former delusions, and
during this time he held lively discussions with his two gossips, the
curate and the barber, on the point he maintained, that knights-errant
were what the world stood most in need of, and that in him was to be
accomplished the revival of knight-errantry. The curate sometimes
contradicted him, sometimes agreed with him, for if he had not observed
this precaution he would have been unable to bring him to reason.

Meanwhile Don Quixote worked upon a farm labourer, a neighbour of his, an
honest man (if indeed that title can be given to him who is poor), but
with very little wit in his pate. In a word, he so talked him over, and
with such persuasions and promises, that the poor clown made up his mind
to sally forth with him and serve him as esquire. Don Quixote, among other
things, told him he ought to be ready to go with him gladly, because any
moment an adventure might occur that might win an island in the twinkling
of an eye and leave him governor of it. On these and the like promises
Sancho Panza (for so the labourer was called) left wife and children, and
engaged himself as esquire to his neighbour.

Don Quixote next set about getting some money; and selling one thing and
pawning another, and making a bad bargain in every case, he got together a
fair sum. He provided himself with a buckler, which he begged as a loan
from a friend, and, restoring his battered helmet as best he could, he
warned his squire Sancho of the day and hour he meant to set out, that he
might provide himself with what he thought most needful. Above all, he
charged him to take alforjas with him. The other said he would, and that
he meant to take also a very good ass he had, as he was not much given to
going on foot. About the ass, Don Quixote hesitated a little, trying
whether he could call to mind any knight-errant taking with him an esquire
mounted on ass-back, but no instance occurred to his memory. For all that,
however, he determined to take him, intending to furnish him with a more
honourable mount when a chance of it presented itself, by appropriating
the horse of the first discourteous knight he encountered. Himself he
provided with shirts and such other things as he could, according to the
advice the host had given him; all which being done, without taking leave,
Sancho Panza of his wife and children, or Don Quixote of his housekeeper
and niece, they sallied forth unseen by anybody from the village one
night, and made such good way in the course of it that by daylight they
held themselves safe from discovery, even should search be made for them.

Sancho rode on his ass like a patriarch, with his alforjas and bota, and
longing to see himself soon governor of the island his master had promised
him. Don Quixote decided upon taking the same route and road he had taken
on his first journey, that over the Campo de Montiel, which he travelled
with less discomfort than on the last occasion, for, as it was early
morning and the rays of the sun fell on them obliquely, the heat did not
distress them.

And now said Sancho Panza to his master, “Your worship will take care,
Señor Knight-errant, not to forget about the island you have promised me,
for be it ever so big I’ll be equal to governing it.”

To which Don Quixote replied, “Thou must know, friend Sancho Panza, that
it was a practice very much in vogue with the knights-errant of old to
make their squires governors of the islands or kingdoms they won, and I am
determined that there shall be no failure on my part in so liberal a
custom; on the contrary, I mean to improve upon it, for they sometimes,
and perhaps most frequently, waited until their squires were old, and then
when they had had enough of service and hard days and worse nights, they
gave them some title or other, of count, or at the most marquis, of some
valley or province more or less; but if thou livest and I live, it may
well be that before six days are over, I may have won some kingdom that
has others dependent upon it, which will be just the thing to enable thee
to be crowned king of one of them. Nor needst thou count this wonderful,
for things and chances fall to the lot of such knights in ways so
unexampled and unexpected that I might easily give thee even more than I
promise thee.”

“In that case,” said Sancho Panza, “if I should become a king by one of
those miracles your worship speaks of, even Juana Gutierrez, my old woman,
would come to be queen and my children infantes.”

“Well, who doubts it?” said Don Quixote.

“I doubt it,” replied Sancho Panza, “because for my part I am persuaded
that though God should shower down kingdoms upon earth, not one of them
would fit the head of Mari Gutierrez. Let me tell you, señor, she is not
worth two maravedis for a queen; countess will fit her better, and that
only with God’s help.”

“Leave it to God, Sancho,” returned Don Quixote, “for he will give her
what suits her best; but do not undervalue thyself so much as to come to
be content with anything less than being governor of a province.”

“I will not, señor,” answered Sancho, “specially as I have a man of such
quality for a master in your worship, who will know how to give me all
that will be suitable for me and that I can bear.”

CHAPTER VIII.

OF THE GOOD FORTUNE WHICH THE VALIANT DON QUIXOTE HAD IN THE TERRIBLE AND
UNDREAMT-OF ADVENTURE OF THE WINDMILLS, WITH OTHER OCCURRENCES WORTHY TO
BE FITLY RECORDED

At this point they came in sight of thirty or forty windmills that there are on
that plain, and as soon as Don Quixote saw them he said to his squire,
“Fortune is arranging matters for us better than we could have shaped our
desires ourselves, for look there, friend Sancho Panza, where thirty or more
monstrous giants present themselves, all of whom I mean to engage in battle and
slay, and with whose spoils we shall begin to make our fortunes; for this is
righteous warfare, and it is God’s good service to sweep so evil a breed
from off the face of the earth.”

“What giants?” said Sancho Panza.

“Those thou seest there,” answered his master, “with the long arms, and
some have them nearly two leagues long.”

“Look, your worship,” said Sancho; “what we see there are not giants but
windmills, and what seem to be their arms are the sails that turned by the
wind make the millstone go.”

“It is easy to see,” replied Don Quixote, “that thou art not used to this
business of adventures; those are giants; and if thou art afraid, away
with thee out of this and betake thyself to prayer while I engage them in
fierce and unequal combat.”

So saying, he gave the spur to his steed Rocinante, heedless of the cries
his squire Sancho sent after him, warning him that most certainly they
were windmills and not giants he was going to attack. He, however, was so
positive they were giants that he neither heard the cries of Sancho, nor
perceived, near as he was, what they were, but made at them shouting, “Fly
not, cowards and vile beings, for a single knight attacks you.”

A slight breeze at this moment sprang up, and the great sails began to
move, seeing which Don Quixote exclaimed, “Though ye flourish more arms
than the giant Briareus, ye have to reckon with me.”

So saying, and commending himself with all his heart to his lady Dulcinea,
imploring her to support him in such a peril, with lance in rest and
covered by his buckler, he charged at Rocinante’s fullest gallop and fell
upon the first mill that stood in front of him; but as he drove his
lance-point into the sail the wind whirled it round with such force that
it shivered the lance to pieces, sweeping with it horse and rider, who
went rolling over on the plain, in a sorry condition. Sancho hastened to
his assistance as fast as his ass could go, and when he came up found him
unable to move, with such a shock had Rocinante fallen with him.

“God bless me!” said Sancho, “did I not tell your worship to mind what you
were about, for they were only windmills? and no one could have made any
mistake about it but one who had something of the same kind in his head.”

“Hush, friend Sancho,” replied Don Quixote, “the fortunes of war more than
any other are liable to frequent fluctuations; and moreover I think, and
it is the truth, that that same sage Friston who carried off my study and
books, has turned these giants into mills in order to rob me of the glory
of vanquishing them, such is the enmity he bears me; but in the end his
wicked arts will avail but little against my good sword.”

“God order it as he may,” said Sancho Panza, and helping him to rise got
him up again on Rocinante, whose shoulder was half out; and then,
discussing the late adventure, they followed the road to Puerto Lapice,
for there, said Don Quixote, they could not fail to find adventures in
abundance and variety, as it was a great thoroughfare. For all that, he
was much grieved at the loss of his lance, and saying so to his squire, he
added, “I remember having read how a Spanish knight, Diego Perez de Vargas
by name, having broken his sword in battle, tore from an oak a ponderous
bough or branch, and with it did such things that day, and pounded so many
Moors, that he got the surname of Machuca, and he and his descendants from
that day forth were called Vargas y Machuca. I mention this because from
the first oak I see I mean to rend such another branch, large and stout
like that, with which I am determined and resolved to do such deeds that
thou mayest deem thyself very fortunate in being found worthy to come and
see them, and be an eyewitness of things that will with difficulty be
believed.”

“Be that as God will,” said Sancho, “I believe it all as your worship says
it; but straighten yourself a little, for you seem all on one side, may be
from the shaking of the fall.”

“That is the truth,” said Don Quixote, “and if I make no complaint of the
pain it is because knights-errant are not permitted to complain of any
wound, even though their bowels be coming out through it.”

“If so,” said Sancho, “I have nothing to say; but God knows I would rather
your worship complained when anything ailed you. For my part, I confess I
must complain however small the ache may be; unless this rule about not
complaining extends to the squires of knights-errant also.”

Don Quixote could not help laughing at his squire’s simplicity, and he
assured him he might complain whenever and however he chose, just as he
liked, for, so far, he had never read of anything to the contrary in the
order of knighthood.

Sancho bade him remember it was dinner-time, to which his master answered
that he wanted nothing himself just then, but that he might eat when he
had a mind. With this permission Sancho settled himself as comfortably as
he could on his beast, and taking out of the alforjas what he had stowed
away in them, he jogged along behind his master munching deliberately, and
from time to time taking a pull at the bota with a relish that the
thirstiest tapster in Malaga might have envied; and while he went on in
this way, gulping down draught after draught, he never gave a thought to
any of the promises his master had made him, nor did he rate it as
hardship but rather as recreation going in quest of adventures, however
dangerous they might be. Finally they passed the night among some trees,
from one of which Don Quixote plucked a dry branch to serve him after a
fashion as a lance, and fixed on it the head he had removed from the
broken one. All that night Don Quixote lay awake thinking of his lady
Dulcinea, in order to conform to what he had read in his books, how many a
night in the forests and deserts knights used to lie sleepless supported
by the memory of their mistresses. Not so did Sancho Panza spend it, for
having his stomach full of something stronger than chicory water he made
but one sleep of it, and, if his master had not called him, neither the
rays of the sun beating on his face nor all the cheery notes of the birds
welcoming the approach of day would have had power to waken him. On
getting up he tried the bota and found it somewhat less full than the
night before, which grieved his heart because they did not seem to be on
the way to remedy the deficiency readily. Don Quixote did not care to
break his fast, for, as has been already said, he confined himself to
savoury recollections for nourishment.

They returned to the road they had set out with, leading to Puerto Lapice,
and at three in the afternoon they came in sight of it. “Here, brother
Sancho Panza,” said Don Quixote when he saw it, “we may plunge our hands
up to the elbows in what they call adventures; but observe, even shouldst
thou see me in the greatest danger in the world, thou must not put a hand
to thy sword in my defence, unless indeed thou perceivest that those who
assail me are rabble or base folk; for in that case thou mayest very
properly aid me; but if they be knights it is on no account permitted or
allowed thee by the laws of knighthood to help me until thou hast been
dubbed a knight.”

“Most certainly, señor,” replied Sancho, “your worship shall be fully
obeyed in this matter; all the more as of myself I am peaceful and no
friend to mixing in strife and quarrels: it is true that as regards the
defence of my own person I shall not give much heed to those laws, for
laws human and divine allow each one to defend himself against any
assailant whatever.”

“That I grant,” said Don Quixote, “but in this matter of aiding me against
knights thou must put a restraint upon thy natural impetuosity.”

“I will do so, I promise you,” answered Sancho, “and will keep this
precept as carefully as Sunday.”

While they were thus talking there appeared on the road two friars of the
order of St. Benedict, mounted on two dromedaries, for not less tall were
the two mules they rode on. They wore travelling spectacles and carried
sunshades; and behind them came a coach attended by four or five persons
on horseback and two muleteers on foot. In the coach there was, as
afterwards appeared, a Biscay lady on her way to Seville, where her
husband was about to take passage for the Indies with an appointment of
high honour. The friars, though going the same road, were not in her
company; but the moment Don Quixote perceived them he said to his squire,
“Either I am mistaken, or this is going to be the most famous adventure
that has ever been seen, for those black bodies we see there must be, and
doubtless are, magicians who are carrying off some stolen princess in that
coach, and with all my might I must undo this wrong.”

“This will be worse than the windmills,” said Sancho. “Look, señor; those
are friars of St. Benedict, and the coach plainly belongs to some
travellers: I tell you to mind well what you are about and don’t let the
devil mislead you.”

“I have told thee already, Sancho,” replied Don Quixote, “that on the
subject of adventures thou knowest little. What I say is the truth, as
thou shalt see presently.”

So saying, he advanced and posted himself in the middle of the road along
which the friars were coming, and as soon as he thought they had come near
enough to hear what he said, he cried aloud, “Devilish and unnatural
beings, release instantly the highborn princesses whom you are carrying
off by force in this coach, else prepare to meet a speedy death as the
just punishment of your evil deeds.”

The friars drew rein and stood wondering at the appearance of Don Quixote
as well as at his words, to which they replied, “Señor Caballero, we are
not devilish or unnatural, but two brothers of St. Benedict following our
road, nor do we know whether or not there are any captive princesses
coming in this coach.”

“No soft words with me, for I know you, lying rabble,” said Don Quixote,
and without waiting for a reply he spurred Rocinante and with levelled
lance charged the first friar with such fury and determination, that, if
the friar had not flung himself off the mule, he would have brought him to
the ground against his will, and sore wounded, if not killed outright. The
second brother, seeing how his comrade was treated, drove his heels into
his castle of a mule and made off across the country faster than the wind.

Sancho Panza, when he saw the friar on the ground, dismounting briskly from his
ass, rushed towards him and began to strip off his gown. At that instant the
friars’ muleteers came up and asked what he was stripping him for. Sancho
answered them that this fell to him lawfully as spoil of the battle which his
lord Don Quixote had won. The muleteers, who had no idea of a joke and did not
understand all this about battles and spoils, seeing that Don Quixote was some
distance off talking to the travellers in the coach, fell upon Sancho, knocked
him down, and leaving hardly a hair in his beard, belaboured him with kicks and
left him stretched breathless and senseless on the ground; and without any more
delay helped the friar to mount, who, trembling, terrified, and pale, as soon
as he found himself in the saddle, spurred after his companion, who was
standing at a distance looking on, watching the result of the onslaught; then,
not caring to wait for the end of the affair just begun, they pursued their
journey making more crosses than if they had the devil after them.

Don Quixote was, as has been said, speaking to the lady in the coach:
“Your beauty, lady mine,” said he, “may now dispose of your
person as may be most in accordance with your pleasure, for the pride of your
ravishers lies prostrate on the ground through this strong arm of mine; and
lest you should be pining to know the name of your deliverer, know that I am
called Don Quixote of La Mancha, knight-errant and adventurer, and captive to
the peerless and beautiful lady Dulcinea del Toboso: and in return for the
service you have received of me I ask no more than that you should return to El
Toboso, and on my behalf present yourself before that lady and tell her what I
have done to set you free.”

One of the squires in attendance upon the coach, a Biscayan, was listening
to all Don Quixote was saying, and, perceiving that he would not allow the
coach to go on, but was saying it must return at once to El Toboso, he
made at him, and seizing his lance addressed him in bad Castilian and
worse Biscayan after his fashion, “Begone, caballero, and ill go with
thee; by the God that made me, unless thou quittest coach, slayest thee as
art here a Biscayan.”

Don Quixote understood him quite well, and answered him very quietly, “If
thou wert a knight, as thou art none, I should have already chastised thy
folly and rashness, miserable creature.” To which the Biscayan returned,
“I no gentleman!—I swear to God thou liest as I am Christian: if
thou droppest lance and drawest sword, soon shalt thou see thou art
carrying water to the cat: Biscayan on land, hidalgo at sea, hidalgo at
the devil, and look, if thou sayest otherwise thou liest.”

“‘”You will see presently,” said Agrajes,’” replied Don Quixote; and
throwing his lance on the ground he drew his sword, braced his buckler on
his arm, and attacked the Biscayan, bent upon taking his life.

The Biscayan, when he saw him coming on, though he wished to dismount from
his mule, in which, being one of those sorry ones let out for hire, he had
no confidence, had no choice but to draw his sword; it was lucky for him,
however, that he was near the coach, from which he was able to snatch a
cushion that served him for a shield; and they went at one another as if
they had been two mortal enemies. The others strove to make peace between
them, but could not, for the Biscayan declared in his disjointed phrase
that if they did not let him finish his battle he would kill his mistress
and everyone that strove to prevent him. The lady in the coach, amazed and
terrified at what she saw, ordered the coachman to draw aside a little,
and set herself to watch this severe struggle, in the course of which the
Biscayan smote Don Quixote a mighty stroke on the shoulder over the top of
his buckler, which, given to one without armour, would have cleft him to
the waist. Don Quixote, feeling the weight of this prodigious blow, cried
aloud, saying, “O lady of my soul, Dulcinea, flower of beauty, come to the
aid of this your knight, who, in fulfilling his obligations to your
beauty, finds himself in this extreme peril.” To say this, to lift his
sword, to shelter himself well behind his buckler, and to assail the
Biscayan was the work of an instant, determined as he was to venture all
upon a single blow. The Biscayan, seeing him come on in this way, was
convinced of his courage by his spirited bearing, and resolved to follow
his example, so he waited for him keeping well under cover of his cushion,
being unable to execute any sort of manoeuvre with his mule, which, dead
tired and never meant for this kind of game, could not stir a step.

On, then, as aforesaid, came Don Quixote against the wary Biscayan, with
uplifted sword and a firm intention of splitting him in half, while on his
side the Biscayan waited for him sword in hand, and under the protection
of his cushion; and all present stood trembling, waiting in suspense the
result of blows such as threatened to fall, and the lady in the coach and
the rest of her following were making a thousand vows and offerings to all
the images and shrines of Spain, that God might deliver her squire and all
of them from this great peril in which they found themselves. But it
spoils all, that at this point and crisis the author of the history leaves
this battle impending, giving as excuse that he could find nothing more
written about these achievements of Don Quixote than what has been already
set forth. It is true the second author of this work was unwilling to
believe that a history so curious could have been allowed to fall under
the sentence of oblivion, or that the wits of La Mancha could have been so
undiscerning as not to preserve in their archives or registries some
documents referring to this famous knight; and this being his persuasion,
he did not despair of finding the conclusion of this pleasant history,
which, heaven favouring him, he did find in a way that shall be related in
the Second Part.

CHAPTER IX.

IN WHICH IS CONCLUDED AND FINISHED THE TERRIFIC BATTLE BETWEEN THE GALLANT
BISCAYAN AND THE VALIANT MANCHEGAN

In the First Part of this history we left the valiant Biscayan and the
renowned Don Quixote with drawn swords uplifted, ready to deliver two such
furious slashing blows that if they had fallen full and fair they would at
least have split and cleft them asunder from top to toe and laid them open
like a pomegranate; and at this so critical point the delightful history
came to a stop and stood cut short without any intimation from the author
where what was missing was to be found.

This distressed me greatly, because the pleasure derived from having read
such a small portion turned to vexation at the thought of the poor chance
that presented itself of finding the large part that, so it seemed to me,
was missing of such an interesting tale. It appeared to me to be a thing
impossible and contrary to all precedent that so good a knight should have
been without some sage to undertake the task of writing his marvellous
achievements; a thing that was never wanting to any of those
knights-errant who, they say, went after adventures; for every one of them
had one or two sages as if made on purpose, who not only recorded their
deeds but described their most trifling thoughts and follies, however
secret they might be; and such a good knight could not have been so
unfortunate as not to have what Platir and others like him had in
abundance. And so I could not bring myself to believe that such a gallant
tale had been left maimed and mutilated, and I laid the blame on Time, the
devourer and destroyer of all things, that had either concealed or
consumed it.

On the other hand, it struck me that, inasmuch as among his books there
had been found such modern ones as “The Enlightenment of Jealousy” and the
“Nymphs and Shepherds of Henares,” his story must likewise be modern, and
that though it might not be written, it might exist in the memory of the
people of his village and of those in the neighbourhood. This reflection
kept me perplexed and longing to know really and truly the whole life and
wondrous deeds of our famous Spaniard, Don Quixote of La Mancha, light and
mirror of Manchegan chivalry, and the first that in our age and in these
so evil days devoted himself to the labour and exercise of the arms of
knight-errantry, righting wrongs, succouring widows, and protecting
damsels of that sort that used to ride about, whip in hand, on their
palfreys, with all their virginity about them, from mountain to mountain
and valley to valley—for, if it were not for some ruffian, or boor
with a hood and hatchet, or monstrous giant, that forced them, there were
in days of yore damsels that at the end of eighty years, in all which time
they had never slept a day under a roof, went to their graves as much
maids as the mothers that bore them. I say, then, that in these and other
respects our gallant Don Quixote is worthy of everlasting and notable
praise, nor should it be withheld even from me for the labour and pains
spent in searching for the conclusion of this delightful history; though I
know well that if Heaven, chance and good fortune had not helped me, the
world would have remained deprived of an entertainment and pleasure that
for a couple of hours or so may well occupy him who shall read it
attentively. The discovery of it occurred in this way.

One day, as I was in the Alcana of Toledo, a boy came up to sell some
pamphlets and old papers to a silk mercer, and, as I am fond of reading
even the very scraps of paper in the streets, led by this natural bent of
mine I took up one of the pamphlets the boy had for sale, and saw that it
was in characters which I recognised as Arabic, and as I was unable to
read them though I could recognise them, I looked about to see if there
were any Spanish-speaking Morisco at hand to read them for me; nor was
there any great difficulty in finding such an interpreter, for even had I
sought one for an older and better language I should have found him. In
short, chance provided me with one, who when I told him what I wanted and
put the book into his hands, opened it in the middle and after reading a
little in it began to laugh. I asked him what he was laughing at, and he
replied that it was at something the book had written in the margin by way
of a note. I bade him tell it to me; and he still laughing said, “In the
margin, as I told you, this is written: ‘This Dulcinea del Toboso so often
mentioned in this history, had, they say, the best hand of any woman in
all La Mancha for salting pigs.’”

When I heard Dulcinea del Toboso named, I was struck with surprise and
amazement, for it occurred to me at once that these pamphlets contained
the history of Don Quixote. With this idea I pressed him to read the
beginning, and doing so, turning the Arabic offhand into Castilian, he
told me it meant, “History of Don Quixote of La Mancha, written by Cid
Hamete Benengeli, an Arab historian.” It required great caution to hide
the joy I felt when the title of the book reached my ears, and snatching
it from the silk mercer, I bought all the papers and pamphlets from the
boy for half a real; and if he had had his wits about him and had known
how eager I was for them, he might have safely calculated on making more
than six reals by the bargain. I withdrew at once with the Morisco into
the cloister of the cathedral, and begged him to turn all these pamphlets
that related to Don Quixote into the Castilian tongue, without omitting or
adding anything to them, offering him whatever payment he pleased. He was
satisfied with two arrobas of raisins and two bushels of wheat, and
promised to translate them faithfully and with all despatch; but to make
the matter easier, and not to let such a precious find out of my hands, I
took him to my house, where in little more than a month and a half he
translated the whole just as it is set down here.

In the first pamphlet the battle between Don Quixote and the Biscayan was
drawn to the very life, they planted in the same attitude as the history
describes, their swords raised, and the one protected by his buckler, the
other by his cushion, and the Biscayan’s mule so true to nature that it
could be seen to be a hired one a bowshot off. The Biscayan had an
inscription under his feet which said, “Don Sancho de Azpeitia,” which no
doubt must have been his name; and at the feet of Rocinante was another
that said, “Don Quixote.” Rocinante was marvellously portrayed, so long
and thin, so lank and lean, with so much backbone and so far gone in
consumption, that he showed plainly with what judgment and propriety the
name of Rocinante had been bestowed upon him. Near him was Sancho Panza
holding the halter of his ass, at whose feet was another label that said,
“Sancho Zancas,” and according to the picture, he must have had a big
belly, a short body, and long shanks, for which reason, no doubt, the
names of Panza and Zancas were given him, for by these two surnames the
history several times calls him. Some other trifling particulars might be
mentioned, but they are all of slight importance and have nothing to do
with the true relation of the history; and no history can be bad so long
as it is true.

If against the present one any objection be raised on the score of its
truth, it can only be that its author was an Arab, as lying is a very
common propensity with those of that nation; though, as they are such
enemies of ours, it is conceivable that there were omissions rather than
additions made in the course of it. And this is my own opinion; for, where
he could and should give freedom to his pen in praise of so worthy a
knight, he seems to me deliberately to pass it over in silence; which is
ill done and worse contrived, for it is the business and duty of
historians to be exact, truthful, and wholly free from passion, and
neither interest nor fear, hatred nor love, should make them swerve from
the path of truth, whose mother is history, rival of time, storehouse of
deeds, witness for the past, example and counsel for the present, and
warning for the future. In this I know will be found all that can be
desired in the pleasantest, and if it be wanting in any good quality, I
maintain it is the fault of its hound of an author and not the fault of
the subject. To be brief, its Second Part, according to the translation,
began in this way:

With trenchant swords upraised and poised on high, it seemed as though the
two valiant and wrathful combatants stood threatening heaven, and earth,
and hell, with such resolution and determination did they bear themselves.
The fiery Biscayan was the first to strike a blow, which was delivered
with such force and fury that had not the sword turned in its course, that
single stroke would have sufficed to put an end to the bitter struggle and
to all the adventures of our knight; but that good fortune which reserved
him for greater things, turned aside the sword of his adversary, so that
although it smote him upon the left shoulder, it did him no more harm than
to strip all that side of its armour, carrying away a great part of his
helmet with half of his ear, all which with fearful ruin fell to the
ground, leaving him in a sorry plight.

Good God! Who is there that could properly describe the rage that filled
the heart of our Manchegan when he saw himself dealt with in this fashion?
All that can be said is, it was such that he again raised himself in his
stirrups, and, grasping his sword more firmly with both hands, he came
down on the Biscayan with such fury, smiting him full over the cushion and
over the head, that—even so good a shield proving useless—as
if a mountain had fallen on him, he began to bleed from nose, mouth, and
ears, reeling as if about to fall backwards from his mule, as no doubt he
would have done had he not flung his arms about its neck; at the same
time, however, he slipped his feet out of the stirrups and then unclasped
his arms, and the mule, taking fright at the terrible blow, made off
across the plain, and with a few plunges flung its master to the ground.
Don Quixote stood looking on very calmly, and, when he saw him fall,
leaped from his horse and with great briskness ran to him, and, presenting
the point of his sword to his eyes, bade him surrender, or he would cut
his head off. The Biscayan was so bewildered that he was unable to answer
a word, and it would have gone hard with him, so blind was Don Quixote,
had not the ladies in the coach, who had hitherto been watching the combat
in great terror, hastened to where he stood and implored him with earnest
entreaties to grant them the great grace and favour of sparing their
squire’s life; to which Don Quixote replied with much gravity and dignity,
“In truth, fair ladies, I am well content to do what ye ask of me; but it
must be on one condition and understanding, which is that this knight
promise me to go to the village of El Toboso, and on my behalf present
himself before the peerless lady Dulcinea, that she deal with him as shall
be most pleasing to her.”

The terrified and disconsolate ladies, without discussing Don Quixote’s
demand or asking who Dulcinea might be, promised that their squire should
do all that had been commanded.

“Then, on the faith of that promise,” said Don Quixote, “I shall do him no
further harm, though he well deserves it of me.”

CHAPTER X.

OF THE PLEASANT DISCOURSE THAT PASSED BETWEEN DON QUIXOTE AND HIS SQUIRE
SANCHO PANZA

Now by this time Sancho had risen, rather the worse for the handling of
the friars’ muleteers, and stood watching the battle of his master, Don
Quixote, and praying to God in his heart that it might be his will to
grant him the victory, and that he might thereby win some island to make
him governor of, as he had promised. Seeing, therefore, that the struggle
was now over, and that his master was returning to mount Rocinante, he
approached to hold the stirrup for him, and, before he could mount, he
went on his knees before him, and taking his hand, kissed it saying, “May
it please your worship, Señor Don Quixote, to give me the government of
that island which has been won in this hard fight, for be it ever so big I
feel myself in sufficient force to be able to govern it as much and as
well as anyone in the world who has ever governed islands.”

To which Don Quixote replied, “Thou must take notice, brother Sancho, that
this adventure and those like it are not adventures of islands, but of
cross-roads, in which nothing is got except a broken head or an ear the
less: have patience, for adventures will present themselves from which I
may make you, not only a governor, but something more.”

Sancho gave him many thanks, and again kissing his hand and the skirt of
his hauberk, helped him to mount Rocinante, and mounting his ass himself,
proceeded to follow his master, who at a brisk pace, without taking leave,
or saying anything further to the ladies belonging to the coach, turned
into a wood that was hard by. Sancho followed him at his ass’s best trot,
but Rocinante stepped out so that, seeing himself left behind, he was
forced to call to his master to wait for him. Don Quixote did so, reining
in Rocinante until his weary squire came up, who on reaching him said, “It
seems to me, señor, it would be prudent in us to go and take refuge in
some church, for, seeing how mauled he with whom you fought has been left,
it will be no wonder if they give information of the affair to the Holy
Brotherhood and arrest us, and, faith, if they do, before we come out of
gaol we shall have to sweat for it.”

“Peace,” said Don Quixote; “where hast thou ever seen or heard that a
knight-errant has been arraigned before a court of justice, however many
homicides he may have committed?”

“I know nothing about omecils,” answered Sancho, “nor in my life have had
anything to do with one; I only know that the Holy Brotherhood looks after
those who fight in the fields, and in that other matter I do not meddle.”

“Then thou needst have no uneasiness, my friend,” said Don Quixote, “for I
will deliver thee out of the hands of the Chaldeans, much more out of
those of the Brotherhood. But tell me, as thou livest, hast thou seen a
more valiant knight than I in all the known world; hast thou read in
history of any who has or had higher mettle in attack, more spirit in
maintaining it, more dexterity in wounding or skill in overthrowing?”

“The truth is,” answered Sancho, “that I have never read any history, for
I can neither read nor write, but what I will venture to bet is that a
more daring master than your worship I have never served in all the days
of my life, and God grant that this daring be not paid for where I have
said; what I beg of your worship is to dress your wound, for a great deal
of blood flows from that ear, and I have here some lint and a little white
ointment in the alforjas.”

“All that might be well dispensed with,” said Don Quixote, “if I had
remembered to make a vial of the balsam of Fierabras, for time and
medicine are saved by one single drop.”

“What vial and what balsam is that?” said Sancho Panza.

“It is a balsam,” answered Don Quixote, “the receipt of which I have in my
memory, with which one need have no fear of death, or dread dying of any
wound; and so when I make it and give it to thee thou hast nothing to do
when in some battle thou seest they have cut me in half through the middle
of the body—as is wont to happen frequently—but neatly and
with great nicety, ere the blood congeal, to place that portion of the
body which shall have fallen to the ground upon the other half which
remains in the saddle, taking care to fit it on evenly and exactly. Then
thou shalt give me to drink but two drops of the balsam I have mentioned,
and thou shalt see me become sounder than an apple.”

“If that be so,” said Panza, “I renounce henceforth the government of the
promised island, and desire nothing more in payment of my many and
faithful services than that your worship give me the receipt of this
supreme liquor, for I am persuaded it will be worth more than two reals an
ounce anywhere, and I want no more to pass the rest of my life in ease and
honour; but it remains to be told if it costs much to make it.”

“With less than three reals, six quarts of it may be made,” said Don
Quixote.

“Sinner that I am!” said Sancho, “then why does your worship put off
making it and teaching it to me?”

“Peace, friend,” answered Don Quixote; “greater secrets I mean to teach
thee and greater favours to bestow upon thee; and for the present let us
see to the dressing, for my ear pains me more than I could wish.”

Sancho took out some lint and ointment from the alforjas; but when Don
Quixote came to see his helmet shattered, he was like to lose his senses,
and clapping his hand upon his sword and raising his eyes to heaven, he
said, “I swear by the Creator of all things and the four Gospels in their
fullest extent, to do as the great Marquis of Mantua did when he swore to
avenge the death of his nephew Baldwin (and that was not to eat bread from
a table-cloth, nor embrace his wife, and other points which, though I
cannot now call them to mind, I here grant as expressed) until I take
complete vengeance upon him who has committed such an offence against me.”

Hearing this, Sancho said to him, “Your worship should bear in mind, Señor
Don Quixote, that if the knight has done what was commanded him in going
to present himself before my lady Dulcinea del Toboso, he will have done
all that he was bound to do, and does not deserve further punishment
unless he commits some new offence.”

“Thou hast said well and hit the point,” answered Don Quixote; and so I
recall the oath in so far as relates to taking fresh vengeance on him, but
I make and confirm it anew to lead the life I have said until such time as
I take by force from some knight another helmet such as this and as good;
and think not, Sancho, that I am raising smoke with straw in doing so, for
I have one to imitate in the matter, since the very same thing to a hair
happened in the case of Mambrino’s helmet, which cost Sacripante so dear.”

“Señor,” replied Sancho, “let your worship send all such oaths to the
devil, for they are very pernicious to salvation and prejudicial to the
conscience; just tell me now, if for several days to come we fall in with
no man armed with a helmet, what are we to do? Is the oath to be observed
in spite of all the inconvenience and discomfort it will be to sleep in
your clothes, and not to sleep in a house, and a thousand other
mortifications contained in the oath of that old fool the Marquis of
Mantua, which your worship is now wanting to revive? Let your worship
observe that there are no men in armour travelling on any of these roads,
nothing but carriers and carters, who not only do not wear helmets, but
perhaps never heard tell of them all their lives.”

“Thou art wrong there,” said Don Quixote, “for we shall not have been
above two hours among these cross-roads before we see more men in armour
than came to Albraca to win the fair Angelica.”

“Enough,” said Sancho; “so be it then, and God grant us success, and that
the time for winning that island which is costing me so dear may soon
come, and then let me die.”

“I have already told thee, Sancho,” said Don Quixote, “not to give thyself
any uneasiness on that score; for if an island should fail, there is the
kingdom of Denmark, or of Sobradisa, which will fit thee as a ring fits
the finger, and all the more that, being on terra firma, thou wilt all the
better enjoy thyself. But let us leave that to its own time; see if thou
hast anything for us to eat in those alforjas, because we must presently
go in quest of some castle where we may lodge to-night and make the balsam
I told thee of, for I swear to thee by God, this ear is giving me great
pain.”

“I have here an onion and a little cheese and a few scraps of bread,” said
Sancho, “but they are not victuals fit for a valiant knight like your
worship.”

“How little thou knowest about it,” answered Don Quixote; “I would have
thee to know, Sancho, that it is the glory of knights-errant to go without
eating for a month, and even when they do eat, that it should be of what
comes first to hand; and this would have been clear to thee hadst thou
read as many histories as I have, for, though they are very many, among
them all I have found no mention made of knights-errant eating, unless by
accident or at some sumptuous banquets prepared for them, and the rest of
the time they passed in dalliance. And though it is plain they could not
do without eating and performing all the other natural functions, because,
in fact, they were men like ourselves, it is plain too that, wandering as
they did the most part of their lives through woods and wilds and without
a cook, their most usual fare would be rustic viands such as those thou
now offer me; so that, friend Sancho, let not that distress thee which
pleases me, and do not seek to make a new world or pervert
knight-errantry.”

“Pardon me, your worship,” said Sancho, “for, as I cannot read or write,
as I said just now, I neither know nor comprehend the rules of the
profession of chivalry: henceforward I will stock the alforjas with every
kind of dry fruit for your worship, as you are a knight; and for myself,
as I am not one, I will furnish them with poultry and other things more
substantial.”

“I do not say, Sancho,” replied Don Quixote, “that it is imperative on
knights-errant not to eat anything else but the fruits thou speakest of;
only that their more usual diet must be those, and certain herbs they
found in the fields which they knew and I know too.”

“A good thing it is,” answered Sancho, “to know those herbs, for to my
thinking it will be needful some day to put that knowledge into practice.”

And here taking out what he said he had brought, the pair made their
repast peaceably and sociably. But anxious to find quarters for the night,
they with all despatch made an end of their poor dry fare, mounted at
once, and made haste to reach some habitation before night set in; but
daylight and the hope of succeeding in their object failed them close by
the huts of some goatherds, so they determined to pass the night there,
and it was as much to Sancho’s discontent not to have reached a house, as
it was to his master’s satisfaction to sleep under the open heaven, for he
fancied that each time this happened to him he performed an act of
ownership that helped to prove his chivalry.

CHAPTER XI.

WHAT BEFELL DON QUIXOTE WITH CERTAIN GOATHERDS

He was cordially welcomed by the goatherds, and Sancho, having as best he
could put up Rocinante and the ass, drew towards the fragrance that came
from some pieces of salted goat simmering in a pot on the fire; and though
he would have liked at once to try if they were ready to be transferred
from the pot to the stomach, he refrained from doing so as the goatherds
removed them from the fire, and laying sheepskins on the ground, quickly
spread their rude table, and with signs of hearty good-will invited them
both to share what they had. Round the skins six of the men belonging to
the fold seated themselves, having first with rough politeness pressed Don
Quixote to take a seat upon a trough which they placed for him upside
down. Don Quixote seated himself, and Sancho remained standing to serve
the cup, which was made of horn. Seeing him standing, his master said to
him:

“That thou mayest see, Sancho, the good that knight-errantry contains in
itself, and how those who fill any office in it are on the high road to be
speedily honoured and esteemed by the world, I desire that thou seat
thyself here at my side and in the company of these worthy people, and
that thou be one with me who am thy master and natural lord, and that thou
eat from my plate and drink from whatever I drink from; for the same may
be said of knight-errantry as of love, that it levels all.”

“Great thanks,” said Sancho, “but I may tell your worship that provided I
have enough to eat, I can eat it as well, or better, standing, and by
myself, than seated alongside of an emperor. And indeed, if the truth is
to be told, what I eat in my corner without form or fuss has much more
relish for me, even though it be bread and onions, than the turkeys of
those other tables where I am forced to chew slowly, drink little, wipe my
mouth every minute, and cannot sneeze or cough if I want or do other
things that are the privileges of liberty and solitude. So, señor, as for
these honours which your worship would put upon me as a servant and
follower of knight-errantry, exchange them for other things which may be
of more use and advantage to me; for these, though I fully acknowledge
them as received, I renounce from this moment to the end of the world.”

“For all that,” said Don Quixote, “thou must seat thyself, because him who
humbleth himself God exalteth;” and seizing him by the arm he forced him
to sit down beside himself.

The goatherds did not understand this jargon about squires and
knights-errant, and all they did was to eat in silence and stare at their
guests, who with great elegance and appetite were stowing away pieces as
big as one’s fist. The course of meat finished, they spread upon the
sheepskins a great heap of parched acorns, and with them they put down a
half cheese harder than if it had been made of mortar. All this while the
horn was not idle, for it went round so constantly, now full, now empty,
like the bucket of a water-wheel, that it soon drained one of the two
wine-skins that were in sight. When Don Quixote had quite appeased his
appetite he took up a handful of the acorns, and contemplating them
attentively delivered himself somewhat in this fashion:

“Happy the age, happy the time, to which the ancients gave the name of
golden, not because in that fortunate age the gold so coveted in this our
iron one was gained without toil, but because they that lived in it knew
not the two words “mine” and “thine”! In that blessed age all things were
in common; to win the daily food no labour was required of any save to
stretch forth his hand and gather it from the sturdy oaks that stood
generously inviting him with their sweet ripe fruit. The clear streams and
running brooks yielded their savoury limpid waters in noble abundance. The
busy and sagacious bees fixed their republic in the clefts of the rocks
and hollows of the trees, offering without usance the plenteous produce of
their fragrant toil to every hand. The mighty cork trees, unenforced save
of their own courtesy, shed the broad light bark that served at first to
roof the houses supported by rude stakes, a protection against the
inclemency of heaven alone. Then all was peace, all friendship, all
concord; as yet the dull share of the crooked plough had not dared to rend
and pierce the tender bowels of our first mother that without compulsion
yielded from every portion of her broad fertile bosom all that could
satisfy, sustain, and delight the children that then possessed her. Then
was it that the innocent and fair young shepherdess roamed from vale to
vale and hill to hill, with flowing locks, and no more garments than were
needful modestly to cover what modesty seeks and ever sought to hide. Nor
were their ornaments like those in use to-day, set off by Tyrian purple,
and silk tortured in endless fashions, but the wreathed leaves of the
green dock and ivy, wherewith they went as bravely and becomingly decked
as our Court dames with all the rare and far-fetched artifices that idle
curiosity has taught them. Then the love-thoughts of the heart clothed
themselves simply and naturally as the heart conceived them, nor sought to
commend themselves by forced and rambling verbiage. Fraud, deceit, or
malice had then not yet mingled with truth and sincerity. Justice held her
ground, undisturbed and unassailed by the efforts of favour and of
interest, that now so much impair, pervert, and beset her. Arbitrary law
had not yet established itself in the mind of the judge, for then there
was no cause to judge and no one to be judged. Maidens and modesty, as I
have said, wandered at will alone and unattended, without fear of insult
from lawlessness or libertine assault, and if they were undone it was of
their own will and pleasure. But now in this hateful age of ours not one
is safe, not though some new labyrinth like that of Crete conceal and
surround her; even there the pestilence of gallantry will make its way to
them through chinks or on the air by the zeal of its accursed importunity,
and, despite of all seclusion, lead them to ruin. In defence of these, as
time advanced and wickedness increased, the order of knights-errant was
instituted, to defend maidens, to protect widows and to succour the
orphans and the needy. To this order I belong, brother goatherds, to whom
I return thanks for the hospitality and kindly welcome ye offer me and my
squire; for though by natural law all living are bound to show favour to
knights-errant, yet, seeing that without knowing this obligation ye have
welcomed and feasted me, it is right that with all the good-will in my
power I should thank you for yours.”

All this long harangue (which might very well have been spared) our knight
delivered because the acorns they gave him reminded him of the golden age;
and the whim seized him to address all this unnecessary argument to the
goatherds, who listened to him gaping in amazement without saying a word
in reply. Sancho likewise held his peace and ate acorns, and paid repeated
visits to the second wine-skin, which they had hung up on a cork tree to
keep the wine cool.

Don Quixote was longer in talking than the supper in finishing, at the end
of which one of the goatherds said, “That your worship, señor
knight-errant, may say with more truth that we show you hospitality with
ready good-will, we will give you amusement and pleasure by making one of
our comrades sing: he will be here before long, and he is a very
intelligent youth and deep in love, and what is more he can read and write
and play on the rebeck to perfection.”

The goatherd had hardly done speaking, when the notes of the rebeck
reached their ears; and shortly after, the player came up, a very
good-looking young man of about two-and-twenty. His comrades asked him if
he had supped, and on his replying that he had, he who had already made
the offer said to him:

“In that case, Antonio, thou mayest as well do us the pleasure of singing
a little, that the gentleman, our guest, may see that even in the
mountains and woods there are musicians: we have told him of thy
accomplishments, and we want thee to show them and prove that we say true;
so, as thou livest, pray sit down and sing that ballad about thy love that
thy uncle the prebendary made thee, and that was so much liked in the
town.”

“With all my heart,” said the young man, and without waiting for more
pressing he seated himself on the trunk of a felled oak, and tuning his
rebeck, presently began to sing to these words.

Here the goatherd brought his song to an end, and though Don Quixote
entreated him to sing more, Sancho had no mind that way, being more
inclined for sleep than for listening to songs; so said he to his master,
“Your worship will do well to settle at once where you mean to pass the
night, for the labour these good men are at all day does not allow them to
spend the night in singing.”

“I understand thee, Sancho,” replied Don Quixote; “I perceive clearly that
those visits to the wine-skin demand compensation in sleep rather than in
music.”

“It’s sweet to us all, blessed be God,” said Sancho.

“I do not deny it,” replied Don Quixote; “but settle thyself where thou
wilt; those of my calling are more becomingly employed in watching than in
sleeping; still it would be as well if thou wert to dress this ear for me
again, for it is giving me more pain than it need.”

Sancho did as he bade him, but one of the goatherds, seeing the wound,
told him not to be uneasy, as he would apply a remedy with which it would
be soon healed; and gathering some leaves of rosemary, of which there was
a great quantity there, he chewed them and mixed them with a little salt,
and applying them to the ear he secured them firmly with a bandage,
assuring him that no other treatment would be required, and so it proved.

CHAPTER XII.

OF WHAT A GOATHERD RELATED TO THOSE WITH DON QUIXOTE

Just then another young man, one of those who fetched their provisions
from the village, came up and said, “Do you know what is going on in the
village, comrades?”

“How could we know it?” replied one of them.

“Well, then, you must know,” continued the young man, “this morning that
famous student-shepherd called Chrysostom died, and it is rumoured that he
died of love for that devil of a village girl the daughter of Guillermo
the Rich, she that wanders about the wolds here in the dress of a
shepherdess.”

“You mean Marcela?” said one.

“Her I mean,” answered the goatherd; “and the best of it is, he has
directed in his will that he is to be buried in the fields like a Moor,
and at the foot of the rock where the Cork-tree spring is, because, as the
story goes (and they say he himself said so), that was the place where he
first saw her. And he has also left other directions which the clergy of
the village say should not and must not be obeyed because they savour of
paganism. To all which his great friend Ambrosio the student, he who, like
him, also went dressed as a shepherd, replies that everything must be done
without any omission according to the directions left by Chrysostom, and
about this the village is all in commotion; however, report says that,
after all, what Ambrosio and all the shepherds his friends desire will be
done, and to-morrow they are coming to bury him with great ceremony where
I said. I am sure it will be something worth seeing; at least I will not
fail to go and see it even if I knew I should not return to the village
to-morrow.”

“We will do the same,” answered the goatherds, “and cast lots to see who
must stay to mind the goats of all.”

“Thou sayest well, Pedro,” said one, “though there will be no need of
taking that trouble, for I will stay behind for all; and don’t suppose it
is virtue or want of curiosity in me; it is that the splinter that ran
into my foot the other day will not let me walk.”

“For all that, we thank thee,” answered Pedro.

Don Quixote asked Pedro to tell him who the dead man was and who the
shepherdess, to which Pedro replied that all he knew was that the dead man
was a wealthy gentleman belonging to a village in those mountains, who had
been a student at Salamanca for many years, at the end of which he
returned to his village with the reputation of being very learned and
deeply read. “Above all, they said, he was learned in the science of the
stars and of what went on yonder in the heavens and the sun and the moon,
for he told us of the cris of the sun and moon to exact time.”

“Eclipse it is called, friend, not cris, the darkening of those two
luminaries,” said Don Quixote; but Pedro, not troubling himself with
trifles, went on with his story, saying, “Also he foretold when the year
was going to be one of abundance or estility.”

“Sterility, you mean,” said Don Quixote.

“Sterility or estility,” answered Pedro, “it is all the same in the end.
And I can tell you that by this his father and friends who believed him
grew very rich because they did as he advised them, bidding them ‘sow
barley this year, not wheat; this year you may sow pulse and not barley;
the next there will be a full oil crop, and the three following not a drop
will be got.’”

“That science is called astrology,” said Don Quixote.

“I do not know what it is called,” replied Pedro, “but I know that he knew
all this and more besides. But, to make an end, not many months had passed
after he returned from Salamanca, when one day he appeared dressed as a
shepherd with his crook and sheepskin, having put off the long gown he
wore as a scholar; and at the same time his great friend, Ambrosio by
name, who had been his companion in his studies, took to the shepherd’s
dress with him. I forgot to say that Chrysostom, who is dead, was a great
man for writing verses, so much so that he made carols for Christmas Eve,
and plays for Corpus Christi, which the young men of our village acted,
and all said they were excellent. When the villagers saw the two scholars
so unexpectedly appearing in shepherd’s dress, they were lost in wonder,
and could not guess what had led them to make so extraordinary a change.
About this time the father of our Chrysostom died, and he was left heir to
a large amount of property in chattels as well as in land, no small number
of cattle and sheep, and a large sum of money, of all of which the young
man was left dissolute owner, and indeed he was deserving of it all, for
he was a very good comrade, and kind-hearted, and a friend of worthy folk,
and had a countenance like a benediction. Presently it came to be known
that he had changed his dress with no other object than to wander about
these wastes after that shepherdess Marcela our lad mentioned a while ago,
with whom the deceased Chrysostom had fallen in love. And I must tell you
now, for it is well you should know it, who this girl is; perhaps, and
even without any perhaps, you will not have heard anything like it all the
days of your life, though you should live more years than sarna.”

“Say Sarra,” said Don Quixote, unable to endure the goatherd’s confusion
of words.

“The sarna lives long enough,” answered Pedro; “and if, señor, you must go
finding fault with words at every step, we shall not make an end of it
this twelvemonth.”

“Pardon me, friend,” said Don Quixote; “but, as there is such a difference
between sarna and Sarra, I told you of it; however, you have answered very
rightly, for sarna lives longer than Sarra: so continue your story, and I
will not object any more to anything.”

“I say then, my dear sir,” said the goatherd, “that in our village there
was a farmer even richer than the father of Chrysostom, who was named
Guillermo, and upon whom God bestowed, over and above great wealth, a
daughter at whose birth her mother died, the most respected woman there
was in this neighbourhood; I fancy I can see her now with that countenance
which had the sun on one side and the moon on the other; and moreover
active, and kind to the poor, for which I trust that at the present moment
her soul is in bliss with God in the other world. Her husband Guillermo
died of grief at the death of so good a wife, leaving his daughter
Marcela, a child and rich, to the care of an uncle of hers, a priest and
prebendary in our village. The girl grew up with such beauty that it
reminded us of her mother’s, which was very great, and yet it was thought
that the daughter’s would exceed it; and so when she reached the age of
fourteen to fifteen years nobody beheld her but blessed God that had made
her so beautiful, and the greater number were in love with her past
redemption. Her uncle kept her in great seclusion and retirement, but for
all that the fame of her great beauty spread so that, as well for it as
for her great wealth, her uncle was asked, solicited, and importuned, to
give her in marriage not only by those of our town but of those many
leagues round, and by the persons of highest quality in them. But he,
being a good Christian man, though he desired to give her in marriage at
once, seeing her to be old enough, was unwilling to do so without her
consent, not that he had any eye to the gain and profit which the custody
of the girl’s property brought him while he put off her marriage; and,
faith, this was said in praise of the good priest in more than one set in
the town. For I would have you know, Sir Errant, that in these little
villages everything is talked about and everything is carped at, and rest
assured, as I am, that the priest must be over and above good who forces
his parishioners to speak well of him, especially in villages.”

“That is the truth,” said Don Quixote; “but go on, for the story is very
good, and you, good Pedro, tell it with very good grace.”

“May that of the Lord not be wanting to me,” said Pedro; “that is the one
to have. To proceed; you must know that though the uncle put before his
niece and described to her the qualities of each one in particular of the
many who had asked her in marriage, begging her to marry and make a choice
according to her own taste, she never gave any other answer than that she
had no desire to marry just yet, and that being so young she did not think
herself fit to bear the burden of matrimony. At these, to all appearance,
reasonable excuses that she made, her uncle ceased to urge her, and waited
till she was somewhat more advanced in age and could mate herself to her
own liking. For, said he—and he said quite right—parents are
not to settle children in life against their will. But when one least
looked for it, lo and behold! one day the demure Marcela makes her
appearance turned shepherdess; and, in spite of her uncle and all those of
the town that strove to dissuade her, took to going a-field with the other
shepherd-lasses of the village, and tending her own flock. And so, since
she appeared in public, and her beauty came to be seen openly, I could not
well tell you how many rich youths, gentlemen and peasants, have adopted
the costume of Chrysostom, and go about these fields making love to her.
One of these, as has been already said, was our deceased friend, of whom
they say that he did not love but adore her. But you must not suppose,
because Marcela chose a life of such liberty and independence, and of so
little or rather no retirement, that she has given any occasion, or even
the semblance of one, for disparagement of her purity and modesty; on the
contrary, such and so great is the vigilance with which she watches over
her honour, that of all those that court and woo her not one has boasted,
or can with truth boast, that she has given him any hope however small of
obtaining his desire. For although she does not avoid or shun the society
and conversation of the shepherds, and treats them courteously and kindly,
should any one of them come to declare his intention to her, though it be
one as proper and holy as that of matrimony, she flings him from her like
a catapult. And with this kind of disposition she does more harm in this
country than if the plague had got into it, for her affability and her
beauty draw on the hearts of those that associate with her to love her and
to court her, but her scorn and her frankness bring them to the brink of
despair; and so they know not what to say save to proclaim her aloud cruel
and hard-hearted, and other names of the same sort which well describe the
nature of her character; and if you should remain here any time, señor,
you would hear these hills and valleys resounding with the laments of the
rejected ones who pursue her. Not far from this there is a spot where
there are a couple of dozen of tall beeches, and there is not one of them
but has carved and written on its smooth bark the name of Marcela, and
above some a crown carved on the same tree as though her lover would say
more plainly that Marcela wore and deserved that of all human beauty. Here
one shepherd is sighing, there another is lamenting; there love songs are
heard, here despairing elegies. One will pass all the hours of the night
seated at the foot of some oak or rock, and there, without having closed
his weeping eyes, the sun finds him in the morning bemused and bereft of
sense; and another without relief or respite to his sighs, stretched on
the burning sand in the full heat of the sultry summer noontide, makes his
appeal to the compassionate heavens, and over one and the other, over
these and all, the beautiful Marcela triumphs free and careless. And all
of us that know her are waiting to see what her pride will come to, and
who is to be the happy man that will succeed in taming a nature so
formidable and gaining possession of a beauty so supreme. All that I have
told you being such well-established truth, I am persuaded that what they
say of the cause of Chrysostom’s death, as our lad told us, is the same.
And so I advise you, señor, fail not to be present to-morrow at his
burial, which will be well worth seeing, for Chrysostom had many friends,
and it is not half a league from this place to where he directed he should
be buried.”

“I will make a point of it,” said Don Quixote, “and I thank you for the
pleasure you have given me by relating so interesting a tale.”

“Oh,” said the goatherd, “I do not know even the half of what has happened
to the lovers of Marcela, but perhaps to-morrow we may fall in with some
shepherd on the road who can tell us; and now it will be well for you to
go and sleep under cover, for the night air may hurt your wound, though
with the remedy I have applied to you there is no fear of an untoward
result.”

Sancho Panza, who was wishing the goatherd’s loquacity at the devil, on
his part begged his master to go into Pedro’s hut to sleep. He did so, and
passed all the rest of the night in thinking of his lady Dulcinea, in
imitation of the lovers of Marcela. Sancho Panza settled himself between
Rocinante and his ass, and slept, not like a lover who had been discarded,
but like a man who had been soundly kicked.

CHAPTER XIII.

IN WHICH IS ENDED THE STORY OF THE SHEPHERDESS MARCELA, WITH OTHER
INCIDENTS

But hardly had day begun to show itself through the balconies of the east,
when five of the six goatherds came to rouse Don Quixote and tell him that
if he was still of a mind to go and see the famous burial of Chrysostom
they would bear him company. Don Quixote, who desired nothing better, rose
and ordered Sancho to saddle and pannel at once, which he did with all
despatch, and with the same they all set out forthwith. They had not gone
a quarter of a league when at the meeting of two 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, and along with them there came
two men of quality on horseback in handsome travelling dress, with three
servants on foot accompanying them. Courteous salutations were exchanged
on meeting, and inquiring one of the other which way each party was going,
they learned that all were bound for the scene of the burial, so they went
on all together.

One of those on horseback addressing his companion said to him, “It seems
to me, Señor Vivaldo, that we may reckon as well spent the delay we shall
incur in seeing this remarkable funeral, for remarkable it cannot but be
judging by the strange things these shepherds have told us, of both the
dead shepherd and homicide shepherdess.”

“So I think too,” replied Vivaldo, “and I would delay not to say a day,
but four, for the sake of seeing it.”

Don Quixote asked them what it was they had heard of Marcela and
Chrysostom. The traveller answered that the same morning they had met
these shepherds, and seeing them dressed in this mournful fashion they had
asked them the reason of their appearing in such a guise; which one of
them gave, describing the strange behaviour and beauty of a shepherdess
called Marcela, and the loves of many who courted her, together with the
death of that Chrysostom to whose burial they were going. In short, he
repeated all that Pedro had related to Don Quixote.

This conversation dropped, and another was commenced by him who was called
Vivaldo asking Don Quixote what was the reason that led him to go armed in
that fashion in a country so peaceful. To which Don Quixote replied, “The
pursuit of my calling does not allow or permit me to go in any other
fashion; easy life, enjoyment, and repose were invented for soft
courtiers, but toil, unrest, and arms were invented and made for those
alone whom the world calls knights-errant, of whom I, though unworthy, am
the least of all.”

The instant they heard this all set him down as mad, and the better to
settle the point and discover what kind of madness his was, Vivaldo
proceeded to ask him what knights-errant meant.

“Have not your worships,” replied Don Quixote, “read the annals and
histories of England, in which are recorded the famous deeds of King
Arthur, whom we in our popular Castilian invariably call King Artus, with
regard to whom it is an ancient tradition, and commonly received all over
that kingdom of Great Britain, that this king did not die, but was changed
by magic art into a raven, and that in process of time he is to return to
reign and recover his kingdom and sceptre; for which reason it cannot be
proved that from that time to this any Englishman ever killed a raven?
Well, then, in the time of this good king that famous order of chivalry of
the Knights of the Round Table was instituted, and the amour of Don
Lancelot of the Lake with the Queen Guinevere occurred, precisely as is
there related, the go-between and confidante therein being the highly
honourable dame Quintanona, whence came that ballad so well known and
widely spread in our Spain—

O never surely was there knight
    So served by hand of dame,
As served was he Sir Lancelot hight
    When he from Britain came—

with all the sweet and delectable course of his achievements in love and
war. Handed down from that time, then, this order of chivalry went on
extending and spreading itself over many and various parts of the world;
and in it, famous and renowned for their deeds, were the mighty Amadis of
Gaul with all his sons and descendants to the fifth generation, and the
valiant Felixmarte of Hircania, and the never sufficiently praised Tirante
el Blanco, and in our own days almost we have seen and heard and talked
with the invincible knight Don Belianis of Greece. This, then, sirs, is to
be a knight-errant, and what I have spoken of is the order of his
chivalry, of which, as I have already said, I, though a sinner, have made
profession, and what the aforesaid knights professed that same do I
profess, and so I go through these solitudes and wilds seeking adventures,
resolved in soul to oppose my arm and person to the most perilous that
fortune may offer me in aid of the weak and needy.”

By these words of his the travellers were able to satisfy themselves of
Don Quixote’s being out of his senses and of the form of madness that
overmastered him, at which they felt the same astonishment that all felt
on first becoming acquainted with it; and Vivaldo, who was a person of
great shrewdness and of a lively temperament, in order to beguile the
short journey which they said was required to reach the mountain, the
scene of the burial, sought to give him an opportunity of going on with
his absurdities. So he said to him, “It seems to me, Señor Knight-errant,
that your worship has made choice of one of the most austere professions
in the world, and I imagine even that of the Carthusian monks is not so
austere.”

“As austere it may perhaps be,” replied our Don Quixote, “but so necessary
for the world I am very much inclined to doubt. For, if the truth is to be
told, the soldier who executes what his captain orders does no less than
the captain himself who gives the order. My meaning, is, that churchmen in
peace and quiet pray to Heaven for the welfare of the world, but we
soldiers and knights carry into effect what they pray for, defending it
with the might of our arms and the edge of our swords, not under shelter
but in the open air, a target for the intolerable rays of the sun in
summer and the piercing frosts of winter. Thus are we God’s ministers on
earth and the arms by which his justice is done therein. And as the
business of war and all that relates and belongs to it cannot be conducted
without exceeding great sweat, toil, and exertion, it follows that those
who make it their profession have undoubtedly more labour than those who
in tranquil peace and quiet are engaged in praying to God to help the
weak. I do not mean to say, nor does it enter into my thoughts, that the
knight-errant’s calling is as good as that of the monk in his cell; I
would merely infer from what I endure myself that it is beyond a doubt a
more laborious and a more belaboured one, a hungrier and thirstier, a
wretcheder, raggeder, and lousier; for there is no reason to doubt that
the knights-errant of yore endured much hardship in the course of their
lives. And if some of them by the might of their arms did rise to be
emperors, in faith it cost them dear in the matter of blood and sweat; and
if those who attained to that rank had not had magicians and sages to help
them they would have been completely baulked in their ambition and
disappointed in their hopes.”

“That is my own opinion,” replied the traveller; “but one thing among many
others seems to me very wrong in knights-errant, and that is that when
they find themselves about to engage in some mighty and perilous adventure
in which there is manifest danger of losing their lives, they never at the
moment of engaging in it think of commending themselves to God, as is the
duty of every good Christian in like peril; instead of which they commend
themselves to their ladies with as much devotion as if these were their
gods, a thing which seems to me to savour somewhat of heathenism.”

“Sir,” answered Don Quixote, “that cannot be on any account omitted, and
the knight-errant would be disgraced who acted otherwise: for it is usual
and customary in knight-errantry that the knight-errant, who on engaging
in any great feat of arms has his lady before him, should turn his eyes
towards her softly and lovingly, as though with them entreating her to
favour and protect him in the hazardous venture he is about to undertake,
and even though no one hear him, he is bound to say certain words between
his teeth, commending himself to her with all his heart, and of this we
have innumerable instances in the histories. Nor is it to be supposed from
this that they are to omit commending themselves to God, for there will be
time and opportunity for doing so while they are engaged in their task.”

“For all that,” answered the traveller, “I feel some doubt still, because
often I have read how words will arise between two knights-errant, and
from one thing to another it comes about that their anger kindles and they
wheel their horses round and take a good stretch of field, and then
without any more ado at the top of their speed they come to the charge,
and in mid-career they are wont to commend themselves to their ladies; and
what commonly comes of the encounter is that one falls over the haunches
of his horse pierced through and through by his antagonist’s lance, and as
for the other, it is only by holding on to the mane of his horse that he
can help falling to the ground; but I know not how the dead man had time
to commend himself to God in the course of such rapid work as this; it
would have been better if those words which he spent in commending himself
to his lady in the midst of his career had been devoted to his duty and
obligation as a Christian. Moreover, it is my belief that all
knights-errant have not ladies to commend themselves to, for they are not
all in love.”

“That is impossible,” said Don Quixote: “I say it is impossible that there
could be a knight-errant without a lady, because to such it is as natural
and proper to be in love as to the heavens to have stars: most certainly
no history has been seen in which there is to be found a knight-errant
without an amour, and for the simple reason that without one he would be
held no legitimate knight but a bastard, and one who had gained entrance
into the stronghold of the said knighthood, not by the door, but over the
wall like a thief and a robber.”

“Nevertheless,” said the traveller, “if I remember rightly, I think I have
read that Don Galaor, the brother of the valiant Amadis of Gaul, never had
any special lady to whom he might commend himself, and yet he was not the
less esteemed, and was a very stout and famous knight.”

To which our Don Quixote made answer, “Sir, one solitary swallow does not
make summer; moreover, I know that knight was in secret very deeply in
love; besides which, that way of falling in love with all that took his
fancy was a natural propensity which he could not control. But, in short,
it is very manifest that he had one alone whom he made mistress of his
will, to whom he commended himself very frequently and very secretly, for
he prided himself on being a reticent knight.”

“Then if it be essential that every knight-errant should be in love,” said
the traveller, “it may be fairly supposed that your worship is so, as you
are of the order; and if you do not pride yourself on being as reticent as
Don Galaor, I entreat you as earnestly as I can, in the name of all this
company and in my own, to inform us of the name, country, rank, and beauty
of your lady, for she will esteem herself fortunate if all the world knows
that she is loved and served by such a knight as your worship seems to
be.”

At this Don Quixote heaved a deep sigh and said, “I cannot say positively
whether my sweet enemy is pleased or not that the world should know I
serve her; I can only say in answer to what has been so courteously asked
of me, that her name is Dulcinea, her country El Toboso, a village of La
Mancha, her rank must be at least that of a princess, since she is my
queen and lady, and her beauty superhuman, since all the impossible and
fanciful attributes of beauty which the poets apply to their ladies are
verified in her; for her hairs are gold, her forehead Elysian fields, her
eyebrows rainbows, her eyes suns, her cheeks roses, her lips coral, her
teeth pearls, her neck alabaster, her bosom marble, her hands ivory, her
fairness snow, and what modesty conceals from sight such, I think and
imagine, as rational reflection can only extol, not compare.”

“We should like to know her lineage, race, and ancestry,” said Vivaldo.

To which Don Quixote replied, “She is not of the ancient Roman Curtii,
Caii, or Scipios, nor of the modern Colonnas or Orsini, nor of the
Moncadas or Requesenes of Catalonia, nor yet of the Rebellas or Villanovas
of Valencia; Palafoxes, Nuzas, Rocabertis, Corellas, Lunas, Alagones,
Urreas, Foces, or Gurreas of Aragon; Cerdas, Manriques, Mendozas, or
Guzmans of Castile; Alencastros, Pallas, or Meneses of Portugal; but she
is of those of El Toboso of La Mancha, a lineage that though modern, may
furnish a source of gentle blood for the most illustrious families of the
ages that are to come, and this let none dispute with me save on the
condition that Zerbino placed at the foot of the trophy of Orlando’s arms,
saying,

These let none move
Who dareth not his might with Roland prove.”

“Although mine is of the Cachopins of Laredo,” said the traveller, “I will
not venture to compare it with that of El Toboso of La Mancha, though, to
tell the truth, no such surname has until now ever reached my ears.”

“What!” said Don Quixote, “has that never reached them?”

The rest of the party went along listening with great attention to the
conversation of the pair, and even the very goatherds and shepherds
perceived how exceedingly out of his wits our Don Quixote was. Sancho
Panza alone thought that what his master said was the truth, knowing who
he was and having known him from his birth; and all that he felt any
difficulty in believing was that about the fair Dulcinea del Toboso,
because neither any such name nor any such princess had ever come to his
knowledge though he lived so close to El Toboso. They were going along
conversing in this way, when they saw descending a gap between two high
mountains some twenty shepherds, all clad in sheepskins of black wool, and
crowned with garlands which, as afterwards appeared, were, some of them of
yew, some of cypress. Six of the number were carrying a bier covered with
a great variety of flowers and branches, on seeing which one of the
goatherds said, “Those who come there are the bearers of Chrysostom’s
body, and the foot of that mountain is the place where he ordered them to
bury him.” They therefore made haste to reach the spot, and did so by the
time those who came had laid the bier upon the ground, and four of them
with sharp pickaxes were digging a grave by the side of a hard rock. They
greeted each other courteously, and then Don Quixote and those who
accompanied him turned to examine the bier, and on it, covered with
flowers, they saw a dead body in the dress of a shepherd, to all
appearance of one thirty years of age, and showing even in death that in
life he had been of comely features and gallant bearing. Around him on the
bier itself were laid some books, and several papers open and folded; and
those who were looking on as well as those who were opening the grave and
all the others who were there preserved a strange silence, until one of
those who had borne the body said to another, “Observe carefully, Ambrosio
if this is the place Chrysostom spoke of, since you are anxious that what
he directed in his will should be so strictly complied with.”

“This is the place,” answered Ambrosio “for in it many a time did my poor
friend tell me the story of his hard fortune. Here it was, he told me,
that he saw for the first time that mortal enemy of the human race, and
here, too, for the first time he declared to her his passion, as
honourable as it was devoted, and here it was that at last Marcela ended
by scorning and rejecting him so as to bring the tragedy of his wretched
life to a close; here, in memory of misfortunes so great, he desired to be
laid in the bowels of eternal oblivion.” Then turning to Don Quixote and
the travellers he went on to say, “That body, sirs, on which you are
looking with compassionate eyes, was the abode of a soul on which Heaven
bestowed a vast share of its riches. That is the body of Chrysostom, who
was unrivalled in wit, unequalled in courtesy, unapproached in gentle
bearing, a phoenix in friendship, generous without limit, grave without
arrogance, gay without vulgarity, and, in short, first in all that
constitutes goodness and second to none in all that makes up misfortune.
He loved deeply, he was hated; he adored, he was scorned; he wooed a wild
beast, he pleaded with marble, he pursued the wind, he cried to the
wilderness, he served ingratitude, and for reward was made the prey of
death in the mid-course of life, cut short by a shepherdess whom he sought
to immortalise in the memory of man, as these papers which you see could
fully prove, had he not commanded me to consign them to the fire after
having consigned his body to the earth.”

“You would deal with them more harshly and cruelly than their owner
himself,” said Vivaldo, “for it is neither right nor proper to do the will
of one who enjoins what is wholly unreasonable; it would not have been
reasonable in Augustus Caesar had he permitted the directions left by the
divine Mantuan in his will to be carried into effect. So that, Señor
Ambrosio while you consign your friend’s body to the earth, you should not
consign his writings to oblivion, for if he gave the order in bitterness
of heart, it is not right that you should irrationally obey it. On the
contrary, by granting life to those papers, let the cruelty of Marcela
live for ever, to serve as a warning in ages to come to all men to shun
and avoid falling into like danger; or I and all of us who have come here
know already the story of this your love-stricken and heart-broken friend,
and we know, too, your friendship, and the cause of his death, and the
directions he gave at the close of his life; from which sad story may be
gathered how great was the cruelty of Marcela, the love of Chrysostom, and
the loyalty of your friendship, together with the end awaiting those who
pursue rashly the path that insane passion opens to their eyes. Last night
we learned the death of Chrysostom and that he was to be buried here, and
out of curiosity and pity we left our direct road and resolved to come and
see with our eyes that which when heard of had so moved our compassion,
and in consideration of that compassion and our desire to prove it if we
might by condolence, we beg of you, excellent Ambrosio, or at least I on
my own account entreat you, that instead of burning those papers you allow
me to carry away some of them.”

And without waiting for the shepherd’s answer, he stretched out his hand
and took up some of those that were nearest to him; seeing which Ambrosio
said, “Out of courtesy, señor, I will grant your request as to those you
have taken, but it is idle to expect me to abstain from burning the
remainder.”

Vivaldo, who was eager to see what the papers contained, opened one of
them at once, and saw that its title was “Lay of Despair.”

Ambrosio hearing it said, “That is the last paper the unhappy man wrote;
and that you may see, señor, to what an end his misfortunes brought him,
read it so that you may be heard, for you will have time enough for that
while we are waiting for the grave to be dug.”

“I will do so very willingly,” said Vivaldo; and as all the bystanders
were equally eager they gathered round him, and he, reading in a loud
voice, found that it ran as follows.

CHAPTER XIV.

WHEREIN ARE INSERTED THE DESPAIRING VERSES OF THE DEAD SHEPHERD, TOGETHER
WITH OTHER INCIDENTS NOT LOOKED FOR

The “Lay of Chrysostom” met with the approbation of the listeners, though
the reader said it did not seem to him to agree with what he had heard of
Marcela’s reserve and propriety, for Chrysostom complained in it of
jealousy, suspicion, and absence, all to the prejudice of the good name
and fame of Marcela; to which Ambrosio replied as one who knew well his
friend’s most secret thoughts, “Señor, to remove that doubt I should tell
you that when the unhappy man wrote this lay he was away from Marcela,
from whom he had voluntarily separated himself, to try if absence would
act with him as it is wont; and as everything distresses and every fear
haunts the banished lover, so imaginary jealousies and suspicions, dreaded
as if they were true, tormented Chrysostom; and thus the truth of what
report declares of the virtue of Marcela remains unshaken, and with her
envy itself should not and cannot find any fault save that of being cruel,
somewhat haughty, and very scornful.”

“That is true,” said Vivaldo; and as he was about to read another paper of
those he had preserved from the fire, he was stopped by a marvellous
vision (for such it seemed) that unexpectedly presented itself to their
eyes; for on the summit of the rock where they were digging the grave
there appeared the shepherdess Marcela, so beautiful that her beauty
exceeded its reputation. Those who had never till then beheld her gazed
upon her in wonder and silence, and those who were accustomed to see her
were not less amazed than those who had never seen her before. But the
instant Ambrosio saw her he addressed her, with manifest indignation:

“Art thou come, by chance, cruel basilisk of these mountains, to see if in
thy presence blood will flow from the wounds of this wretched being thy
cruelty has robbed of life; or is it to exult over the cruel work of thy
humours that thou art come; or like another pitiless Nero to look down
from that height upon the ruin of his Rome in embers; or in thy arrogance
to trample on this ill-fated corpse, as the ungrateful daughter trampled
on her father Tarquin’s? Tell us quickly for what thou art come, or what
it is thou wouldst have, for, as I know the thoughts of Chrysostom never
failed to obey thee in life, I will make all these who call themselves his
friends obey thee, though he be dead.”

“I come not, Ambrosio for any of the purposes thou hast named,”
replied Marcela, “but to defend myself and to prove how unreasonable are
all those who blame me for their sorrow and for Chrysostom’s death; and
therefore I ask all of you that are here to give me your attention, for it will
not take much time or many words to bring the truth home to persons of sense.
Heaven has made me, so you say, beautiful, and so much so that in spite of
yourselves my beauty leads you to love me; and for the love you show me you
say, and even urge, that I am bound to love you. By that natural understanding
which God has given me I know that everything beautiful attracts love, but I
cannot see how, by reason of being loved, that which is loved for its beauty is
bound to love that which loves it; besides, it may happen that the lover of
that which is beautiful may be ugly, and ugliness being detestable, it is very
absurd to say, “I love thee because thou art beautiful, thou must love me
though I be ugly.” But supposing the beauty equal on both sides, it does
not follow that the inclinations must be therefore alike, for it is not every
beauty that excites love, some but pleasing the eye without winning the
affection; and if every sort of beauty excited love and won the heart, the will
would wander vaguely to and fro unable to make choice of any; for as there is
an infinity of beautiful objects there must be an infinity of inclinations, and
true love, I have heard it said, is indivisible, and must be voluntary and not
compelled. If this be so, as I believe it to be, why do you desire me to bend
my will by force, for no other reason but that you say you love me?
Nay—tell me—had Heaven made me ugly, as it has made me beautiful,
could I with justice complain of you for not loving me? Moreover, you must
remember that the beauty I possess was no choice of mine, for, be it what it
may, Heaven of its bounty gave it me without my asking or choosing it; and as
the viper, though it kills with it, does not deserve to be blamed for the
poison it carries, as it is a gift of nature, neither do I deserve reproach for
being beautiful; for beauty in a modest woman is like fire at a distance or a
sharp sword; the one does not burn, the other does not cut, those who do not
come too near. Honour and virtue are the ornaments of the mind, without which
the body, though it be so, has no right to pass for beautiful; but if modesty
is one of the virtues that specially lend a grace and charm to mind and body,
why should she who is loved for her beauty part with it to gratify one who for
his pleasure alone strives with all his might and energy to rob her of it? I
was born free, and that I might live in freedom I chose the solitude of the
fields; in the trees of the mountains I find society, the clear waters of the
brooks are my mirrors, and to the trees and waters I make known my thoughts and
charms. I am a fire afar off, a sword laid aside. Those whom I have inspired
with love by letting them see me, I have by words undeceived, and if their
longings live on hope—and I have given none to Chrysostom or to any
other—it cannot justly be said that the death of any is my doing, for it
was rather his own obstinacy than my cruelty that killed him; and if it be made
a charge against me that his wishes were honourable, and that therefore I was
bound to yield to them, I answer that when on this very spot where now his
grave is made he declared to me his purity of purpose, I told him that mine was
to live in perpetual solitude, and that the earth alone should enjoy the fruits
of my retirement and the spoils of my beauty; and if, after this open avowal,
he chose to persist against hope and steer against the wind, what wonder is it
that he should sink in the depths of his infatuation? If I had encouraged him,
I should be false; if I had gratified him, I should have acted against my own
better resolution and purpose. He was persistent in spite of warning, he
despaired without being hated. Bethink you now if it be reasonable that his
suffering should be laid to my charge. Let him who has been deceived complain,
let him give way to despair whose encouraged hopes have proved vain, let him
flatter himself whom I shall entice, let him boast whom I shall receive; but
let not him call me cruel or homicide to whom I make no promise, upon whom I
practise no deception, whom I neither entice nor receive. It has not been so
far the will of Heaven that I should love by fate, and to expect me to love by
choice is idle. Let this general declaration serve for each of my suitors on
his own account, and let it be understood from this time forth that if anyone
dies for me it is not of jealousy or misery he dies, for she who loves no one
can give no cause for jealousy to any, and candour is not to be confounded with
scorn. Let him who calls me wild beast and basilisk, leave me alone as
something noxious and evil; let him who calls me ungrateful, withhold his
service; who calls me wayward, seek not my acquaintance; who calls me cruel,
pursue me not; for this wild beast, this basilisk, this ungrateful, cruel,
wayward being has no kind of desire to seek, serve, know, or follow them. If
Chrysostom’s impatience and violent passion killed him, why should my
modest behaviour and circumspection be blamed? If I preserve my purity in the
society of the trees, why should he who would have me preserve it among men,
seek to rob me of it? I have, as you know, wealth of my own, and I covet not
that of others; my taste is for freedom, and I have no relish for constraint; I
neither love nor hate anyone; I do not deceive this one or court that, or
trifle with one or play with another. The modest converse of the shepherd girls
of these hamlets and the care of my goats are my recreations; my desires are
bounded by these mountains, and if they ever wander hence it is to contemplate
the beauty of the heavens, steps by which the soul travels to its primeval
abode.”

With these words, and not waiting to hear a reply, she turned and passed
into the thickest part of a wood that was hard by, leaving all who were
there lost in admiration as much of her good sense as of her beauty. Some—those
wounded by the irresistible shafts launched by her bright eyes—made
as though they would follow her, heedless of the frank declaration they
had heard; seeing which, and deeming this a fitting occasion for the
exercise of his chivalry in aid of distressed damsels, Don Quixote, laying
his hand on the hilt of his sword, exclaimed in a loud and distinct voice:

“Let no one, whatever his rank or condition, dare to follow the beautiful
Marcela, under pain of incurring my fierce indignation. She has shown by
clear and satisfactory arguments that little or no fault is to be found
with her for the death of Chrysostom, and also how far she is from
yielding to the wishes of any of her lovers, for which reason, instead of
being followed and persecuted, she should in justice be honoured and
esteemed by all the good people of the world, for she shows that she is
the only woman in it that holds to such a virtuous resolution.”

Whether it was because of the threats of Don Quixote, or because Ambrosio
told them to fulfil their duty to their good friend, none of the shepherds
moved or stirred from the spot until, having finished the grave and burned
Chrysostom’s papers, they laid his body in it, not without many tears from
those who stood by. They closed the grave with a heavy stone until a slab
was ready which Ambrosio said he meant to have prepared, with an epitaph
which was to be to this effect:

They then strewed upon the grave a profusion of flowers and branches, and
all expressing their condolence with his friend Ambrosio, took their
Vivaldo and his companion did the same; and Don Quixote bade farewell to
his hosts and to the travellers, who pressed him to come with them to
Seville, as being such a convenient place for finding adventures, for they
presented themselves in every street and round every corner oftener than
anywhere else. Don Quixote thanked them for their advice and for the
disposition they showed to do him a favour, and said that for the present
he would not, and must not go to Seville until he had cleared all these
mountains of highwaymen and robbers, of whom report said they were full.
Seeing his good intention, the travellers were unwilling to press him
further, and once more bidding him farewell, they left him and pursued
their journey, in the course of which they did not fail to discuss the
story of Marcela and Chrysostom as well as the madness of Don Quixote. He,
on his part, resolved to go in quest of the shepherdess Marcela, and make
offer to her of all the service he could render her; but things did not
fall out with him as he expected, according to what is related in the
course of this veracious history, of which the Second Part ends here.

CHAPTER XV.

IN WHICH IS RELATED THE UNFORTUNATE ADVENTURE THAT DON QUIXOTE FELL IN
WITH WHEN HE FELL OUT WITH CERTAIN HEARTLESS YANGUESANS

The sage Cid Hamete Benengeli relates that as soon as Don Quixote took
leave of his hosts and all who had been present at the burial of
Chrysostom, he and his squire passed into the same wood which they had
seen the shepherdess Marcela enter, and after having wandered for more
than two hours in all directions in search of her without finding her,
they came to a halt in a glade covered with tender grass, beside which ran
a pleasant cool stream that invited and compelled them to pass there the
hours of the noontide heat, which by this time was beginning to come on
oppressively. Don Quixote and Sancho dismounted, and turning Rocinante and
the ass loose to feed on the grass that was there in abundance, they
ransacked the alforjas, and without any ceremony very peacefully and
sociably master and man made their repast on what they found in them.

Sancho had not thought it worth while to hobble Rocinante, feeling sure,
from what he knew of his staidness and freedom from incontinence, that all
the mares in the Cordova pastures would not lead him into an impropriety.
Chance, however, and the devil, who is not always asleep, so ordained it
that feeding in this valley there was a drove of Galician ponies belonging
to certain Yanguesan carriers, whose way it is to take their midday rest
with their teams in places and spots where grass and water abound; and
that where Don Quixote chanced to be suited the Yanguesans’ purpose very
well. It so happened, then, that Rocinante took a fancy to disport himself
with their ladyships the ponies, and abandoning his usual gait and
demeanour as he scented them, he, without asking leave of his master, got
up a briskish little trot and hastened to make known his wishes to them;
they, however, it seemed, preferred their pasture to him, and received him
with their heels and teeth to such effect that they soon broke his girths
and left him naked without a saddle to cover him; but what must have been
worse to him was that the carriers, seeing the violence he was offering to
their mares, came running up armed with stakes, and so belaboured him that
they brought him sorely battered to the ground.

By this time Don Quixote and Sancho, who had witnessed the drubbing of
Rocinante, came up panting, and said Don Quixote to Sancho:

“So far as I can see, friend Sancho, these are not knights but base folk
of low birth: I mention it because thou canst lawfully aid me in taking
due vengeance for the insult offered to Rocinante before our eyes.”

“What the devil vengeance can we take,” answered Sancho, “if they are more
than twenty, and we no more than two, or, indeed, perhaps not more than
one and a half?”

“I count for a hundred,” replied Don Quixote, and without more words he
drew his sword and attacked the Yanguesans and excited and impelled by the
example of his master, Sancho did the same; and to begin with, Don Quixote
delivered a slash at one of them that laid open the leather jerkin he
wore, together with a great portion of his shoulder. The Yanguesans,
seeing themselves assaulted by only two men while they were so many,
betook themselves to their stakes, and driving the two into the middle
they began to lay on with great zeal and energy; in fact, at the second
blow they brought Sancho to the ground, and Don Quixote fared the same
way, all his skill and high mettle availing him nothing, and fate willed
it that he should fall at the feet of Rocinante, who had not yet risen;
whereby it may be seen how furiously stakes can pound in angry boorish
hands.

Then, seeing the mischief they had done, the Yanguesans with all the haste
they could loaded their team and pursued their journey, leaving the two
adventurers a sorry sight and in sorrier mood.

Sancho was the first to come to, and finding himself close to his master
he called to him in a weak and doleful voice, “Señor Don Quixote, ah,
Señor Don Quixote!”

“What wouldst thou, brother Sancho?” answered Don Quixote in the same
feeble suffering tone as Sancho.

“I would like, if it were possible,” answered Sancho Panza, “your worship
to give me a couple of sups of that potion of the fiery Blas, if it be
that you have any to hand there; perhaps it will serve for broken bones as
well as for wounds.”

“If I only had it here, wretch that I am, what more should we want?” said
Don Quixote; “but I swear to thee, Sancho Panza, on the faith of a
knight-errant, ere two days are over, unless fortune orders otherwise, I
mean to have it in my possession, or my hand will have lost its cunning.”

“But in how many does your worship think we shall have the use of our
feet?” answered Sancho Panza.

“For myself I must say I cannot guess how many,” said the battered
knight Don Quixote; “but I take all the blame upon myself, for I had no
business to put hand to sword against men who where not dubbed knights like
myself, and so I believe that in punishment for having transgressed the laws of
chivalry the God of battles has permitted this chastisement to be administered
to me; for which reason, brother Sancho, it is well thou shouldst receive a
hint on the matter which I am now about to mention to thee, for it is of much
importance to the welfare of both of us. It is that when thou shalt see rabble
of this sort offering us insult thou art not to wait till I draw sword against
them, for I shall not do so at all; but do thou draw sword and chastise them to
thy heart’s content, and if any knights come to their aid and defence I
will take care to defend thee and assail them with all my might; and thou hast
already seen by a thousand signs and proofs what the might of this strong arm
of mine is equal to”—so uplifted had the poor gentleman become
through the victory over the stout Biscayan.

But Sancho did not so fully approve of his master’s admonition as to let
it pass without saying in reply, “Señor, I am a man of peace, meek and
quiet, and I can put up with any affront because I have a wife and
children to support and bring up; so let it be likewise a hint to your
worship, as it cannot be a mandate, that on no account will I draw sword
either against clown or against knight, and that here before God I forgive
the insults that have been offered me, whether they have been, are, or
shall be offered me by high or low, rich or poor, noble or commoner, not
excepting any rank or condition whatsoever.”

To all which his master said in reply, “I wish I had breath enough to
speak somewhat easily, and that the pain I feel on this side would abate
so as to let me explain to thee, Panza, the mistake thou makest. Come now,
sinner, suppose the wind of fortune, hitherto so adverse, should turn in
our favour, filling the sails of our desires so that safely and without
impediment we put into port in some one of those islands I have promised
thee, how would it be with thee if on winning it I made thee lord of it?
Why, thou wilt make it well-nigh impossible through not being a knight nor
having any desire to be one, nor possessing the courage nor the will to
avenge insults or defend thy lordship; for thou must know that in newly
conquered kingdoms and provinces the minds of the inhabitants are never so
quiet nor so well disposed to the new lord that there is no fear of their
making some move to change matters once more, and try, as they say, what
chance may do for them; so it is essential that the new possessor should
have good sense to enable him to govern, and valour to attack and defend
himself, whatever may befall him.”

“In what has now befallen us,” answered Sancho, “I’d have been well
pleased to have that good sense and that valour your worship speaks of,
but I swear on the faith of a poor man I am more fit for plasters than for
arguments. See if your worship can get up, and let us help Rocinante,
though he does not deserve it, for he was the main cause of all this
thrashing. I never thought it of Rocinante, for I took him to be a
virtuous person and as quiet as myself. After all, they say right that it
takes a long time to come to know people, and that there is nothing sure
in this life. Who would have said that, after such mighty slashes as your
worship gave that unlucky knight-errant, there was coming, travelling post
and at the very heels of them, such a great storm of sticks as has fallen
upon our shoulders?”

“And yet thine, Sancho,” replied Don Quixote, “ought to be used to such
squalls; but mine, reared in soft cloth and fine linen, it is plain they
must feel more keenly the pain of this mishap, and if it were not that I
imagine—why do I say imagine?—know of a certainty that all
these annoyances are very necessary accompaniments of the calling of arms,
I would lay me down here to die of pure vexation.”

To this the squire replied, “Señor, as these mishaps are what one reaps of
chivalry, tell me if they happen very often, or if they have their own
fixed times for coming to pass; because it seems to me that after two
harvests we shall be no good for the third, unless God in his infinite
mercy helps us.”

“Know, friend Sancho,” answered Don Quixote, “that the life of
knights-errant is subject to a thousand dangers and reverses, and neither
more nor less is it within immediate possibility for knights-errant to
become kings and emperors, as experience has shown in the case of many
different knights with whose histories I am thoroughly acquainted; and I
could tell thee now, if the pain would let me, of some who simply by might
of arm have risen to the high stations I have mentioned; and those same,
both before and after, experienced divers misfortunes and miseries; for
the valiant Amadis of Gaul found himself in the power of his mortal enemy
Arcalaus the magician, who, it is positively asserted, holding him
captive, gave him more than two hundred lashes with the reins of his horse
while tied to one of the pillars of a court; and moreover there is a
certain recondite author of no small authority who says that the Knight of
Phoebus, being caught in a certain pitfall, which opened under his feet in
a certain castle, on falling found himself bound hand and foot in a deep
pit underground, where they administered to him one of those things they
call clysters, of sand and snow-water, that well-nigh finished him; and if
he had not been succoured in that sore extremity by a sage, a great friend
of his, it would have gone very hard with the poor knight; so I may well
suffer in company with such worthy folk, for greater were the indignities
which they had to suffer than those which we suffer. For I would have thee
know, Sancho, that wounds caused by any instruments which happen by chance
to be in hand inflict no indignity, and this is laid down in the law of
the duel in express words: if, for instance, the cobbler strikes another
with the last which he has in his hand, though it be in fact a piece of
wood, it cannot be said for that reason that he whom he struck with it has
been cudgelled. I say this lest thou shouldst imagine that because we have
been drubbed in this affray we have therefore suffered any indignity; for
the arms those men carried, with which they pounded us, were nothing more
than their stakes, and not one of them, so far as I remember, carried
rapier, sword, or dagger.”

“They gave me no time to see that much,” answered Sancho, “for hardly had
I laid hand on my tizona when they signed the cross on my shoulders with
their sticks in such style that they took the sight out of my eyes and the
strength out of my feet, stretching me where I now lie, and where thinking
of whether all those stake-strokes were an indignity or not gives me no
uneasiness, which the pain of the blows does, for they will remain as
deeply impressed on my memory as on my shoulders.”

“For all that let me tell thee, brother Panza,” said Don Quixote, “that
there is no recollection which time does not put an end to, and no pain
which death does not remove.”

“And what greater misfortune can there be,” replied Panza, “than the one
that waits for time to put an end to it and death to remove it? If our
mishap were one of those that are cured with a couple of plasters, it
would not be so bad; but I am beginning to think that all the plasters in
a hospital almost won’t be enough to put us right.”

“No more of that: pluck strength out of weakness, Sancho, as I mean to
do,” returned Don Quixote, “and let us see how Rocinante is, for it seems
to me that not the least share of this mishap has fallen to the lot of the
poor beast.”

“There is nothing wonderful in that,” replied Sancho, “since he is a
knight-errant too; what I wonder at is that my beast should have come off
scot-free where we come out scotched.”

“Fortune always leaves a door open in adversity in order to bring relief
to it,” said Don Quixote; “I say so because this little beast may now
supply the want of Rocinante, carrying me hence to some castle where I may
be cured of my wounds. And moreover I shall not hold it any dishonour to
be so mounted, for I remember having read how the good old Silenus, the
tutor and instructor of the gay god of laughter, when he entered the city
of the hundred gates, went very contentedly mounted on a handsome ass.”

“It may be true that he went mounted as your worship says,” answered
Sancho, “but there is a great difference between going mounted and going
slung like a sack of manure.”

To which Don Quixote replied, “Wounds received in battle confer honour
instead of taking it away; and so, friend Panza, say no more, but, as I
told thee before, get up as well as thou canst and put me on top of thy
beast in whatever fashion pleases thee best, and let us go hence ere night
come on and surprise us in these wilds.”

“And yet I have heard your worship say,” observed Panza, “that it is very
meet for knights-errant to sleep in wastes and deserts, and that they
esteem it very good fortune.”

“That is,” said Don Quixote, “when they cannot help it, or when they are
in love; and so true is this that there have been knights who have
remained two years on rocks, in sunshine and shade and all the
inclemencies of heaven, without their ladies knowing anything of it; and
one of these was Amadis, when, under the name of Beltenebros, he took up
his abode on the Pena Pobre for—I know not if it was eight years or
eight months, for I am not very sure of the reckoning; at any rate he
stayed there doing penance for I know not what pique the Princess Oriana
had against him; but no more of this now, Sancho, and make haste before a
mishap like Rocinante’s befalls the ass.”

“The very devil would be in it in that case,” said Sancho; and letting off
thirty “ohs,” and sixty sighs, and a hundred and twenty maledictions and
execrations on whomsoever it was that had brought him there, he raised
himself, stopping half-way bent like a Turkish bow without power to bring
himself upright, but with all his pains he saddled his ass, who too had
gone astray somewhat, yielding to the excessive licence of the day; he
next raised up Rocinante, and as for him, had he possessed a tongue to
complain with, most assuredly neither Sancho nor his master would have
been behind him.

To be brief, Sancho fixed Don Quixote on the ass and secured Rocinante
with a leading rein, and taking the ass by the halter, he proceeded more
or less in the direction in which it seemed to him the high road might be;
and, as chance was conducting their affairs for them from good to better,
he had not gone a short league when the road came in sight, and on it he
perceived an inn, which to his annoyance and to the delight of Don Quixote
must needs be a castle. Sancho insisted that it was an inn, and his master
that it was not one, but a castle, and the dispute lasted so long that
before the point was settled they had time to reach it, and into it Sancho
entered with all his team without any further controversy.

CHAPTER XVI.

OF WHAT HAPPENED TO THE INGENIOUS GENTLEMAN IN THE INN WHICH HE TOOK TO BE
A CASTLE

The innkeeper, seeing Don Quixote slung across the ass, asked Sancho what
was amiss with him. Sancho answered that it was nothing, only that he had
fallen down from a rock and had his ribs a little bruised. The innkeeper
had a wife whose disposition was not such as those of her calling commonly
have, for she was by nature kind-hearted and felt for the sufferings of
her neighbours, so she at once set about tending Don Quixote, and made her
young daughter, a very comely girl, help her in taking care of her guest.
There was besides in the inn, as servant, an Asturian lass with a broad
face, flat poll, and snub nose, blind of one eye and not very sound in the
other. The elegance of her shape, to be sure, made up for all her defects;
she did not measure seven palms from head to foot, and her shoulders,
which overweighted her somewhat, made her contemplate the ground more than
she liked. This graceful lass, then, helped the young girl, and the two
made up a very bad bed for Don Quixote in a garret that showed evident
signs of having formerly served for many years as a straw-loft, in which
there was also quartered a carrier whose bed was placed a little beyond
our Don Quixote’s, and, though only made of the pack-saddles and cloths of
his mules, had much the advantage of it, as Don Quixote’s consisted simply
of four rough boards on two not very even trestles, a mattress, that for
thinness might have passed for a quilt, full of pellets which, were they
not seen through the rents to be wool, would to the touch have seemed
pebbles in hardness, two sheets made of buckler leather, and a coverlet
the threads of which anyone that chose might have counted without missing
one in the reckoning.

On this accursed bed Don Quixote stretched himself, and the hostess and
her daughter soon covered him with plasters from top to toe, while
Maritornes—for that was the name of the Asturian—held the
light for them, and while plastering him, the hostess, observing how full
of wheals Don Quixote was in some places, remarked that this had more the
look of blows than of a fall.

It was not blows, Sancho said, but that the rock had many points and
projections, and that each of them had left its mark. “Pray, señora,” he
added, “manage to save some tow, as there will be no want of some one to
use it, for my loins too are rather sore.”

“Then you must have fallen too,” said the hostess.

“I did not fall,” said Sancho Panza, “but from the shock I got at seeing
my master fall, my body aches so that I feel as if I had had a thousand
thwacks.”

“That may well be,” said the young girl, “for it has many a time happened
to me to dream that I was falling down from a tower and never coming to
the ground, and when I awoke from the dream to find myself as weak and
shaken as if I had really fallen.”

“There is the point, señora,” replied Sancho Panza, “that I without
dreaming at all, but being more awake than I am now, find myself with
scarcely less wheals than my master, Don Quixote.”

“How is the gentleman 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 stoutest that have been seen in
the world this long time past.”

“What is a knight-adventurer?” said the lass.

“Are you so new in the world as not to know?” answered Sancho Panza.
“Well, then, you must know, sister, that a knight-adventurer is a thing
that in two words is seen drubbed and emperor, that is to-day the most
miserable and needy being in the world, and to-morrow will have two or
three crowns of kingdoms to give his squire.”

“Then how is it,” said the hostess, “that belonging to so good a master as
this, you have not, to judge by appearances, even so much as a county?”

“It is too soon yet,” answered Sancho, “for we have only been a month
going in quest of adventures, and so far we have met with nothing that can
be called one, for it will happen that when one thing is looked for
another thing is found; however, if my master Don Quixote gets well of
this wound, or fall, and I am left none the worse of it, I would not
change my hopes for the best title in Spain.”

To all this conversation Don Quixote was listening very attentively, and
sitting up in bed as well as he could, and taking the hostess by the hand
he said to her, “Believe me, fair lady, you may call yourself fortunate in
having in this castle of yours sheltered my person, which is such that if
I do not myself praise it, it is because of what is commonly said, that
self-praise debaseth; but my squire will inform you who I am. I only tell
you that I shall preserve for ever inscribed on my memory the service you
have rendered me in order to tender you my gratitude while life shall last
me; and would to Heaven love held me not so enthralled and subject to its
laws and to the eyes of that fair ingrate whom I name between my teeth,
but that those of this lovely damsel might be the masters of my liberty.”

The hostess, her daughter, and the worthy Maritornes listened in
bewilderment to the words of the knight-errant; for they understood about
as much of them as if he had been talking Greek, though they could
perceive they were all meant for expressions of good-will and
blandishments; and not being accustomed to this kind of language, they
stared at him and wondered to themselves, for he seemed to them a man of a
different sort from those they were used to, and thanking him in pothouse
phrase for his civility they left him, while the Asturian gave her
attention to Sancho, who needed it no less than his master.

The carrier had made an arrangement with her for recreation that night,
and she had given him her word that when the guests were quiet and the
family asleep she would come in search of him and meet his wishes
unreservedly. And it is said of this good lass that she never made
promises of the kind without fulfilling them, even though she made them in
a forest and without any witness present, for she plumed herself greatly
on being a lady and held it no disgrace to be in such an employment as
servant in an inn, because, she said, misfortunes and ill-luck had brought
her to that position. The hard, narrow, wretched, rickety bed of Don
Quixote stood first in the middle of this star-lit stable, and close
beside it Sancho made his, which merely consisted of a rush mat and a
blanket that looked as if it was of threadbare canvas rather than of wool.
Next to these two beds was that of the carrier, made up, as has been said,
of the pack-saddles and all the trappings of the two best mules he had,
though there were twelve of them, sleek, plump, and in prime condition,
for he was one of the rich carriers of Arevalo, according to the author of
this history, who particularly mentions this carrier because he knew him
very well, and they even say was in some degree a relation of his; besides
which Cid Hamete Benengeli was a historian of great research and accuracy
in all things, as is very evident since he would not pass over in silence
those that have been already mentioned, however trifling and insignificant
they might be, an example that might be followed by those grave historians
who relate transactions so curtly and briefly that we hardly get a taste
of them, all the substance of the work being left in the inkstand from
carelessness, perverseness, or ignorance. A thousand blessings on the
author of “Tablante de Ricamonte” and that of the other book in which the
deeds of the Conde Tomillas are recounted; with what minuteness they
describe everything!

To proceed, then: after having paid a visit to his team and given them
their second feed, the carrier stretched himself on his pack-saddles and
lay waiting for his conscientious Maritornes. Sancho was by this time
plastered and had lain down, and though he strove to sleep the pain of his
ribs would not let him, while Don Quixote with the pain of his had his
eyes as wide open as a hare’s.

The inn was all in silence, and in the whole of it there was no light
except that given by a lantern that hung burning in the middle of the
gateway. This strange stillness, and the thoughts, always present to our
knight’s mind, of the incidents described at every turn in the books that
were the cause of his misfortune, conjured up to his imagination as
extraordinary a delusion as can well be conceived, which was that he
fancied himself to have reached a famous castle (for, as has been said,
all the inns he lodged in were castles to his eyes), and that the daughter
of the innkeeper was daughter of the lord of the castle, and that she, won
by his high-bred bearing, had fallen in love with him, and had promised to
come to his bed for a while that night without the knowledge of her
parents; and holding all this fantasy that he had constructed as solid
fact, he began to feel uneasy and to consider the perilous risk which his
virtue was about to encounter, and he resolved in his heart to commit no
treason to his lady Dulcinea del Toboso, even though the queen Guinevere
herself and the dame Quintanona should present themselves before him.

While he was taken up with these vagaries, then, the time and the hour—an
unlucky one for him—arrived for the Asturian to come, who in her
smock, with bare feet and her hair gathered into a fustian coif, with
noiseless and cautious steps entered the chamber where the three were
quartered, in quest of the carrier; but scarcely had she gained the door
when Don Quixote perceived her, and sitting up in his bed in spite of his
plasters and the pain of his ribs, he stretched out his arms to receive
his beauteous damsel. The Asturian, who went all doubled up and in silence
with her hands before her feeling for her lover, encountered the arms of
Don Quixote, who grasped her tightly by the wrist, and drawing her towards
him, while she dared not utter a word, made her sit down on the bed. He
then felt her smock, and although it was of sackcloth it appeared to him
to be of the finest and softest silk: on her wrists she wore some glass
beads, but to him they had the sheen of precious Orient pearls: her hair,
which in some measure resembled a horse’s mane, he rated as threads of the
brightest gold of Araby, whose refulgence dimmed the sun himself: her
breath, which no doubt smelt of yesterday’s stale salad, seemed to him to
diffuse a sweet aromatic fragrance from her mouth; and, in short, he drew
her portrait in his imagination with the same features and in the same
style as that which he had seen in his books of the other princesses who,
smitten by love, came with all the adornments that are here set down, to
see the sorely wounded knight; and so great was the poor gentleman’s
blindness that neither touch, nor smell, nor anything else about the good
lass that would have made any but a carrier vomit, were enough to
undeceive him; on the contrary, he was persuaded he had the goddess of
beauty in his arms, and holding her firmly in his grasp he went on to say
in low, tender voice:

“Would that I found myself, lovely and exalted lady, in a position to
repay such a favour as that which you, by the sight of your great beauty, have
granted me; but fortune, which is never weary of persecuting the good, has
chosen to place me upon this bed, where I lie so bruised and broken that though
my inclination would gladly comply with yours it is impossible; besides, to
this impossibility another yet greater is to be added, which is the faith that
I have pledged to the peerless Dulcinea del Toboso, sole lady of my most secret
thoughts; and were it not that this stood in the way I should not be so
insensible a knight as to miss the happy opportunity which your great goodness
has offered me.”

Maritornes was fretting and sweating at finding herself held so fast by
Don Quixote, and not understanding or heeding the words he addressed to
her, she strove without speaking to free herself. The worthy carrier,
whose unholy thoughts kept him awake, was aware of his doxy the moment she
entered the door, and was listening attentively to all Don Quixote said;
and jealous that the Asturian should have broken her word with him for
another, drew nearer to Don Quixote’s bed and stood still to see what
would come of this talk which he could not understand; but when he
perceived the wench struggling to get free and Don Quixote striving to
hold her, not relishing the joke he raised his arm and delivered such a
terrible cuff on the lank jaws of the amorous knight that he bathed all
his mouth in blood, and not content with this he mounted on his ribs and
with his feet tramped all over them at a pace rather smarter than a trot.
The bed which was somewhat crazy and not very firm on its feet, unable to
support the additional weight of the carrier, came to the ground, and at
the mighty crash of this the innkeeper awoke and at once concluded that it
must be some brawl of Maritornes’, because after calling loudly to her he
got no answer. With this suspicion he got up, and lighting a lamp hastened
to the quarter where he had heard the disturbance. The wench, seeing that
her master was coming and knowing that his temper was terrible, frightened
and panic-stricken made for the bed of Sancho Panza, who still slept, and
crouching upon it made a ball of herself.

The innkeeper came in exclaiming, “Where art thou, strumpet? Of course
this is some of thy work.” At this Sancho awoke, and feeling this mass
almost on top of him fancied he had the nightmare and began to distribute
fisticuffs all round, of which a certain share fell upon Maritornes, who,
irritated by the pain and flinging modesty aside, paid back so many in
return to Sancho that she woke him up in spite of himself. He then,
finding himself so handled, by whom he knew not, raising himself up as
well as he could, grappled with Maritornes, and he and she between them
began the bitterest and drollest scrimmage in the world. The carrier,
however, perceiving by the light of the innkeeper candle how it fared with
his ladylove, quitting Don Quixote, ran to bring her the help she needed;
and the innkeeper did the same but with a different intention, for his was
to chastise the lass, as he believed that beyond a doubt she alone was the
cause of all the harmony. And so, as the saying is, cat to rat, rat to
rope, rope to stick, the carrier pounded Sancho, Sancho the lass, she him,
and the innkeeper her, and all worked away so briskly that they did not
give 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 laid
on one upon the other in a mass so unmercifully that there was not a sound
spot left where a hand could light.

It so happened that there was lodging that night in the inn a caudrillero
of what they call the Old Holy Brotherhood of Toledo, who, also hearing
the extraordinary noise of the conflict, seized his staff and the tin case
with his warrants, and made his way in the dark into the room crying:
“Hold! in the name of the Jurisdiction! Hold! in the name of the Holy
Brotherhood!”

The first that he came upon was the pummelled Don Quixote, who lay
stretched senseless on his back upon his broken-down bed, and, his hand
falling on the beard as he felt about, he continued to cry, “Help for the
Jurisdiction!” but perceiving that he whom he had laid hold of did not
move or stir, he concluded that he was dead and that those in the room
were his murderers, and with this suspicion he raised his voice still
higher, calling out, “Shut the inn gate; see that no one goes out; they
have killed a man here!” This cry startled them all, and each dropped the
contest at the point at which the voice reached him. The innkeeper
retreated to his room, the carrier to his pack-saddles, the lass to her
crib; the unlucky Don Quixote and Sancho alone were unable to move from
where they were. The cuadrillero on this let go Don Quixote’s beard, and
went out to look for a light to search for and apprehend the culprits; but
not finding one, as the innkeeper had purposely extinguished the lantern
on retreating to his room, he was compelled to have recourse to the
hearth, where after much time and trouble he lit another lamp.

CHAPTER XVII.

IN WHICH ARE CONTAINED THE INNUMERABLE TROUBLES WHICH THE BRAVE DON
QUIXOTE AND HIS GOOD SQUIRE SANCHO PANZA ENDURED IN THE INN, WHICH TO HIS
MISFORTUNE HE TOOK TO BE A CASTLE

By this time Don Quixote had recovered from his swoon; and in the same
tone of voice in which he had called to his squire the day before when he
lay stretched “in the vale of the stakes,” he began calling to him now,
“Sancho, my friend, art thou asleep? sleepest thou, friend Sancho?”

“How can I sleep, curses on it!” returned Sancho discontentedly and
bitterly, “when it is plain that all the devils have been at me this
night?”

“Thou mayest well believe that,” answered Don Quixote, “because, either I
know little, or this castle is enchanted, for thou must know—but
this that I am now about to tell thee thou must swear to keep secret until
after my death.”

“I swear it,” answered Sancho.

“I say so,” continued Don Quixote, “because I hate taking away anyone’s
good name.”

“I say,” replied Sancho, “that I swear to hold my tongue about it till the
end of your worship’s days, and God grant I may be able to let it out
to-morrow.”

“Do I do thee such injuries, Sancho,” said Don Quixote, “that thou wouldst
see me dead so soon?”

“It is not for that,” replied Sancho, “but because I hate keeping things
long, and I don’t want them to grow rotten with me from over-keeping.”

“At any rate,” said Don Quixote, “I have more confidence in thy affection
and good nature; and so I would have thee know that this night there
befell me one of the strangest adventures that I could describe, and to
relate it to thee briefly thou must know that a little while ago the
daughter of the lord of this castle came to me, and that she is the most
elegant and beautiful damsel that could be found in the wide world. What I
could tell thee of the charms of her person! of her lively wit! of other
secret matters which, to preserve the fealty I owe to my lady Dulcinea del
Toboso, I shall pass over unnoticed and in silence! I will only tell thee
that, either fate being envious of so great a boon placed in my hands by
good fortune, or perhaps (and this is more probable) this castle being, as
I have already said, enchanted, at the time when I was engaged in the
sweetest and most amorous discourse with her, there came, without my
seeing or knowing whence it came, a hand attached to some arm of some huge
giant, that planted such a cuff on my jaws that I have them all bathed in
blood, and then pummelled me in such a way that I am in a worse plight
than yesterday when the carriers, on account of Rocinante’s misbehaviour,
inflicted on us the injury thou knowest of; whence conjecture that there
must be some enchanted Moor guarding the treasure of this damsel’s beauty,
and that it is not for me.”

“Not for me either,” said Sancho, “for more than four hundred Moors have
so thrashed me that the drubbing of the stakes was cakes and fancy-bread
to it. But tell me, señor, what do you call this excellent and rare
adventure that has left us as we are left now? Though your worship was not
so badly off, having in your arms that incomparable beauty you spoke of;
but I, what did I have, except the heaviest whacks I think I had in all my
life? Unlucky me and the mother that bore me! for I am not a knight-errant
and never expect to be one, and of all the mishaps, the greater part falls
to my share.”

“Then thou hast been thrashed too?” said Don Quixote.

“Didn’t I say so? worse luck to my line!” said Sancho.

“Be not distressed, friend,” said Don Quixote, “for I will now make the
precious balsam with which we shall cure ourselves in the twinkling of an
eye.”

By this time the cuadrillero had succeeded in lighting the lamp, and came
in to see the man that he thought had been killed; and as Sancho caught
sight of him at the door, seeing him coming in his shirt, with a cloth on
his head, and a lamp in his hand, and a very forbidding countenance, he
said to his master, “Señor, can it be that this is the enchanted Moor
coming back to give us more castigation if there be anything still left in
the ink-bottle?”

“It cannot be the Moor,” answered Don Quixote, “for those under
enchantment do not let themselves be seen by anyone.”

“If they don’t let themselves be seen, they let themselves be felt,” said
Sancho; “if not, let my shoulders speak to the point.”

“Mine could speak too,” said Don Quixote, “but that is not a sufficient
reason for believing that what we see is the enchanted Moor.”

The officer came up, and finding them engaged in such a peaceful
conversation, stood amazed; though Don Quixote, to be sure, still lay on
his back unable to move from pure pummelling and plasters. The officer
turned to him and said, “Well, how goes it, good man?”

“I would speak more politely if I were you,” replied Don Quixote; “is it
the way of this country to address knights-errant in that style, you
booby?”

The cuadrillero finding himself so disrespectfully treated by such a
sorry-looking individual, lost his temper, and raising the lamp full of
oil, smote Don Quixote such a blow with it on the head that he gave him a
badly broken pate; then, all being in darkness, he went out, and Sancho
Panza said, “That is certainly the enchanted Moor, Señor, and he keeps the
treasure for others, and for us only the cuffs and lamp-whacks.”

“That is the truth,” answered Don Quixote, “and there is no use in
troubling oneself about these matters of enchantment or being angry or
vexed at them, for as they are invisible and visionary we shall find no
one on whom to avenge ourselves, do what we may; rise, Sancho, if thou
canst, and call the alcaide of this fortress, and get him to give me a
little oil, wine, salt, and rosemary to make the salutiferous balsam, for
indeed I believe I have great need of it now, because I am losing much
blood from the wound that phantom gave me.”

Sancho got up with pain enough in his bones, and went after the innkeeper
in the dark, and meeting the officer, who was looking to see what had
become of his enemy, he said to him, “Señor, whoever you are, do us the
favour and kindness to give us a little rosemary, oil, salt, and wine, for
it is wanted to cure one of the best knights-errant on earth, who lies on
yonder bed wounded by the hands of the enchanted Moor that is in this
inn.”

When the officer heard him talk in this way, he took him for a man out of
his senses, and as day was now beginning to break, he opened the inn gate,
and calling the host, he told him what this good man wanted. The host
furnished him with what he required, and Sancho brought it to Don Quixote,
who, with his hand to his head, was bewailing the pain of the blow of the
lamp, which had done him no more harm than raising a couple of rather
large lumps, and what he fancied blood was only the sweat that flowed from
him in his sufferings during the late storm. To be brief, he took the
materials, of which he made a compound, mixing them all and boiling them a
good while until it seemed to him they had come to perfection. He then
asked for some vial to pour it into, and as there was not one in the inn,
he decided on putting it into a tin oil-bottle or flask of which the host
made him a free gift; and over the flask he repeated more than eighty
paternosters and as many more ave-marias, salves, and credos, accompanying
each word with a cross by way of benediction, at all which there were
present Sancho, the innkeeper, and the cuadrillero; for the carrier was
now peacefully engaged in attending to the comfort of his mules.

This being accomplished, he felt anxious to make trial himself, on the
spot, of the virtue of this precious balsam, as he considered it, and so
he drank near a quart of what could not be put into the flask and remained
in the pigskin in which it had been boiled; but scarcely had he done
drinking when he began to vomit in such a way that nothing was left in his
stomach, and with the pangs and spasms of vomiting he broke into a profuse
sweat, on account of which he bade them cover him up and leave him alone.
They did so, and he lay sleeping more than three hours, at the end of
which he awoke and felt very great bodily relief and so much ease from his
bruises that he thought himself quite cured, and verily believed he had
hit upon the balsam of Fierabras; and that with this remedy he might
thenceforward, without any fear, face any kind of destruction, battle, or
combat, however perilous it might be.

Sancho Panza, who also regarded the amendment of his master as miraculous,
begged him to give him what was left in the pigskin, which was no small
quantity. Don Quixote consented, and he, taking it with both hands, in
good faith and with a better will, gulped down and drained off very little
less than his master. But the fact is, that the stomach of poor Sancho was
of necessity not so delicate as that of his master, and so, before
vomiting, he was seized with such gripings and retchings, and such sweats
and faintness, that verily and truly he believed his last hour had come,
and finding himself so racked and tormented he cursed the balsam and the
thief that had given it to him.

Don Quixote seeing him in this state said, “It is my belief, Sancho, that
this mischief comes of thy not being dubbed a knight, for I am persuaded
this liquor cannot be good for those who are not so.”

“If your worship knew that,” returned Sancho—“woe betide me and all
my kindred!—why did you let me taste it?”

At this moment the draught took effect, and the poor squire began to
discharge both ways at such a rate that the rush mat on which he had
thrown himself and the canvas blanket he had covering him were fit for
nothing afterwards. He sweated and perspired with such paroxysms and
convulsions that not only he himself but all present thought his end had
come. This tempest and tribulation lasted about two hours, at the end of
which he was left, not like his master, but so weak and exhausted that he
could not stand. Don Quixote, however, who, as has been said, felt himself
relieved and well, was eager to take his departure at once in quest of
adventures, as it seemed to him that all the time he loitered there was a
fraud upon the world and those in it who stood in need of his help and
protection, all the more when he had the security and confidence his
balsam afforded him; and so, urged by this impulse, he saddled Rocinante
himself and put the pack-saddle on his squire’s beast, whom likewise he
helped to dress and mount the ass; after which he mounted his horse and
turning to a corner of the inn he laid hold of a pike that stood there, to
serve him by way of a lance. All that were in the inn, who were more than
twenty persons, stood watching him; the innkeeper’s daughter was likewise
observing him, and he too never took his eyes off her, and from time to
time fetched a sigh that he seemed to pluck up from the depths of his
bowels; but they all thought it must be from the pain he felt in his ribs;
at any rate they who had seen him plastered the night before thought so.

As soon as they were both mounted, at the gate of the inn, he called to
the host and said in a very grave and measured voice, “Many and great are
the favours, Señor Alcaide, that 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 them in avenging you of any
arrogant foe who may have wronged you, know that my calling is no other
than to aid the weak, to avenge those who suffer wrong, and to chastise
perfidy. Search your memory, and if you find anything of this kind you
need only tell me of it, and I promise you by the order of knighthood
which I have received to procure you satisfaction and reparation to the
utmost of your desire.”

The innkeeper replied to him with equal calmness, “Sir Knight, I do not
want your worship to avenge me of any wrong, because when any is done me I
can take what vengeance seems good to me; the only thing I want is that
you pay me the score that you have run up in the inn last night, as well
for the straw and barley for your two beasts, as for supper and beds.”

“Then this is an inn?” said Don Quixote.

“And a very respectable one,” said the innkeeper.

“I have been under a mistake all this time,” answered Don Quixote, “for in
truth I thought it was a castle, and not a bad one; but since it appears
that it is not a castle but an inn, all that can be done now is that you
should excuse the payment, for I cannot contravene the rule of
knights-errant, of whom I know as a fact (and up to the present I have
read nothing to the contrary) that they never paid for lodging or anything
else in the inn where they might be; for any hospitality that might be
offered them is their due by law and right in return for the insufferable
toil they endure in seeking adventures by night and by day, in summer and
in winter, on foot and on horseback, in hunger and thirst, cold and heat,
exposed to all the inclemencies of heaven and all the hardships of earth.”

“I have little to do with that,” replied the innkeeper; “pay me what you
owe me, and let us have no more talk of chivalry, for all I care about is
to get my money.”

“You are a stupid, scurvy innkeeper,” said Don Quixote, and putting spurs
to Rocinante and bringing his pike to the slope he rode out of the inn
before anyone could stop him, and pushed on some distance without looking
to see if his squire was following him.

The innkeeper when he saw him go without paying him ran to get payment of
Sancho, who said that as his master would not pay neither would he,
because, being as he was squire to a knight-errant, the same rule and
reason held good for him as for his master with regard to not paying
anything in inns and hostelries. At this the innkeeper waxed very wroth,
and threatened if he did not pay to compel him in a way that he would not
like. To which Sancho made answer that by the law of chivalry his master
had received he would not pay a rap, though it cost him his life; for the
excellent and ancient usage of knights-errant was not going to be violated
by him, nor should the squires of such as were yet to come into the world
ever complain of him or reproach him with breaking so just a privilege.

The ill-luck of the unfortunate Sancho so ordered it that among the
company in the inn there were four woolcarders from Segovia, three
needle-makers from the Colt of Cordova, and two lodgers from the Fair of
Seville, lively fellows, tender-hearted, fond of a joke, and playful, who,
almost as if instigated and moved by a common impulse, made up to Sancho
and dismounted him from his ass, while one of them went in for the blanket
of the host’s bed; but on flinging him into it they looked up, and seeing
that the ceiling was somewhat lower than what they required for their work,
they decided upon going out into the yard, which was bounded by the sky,
and there, putting Sancho in the middle of the blanket, they began to
raise him high, making sport with him as they would with a dog at
Shrovetide.

The cries of the poor blanketed wretch were so loud that they reached the
ears of his master, who, halting to listen attentively, was persuaded that
some new adventure was coming, until he clearly perceived that it was his
squire who uttered them. Wheeling about he came up to the inn with a
laborious gallop, and finding it shut went round it to see if he could
find some way of getting in; but as soon as he came to the wall of the
yard, which was not very high, he discovered the game that was being
played with his squire. He saw him rising and falling in the air with such
grace and nimbleness that, had his rage allowed him, it is my belief he
would have laughed. He tried to climb from his horse on to the top of the
wall, but he was so bruised and battered that he could not even dismount;
and so from the back of his horse he began to utter such maledictions and
objurgations against those who were blanketing Sancho as it would be
impossible to write down accurately: they, however, did not stay their
laughter or their work for this, nor did the flying Sancho cease his
lamentations, mingled now with threats, now with entreaties but all to
little purpose, or none at all, until from pure weariness they left off.
They then brought him his ass, and mounting him on top of it they put his
jacket round him; and the compassionate Maritornes, seeing him so
exhausted, thought fit to refresh him with a jug of water, and that it
might be all the cooler she fetched it from the well. Sancho took it, and
as he was raising it to his mouth he was stopped by the cries of his
master exclaiming, “Sancho, my son, drink not water; drink it not, my son,
for it will kill thee; see, here I have the blessed balsam (and he held up
the flask of liquor), and with drinking two drops of it thou wilt
certainly be restored.”

At these words Sancho turned his eyes asquint, and in a still louder voice
said, “Can it be your worship has forgotten that I am not a knight, or do
you want me to end by vomiting up what bowels I have left after last
night? Keep your liquor in the name of all the devils, and leave me to
myself!” and at one and the same instant he left off talking and began
drinking; but as at the first sup he perceived it was water he did not
care to go on with it, and begged Maritornes to fetch him some wine, which
she did with right good will, and paid for it with her own money; for
indeed they say of her that, though she was in that line of life, there
was some faint and distant resemblance to a Christian about her. When
Sancho had done drinking he dug his heels into his ass, and the gate of
the inn being thrown open he passed out very well pleased at having paid
nothing and carried his point, though it had been at the expense of his
usual sureties, his shoulders. It is true that the innkeeper detained his
alforjas in payment of what was owing to him, but Sancho took his
departure in such a flurry that he never missed them. The innkeeper, as
soon as he saw him off, wanted to bar the gate close, but the blanketers
would not agree to it, for they were fellows who would not have cared two
farthings for Don Quixote, even had he been really one of the
knights-errant of the Round Table.

CHAPTER XVIII.

IN WHICH IS RELATED THE DISCOURSE SANCHO PANZA HELD WITH HIS MASTER, DON
QUIXOTE, AND OTHER ADVENTURES WORTH RELATING

Sancho reached his master so limp and faint that he could not urge on his
beast. When Don Quixote saw the state he was in he said, “I have now come
to the conclusion, good Sancho, that this castle or inn is beyond a doubt
enchanted, because those who have so atrociously diverted themselves with
thee, what can they be but phantoms or beings of another world? and I hold
this confirmed by having noticed that when I was by the wall of the yard
witnessing the acts of thy sad tragedy, it was out of my power to mount
upon it, nor could I even dismount from Rocinante, because they no doubt
had me enchanted; for I swear to thee by the faith of what I am that if I
had been able to climb up or dismount, I would have avenged thee in such a
way that those braggart thieves would have remembered their freak for
ever, even though in so doing I knew that I contravened the laws of
chivalry, which, as I have often told thee, do not permit a knight to lay
hands on him who is not one, save in case of urgent and great necessity in
defence of his own life and person.”

“I would have avenged myself too if I could,” said Sancho, “whether I had
been dubbed knight or not, but I could not; though for my part I am
persuaded those who amused themselves with me were not phantoms or
enchanted men, as your worship says, but men of flesh and bone like
ourselves; and they all had their names, for I heard them name them when
they were tossing me, and one was called Pedro Martinez, and another
Tenorio Hernandez, and the innkeeper, I heard, was called Juan Palomeque
the Left-handed; so that, señor, your not being able to leap over the wall
of the yard or dismount from your horse came of something else besides
enchantments; and what I make out clearly from all this is, that these
adventures we go seeking will in the end lead us into such misadventures
that we shall not know which is our right foot; and that the best and
wisest thing, according to my small wits, would be for us to return home,
now that it is harvest-time, and attend to our business, and give over
wandering from Zeca to Mecca and from pail to bucket, as the saying is.”

“How little thou knowest about chivalry, Sancho,” replied Don Quixote;
“hold thy peace and have patience; the day will come when thou shalt see
with thine own eyes what an honourable thing it is to wander in the
pursuit of this calling; nay, tell me, what greater pleasure can there be
in the world, or what delight can equal that of winning a battle, and
triumphing over one’s enemy? None, beyond all doubt.”

“Very likely,” answered Sancho, “though I do not know it; all I know is
that since we have been knights-errant, or since your worship has been one
(for I have no right to reckon myself one of so honourable a number) we
have never won any battle except the one with the Biscayan, and even out
of that your worship came with half an ear and half a helmet the less; and
from that till now it has been all cudgellings and more cudgellings, cuffs
and more cuffs, I getting the blanketing over and above, and falling in
with enchanted persons on whom I cannot avenge myself so as to know what
the delight, as your worship calls it, of conquering an enemy is like.”

“That is what vexes me, and what ought to vex thee, Sancho,” replied Don
Quixote; “but henceforward I will endeavour to have at hand some sword
made by such craft that no kind of enchantments can take effect upon him
who carries it, and it is even possible that fortune may procure for me
that which belonged to Amadis when he was called ‘The Knight of the
Burning Sword,’ which was one of the best swords that ever knight in the
world possessed, for, besides having the said virtue, it cut like a razor,
and there was no armour, however strong and enchanted it might be, that
could resist it.”

“Such is my luck,” said Sancho, “that even if that happened and your
worship found some such sword, it would, like the balsam, turn out
serviceable and good for dubbed knights only, and as for the squires, they
might sup sorrow.”

“Fear not that, Sancho,” said Don Quixote: “Heaven will deal better by
thee.”

Thus talking, Don Quixote and his squire were going along, when, on the
road they were following, Don Quixote perceived approaching them a large
and thick cloud of dust, on seeing which he turned to Sancho and said:

“This is the day, Sancho, on which will be seen the boon my fortune is
reserving for me; this, I say, is the day on which as much as on any other
shall be displayed the might of my arm, and on which I shall do deeds that
shall remain written in the book of fame for all ages to come. Seest thou
that cloud of dust which rises yonder? Well, then, all that is churned up
by a vast army composed of various and countless nations that comes
marching there.”

“According to that there must be two,” said Sancho, “for on this opposite
side also there rises just such another cloud of dust.”

Don Quixote turned to look and found that it was true, and rejoicing
exceedingly, he concluded that they were two armies about to engage and
encounter in the midst of that broad plain; for at all times and seasons
his fancy was full of the battles, enchantments, adventures, crazy feats,
loves, and defiances that are recorded in the books of chivalry, and
everything he said, thought, or did had reference to such things. Now the
cloud of dust he had seen was raised by two great droves of sheep coming
along the same road in opposite directions, which, because of the dust,
did not become visible until they drew near, but Don Quixote asserted so
positively that they were armies that Sancho was led to believe it and
say, “Well, and what are we to do, señor?”

“What?” said Don Quixote: “give aid and assistance to the weak and those
who need it; and thou must know, Sancho, that this which comes opposite to
us is conducted and led by the mighty emperor Alifanfaron, lord of the
great isle of Trapobana; this other that marches behind me is that of his
enemy the king of the Garamantas, Pentapolin of the Bare Arm, for he
always goes into battle with his right arm bare.”

“But why are these two lords such enemies?”

“They are at enmity,” replied Don Quixote, “because this Alifanfaron is a
furious pagan and is in love with the daughter of Pentapolin, who is a
very beautiful and moreover gracious lady, and a Christian, and her father
is unwilling to bestow her upon the pagan king unless he first abandons
the religion of his false prophet Mahomet, and adopts his own.”

“By my beard,” said Sancho, “but Pentapolin does quite right, and I will
help him as much as I can.”

“In that thou wilt do what is thy duty, Sancho,” said Don Quixote; “for to
engage in battles of this sort it is not requisite to be a dubbed knight.”

“That I can well understand,” answered Sancho; “but where shall we put
this ass where we may be sure to find him after the fray is over? for I
believe it has not been the custom so far to go into battle on a beast of
this kind.”

“That is true,” said Don Quixote, “and what you had best do with him is to
leave him to take his chance whether he be lost or not, for the horses we
shall have when we come out victors will be so many that even Rocinante
will run a risk of being changed for another. But attend to me and
observe, for I wish to give thee some account of the chief knights who
accompany these two armies; and that thou mayest the better see and mark,
let us withdraw to that hillock which rises yonder, whence both armies may
be seen.”

They did so, and placed themselves on a rising ground from which the two
droves that Don Quixote made armies of might have been plainly seen if the
clouds of dust they raised had not obscured them and blinded the sight;
nevertheless, seeing in his imagination what he did not see and what did
not exist, he began thus in a loud voice:

“That knight whom thou seest yonder in yellow armour, who bears upon his
shield a lion crowned crouching at the feet of a damsel, is the valiant
Laurcalco, lord of the Silver Bridge; that one in armour with flowers of
gold, who bears on his shield three crowns argent on an azure field, is
the dreaded Micocolembo, grand duke of Quirocia; that other of gigantic
frame, on his right hand, is the ever dauntless Brandabarbaran de Boliche,
lord of the three Arabias, who for armour wears that serpent skin, and has
for shield a gate which, according to tradition, is one of those of the
temple that Samson brought to the ground when by his death he revenged
himself upon his enemies. But turn thine eyes to the other side, and thou
shalt see in front and in the van of this other army the ever victorious
and never vanquished Timonel of Carcajona, prince of New Biscay, who comes
in armour with arms quartered azure, vert, white, and yellow, and bears on
his shield a cat or on a field tawny with a motto which says Miau, which
is the beginning of the name of his lady, who according to report is the
peerless Miaulina, daughter of the duke Alfeniquen of the Algarve; the
other, who burdens and presses the loins of that powerful charger and
bears arms white as snow and a shield blank and without any device, is a
novice knight, a Frenchman by birth, Pierres Papin by name, lord of the
baronies of Utrique; that other, who with iron-shod heels strikes the
flanks of that nimble parti-coloured zebra, and for arms bears azure vair,
is the mighty duke of Nerbia, Espartafilardo del Bosque, who bears for
device on his shield an asparagus plant with a motto in Castilian that
says, Rastrea mi suerte.” And so he went on naming a number of knights of
one squadron or the other out of his imagination, and to all he assigned
off-hand their arms, colours, devices, and mottoes, carried away by the
illusions of his unheard-of craze; and without a pause, he continued,
“People of divers nations compose this squadron in front; here are those
that drink of the sweet waters of the famous Xanthus, those that scour the
woody Massilian plains, those that sift the pure fine gold of Arabia
Felix, those that enjoy the famed cool banks of the crystal Thermodon,
those that in many and various ways divert the streams of the golden
Pactolus, the Numidians, faithless in their promises, the Persians
renowned in archery, the Parthians and the Medes that fight as they fly,
the Arabs that ever shift their dwellings, the Scythians as cruel as they
are fair, the Ethiopians with pierced lips, and an infinity of other
nations whose features I recognise and descry, though I cannot recall
their names. In this other squadron there come those that drink of the
crystal streams of the olive-bearing Betis, those that make smooth their
countenances with the water of the ever rich and golden Tagus, those that
rejoice in the fertilising flow of the divine Genil, those that roam the
Tartesian plains abounding in pasture, those that take their pleasure in
the Elysian meadows of Jerez, the rich Manchegans crowned with ruddy ears
of corn, the wearers of iron, old relics of the Gothic race, those that
bathe in the Pisuerga renowned for its gentle current, those that feed
their herds along the spreading pastures of the winding Guadiana famed for
its hidden course, those that tremble with the cold of the pineclad
Pyrenees or the dazzling snows of the lofty Apennine; in a word, as many
as all Europe includes and contains.”

Good God! what a number of countries and nations he named! giving to each
its proper attributes with marvellous readiness; brimful and saturated
with what he had read in his lying books! Sancho Panza hung upon his words
without speaking, and from time to time turned to try if he could see the
knights and giants his master was describing, and as he could not make out
one of them he said to him:

“Señor, devil take it if there’s a sign of any man you talk of, knight or
giant, in the whole thing; maybe it’s all enchantment, like the phantoms
last night.”

“How canst thou say that!” answered Don Quixote; “dost thou not hear the
neighing of the steeds, the braying of the trumpets, the roll of the
drums?”

“I hear nothing but a great bleating of ewes and sheep,” said Sancho;
which was true, for by this time the two flocks had come close.

“The fear thou art in, Sancho,” said Don Quixote, “prevents thee from
seeing or hearing correctly, for one of the effects of fear is to derange
the senses and make things appear different from what they are; if thou
art in such fear, withdraw to one side and leave me to myself, for alone I
suffice to bring victory to that side to which I shall give my aid;” and
so saying he gave Rocinante the spur, and putting the lance in rest, shot
down the slope like a thunderbolt. Sancho shouted after him, crying, “Come
back, Señor Don Quixote; I vow to God they are sheep and ewes you are
charging! Come back! Unlucky the father that begot me! what madness is
this! Look, there is no giant, nor knight, nor cats, nor arms, nor shields
quartered or whole, nor vair azure or bedevilled. What are you about?
Sinner that I am before God!” But not for all these entreaties did Don
Quixote turn back; on the contrary he went on shouting out, “Ho, knights,
ye who follow and fight under the banners of the valiant emperor
Pentapolin of the Bare Arm, follow me all; ye shall see how easily I shall
give him his revenge over his enemy Alifanfaron of the Trapobana.”

So saying, he dashed into the midst of the squadron of ewes, and began
spearing them with as much spirit and intrepidity as if he were
transfixing mortal enemies in earnest. The shepherds and drovers
accompanying the flock shouted to him to desist; seeing it was no use,
they ungirt their slings and began to salute his ears with stones as big
as one’s fist. Don Quixote gave no heed to the stones, but, letting drive
right and left kept saying:

“Where art thou, proud Alifanfaron? Come before me; I am a single knight
who would fain prove thy prowess hand to hand, and make thee yield thy
life a penalty for the wrong thou dost to the valiant Pentapolin
Garamanta.” Here came a sugar-plum from the brook that struck him on the
side and buried a couple of ribs in his body. Feeling himself so smitten,
he imagined himself slain or badly wounded for certain, and recollecting
his liquor he drew out his flask, and putting it to his mouth began to
pour the contents into his stomach; but ere he had succeeded in swallowing
what seemed to him enough, there came another almond which struck him on
the hand and on the flask so fairly that it smashed it to pieces, knocking
three or four teeth and grinders out of his mouth in its course, and
sorely crushing two fingers of his hand. Such was the force of the first
blow and of the second, that the poor knight in spite of himself came down
backwards off his horse. The shepherds came up, and felt sure they had
killed him; so in all haste they collected their flock together, took up
the dead beasts, of which there were more than seven, and made off without
waiting to ascertain anything further.

All this time Sancho stood on the hill watching the crazy feats his master
was performing, and tearing his beard and cursing the hour and the
occasion when fortune had made him acquainted with him. Seeing him, then,
brought to the ground, and that the shepherds had taken themselves off, he
ran to him and found him in very bad case, though not unconscious; and
said he:

“Did I not tell you to come back, Señor Don Quixote; and that what you
were going to attack were not armies but droves of sheep?”

“That’s how that thief of a sage, my enemy, can alter and falsify things,”
answered Don Quixote; “thou must know, Sancho, that it is a very easy
matter for those of his sort to make us believe what they choose; and this
malignant being who persecutes me, envious of the glory he knew I was to
win in this battle, has turned the squadrons of the enemy into droves of
sheep. At any rate, do this much, I beg of thee, Sancho, to undeceive
thyself, and see that what I say is true; mount thy ass and follow them
quietly, and thou shalt see that when they have gone some little distance
from this they will return to their original shape and, ceasing to be
sheep, become men in all respects as I described them to thee at first.
But go not just yet, for I want thy help and assistance; come hither, and
see how many of my teeth and grinders are missing, for I feel as if there
was not one left in my mouth.”

Sancho came so close that he almost put his eyes into his mouth; now just
at that moment the balsam had acted on the stomach of Don Quixote, so, at
the very instant when Sancho came to examine his mouth, he discharged all
its contents with more force than a musket, and full into the beard of the
compassionate squire.

“Holy Mary!” cried Sancho, “what is this that has happened me? Clearly
this sinner is mortally wounded, as he vomits blood from the mouth;” but
considering the matter a little more closely he perceived by the colour,
taste, and smell, that it was not blood but the balsam from the flask
which he had seen him drink; and he was taken with such a loathing that
his stomach turned, and he vomited up his inside over his very master, and
both were left in a precious state. Sancho ran to his ass to get something
wherewith to clean himself, and relieve his master, out of his alforjas;
but not finding them, he well-nigh took leave of his senses, and cursed
himself anew, and in his heart resolved to quit his master and return
home, even though he forfeited the wages of his service and all hopes of
the promised island.

Don Quixote now rose, and putting his left hand to his mouth to keep his
teeth from falling out altogether, with the other he laid hold of the
bridle of Rocinante, who had never stirred from his master’s side—so
loyal and well-behaved was he—and betook himself to where the squire
stood leaning over his ass with his hand to his cheek, like one in deep
dejection. Seeing him in this mood, looking so sad, Don Quixote said to
him:

“Bear in mind, Sancho, that one man is no more than another, unless he
does more than another; all these tempests that fall upon us are signs
that fair weather is coming shortly, and that things will go well with us,
for it is impossible for good or evil to last for ever; and hence it
follows that the evil having lasted long, the good must be now nigh at
hand; so thou must not distress thyself at the misfortunes which happen to
me, since thou hast no share in them.”

“How have I not?” replied Sancho; “was he whom they blanketed yesterday
perchance any other than my father’s son? and the alforjas that are
missing to-day with all my treasures, did they belong to any other but
myself?”

“What! are the alforjas missing, Sancho?” said Don Quixote.

“Yes, they are missing,” answered Sancho.

“In that case we have nothing to eat to-day,” replied Don Quixote.

“It would be so,” answered Sancho, “if there were none of the herbs your
worship says you know in these meadows, those with which knights-errant as
unlucky as your worship are wont to supply such-like shortcomings.”

“For all that,” answered Don Quixote, “I would rather have just now a
quarter of bread, or a loaf and a couple of pilchards’ heads, than all the
herbs described by Dioscorides, even with Doctor Laguna’s notes.
Nevertheless, Sancho the Good, mount thy beast and come along with me, for
God, who provides for all things, will not fail us (more especially when
we are so active in his service as we are), since he fails not the midges
of the air, nor the grubs of the earth, nor the tadpoles of the water, and
is so merciful that he maketh his sun to rise on the good and on the evil,
and sendeth rain on the unjust and on the just.”

“Your worship would make a better preacher than knight-errant,” said
Sancho.

“Knights-errant knew and ought to know everything, Sancho,” said Don
Quixote; “for there were knights-errant in former times as well qualified
to deliver a sermon or discourse in the middle of an encampment, as if
they had graduated in the University of Paris; whereby we may see that the
lance has never blunted the pen, nor the pen the lance.”

“Well, be it as your worship says,” replied Sancho; “let us be off now and
find some place of shelter for the night, and God grant it may be
somewhere where there are no blankets, nor blanketeers, nor phantoms, nor
enchanted Moors; for if there are, may the devil take the whole concern.”

“Ask that of God, my son,” said Don Quixote; and do thou lead on where
thou wilt, for this time I leave our lodging to thy choice; but reach me
here thy hand, and feel with thy finger, and find out how many of my teeth
and grinders are missing from this right side of the upper jaw, for it is
there I feel the pain.”

Sancho put in his fingers, and feeling about asked him, “How many grinders
used your worship have on this side?”

“Four,” replied Don Quixote, “besides the back-tooth, all whole and quite
sound.”

“Mind what you are saying, señor.”

“I say four, if not five,” answered Don Quixote, “for never in my life
have I had tooth or grinder drawn, nor has any fallen out or been
destroyed by any decay or rheum.”

“Well, then,” said Sancho, “in this lower side your worship has no more
than two grinders and a half, and in the upper neither a half nor any at
all, for it is all as smooth as the palm of my hand.”

“Luckless that I am!” said Don Quixote, hearing the sad news his squire
gave him; “I had rather they despoiled me of an arm, so it were not the
sword-arm; for I tell thee, Sancho, a mouth without teeth is like a mill
without a millstone, and a tooth is much more to be prized than a diamond;
but we who profess the austere order of chivalry are liable to all this.
Mount, friend, and lead the way, and I will follow thee at whatever pace
thou wilt.”

Sancho did as he bade him, and proceeded in the direction in which he
thought he might find refuge without quitting the high road, which was
there very much frequented. As they went along, then, at a slow pace—for
the pain in Don Quixote’s jaws kept him uneasy and ill-disposed for speed—Sancho
thought it well to amuse and divert him by talk of some kind, and among
the things he said to him was that which will be told in the following
chapter.

CHAPTER XIX.

OF THE SHREWD DISCOURSE WHICH SANCHO HELD WITH HIS MASTER, AND OF THE
ADVENTURE THAT BEFELL HIM WITH A DEAD BODY, TOGETHER WITH OTHER NOTABLE
OCCURRENCES

“It seems to me, señor, that all these mishaps that have befallen us of
late have been without any doubt a punishment for the offence committed by
your worship against the order of chivalry in not keeping the oath you
made not to eat bread off a tablecloth or embrace the queen, and all the
rest of it that your worship swore to observe until you had taken that
helmet of Malandrino’s, or whatever the Moor is called, for I do not very
well remember.”

“Thou art very right, Sancho,” said Don Quixote, “but to tell the truth,
it had escaped my memory; and likewise thou mayest rely upon it that the
affair of the blanket happened to thee because of thy fault in not
reminding me of it in time; but I will make amends, for there are ways of
compounding for everything in the order of chivalry.”

“Why! have I taken an oath of some sort, then?” said Sancho.

“It makes no matter that thou hast not taken an oath,” said Don Quixote;
“suffice it that I see thou art not quite clear of complicity; and whether
or no, it will not be ill done to provide ourselves with a remedy.”

“In that case,” said Sancho, “mind that your worship does not forget this
as you did the oath; perhaps the phantoms may take it into their heads to
amuse themselves once more with me; or even with your worship if they see
you so obstinate.”

While engaged in this and other talk, night overtook them on the road
before they had reached or discovered any place of shelter; and what made
it still worse was that they were dying of hunger, for with the loss of
the alforjas they had lost their entire larder and commissariat; and to
complete the misfortune they met with an adventure which without any
invention had really the appearance of one. It so happened that the night
closed in somewhat darkly, but for all that they pushed on, Sancho feeling
sure that as the road was the king’s highway they might reasonably expect
to find some inn within a league or two. Going along, then, in this way,
the night dark, the squire hungry, the master sharp-set, they saw coming
towards them on the road they were travelling a great number of lights
which looked exactly like stars in motion. Sancho was taken aback at the
sight of them, nor did Don Quixote altogether relish them: the one pulled
up his ass by the halter, the other his hack by the bridle, and they stood
still, watching anxiously to see what all this would turn out to be, and
found that the lights were approaching them, and the nearer they came the
greater they seemed, at which spectacle Sancho began to shake like a man
dosed with mercury, and Don Quixote’s hair stood on end; he, however,
plucking up spirit a little, said:

“This, no doubt, Sancho, will be a most mighty and perilous adventure, in
which it will be needful for me to put forth all my valour and
resolution.”

“Unlucky me!” answered Sancho; “if this adventure happens to be one of
phantoms, as I am beginning to think it is, where shall I find the ribs to
bear it?”

“Be they phantoms ever so much,” said Don Quixote, “I will not permit them
to touch a thread of thy garments; for if they played tricks with thee the
time before, it was because I was unable to leap the walls of the yard;
but now we are on a wide plain, where I shall be able to wield my sword as
I please.”

“And if they enchant and cripple you as they did the last time,” said
Sancho, “what difference will it make being on the open plain or not?”

“For all that,” replied Don Quixote, “I entreat thee, Sancho, to keep a
good heart, for experience will tell thee what mine is.”

“I will, please God,” answered Sancho, and the two retiring to one side of
the road set themselves to observe closely what all these moving lights
might be; and very soon afterwards they made out some twenty encamisados,
all on horseback, with lighted torches in their hands, the awe-inspiring
aspect of whom completely extinguished the courage of Sancho, who began to
chatter with his teeth like one in the cold fit of an ague; and his heart
sank and his teeth chattered still more when they perceived distinctly
that behind them there came a litter covered over with black and followed
by six more mounted figures in mourning down to the very feet of their
mules—for they could perceive plainly they were not horses by the
easy pace at which they went. And as the encamisados came along they
muttered to themselves in a low plaintive tone. This strange spectacle at
such an hour and in such a solitary place was quite enough to strike
terror into Sancho’s heart, and even into his master’s; and (save in Don
Quixote’s case) did so, for all Sancho’s resolution had now broken down.
It was just the opposite with his master, whose imagination immediately
conjured up all this to him vividly as one of the adventures of his books.

He took it into his head that the litter was a bier on which was borne
some sorely wounded or slain knight, to avenge whom was a task reserved
for him alone; and without any further reasoning he laid his lance in
rest, fixed himself firmly in his saddle, and with gallant spirit and
bearing took up his position in the middle of the road where the
encamisados must of necessity pass; and as soon as he saw them near at
hand he raised his voice and said:

“Halt, knights, or whosoever ye may be, and render me account of who ye
are, whence ye come, where ye go, what it is ye carry upon that bier, for,
to judge by appearances, either ye have done some wrong or some wrong has
been done to you, and it is fitting and necessary that I should know,
either that I may chastise you for the evil ye have done, or else that I
may avenge you for the injury that has been inflicted upon you.”

“We are in haste,” answered one of the encamisados, “and the inn is far
off, and we cannot stop to render you such an account as you demand;” and
spurring his mule he moved on.

Don Quixote was mightily provoked by this answer, and seizing the mule by
the bridle he said, “Halt, and be more mannerly, and render an account of
what I have asked of you; else, take my defiance to combat, all of you.”

The mule was shy, and was so frightened at her bridle being seized that
rearing up she flung her rider to the ground over her haunches. An
attendant who was on foot, seeing the encamisado fall, began to abuse Don
Quixote, who now moved to anger, without any more ado, laying his lance in
rest charged one of the men in mourning and brought him badly wounded to
the ground, and as he wheeled round upon the others the agility with which
he attacked and routed them was a sight to see, for it seemed just as if
wings had that instant grown upon Rocinante, so lightly and proudly did he
bear himself. The encamisados were all timid folk and unarmed, so they
speedily made their escape from the fray and set off at a run across the
plain with their lighted torches, looking exactly like maskers running on
some gala or festival night. The mourners, too, enveloped and swathed in
their skirts and gowns, were unable to bestir themselves, and so with
entire safety to himself Don Quixote belaboured them all and drove them
off against their will, for they all thought it was no man but a devil
from hell come to carry away the dead body they had in the litter.

Sancho beheld all this in astonishment at the intrepidity of his lord, and
said to himself, “Clearly this master of mine is as bold and valiant as he
says he is.”

A burning torch lay on the ground near the first man whom the mule had
thrown, by the light of which Don Quixote perceived him, and coming up to
him he presented the point of the lance to his face, calling on him to
yield himself prisoner, or else he would kill him; to which the prostrate
man replied, “I am prisoner enough as it is; I cannot stir, for one of my
legs is broken: I entreat you, if you be a Christian gentleman, not to
kill me, which will be committing grave sacrilege, for I am a licentiate
and I hold first orders.”

“Then what the devil brought you here, being a churchman?” said Don
Quixote.

“What, señor?” said the other. “My bad luck.”

“Then still worse awaits you,” said Don Quixote, “if you do not satisfy me
as to all I asked you at first.”

“You shall be soon satisfied,” said the licentiate; “you must know, then,
that though just now I said I was a licentiate, I am only a bachelor, and
my name is Alonzo Lopez; I am a native of Alcobendas, I come from the city
of Baeza with eleven others, priests, the same who fled with the torches,
and we are going to the city of Segovia accompanying a dead body which is
in that litter, and is that of a gentleman who died in Baeza, where he was
interred; and now, as I said, we are taking his bones to their
burial-place, which is in Segovia, where he was born.”

“And who killed him?” asked Don Quixote.

“God, by means of a malignant fever that took him,” answered the bachelor.

“In that case,” said Don Quixote, “the Lord has relieved me of the task of
avenging his death had any other slain him; but, he who slew him having
slain him, there is nothing for it but to be silent, and shrug one’s
shoulders; I should do the same were he to slay myself; and I would have
your reverence know that I am a knight of La Mancha, Don Quixote by name,
and it is my business and calling to roam the world righting wrongs and
redressing injuries.”

“I do not know how that about righting wrongs can be,” said the bachelor,
“for from straight you have made me crooked, leaving me with a broken leg
that will never see itself straight again all the days of its life; and
the injury you have redressed in my case has been to leave me injured in
such a way that I shall remain injured for ever; and the height of
misadventure it was to fall in with you who go in search of adventures.”

“Things do not all happen in the same way,” answered Don Quixote; “it all
came, Sir Bachelor Alonzo Lopez, of your going, as you did, by night,
dressed in those surplices, with lighted torches, praying, covered with
mourning, so that naturally you looked like something evil and of the
other world; and so I could not avoid doing my duty in attacking you, and
I should have attacked you even had I known positively that you were the
very devils of hell, for such I certainly believed and took you to be.”

“As my fate has so willed it,” said the bachelor, “I entreat you, sir
knight-errant, whose errand has been such an evil one for me, to help me
to get from under this mule that holds one of my legs caught between the
stirrup and the saddle.”

“I would have talked on till to-morrow,” said Don Quixote; “how long were
you going to wait before telling me of your distress?”

He at once called to Sancho, who, however, had no mind to come, as he was
just then engaged in unloading a sumpter mule, well laden with provender,
which these worthy gentlemen had brought with them. Sancho made a bag of
his coat, and, getting together as much as he could, and as the bag would
hold, he loaded his beast, and then hastened to obey his master’s call,
and helped him to remove the bachelor from under the mule; then putting
him on her back he gave him the torch, and Don Quixote bade him follow the
track of his companions, and beg pardon of them on his part for the wrong
which he could not help doing them.

And said Sancho, “If by chance these gentlemen should want to know who was
the hero that served them so, your worship may tell them that he is the
famous Don Quixote of La Mancha, otherwise called the Knight of the Rueful
Countenance.”

The bachelor then took his departure.

I forgot to mention that before he did so he said to Don Quixote,
“Remember that you stand excommunicated for having laid violent hands on a
holy thing, juxta illud, si quis, suadente diabolo.”

“I do not understand that Latin,” answered Don Quixote, “but I know well I
did not lay hands, only this pike; besides, I did not think I was
committing an assault upon priests or things of the Church, which, like a
Catholic and faithful Christian as I am, I respect and revere, but upon
phantoms and spectres of the other world; but even so, I remember how it
fared with Cid Ruy Diaz when he broke the chair of the ambassador of that
king before his Holiness the Pope, who excommunicated him for the same;
and yet the good Roderick of Vivar bore himself that day like a very noble
and valiant knight.”

On hearing this the bachelor took his departure, as has been said, without
making any reply; and Don Quixote asked Sancho what had induced him to
call him the “Knight of the Rueful Countenance” more then than at any
other time.

“I will tell you,” answered Sancho; “it was because I have been looking at
you for some time by the light of the torch held by that unfortunate, and
verily your worship has got of late the most ill-favoured countenance I
ever saw: it must be either owing to the fatigue of this combat, or else
to the want of teeth and grinders.”

“It is not that,” replied Don Quixote, “but because the sage whose duty it
will be to write the history of my achievements must have thought it
proper that I should take some distinctive name as all knights of yore
did; one being ‘He of the Burning Sword,’ another ‘He of the Unicorn,’
this one ‘He of the Damsels,’ that ‘He of the Phoenix,’ another ‘The
Knight of the Griffin,’ and another ‘He of the Death,’ and by these names
and designations they were known all the world round; and so I say that
the sage aforesaid must have put it into your mouth and mind just now to
call me ‘The Knight of the Rueful Countenance,’ as I intend to call myself
from this day forward; and that the said name may fit me better, I mean,
when the opportunity offers, to have a very rueful countenance painted on
my shield.”

“There is no occasion, señor, for wasting time or money on making that
countenance,” said Sancho; “for all that need be done is for your worship
to show your own, face to face, to those who look at you, and without
anything more, either image or shield, they will call you ‘Him of the
Rueful Countenance’ and believe me I am telling you the truth, for I
assure you, señor (and in good part be it said), hunger and the loss of
your grinders have given you such an ill-favoured face that, as I say, the
rueful picture may be very well spared.”

Don Quixote laughed at Sancho’s pleasantry; nevertheless he resolved to
call himself by that name, and have his shield or buckler painted as he
had devised.

Don Quixote would have looked to see whether the body in the litter were
bones or not, but Sancho would not have it, saying:

“Señor, you have ended this perilous adventure more safely for yourself
than any of those I have seen: perhaps these people, though beaten and
routed, may bethink themselves that it is a single man that has beaten
them, and feeling sore and ashamed of it may take heart and come in search
of us and give us trouble enough. The ass is in proper trim, the mountains
are near at hand, hunger presses, we have nothing more to do but make good
our retreat, and, as the saying is, the dead to the grave and the living
to the loaf.”

And driving his ass before him he begged his master to follow, who,
feeling that Sancho was right, did so without replying; and after
proceeding some little distance between two hills they found themselves in
a wide and retired valley, where they alighted, and Sancho unloaded his
beast, and stretched upon the green grass, with hunger for sauce, they
breakfasted, dined, lunched, and supped all at once, satisfying their
appetites with more than one store of cold meat which the dead man’s
clerical gentlemen (who seldom put themselves on short allowance) had
brought with them on their sumpter mule. But another piece of ill-luck
befell them, which Sancho held the worst of all, and that was that they
had no wine to drink, nor even water to moisten their lips; and as thirst
tormented them, Sancho, observing that the meadow where they were was full
of green and tender grass, said what will be told in the following
chapter.

CHAPTER XX.

OF THE UNEXAMPLED AND UNHEARD-OF ADVENTURE WHICH WAS ACHIEVED BY THE
VALIANT DON QUIXOTE OF LA MANCHA WITH LESS PERIL THAN ANY EVER ACHIEVED BY
ANY FAMOUS KNIGHT IN THE WORLD

“It cannot be, señor, but that this grass is a proof that there must be
hard by some spring or brook to give it moisture, so it would be well to
move a little farther on, that we may find some place where we may quench
this terrible thirst that plagues us, which beyond a doubt is more
distressing than hunger.”

The advice seemed good to Don Quixote, and, he leading Rocinante by the
bridle and Sancho the ass by the halter, after he had packed away upon him
the remains of the supper, they advanced the meadow feeling their way, for
the darkness of the night made it impossible to see anything; but they had
not gone two hundred paces when a loud noise of water, as if falling from
great rocks, struck their ears. The sound cheered them greatly; but
halting to make out by listening from what quarter it came they heard
unseasonably another noise which spoiled the satisfaction the sound of the
water gave them, especially for Sancho, who was by nature timid and
faint-hearted. They heard, I say, strokes falling with a measured beat,
and a certain rattling of iron and chains that, together with the furious
din of the water, would have struck terror into any heart but Don
Quixote’s. The night was, as has been said, dark, and they had happened to
reach a spot in among some tall trees, whose leaves stirred by a gentle
breeze made a low ominous sound; so that, what with the solitude, the
place, the darkness, the noise of the water, and the rustling of the
leaves, everything inspired awe and dread; more especially as they
perceived that the strokes did not cease, nor the wind lull, nor morning
approach; to all which might be added their ignorance as to where they
were.

But Don Quixote, supported by his intrepid heart, leaped on Rocinante, and
bracing his buckler on his arm, brought his pike to the slope, and said,
“Friend Sancho, know that I by Heaven’s will have been born in this our
iron age to revive in it the age of gold, or the golden as it is
called; I am he for whom perils, mighty achievements, and valiant deeds
are reserved; I am, I say again, he who is to revive the Knights of the
Round Table, the Twelve of France and the Nine Worthies; and he who is to
consign to oblivion the Platirs, the Tablantes, the Olivantes and
Tirantes, the Phoebuses and Belianises, with the whole herd of famous
knights-errant of days gone by, performing in these in which I live such
exploits, marvels, and feats of arms as shall obscure their brightest
deeds. Thou dost mark well, faithful and trusty squire, the gloom of this
night, its strange silence, the dull confused murmur of those trees, the
awful sound of that water in quest of which we came, that seems as though
it were precipitating and dashing itself down from the lofty mountains of
the Moon, and that incessant hammering that wounds and pains our ears;
which things all together and each of itself are enough to instil fear,
dread, and dismay into the breast of Mars himself, much more into one not
used to hazards and adventures of the kind. Well, then, all this that I
put before thee is but an incentive and stimulant to my spirit, making my
heart burst in my bosom through eagerness to engage in this adventure,
arduous as it promises to be; therefore tighten Rocinante’s girths a
little, and God be with thee; wait for me here three days and no more, and
if in that time I come not back, thou canst return to our village, and
thence, to do me a favour and a service, thou wilt go to El Toboso, where
thou shalt say to my incomparable lady Dulcinea that her captive knight
hath died in attempting things that might make him worthy of being called
hers.”

When Sancho heard his master’s words he began to weep in the most pathetic
way, saying:

“Señor, I know not why your worship wants to attempt this so dreadful
adventure; it is night now, no one sees us here, we can easily turn about
and take ourselves out of danger, even if we don’t drink for three days to
come; and as there is no one to see us, all the less will there be anyone
to set us down as cowards; besides, I have many a time heard the curate of
our village, whom your worship knows well, preach that he who seeks danger
perishes in it; so it is not right to tempt God by trying so tremendous a
feat from which there can be no escape save by a miracle, and Heaven has
performed enough of them for your worship in delivering you from being
blanketed as I was, and bringing you out victorious and safe and sound
from among all those enemies that were with the dead man; and if all this
does not move or soften that hard heart, let this thought and reflection
move it, that you will have hardly quitted this spot when from pure fear I
shall yield my soul up to anyone that will take it. I left home and wife
and children to come and serve your worship, trusting to do better and not
worse; but as covetousness bursts the bag, it has rent my hopes asunder,
for just as I had them highest about getting that wretched unlucky island
your worship has so often promised me, I see that instead and in lieu of
it you mean to desert me now in a place so far from human reach: for God’s
sake, master mine, deal not so unjustly by me, and if your worship will
not entirely give up attempting this feat, at least put it off till
morning, for by what the lore I learned when I was a shepherd tells me it
cannot want three hours of dawn now, because the mouth of the Horn is
overhead and makes midnight in the line of the left arm.”

“How canst thou see, Sancho,” said Don Quixote, “where it makes that line,
or where this mouth or this occiput is that thou talkest of, when the
night is so dark that there is not a star to be seen in the whole heaven?”

“That’s true,” said Sancho, “but fear has sharp eyes, and sees things
underground, much more above in heavens; besides, there is good reason to
show that it now wants but little of day.”

“Let it want what it may,” replied Don Quixote, “it shall not be said of
me now or at any time that tears or entreaties turned me aside from doing
what was in accordance with knightly usage; and so I beg of thee, Sancho,
to hold thy peace, for God, who has put it into my heart to undertake now
this so unexampled and terrible adventure, will take care to watch over my
safety and console thy sorrow; what thou hast to do is to tighten
Rocinante’s girths well, and wait here, for I shall come back shortly,
alive or dead.”

Sancho perceiving it his master’s final resolve, and how little his tears,
counsels, and entreaties prevailed with him, determined to have recourse
to his own ingenuity and compel him, if he could, to wait till daylight;
and so, while tightening the girths of the horse, he quietly and without
being felt, with his ass’ halter tied both Rocinante’s legs, so that when
Don Quixote strove to go he was unable as the horse could only move by
jumps. Seeing the success of his trick, Sancho Panza said:

“See there, señor! Heaven, moved by my tears and prayers, has so ordered
it that Rocinante cannot stir; and if you will be obstinate, and spur and
strike him, you will only provoke fortune, and kick, as they say, against
the pricks.”

Don Quixote at this grew desperate, but the more he drove his heels into
the horse, the less he stirred him; and not having any suspicion of the
tying, he was fain to resign himself and wait till daybreak or until
Rocinante could move, firmly persuaded that all this came of something
other than Sancho’s ingenuity. So he said to him, “As it is so, Sancho,
and as Rocinante cannot move, I am content to wait till dawn smiles upon
us, even though I weep while it delays its coming.”

“There is no need to weep,” answered Sancho, “for I will amuse your
worship by telling stories from this till daylight, unless indeed you like
to dismount and lie down to sleep a little on the green grass after the
fashion of knights-errant, so as to be fresher when day comes and the
moment arrives for attempting this extraordinary adventure you are looking
forward to.”

“What art thou talking about dismounting or sleeping for?” said Don
Quixote. “Am I, thinkest thou, one of those knights that take their rest
in the presence of danger? Sleep thou who art born to sleep, or do as thou
wilt, for I will act as I think most consistent with my character.”

“Be not angry, master mine,” replied Sancho, “I did not mean to say that;”
and coming close to him he laid one hand on the pommel of the saddle and
the other on the cantle so that he held his master’s left thigh in his
embrace, not daring to separate a finger’s width from him; so much afraid
was he of the strokes which still resounded with a regular beat. Don
Quixote bade him tell some story to amuse him as he had proposed, to which
Sancho replied that he would if his dread of what he heard would let him;
“Still,” said he, “I will strive to tell a story which, if I can manage to
relate it, and nobody interferes with the telling, is the best of stories,
and let your worship give me your attention, for here I begin. What was,
was; and may the good that is to come be for all, and the evil for him who
goes to look for it—your worship must know that the beginning the
old folk used to put to their tales was not just as each one pleased; it
was a maxim of Cato Zonzorino the Roman, that says ‘the evil for him that
goes to look for it,’ and it comes as pat to the purpose now as ring to
finger, to show that your worship should keep quiet and not go looking for
evil in any quarter, and that we should go back by some other road, since
nobody forces us to follow this in which so many terrors affright us.”

“Go on with thy story, Sancho,” said Don Quixote, “and leave the choice of
our road to my care.”

“I say then,” continued Sancho, “that in a village of Estremadura there
was a goat-shepherd—that is to say, one who tended goats—which
shepherd or goatherd, as my story goes, was called Lope Ruiz, and this
Lope Ruiz was in love with a shepherdess called Torralva, which
shepherdess called Torralva was the daughter of a rich grazier, and this
rich grazier—”

“If that is the way thou tellest thy tale, Sancho,” said Don Quixote,
“repeating twice all thou hast to say, thou wilt not have done these two
days; go straight on with it, and tell it like a reasonable man, or else
say nothing.”

“Tales are always told in my country in the very way I am telling this,”
answered Sancho, “and I cannot tell it in any other, nor is it right of
your worship to ask me to make new customs.”

“Tell it as thou wilt,” replied Don Quixote; “and as fate will have it
that I cannot help listening to thee, go on.”

“And so, lord of my soul,” continued Sancho, as I have said, this shepherd
was in love with Torralva the shepherdess, who was a wild buxom lass with
something of the look of a man about her, for she had little moustaches; I
fancy I see her now.”

“Then you knew her?” said Don Quixote.

“I did not know her,” said Sancho, “but he who told me the story said it
was so true and certain that when I told it to another I might safely
declare and swear I had seen it all myself. And so in course of time, the
devil, who never sleeps and puts everything in confusion, contrived that
the love the shepherd bore the shepherdess turned into hatred and
ill-will, and the reason, according to evil tongues, was some little
jealousy she caused him that crossed the line and trespassed on forbidden
ground; and so much did the shepherd hate her from that time forward that,
in order to escape from her, he determined to quit the country and go
where he should never set eyes on her again. Torralva, when she found
herself spurned by Lope, was immediately smitten with love for him, though
she had never loved him before.”

“That is the natural way of women,” said Don Quixote, “to scorn the one
that loves them, and love the one that hates them: go on, Sancho.”

“It came to pass,” said Sancho, “that the shepherd carried out his
intention, and driving his goats before him took his way across the plains
of Estremadura to pass over into the Kingdom of Portugal. Torralva, who
knew of it, went after him, and on foot and barefoot followed him at a
distance, with a pilgrim’s staff in her hand and a scrip round her neck,
in which she carried, it is said, a bit of looking-glass and a piece of a
comb and some little pot or other of paint for her face; but let her carry
what she did, I am not going to trouble myself to prove it; all I say is,
that the shepherd, they say, came with his flock to cross over the river
Guadiana, which was at that time swollen and almost overflowing its banks,
and at the spot he came to there was neither ferry nor boat nor anyone to
carry him or his flock to the other side, at which he was much vexed, for
he perceived that Torralva was approaching and would give him great
annoyance with her tears and entreaties; however, he went looking about so
closely that he discovered a fisherman who had alongside of him a boat so
small that it could only hold one person and one goat; but for all that he
spoke to him and agreed with him to carry himself and his three hundred
goats across. The fisherman got into the boat and carried one goat over;
he came back and carried another over; he came back again, and again
brought over another—let your worship keep count of the goats the
fisherman is taking across, for if one escapes the memory there will be an
end of the story, and it will be impossible to tell another word of it. To
proceed, I must tell you the landing place on the other side was miry and
slippery, and the fisherman lost a great deal of time in going and coming;
still he returned for another goat, and another, and another.”

“Take it for granted he brought them all across,” said Don Quixote, “and
don’t keep going and coming in this way, or thou wilt not make an end of
bringing them over this twelvemonth.”

“How many have gone across so far?” said Sancho.

“How the devil do I know?” replied Don Quixote.

“There it is,” said Sancho, “what I told you, that you must keep a good
count; well then, by God, there is an end of the story, for there is no
going any farther.”

“How can that be?” said Don Quixote; “is it so essential to the story to
know to a nicety the goats that have crossed over, that if there be a
mistake of one in the reckoning, thou canst not go on with it?”

“No, señor, not a bit,” replied Sancho; “for when I asked your worship to
tell me how many goats had crossed, and you answered you did not know, at
that very instant all I had to say passed away out of my memory, and,
faith, there was much virtue in it, and entertainment.”

“So, then,” said Don Quixote, “the story has come to an end?”

“As much as my mother has,” said Sancho.

“In truth,” said Don Quixote, “thou hast told one of the rarest stories,
tales, or histories, that anyone in the world could have imagined, and
such a way of telling it and ending it was never seen nor will be in a
lifetime; though I expected nothing else from thy excellent understanding.
But I do not wonder, for perhaps those ceaseless strokes may have confused
thy wits.”

“All that may be,” replied Sancho, “but I know that as to my story, all
that can be said is that it ends there where the mistake in the count of
the passage of the goats begins.”

“Let it end where it will, well and good,” said Don Quixote, “and let us
see if Rocinante can go;” and again he spurred him, and again Rocinante
made jumps and remained where he was, so well tied was he.

Just then, whether it was the cold of the morning that was now
approaching, or that he had eaten something laxative at supper, or that it
was only natural (as is most likely), Sancho felt a desire to do what no
one could do for him; but so great was the fear that had penetrated his
heart, he dared not separate himself from his master by as much as the
black of his nail; to escape doing what he wanted was, however, also
impossible; so what he did for peace’s sake was to remove his right hand,
which held the back of the saddle, and with it to untie gently and
silently the running string which alone held up his breeches, so that on
loosening it they at once fell down round his feet like fetters; he then
raised his shirt as well as he could and bared his hind quarters, no slim
ones. But, this accomplished, which he fancied was all he had to do to get
out of this terrible strait and embarrassment, another still greater
difficulty presented itself, for it seemed to him impossible to relieve
himself without making some noise, and he ground his teeth and squeezed
his shoulders together, holding his breath as much as he could; but in
spite of his precautions he was unlucky enough after all to make a little
noise, very different from that which was causing him so much fear.

Don Quixote, hearing it, said, “What noise is that, Sancho?”

“I don’t know, señor,” said he; “it must be something new, for adventures
and misadventures never begin with a trifle.” Once more he tried his luck,
and succeeded so well, that without any further noise or disturbance he
found himself relieved of the burden that had given him so much
discomfort. But as Don Quixote’s sense of smell was as acute as his
hearing, and as Sancho was so closely linked with him that the fumes rose
almost in a straight line, it could not be but that some should reach his
nose, and as soon as they did he came to its relief by compressing it
between his fingers, saying in a rather snuffing tone, “Sancho, it strikes
me thou art in great fear.”

“I am,” answered Sancho; “but how does your worship perceive it now more
than ever?”

“Because just now thou smellest stronger than ever, and not of ambergris,”
answered Don Quixote.

“Very likely,” said Sancho, “but that’s not my fault, but your worship’s,
for leading me about at unseasonable hours and at such unwonted paces.”

“Then go back three or four, my friend,” said Don Quixote, all the time
with his fingers to his nose; “and for the future pay more attention to
thy person and to what thou owest to mine; for it is my great familiarity
with thee that has bred this contempt.”

“I’ll bet,” replied Sancho, “that your worship thinks I have done
something I ought not with my person.”

“It makes it worse to stir it, friend Sancho,” returned Don Quixote.

With this and other talk of the same sort master and man passed the night,
till Sancho, perceiving that daybreak was coming on apace, very cautiously
untied Rocinante and tied up his breeches. As soon as Rocinante found
himself free, though by nature he was not at all mettlesome, he seemed to
feel lively and began pawing—for as to capering, begging his pardon,
he knew not what it meant. Don Quixote, then, observing that Rocinante
could move, took it as a good sign and a signal that he should attempt the
dread adventure. By this time day had fully broken and everything showed
distinctly, and Don Quixote saw that he was among some tall trees,
chestnuts, which cast a very deep shade; he perceived likewise that the
sound of the strokes did not cease, but could not discover what caused it,
and so without any further delay he let Rocinante feel the spur, and once
more taking leave of Sancho, he told him to wait for him there three days
at most, as he had said before, and if he should not have returned by that
time, he might feel sure it had been God’s will that he should end his
days in that perilous adventure. He again repeated the message and
commission with which he was to go on his behalf to his lady Dulcinea, and
said he was not to be uneasy as to the payment of his services, for before
leaving home he had made his will, in which he would find himself fully
recompensed in the matter of wages in due proportion to the time he had
served; but if God delivered him safe, sound, and unhurt out of that
danger, he might look upon the promised island as much more than certain.
Sancho began to weep afresh on again hearing the affecting words of his
good master, and resolved to stay with him until the final issue and end
of the business. From these tears and this honourable resolve of Sancho
Panza’s the author of this history infers that he must have been of good
birth and at least an old Christian; and the feeling he displayed touched
his but not so much as to make him show any weakness; on the contrary,
hiding what he felt as well as he could, he began to move towards that
quarter whence the sound of the water and of the strokes seemed to come.

Sancho followed him on foot, leading by the halter, as his custom was, his
ass, his constant comrade in prosperity or adversity; and advancing some
distance through the shady chestnut trees they came upon a little meadow
at the foot of some high rocks, down which a mighty rush of water flung
itself. At the foot of the rocks were some rudely constructed houses
looking more like ruins than houses, from among which came, they
perceived, the din and clatter of blows, which still continued without
intermission. Rocinante took fright at the noise of the water and of the
blows, but quieting him Don Quixote advanced step by step towards the
houses, commending himself with all his heart to his lady, imploring her
support in that dread pass and enterprise, and on the way commending
himself to God, too, not to forget him. Sancho who never quitted his side,
stretched his neck as far as he could and peered between the legs of
Rocinante to see if he could now discover what it was that caused him such
fear and apprehension. They went it might be a hundred paces farther, when
on turning a corner the true cause, beyond the possibility of any mistake,
of that dread-sounding and to them awe-inspiring noise that had kept them
all the night in such fear and perplexity, appeared plain and obvious; and
it was (if, reader, thou art not disgusted and disappointed) six fulling
hammers which by their alternate strokes made all the din.

When Don Quixote perceived what it was, he was struck dumb and rigid from
head to foot. Sancho glanced at him and saw him with his head bent down
upon his breast in manifest mortification; and Don Quixote glanced at
Sancho and saw him with his cheeks puffed out and his mouth full of
laughter, and evidently ready to explode with it, and in spite of his
vexation he could not help laughing at the sight of him; and when Sancho
saw his master begin he let go so heartily that he had to hold his sides
with both hands to keep himself from bursting with laughter. Four times he
stopped, and as many times did his laughter break out afresh with the same
violence as at first, whereat Don Quixote grew furious, above all when he
heard him say mockingly, “Thou must know, friend Sancho, that of Heaven’s
will I was born in this our iron age to revive in it the golden or age of
gold; I am he for whom are reserved perils, mighty achievements, valiant
deeds;” and here he went on repeating the words that Don Quixote uttered
the first time they heard the awful strokes.

Don Quixote, then, seeing that Sancho was turning him into ridicule, was
so mortified and vexed that he lifted up his pike and smote him two such
blows that if, instead of catching them on his shoulders, he had caught
them on his head there would have been no wages to pay, unless indeed to
his heirs. Sancho seeing that he was getting an awkward return in earnest
for his jest, and fearing his master might carry it still further, said to
him very humbly, “Calm yourself, sir, for by God I am only joking.”

“Well, then, if you are joking I am not,” replied Don Quixote. “Look here,
my lively gentleman, if these, instead of being fulling hammers, had been
some perilous adventure, have I not, think you, shown the courage required
for the attempt and achievement? Am I, perchance, being, as I am, a
gentleman, bound to know and distinguish sounds and tell whether they come
from fulling mills or not; and that, when perhaps, as is the case, I have
never in my life seen any as you have, low boor as you are, that have been
born and bred among them? But turn me these six hammers into six giants,
and bring them to beard me, one by one or all together, and if I do not
knock them head over heels, then make what mockery you like of me.”

“No more of that, señor,” returned Sancho; “I own I went a little too far
with the joke. But tell me, your worship, now that peace is made between
us (and may God bring you out of all the adventures that may befall you as
safe and sound as he has brought you out of this one), was it not a thing
to laugh at, and is it not a good story, the great fear we were in?—at
least that I was in; for as to your worship I see now that you neither
know nor understand what either fear or dismay is.”

“I do not deny,” said Don Quixote, “that what happened to us may be worth
laughing at, but it is not worth making a story about, for it is not
everyone that is shrewd enough to hit the right point of a thing.”

“At any rate,” said Sancho, “your worship knew how to hit the right point
with your pike, aiming at my head and hitting me on the shoulders, thanks
be to God and my own smartness in dodging it. But let that pass; all will
come out in the scouring; for I have heard say ‘he loves thee well that
makes thee weep;’ and moreover that it is the way with great lords after
any hard words they give a servant to give him a pair of breeches; though
I do not know what they give after blows, unless it be that knights-errant
after blows give islands, or kingdoms on the mainland.”

“It may be on the dice,” said Don Quixote, “that all thou sayest will come
true; overlook the past, for thou art shrewd enough to know that our first
movements are not in our own control; and one thing for the future bear in
mind, that thou curb and restrain thy loquacity in my company; for in all
the books of chivalry that I have read, and they are innumerable, I never
met with a squire who talked so much to his lord as thou dost to thine;
and in fact I feel it to be a great fault of thine and of mine: of thine,
that thou hast so little respect for me; of mine, that I do not make
myself more respected. There was Gandalin, the squire of Amadis of Gaul,
that was Count of the Insula Firme, and we read of him that he always
addressed his lord with his cap in his hand, his head bowed down and his
body bent double, more turquesco. And then, what shall we say of Gasabal,
the squire of Galaor, who was so silent that in order to indicate to us
the greatness of his marvellous taciturnity his name is only once
mentioned in the whole of that history, as long as it is truthful? From
all I have said thou wilt gather, Sancho, that there must be a difference
between master and man, between lord and lackey, between knight and
squire: so that from this day forward in our intercourse we must observe
more respect and take less liberties, for in whatever way I may be
provoked with you it will be bad for the pitcher. The favours and benefits
that I have promised you will come in due time, and if they do not your
wages at least will not be lost, as I have already told you.”

“All that your worship says is very well,” said Sancho, “but I should like
to know (in case the time of favours should not come, and it might be
necessary to fall back upon wages) how much did the squire of a
knight-errant get in those days, and did they agree by the month, or by
the day like bricklayers?”

“I do not believe,” replied Don Quixote, “that such squires were ever on
wages, but were dependent on favour; and if I have now mentioned thine in
the sealed will I have left at home, it was with a view to what may
happen; for as yet I know not how chivalry will turn out in these wretched
times of ours, and I do not wish my soul to suffer for trifles in the
other world; for I would have thee know, Sancho, that in this there is no
condition more hazardous than that of adventurers.”

“That is true,” said Sancho, “since the mere noise of the hammers of a
fulling mill can disturb and disquiet the heart of such a valiant errant
adventurer as your worship; but you may be sure I will not open my lips
henceforward to make light of anything of your worship’s, but only to
honour you as my master and natural lord.”

“By so doing,” replied Don Quixote, “shalt thou live long on the face of
the earth; for next to parents, masters are to be respected as though they
were parents.”

CHAPTER XXI.

WHICH TREATS OF THE EXALTED ADVENTURE AND RICH PRIZE OF MAMBRINO’S HELMET,
TOGETHER WITH OTHER THINGS THAT HAPPENED TO OUR INVINCIBLE KNIGHT

It now began to rain a little, and Sancho was for going into the fulling
mills, but Don Quixote had taken such an abhorrence to them on account of
the late joke that he would not enter them on any account; so turning
aside to right they came upon another road, different from that which they
had taken the night before. Shortly afterwards Don Quixote perceived a man
on horseback who wore on his head something that shone like gold, and the
moment he saw him he turned to Sancho and said:

“I think, Sancho, there is no proverb that is not true, all being maxims
drawn from experience itself, the mother of all the sciences, especially
that one that says, ‘Where one door shuts, another opens.’ I say so
because if last night fortune shut the door of the adventure we were
looking for against us, cheating us with the fulling mills, it now opens
wide another one for another better and more certain adventure, and if I
do not contrive to enter it, it will be my own fault, and I cannot lay it
to my ignorance of fulling mills, or the darkness of the night. I say this
because, if I mistake not, there comes towards us one who wears on his
head the helmet of Mambrino, concerning which I took the oath thou
rememberest.”

“Mind what you say, your worship, and still more what you do,” said
Sancho, “for I don’t want any more fulling mills to finish off fulling and
knocking our senses out.”

“The devil take thee, man,” said Don Quixote; “what has a helmet to do
with fulling mills?”

“I don’t know,” replied Sancho, “but, faith, if I might speak as I used,
perhaps I could give such reasons that your worship would see you were
mistaken in what you say.”

“How can I be mistaken in what I say, unbelieving traitor?” returned Don
Quixote; “tell me, seest thou not yonder knight coming towards us on a
dappled grey steed, who has upon his head a helmet of gold?”

“What I see and make out,” answered Sancho, “is only a man on a grey ass
like my own, who has something that shines on his head.”

“Well, that is the helmet of Mambrino,” said Don Quixote; “stand to one
side and leave me alone with him; thou shalt see how, without saying a
word, to save time, I shall bring this adventure to an issue and possess
myself of the helmet I have so longed for.”

“I will take care to stand aside,” said Sancho; “but God grant, I say once
more, that it may be marjoram and not fulling mills.”

“I have told thee, brother, on no account to mention those fulling mills
to me again,” said Don Quixote, “or I vow—and I say no more—I’ll
full the soul out of you.”

Sancho held his peace in dread lest his master should carry out the vow he
had hurled like a bowl at him.

The fact of the matter as regards the helmet, steed, and knight that Don
Quixote saw, was this. In that neighbourhood there were two villages, one
of them so small that it had neither apothecary’s shop nor barber, which
the other that was close to it had, so the barber of the larger served the
smaller, and in it there was a sick man who required to be bled and
another man who wanted to be shaved, and on this errand the barber was
going, carrying with him a brass basin; but as luck would have it, as he
was on the way it began to rain, and not to spoil his hat, which probably
was a new one, he put the basin on his head, and being clean it glittered
at half a league’s distance. He rode upon a grey ass, as Sancho said, and
this was what made it seem to Don Quixote to be a dapple-grey steed and a
knight and a golden helmet; for everything he saw he made to fall in with
his crazy chivalry and ill-errant notions; and when he saw the poor knight
draw near, without entering into any parley with him, at Rocinante’s top
speed he bore down upon him with the pike pointed low, fully determined to
run him through and through, and as he reached him, without checking the
fury of his charge, he cried to him:

“Defend thyself, miserable being, or yield me of thine own accord that
which is so reasonably my due.”

The barber, who without any expectation or apprehension of it saw this
apparition coming down upon him, had no other way of saving himself from
the stroke of the lance but to let himself fall off his ass; and no sooner
had he touched the ground than he sprang up more nimbly than a deer and
sped away across the plain faster than the wind.

He left the basin on the ground, with which Don Quixote contented himself,
saying that the pagan had shown his discretion and imitated the beaver,
which finding itself pressed by the hunters bites and cuts off with its
teeth that for which, by its natural instinct, it knows it is pursued.

He told Sancho to pick up the helmet, and he taking it in his hands said:

“By God the basin is a good one, and worth a real of eight if it is worth
a maravedis,” and handed it to his master, who immediately put it on his
head, turning it round, now this way, now that, in search of fitment, and
not finding it he said, “Clearly the pagan to whose measure this famous
head-piece was first forged must have had a very large head; but the worst
of it is half of it is wanting.”

When Sancho heard him call the basin a headpiece he was unable to restrain
his laughter, but remembering his master’s wrath he checked himself in the
midst of it.

“What art thou laughing at, Sancho?” said Don Quixote.

“I am laughing,” said he, “to think of the great head the pagan must have
had who owned this helmet, for it looks exactly like a regular barber’s
basin.”

“Dost thou know what I suspect, Sancho?” said Don Quixote; “that this
wonderful piece of this enchanted helmet must by some strange accident
have come into the hands of some one who was unable to recognise or
realise its value, and who, not knowing what he did, and seeing it to be
of the purest gold, must have melted down one half for the sake of what it
might be worth, and of the other made this which is like a barber’s basin
as thou sayest; but be it as it may, to me who recognise it, its
transformation makes no difference, for I will set it to rights at the
first village where there is a blacksmith, and in such style that that
helmet the god of smithies forged for the god of battles shall not surpass
it or even come up to it; and in the meantime I will wear it as well as I
can, for something is better than nothing; all the more as it will be
quite enough to protect me from any chance blow of a stone.”

“That is,” said Sancho, “if it is not shot with a sling as they were in
the battle of the two armies, when they signed the cross on your worship’s
grinders and smashed the flask with that blessed draught that made me
vomit my bowels up.”

“It does not grieve me much to have lost it,” said Don Quixote, “for thou
knowest, Sancho, that I have the receipt in my memory.”

“So have I,” answered Sancho, “but if ever I make it, or try it again as
long as I live, may this be my last hour; moreover, I have no intention of
putting myself in the way of wanting it, for I mean, with all my five
senses, to keep myself from being wounded or from wounding anyone: as to
being blanketed again I say nothing, for it is hard to prevent mishaps of
that sort, and if they come there is nothing for it but to squeeze our
shoulders together, hold our breath, shut our eyes, and let ourselves go
where luck and the blanket may send us.”

“Thou art a bad Christian, Sancho,” said Don Quixote on hearing this, “for
once an injury has been done thee thou never forgettest it: but know that
it is the part of noble and generous hearts not to attach importance to
trifles. What lame leg hast thou got by it, what broken rib, what cracked
head, that thou canst not forget that jest? For jest and sport it was,
properly regarded, and had I not seen it in that light I would have
returned and done more mischief in revenging thee than the Greeks did for
the rape of Helen, who, if she were alive now, or if my Dulcinea had lived
then, might depend upon it she would not be so famous for her beauty as
she is;” and here he heaved a sigh and sent it aloft; and said Sancho,
“Let it pass for a jest as it cannot be revenged in earnest, but I know
what sort of jest and earnest it was, and I know it will never be rubbed
out of my memory any more than off my shoulders. But putting that aside,
will your worship tell me what are we to do with this dapple-grey steed
that looks like a grey ass, which that Martino that your worship overthrew
has left deserted here? for, from the way he took to his heels and bolted,
he is not likely ever to come back for it; and by my beard but the grey is
a good one.”

“I have never been in the habit,” said Don Quixote, “of taking spoil of
those whom I vanquish, nor is it the practice of chivalry to take away
their horses and leave them to go on foot, unless indeed it be that the
victor have lost his own in the combat, in which case it is lawful to take
that of the vanquished as a thing won in lawful war; therefore, Sancho,
leave this horse, or ass, or whatever thou wilt have it to be; for when
its owner sees us gone hence he will come back for it.”

“God knows I should like to take it,” returned Sancho, “or at least to
change it for my own, which does not seem to me as good a one: verily the
laws of chivalry are strict, since they cannot be stretched to let one ass
be changed for another; I should like to know if I might at least change
trappings.”

“On that head I am not quite certain,” answered Don Quixote, “and the
matter being doubtful, pending better information, I say thou mayest
change them, if so be thou hast urgent need of them.”

“So urgent is it,” answered Sancho, “that if they were for my own person I
could not want them more;” and forthwith, fortified by this licence, he
effected the mutatio capparum, rigging out his beast to the ninety-nines
and making quite another thing of it. This done, they broke their fast on
the remains of the spoils of war plundered from the sumpter mule, and
drank of the brook that flowed from the fulling mills, without casting a
look in that direction, in such loathing did they hold them for the alarm
they had caused them; and, all anger and gloom removed, they mounted and,
without taking any fixed road (not to fix upon any being the proper thing
for true knights-errant), they set out, guided by Rocinante’s will, which
carried along with it that of his master, not to say that of the ass,
which always followed him wherever he led, lovingly and sociably;
nevertheless they returned to the high road, and pursued it at a venture
without any other aim.

As they went along, then, in this way Sancho said to his master, “Señor,
would your worship give me leave to speak a little to you? For since you
laid that hard injunction of silence on me several things have gone to rot
in my stomach, and I have now just one on the tip of my tongue that I
don’t want to be spoiled.”

“Say, on, Sancho,” said Don Quixote, “and be brief in thy discourse, for
there is no pleasure in one that is long.”

“Well then, señor,” returned Sancho, “I say that for some days past I have
been considering how little is got or gained by going in search of these
adventures that your worship seeks in these wilds and cross-roads, where,
even if the most perilous are victoriously achieved, there is no one to
see or know of them, and so they must be left untold for ever, to the loss
of your worship’s object and the credit they deserve; therefore it seems
to me it would be better (saving your worship’s better judgment) if we
were to go and serve some emperor or other great prince who may have some
war on hand, in whose service your worship may prove the worth of your
person, your great might, and greater understanding, on perceiving which
the lord in whose service we may be will perforce have to reward us, each
according to his merits; and there you will not be at a loss for some one
to set down your achievements in writing so as to preserve their memory
for ever. Of my own I say nothing, as they will not go beyond squirely
limits, though I make bold to say that, if it be the practice in chivalry
to write the achievements of squires, I think mine must not be left out.”

“Thou speakest not amiss, Sancho,” answered Don Quixote, “but before that
point is reached it is requisite to roam the world, as it were on
probation, seeking adventures, in order that, by achieving some, name and
fame may be acquired, such that when he betakes himself to the court of
some great monarch the knight may be already known by his deeds, and that
the boys, the instant they see him enter the gate of the city, may all
follow him and surround him, crying, ‘This is the Knight of the Sun’-or
the Serpent, or any other title under which he may have achieved great
deeds. ‘This,’ they will say, ‘is he who vanquished in single combat the
gigantic Brocabruno of mighty strength; he who delivered the great
Mameluke of Persia out of the long enchantment under which he had been for
almost nine hundred years.’ So from one to another they will go
proclaiming his achievements; and presently at the tumult of the boys and
the others the king of that kingdom will appear at the windows of his
royal palace, and as soon as he beholds the knight, recognising him by his
arms and the device on his shield, he will as a matter of course say,
‘What ho! Forth all ye, the knights of my court, to receive the flower of
chivalry who cometh hither!’ At which command all will issue forth, and he
himself, advancing half-way down the stairs, will embrace him closely, and
salute him, kissing him on the cheek, and will then lead him to the
queen’s chamber, where the knight will find her with the princess her
daughter, who will be one of the most beautiful and accomplished damsels
that could with the utmost pains be discovered anywhere in the known
world. Straightway it will come to pass that she will fix her eyes upon
the knight and he his upon her, and each will seem to the other something
more divine than human, and, without knowing how or why they will be taken
and entangled in the inextricable toils of love, and sorely distressed in
their hearts not to see any way of making their pains and sufferings known
by speech. Thence they will lead him, no doubt, to some richly adorned
chamber of the palace, where, having removed his armour, they will bring
him a rich mantle of scarlet wherewith to robe himself, and if he looked
noble in his armour he will look still more so in a doublet. When night
comes he will sup with the king, queen, and princess; and all the time he
will never take his eyes off her, stealing stealthy glances, unnoticed by
those present, and she will do the same, and with equal cautiousness,
being, as I have said, a damsel of great discretion. The tables being
removed, suddenly through the door of the hall there will enter a hideous
and diminutive dwarf followed by a fair dame, between two giants, who
comes with a certain adventure, the work of an ancient sage; and he who
shall achieve it shall be deemed the best knight in the world.

“The king will then command all those present to essay it, and none will
bring it to an end and conclusion save the stranger knight, to the great
enhancement of his fame, whereat the princess will be overjoyed and will
esteem herself happy and fortunate in having fixed and placed her thoughts
so high. And the best of it is that this king, or prince, or whatever he
is, is engaged in a very bitter war with another as powerful as himself,
and the stranger knight, after having been some days at his court,
requests leave from him to go and serve him in the said war. The king will
grant it very readily, and the knight will courteously kiss his hands for
the favour done to him; and that night he will take leave of his lady the
princess at the grating of the chamber where she sleeps, which looks upon
a garden, and at which he has already many times conversed with her, the
go-between and confidante in the matter being a damsel much trusted by the
princess. He will sigh, she will swoon, the damsel will fetch water, much
distressed because morning approaches, and for the honour of her lady he
would not that they were discovered; at last the princess will come to
herself and will present her white hands through the grating to the
knight, who will kiss them a thousand and a thousand times, bathing them
with his tears. It will be arranged between them how they are to inform
each other of their good or evil fortunes, and the princess will entreat
him to make his absence as short as possible, which he will promise to do
with many oaths; once more he kisses her hands, and takes his leave in
such grief that he is well-nigh ready to die. He betakes him thence to his
chamber, flings himself on his bed, cannot sleep for sorrow at parting,
rises early in the morning, goes to take leave of the king, queen, and
princess, and, as he takes his leave of the pair, it is told him that the
princess is indisposed and cannot receive a visit; the knight thinks it is
from grief at his departure, his heart is pierced, and he is hardly able
to keep from showing his pain. The confidante is present, observes all,
goes to tell her mistress, who listens with tears and says that one of her
greatest distresses is not knowing who this knight is, and whether he is
of kingly lineage or not; the damsel assures her that so much courtesy,
gentleness, and gallantry of bearing as her knight possesses could not
exist in any save one who was royal and illustrious; her anxiety is thus
relieved, and she strives to be of good cheer lest she should excite
suspicion in her parents, and at the end of two days she appears in
public. Meanwhile the knight has taken his departure; he fights in the
war, conquers the king’s enemy, wins many cities, triumphs in many
battles, returns to the court, sees his lady where he was wont to see her,
and it is agreed that he shall demand her in marriage of her parents as
the reward of his services; the king is unwilling to give her, as he knows
not who he is, but nevertheless, whether carried off or in whatever other
way it may be, the princess comes to be his bride, and her father comes to
regard it as very good fortune; for it so happens that this knight is
proved to be the son of a valiant king of some kingdom, I know not what,
for I fancy it is not likely to be on the map. The father dies, the
princess inherits, and in two words the knight becomes king. And here
comes in at once the bestowal of rewards upon his squire and all who have
aided him in rising to so exalted a rank. He marries his squire to a
damsel of the princess’s, who will be, no doubt, the one who was
confidante in their amour, and is daughter of a very great duke.”

“That’s what I want, and no mistake about it!” said Sancho. “That’s what
I’m waiting for; for all this, word for word, is in store for your worship
under the title of the Knight of the Rueful Countenance.”

“Thou needst not doubt it, Sancho,” replied Don Quixote, “for in the same
manner, and by the same steps as I have described here, knights-errant
rise and have risen to be kings and emperors; all we want now is to find
out what king, Christian or pagan, is at war and has a beautiful daughter;
but there will be time enough to think of that, for, as I have told thee,
fame must be won in other quarters before repairing to the court. There is
another thing, too, that is wanting; for supposing we find a king who is
at war and has a beautiful daughter, and that I have won incredible fame
throughout the universe, I know not how it can be made out that I am of
royal lineage, or even second cousin to an emperor; for the king will not
be willing to give me his daughter in marriage unless he is first
thoroughly satisfied on this point, however much my famous deeds may
deserve it; so that by this deficiency I fear I shall lose what my arm has
fairly earned. True it is I am a gentleman of known house, of estate and
property, and entitled to the five hundred sueldos mulct; and it may be
that the sage who shall write my history will so clear up my ancestry and
pedigree that I may find myself fifth or sixth in descent from a king; for
I would have thee know, Sancho, that there are two kinds of lineages in
the world; some there be tracing and deriving their descent from kings and
princes, whom time has reduced little by little until they end in a point
like a pyramid upside down; and others who spring from the common herd and
go on rising step by step until they come to be great lords; so that the
difference is that the one were what they no longer are, and the others
are what they formerly were not. And I may be of such that after
investigation my origin may prove great and famous, with which the king,
my father-in-law that is to be, ought to be satisfied; and should he not
be, the princess will so love me that even though she well knew me to be
the son of a water-carrier, she will take me for her lord and husband in
spite of her father; if not, then it comes to seizing her and carrying her
off where I please; for time or death will put an end to the wrath of her
parents.”

“It comes to this, too,” said Sancho, “what some naughty people say,
‘Never ask as a favour what thou canst take by force;’ though it would fit
better to say, ‘A clear escape is better than good men’s prayers.’ I say
so because if my lord the king, your worship’s father-in-law, will not
condescend to give you my lady the princess, there is nothing for it but,
as your worship says, to seize her and transport her. But the mischief is
that until peace is made and you come into the peaceful enjoyment of your
kingdom, the poor squire is famishing as far as rewards go, unless it be
that the confidante damsel that is to be his wife comes with the princess,
and that with her he tides over his bad luck until Heaven otherwise orders
things; for his master, I suppose, may as well give her to him at once for
a lawful wife.”

“Nobody can object to that,” said Don Quixote.

“Then since that may be,” said Sancho, “there is nothing for it but to
commend ourselves to God, and let fortune take what course it will.”

“God guide it according to my wishes and thy wants,” said Don Quixote,
“and mean be he who thinks himself mean.”

“In God’s name let him be so,” said Sancho: “I am an old Christian, and to
fit me for a count that’s enough.”

“And more than enough for thee,” said Don Quixote; “and even wert thou
not, it would make no difference, because I being the king can easily give
thee nobility without purchase or service rendered by thee, for when I
make thee a count, then thou art at once a gentleman; and they may say
what they will, but by my faith they will have to call thee ‘your
lordship,’ whether they like it or not.”

“Not a doubt of it; and I’ll know how to support the tittle,” said Sancho.

“Title thou shouldst say, not tittle,” said his master.

“So be it,” answered Sancho. “I say I will know how to behave, for once in
my life I was beadle of a brotherhood, and the beadle’s gown sat so well
on me that all said I looked as if I was to be steward of the same
brotherhood. What will it be, then, when I put a duke’s robe on my back,
or dress myself in gold and pearls like a count? I believe they’ll come a
hundred leagues to see me.”

“Thou wilt look well,” said Don Quixote, “but thou must shave thy beard
often, for thou hast it so thick and rough and unkempt, that if thou dost
not shave it every second day at least, they will see what thou art at the
distance of a musket shot.”

“What more will it be,” said Sancho, “than having a barber, and keeping
him at wages in the house? and even if it be necessary, I will make him go
behind me like a nobleman’s equerry.”

“Why, how dost thou know that noblemen have equerries behind them?” asked
Don Quixote.

“I will tell you,” answered Sancho. “Years ago I was for a month at the
capital and there I saw taking the air a very small gentleman who they
said was a very great man, and a man following him on horseback in every
turn he took, just as if he was his tail. I asked why this man did not
join the other man, instead of always going behind him; they answered me
that he was his equerry, and that it was the custom with nobles to have
such persons behind them, and ever since then I know it, for I have never
forgotten it.”

“Thou art right,” said Don Quixote, “and in the same way thou mayest carry
thy barber with thee, for customs did not come into use all together, nor
were they all invented at once, and thou mayest be the first count to have
a barber to follow him; and, indeed, shaving one’s beard is a greater
trust than saddling one’s horse.”

“Let the barber business be my look-out,” said Sancho; “and your worship’s
be it to strive to become a king, and 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.

CHAPTER XXII.

OF THE FREEDOM DON QUIXOTE CONFERRED ON SEVERAL UNFORTUNATES WHO AGAINST
THEIR WILL WERE BEING CARRIED WHERE THEY HAD NO WISH TO GO

Cid Hamete Benengeli, the Arab and Manchegan author, relates in this most
grave, high-sounding, minute, delightful, and original history that after
the discussion between the famous Don Quixote of La Mancha and his squire
Sancho Panza which is set down at the end of chapter twenty-one, Don
Quixote raised his eyes and saw coming along the road he was following
some dozen men on foot strung together by the neck, like beads, on a great
iron chain, and all with manacles on their hands. With them there came
also two men on horseback and two on foot; those on horseback with
wheel-lock muskets, those on foot with javelins and swords, and as soon as
Sancho saw them he said:

“That is a chain of galley slaves, on the way to the galleys by force of
the king’s orders.”

“How by force?” asked Don Quixote; “is it possible that the king uses
force against anyone?”

“I do not say that,” answered Sancho, “but that these are people condemned
for their crimes to serve by force in the king’s galleys.”

“In fact,” replied Don Quixote, “however it may be, these people are going
where they are taking them by force, and not of their own will.”

“Just so,” said Sancho.

“Then if so,” said Don Quixote, “here is a case for the exercise of my
office, to put down force and to succour and help the wretched.”

“Recollect, your worship,” said Sancho, “Justice, which is the king
himself, is not using force or doing wrong to such persons, but punishing
them for their crimes.”

The chain of galley slaves had by this time come up, and Don Quixote in
very courteous language asked those who were in custody of it to be good
enough to tell him the reason or reasons for which they were conducting
these people in this manner. One of the guards on horseback answered that
they were galley slaves belonging to his majesty, that they were going to
the galleys, and that was all that was to be said and all he had any
business to know.

“Nevertheless,” replied Don Quixote, “I should like to know from each of
them separately the reason of his misfortune;” to this he added more to
the same effect to induce them to tell him what he wanted so civilly that
the other mounted guard said to him:

“Though we have here the register and certificate of the sentence of every
one of these wretches, this is no time to take them out or read them; come
and ask themselves; they can tell if they choose, and they will, for these
fellows take a pleasure in doing and talking about rascalities.”

With this permission, which Don Quixote would have taken even had they not
granted it, he approached the chain and asked the first for what offences
he was now in such a sorry case.

He made answer that it was for being a lover.

“For that only?” replied Don Quixote; “why, if for being lovers they send
people to the galleys I might have been rowing in them long ago.”

“The love is not the sort your worship is thinking of,” said the galley
slave; “mine was that I loved a washerwoman’s basket of clean linen so
well, and held it so close in my embrace, that if the arm of the law had
not forced it from me, I should never have let it go of my own will to
this moment; I was caught in the act, there was no occasion for torture,
the case was settled, they treated me to a hundred lashes on the back, and
three years of gurapas besides, and that was the end of it.”

“What are gurapas?” asked Don Quixote.

“Gurapas are galleys,” answered the galley slave, who was a young man of
about four-and-twenty, and said he was a native of Piedrahita.

Don Quixote asked the same question of the second, who made no reply, so
downcast and melancholy was he; but the first answered for him, and said,
“He, sir, goes as a canary, I mean as a musician and a singer.”

“What!” said Don Quixote, “for being musicians and singers are people sent
to the galleys too?”

“Yes, sir,” answered the galley slave, “for there is nothing worse than
singing under suffering.”

“On the contrary, I have heard say,” said Don Quixote, “that he who sings
scares away his woes.”

“Here it is the reverse,” said the galley slave; “for he who sings once
weeps all his life.”

“I do not understand it,” said Don Quixote; but one of the guards said to
him, “Sir, to sing under suffering means with the non sancta fraternity to
confess under torture; they put this sinner to the torture and he
confessed his crime, which was being a cuatrero, that is a cattle-stealer,
and on his confession they sentenced him to six years in the galleys,
besides two hundred lashes that he has already had on the back; and he is
always dejected and downcast because the other thieves that were left
behind and that march here ill-treat, and snub, and jeer, and despise him
for confessing and not having spirit enough to say nay; for, say they,
‘nay’ has no more letters in it than ‘yea,’ and a culprit is well off when
life or death with him depends on his own tongue and not on that of
witnesses or evidence; and to my thinking they are not very far out.”

“And I think so too,” answered Don Quixote; then passing on to the third
he asked him what he had asked the others, and the man answered very
readily and unconcernedly, “I am going for five years to their ladyships
the gurapas for the want of ten ducats.”

“I will give twenty with pleasure to get you out of that trouble,” said
Don Quixote.

“That,” said the galley slave, “is like a man having money at sea when he
is dying of hunger and has no way of buying what he wants; I say so
because if at the right time I had had those twenty ducats that your
worship now offers me, I would have greased the notary’s pen and freshened
up the attorney’s wit with them, so that to-day I should be in the middle
of the plaza of the Zocodover at Toledo, and not on this road coupled like
a greyhound. But God is great; patience—there, that’s enough of it.”

Don Quixote passed on to the fourth, a man of venerable aspect with a
white beard falling below his breast, who on hearing himself asked the
reason of his being there began to weep without answering a word, but the
fifth acted as his tongue and said, “This worthy man is going to the
galleys for four years, after having gone the rounds in ceremony and on
horseback.”

“That means,” said Sancho Panza, “as I take it, to have been exposed to
shame in public.”

“Just so,” replied the galley slave, “and the offence for which they gave
him that punishment was having been an ear-broker, nay body-broker; I
mean, in short, that this gentleman goes as a pimp, and for having besides
a certain touch of the sorcerer about him.”

“If that touch had not been thrown in,” said Don Quixote, “he would not
deserve, for mere pimping, to row in the galleys, but rather to command
and be admiral of them; for the office of pimp is no ordinary one, being
the office of persons of discretion, one very necessary in a well-ordered
state, and only to be exercised by persons of good birth; nay, there ought
to be an inspector and overseer of them, as in other offices, and
recognised number, as with the brokers on change; in this way many of the
evils would be avoided which are caused by this office and calling being
in the hands of stupid and ignorant people, such as women more or less
silly, and pages and jesters of little standing and experience, who on the
most urgent occasions, and when ingenuity of contrivance is needed, let
the crumbs freeze on the way to their mouths, and know not which is their
right hand. I should like to go farther, and give reasons to show that it
is advisable to choose those who are to hold so necessary an office in the
state, but this is not the fit place for it; some day I will expound the
matter to some one able to see to and rectify it; all I say now is, that
the additional fact of his being a sorcerer has removed the sorrow it gave
me to see these white hairs and this venerable countenance in so painful a
position on account of his being a pimp; though I know well there are no
sorceries in the world that can move or compel the will as some simple
folk fancy, for our will is free, nor is there herb or charm that can
force it. All that certain silly women and quacks do is to turn men mad
with potions and poisons, pretending that they have power to cause love,
for, as I say, it is an impossibility to compel the will.”

“It is true,” said the good old man, “and indeed, sir, as far as the
charge of sorcery goes I was not guilty; as to that of being a pimp I
cannot deny it; but I never thought I was doing any harm by it, for my
only object was that all the world should enjoy itself and live in peace
and quiet, without quarrels or troubles; but my good intentions were
unavailing to save me from going where I never expect to come back from,
with this weight of years upon me and a urinary ailment that never gives
me a moment’s ease;” and again he fell to weeping as before, and such
compassion did Sancho feel for him that he took out a real of four from
his bosom and gave it to him in alms.

Don Quixote went on and asked another what his crime was, and the man
answered with no less but rather much more sprightliness than the last
one.

“I am here because I carried the joke too far with a couple of cousins of
mine, and with a couple of other cousins who were none of mine; in short,
I carried the joke so far with them all that it ended in such a
complicated increase of kindred that no accountant could make it clear: it
was all proved against me, I got no favour, I had no money, I was near
having my neck stretched, they sentenced me to the galleys for six years,
I accepted my fate, it is the punishment of my fault; I am a young man;
let life only last, and with that all will come right. If you, sir, have
anything wherewith to help the poor, God will repay it to you in heaven,
and we on earth will take care in our petitions to him to pray for the
life and health of your worship, that they may be as long and as good as
your amiable appearance deserves.”

This one was in the dress of a student, and one of the guards said he was
a great talker and a very elegant Latin scholar.

Behind all these there came a man of thirty, a very personable fellow,
except that when he looked, his eyes turned in a little one towards the
other. He was bound differently from the rest, for he had to his leg a
chain so long that it was wound all round his body, and two rings on his
neck, one attached to the chain, the other to what they call a
“keep-friend” or “friend’s foot,” from which hung two irons reaching to
his waist with two manacles fixed to them in which his hands were secured
by a big padlock, so that he could neither raise his hands to his mouth
nor lower his head to his hands. Don Quixote asked why this man carried so
many more chains than the others. The guard replied that it was because he
alone had committed more crimes than all the rest put together, and was so
daring and such a villain, that though they marched him in that fashion
they did not feel sure of him, but were in dread of his making his escape.

“What crimes can he have committed,” said Don Quixote, “if they have not
deserved a heavier punishment than being sent to the galleys?”

“He goes for ten years,” replied the guard, “which is the same thing as
civil death, and all that need be said is that this good fellow is the
famous Gines de Pasamonte, otherwise called Ginesillo de Parapilla.”

“Gently, señor commissary,” said the galley slave at this, “let us have no
fixing of names or surnames; my name is Gines, not Ginesillo, and my
family name is Pasamonte, not Parapilla as you say; let each one mind his
own business, and he will be doing enough.”

“Speak with less impertinence, master thief of extra measure,” replied the
commissary, “if you don’t want me to make you hold your tongue in spite of
your teeth.”

“It is easy to see,” returned the galley slave, “that man goes as God
pleases, but some one shall know some day whether I am called Ginesillo de
Parapilla or not.”

“Don’t they call you so, you liar?” said the guard.

“They do,” returned Gines, “but I will make them give over calling me so,
or I will be shaved, where, I only say behind my teeth. If you, sir, have
anything to give us, give it to us at once, and God speed you, for you are
becoming tiresome with all this inquisitiveness about the lives of others;
if you want to know about mine, let me tell you I am Gines de Pasamonte,
whose life is written by these fingers.”

“He says true,” said the commissary, “for he has himself written his story
as grand as you please, and has left the book in the prison in pawn for
two hundred reals.”

“And I mean to take it out of pawn,” said Gines, “though it were in for
two hundred ducats.”

“Is it so good?” said Don Quixote.

“So good is it,” replied Gines, “that a fig for ‘Lazarillo de Tormes,’ and
all of that kind that have been written, or shall be written compared with
it: all I will say about it is that it deals with facts, and facts so neat
and diverting that no lies could match them.”

“And how is the book entitled?” asked Don Quixote.

“The ‘Life of Gines de Pasamonte,’” replied the subject of it.

“And is it finished?” asked Don Quixote.

“How can it be finished,” said the other, “when my life is not yet
finished? All that is written is from my birth down to the point when they
sent me to the galleys this last time.”

“Then you have been there before?” said Don Quixote.

“In the service of God and the king I have been there for four years
before now, and I know by this time what the biscuit and courbash are
like,” replied Gines; “and it is no great grievance to me to go back to
them, for there I shall have time to finish my book; I have still many
things left to say, and in the galleys of Spain there is more than enough
leisure; though I do not want much for what I have to write, for I have it
by heart.”

“You seem a clever fellow,” said Don Quixote.

“And an unfortunate one,” replied Gines, “for misfortune always persecutes
good wit.”

“It persecutes rogues,” said the commissary.

“I told you already to go gently, master commissary,” said
Pasamonte; “their lordships yonder never gave you that staff to ill-treat
us wretches here, but to conduct and take us where his majesty orders you; if
not, by the life of—never mind—; it may be that some day the stains
made in the inn will come out in the scouring; let everyone hold his tongue and
behave well and speak better; and now let us march on, for we have had quite
enough of this entertainment.”

The commissary lifted his staff to strike Pasamonte in return for his
threats, but Don Quixote came between them, and begged him not to ill-use
him, as it was not too much to allow one who had his hands tied to have
his tongue a trifle free; and turning to the whole chain of them he said:

“From all you have told me, dear brethren, I make out clearly that though
they have punished you for your faults, the punishments you are about to endure
do not give you much pleasure, and that you go to them very much against the
grain and against your will, and that perhaps this one’s want of courage
under torture, that one’s want of money, the other’s want of
advocacy, and lastly the perverted judgment of the judge may have been the
cause of your ruin and of your failure to obtain the justice you had on your
side. All which presents itself now to my mind, urging, persuading, and even
compelling me to demonstrate in your case the purpose for which Heaven sent me
into the world and caused me to make profession of the order of chivalry to
which I belong, and the vow I took therein to give aid to those in need and
under the oppression of the strong. But as I know that it is a mark of prudence
not to do by foul means what may be done by fair, I will ask these gentlemen,
the guards and commissary, to be so good as to release you and let you go in
peace, as there will be no lack of others to serve the king under more
favourable circumstances; for it seems to me a hard case to make slaves of
those whom God and nature have made free. Moreover, sirs of the guard,”
added Don Quixote, “these poor fellows have done nothing to you; let each
answer for his own sins yonder; there is a God in Heaven who will not forget to
punish the wicked or reward the good; and it is not fitting that honest men
should be the instruments of punishment to others, they being therein no way
concerned. This request I make thus gently and quietly, that, if you comply
with it, I may have reason for thanking you; and, if you will not voluntarily,
this lance and sword together with the might of my arm shall compel you to
comply with it by force.”

“Nice nonsense!” said the commissary; “a fine piece of pleasantry he has
come out with at last! He wants us to let the king’s prisoners go, as if
we had any authority to release them, or he to order us to do so! Go your
way, sir, and good luck to you; put that basin straight that you’ve got on
your head, and don’t go looking for three feet on a cat.”

“‘Tis you that are the cat, rat, and rascal,” replied Don Quixote, and
acting on the word he fell upon him so suddenly that without giving him
time to defend himself he brought him to the ground sorely wounded with a
lance-thrust; and lucky it was for him that it was the one that had the
musket. The other guards stood thunderstruck and amazed at this unexpected
event, but recovering presence of mind, those on horseback seized their
swords, and those on foot their javelins, and attacked Don Quixote, who
was waiting for them with great calmness; and no doubt it would have gone
badly with him if the galley slaves, seeing the chance before them of
liberating themselves, had not effected it by contriving to break the
chain on which they were strung. Such was the confusion, that the guards,
now rushing at the galley slaves who were breaking loose, now to attack
Don Quixote who was waiting for them, did nothing at all that was of any
use. Sancho, on his part, gave a helping hand to release Gines de
Pasamonte, who was the first to leap forth upon the plain free and
unfettered, and who, attacking the prostrate commissary, took from him his
sword and the musket, with which, aiming at one and levelling at another,
he, without ever discharging it, drove every one of the guards off the
field, for they took to flight, as well to escape Pasamonte’s musket, as
the showers of stones the now released galley slaves were raining upon
them. Sancho was greatly grieved at the affair, because he anticipated
that those who had fled would report the matter to the Holy Brotherhood,
who at the summons of the alarm-bell would at once sally forth in quest of
the offenders; and he said so to his master, and entreated him to leave
the place at once, and go into hiding in the sierra that was close by.

“That is all very well,” said Don Quixote, “but I know what must be done
now;” and calling together all the galley slaves, who were now running
riot, and had stripped the commissary to the skin, he collected them round
him to hear what he had to say, and addressed them as follows: “To be
grateful for benefits received is the part of persons of good birth, and
one of the sins most offensive to God is ingratitude; I say so because,
sirs, ye have already seen by manifest proof the benefit ye have received
of me; in return for which I desire, and it is my good pleasure that,
laden with that chain which I have taken off your necks, ye at once set
out and proceed to the city of El Toboso, and there present yourselves
before the lady Dulcinea del Toboso, and say to her that her knight, he of
the Rueful Countenance, sends to commend himself to her; and that ye
recount to her in full detail all the particulars of this notable
adventure, up to the recovery of your longed-for liberty; and this done ye
may go where ye will, and good fortune attend you.”

Gines de Pasamonte made answer for all, saying, “That which you, sir, our
deliverer, demand of us, is of all impossibilities the most impossible to
comply with, because we cannot go together along the roads, but only
singly and separate, and each one his own way, endeavouring to hide
ourselves in the bowels of the earth to escape the Holy Brotherhood,
which, no doubt, will come out in search of us. What your worship may do,
and fairly do, is to change this service and tribute as regards the lady
Dulcinea del Toboso for a certain quantity of ave-marias and credos which
we will say for your worship’s intention, and this is a condition that can
be complied with by night as by day, running or resting, in peace or in
war; but to imagine that we are going now to return to the flesh-pots of
Egypt, I mean to take up our chain and set out for El Toboso, is to
imagine that it is now night, though it is not yet ten in the morning, and
to ask this of us is like asking pears of the elm tree.”

“Then by all that’s good,” said Don Quixote (now stirred to wrath), “Don
son of a bitch, Don Ginesillo de Paropillo, or whatever your name is, you
will have to go yourself alone, with your tail between your legs and the
whole chain on your back.”

Pasamonte, who was anything but meek (being by this time thoroughly
convinced that Don Quixote was not quite right in his head as he had
committed such a vagary as to set them free), finding himself abused in
this fashion, gave the wink to his companions, and falling back they began
to shower stones on Don Quixote at such a rate that he was quite unable to
protect himself with his buckler, and poor Rocinante no more heeded the
spur than if he had been made of brass. Sancho planted himself behind his
ass, and with him sheltered himself from the hailstorm that poured on both
of them. Don Quixote was unable to shield himself so well but that more
pebbles than I could count struck him full on the body with such force
that they brought him to the ground; and the instant he fell the student
pounced upon him, snatched the basin from his head, and with it struck
three or four blows on his shoulders, and as many more on the ground,
knocking it almost to pieces. They then stripped him of a jacket that he
wore over his armour, and they would have stripped off his stockings if
his greaves had not prevented them. From Sancho they took his coat,
leaving him in his shirt-sleeves; and dividing among themselves the
remaining spoils of the battle, they went each one his own way, more
solicitous about keeping clear of the Holy Brotherhood they dreaded, than
about burdening themselves with the chain, or going to present themselves
before the lady Dulcinea del Toboso. The ass and Rocinante, Sancho and Don
Quixote, were all that were left upon the spot; the ass with drooping
head, serious, shaking his ears from time to time as if he thought the
storm of stones that assailed them was not yet over; Rocinante stretched
beside his master, for he too had been brought to the ground by a stone;
Sancho stripped, and trembling with fear of the Holy Brotherhood; and Don
Quixote fuming to find himself so served by the very persons for whom he
had done so much.

CHAPTER XXIII.

OF WHAT BEFELL DON QUIXOTE IN THE SIERRA MORENA, WHICH WAS ONE OF THE
RAREST ADVENTURES RELATED IN THIS VERACIOUS HISTORY

Seeing himself served in this way, Don Quixote said to his squire, “I have
always heard it said, Sancho, that to do good to boors is to throw water
into the sea. If I had believed thy words, I should have avoided this
trouble; but it is done now, it is only to have patience and take warning
for the future.”

“Your worship will take warning as much as I am a Turk,” returned Sancho;
“but, as you say this mischief might have been avoided if you had believed
me, believe me now, and a still greater one will be avoided; for I tell
you chivalry is of no account with the Holy Brotherhood, and they don’t
care two maravedis for all the knights-errant in the world; and I can tell
you I fancy I hear their arrows whistling past my ears this minute.”

“Thou art a coward by nature, Sancho,” said Don Quixote, “but lest thou
shouldst say I am obstinate, and that I never do as thou dost advise, this
once I will take thy advice, and withdraw out of reach of that fury thou
so dreadest; but it must be on one condition, that never, in life or in
death, thou art to say to anyone that I retired or withdrew from this
danger out of fear, but only in compliance with thy entreaties; for if
thou sayest otherwise thou wilt lie therein, and from this time to that,
and from that to this, I give thee lie, and say thou liest and wilt lie
every time thou thinkest or sayest it; and answer me not again; for at the
mere thought that I am withdrawing or retiring from any danger, above all
from this, which does seem to carry some little shadow of fear with it, I
am ready to take my stand here and await alone, not only that Holy
Brotherhood you talk of and dread, but the brothers of the twelve tribes
of Israel, and the Seven Maccabees, and Castor and Pollux, and all the
brothers and brotherhoods in the world.”

“Señor,” replied Sancho, “to retire is not to flee, and there is no wisdom
in waiting when danger outweighs hope, and it is the part of wise men to
preserve themselves to-day for to-morrow, and not risk all in one day; and
let me tell you, though I am a clown and a boor, I have got some notion of
what they call safe conduct; so repent not of having taken my advice, but
mount Rocinante if you can, and if not I will help you; and follow me, for
my mother-wit tells me we have more need of legs than hands just now.”

Don Quixote mounted without replying, and, Sancho leading the way on his
ass, they entered the side of the Sierra Morena, which was close by, as it
was Sancho’s design to cross it entirely and come out again at El Viso or
Almodovar del Campo, and hide for some days among its crags so as to
escape the search of the Brotherhood should they come to look for them. He
was encouraged in this by perceiving that the stock of provisions carried
by the ass had come safe out of the fray with the galley slaves, a
circumstance that he regarded as a miracle, seeing how they pillaged and
ransacked.

That night they reached the very heart of the Sierra Morena, where it
seemed prudent to Sancho to pass the night and even some days, at least as
many as the stores he carried might last, and so they encamped between two
rocks and among some cork trees; but fatal destiny, which, according to
the opinion of those who have not the light of the true faith, directs,
arranges, and settles everything in its own way, so ordered it that Gines
de Pasamonte, the famous knave and thief who by the virtue and madness of
Don Quixote had been released from the chain, driven by fear of the Holy
Brotherhood, which he had good reason to dread, resolved to take hiding in
the mountains; and his fate and fear led him to the same spot to which Don
Quixote and Sancho Panza had been led by theirs, just in time to recognise
them and leave them to fall asleep: and as the wicked are always
ungrateful, and necessity leads to evildoing, and immediate advantage
overcomes all considerations of the future, Gines, who was neither
grateful nor well-principled, made up his mind to steal Sancho Panza’s
ass, not troubling himself about Rocinante, as being a prize that was no
good either to pledge or sell. While Sancho slept he stole his ass, and
before day dawned he was far out of reach.

Aurora made her appearance bringing gladness to the earth but sadness to
Sancho Panza, for he found that his Dapple was missing, and seeing himself
bereft of him he began the saddest and most doleful lament in the world,
so loud that Don Quixote awoke at his exclamations and heard him saying,
“O son of my bowels, born in my very house, my children’s plaything, my
wife’s joy, the envy of my neighbours, relief of my burdens, and lastly,
half supporter of myself, for with the six-and-twenty maravedis thou didst
earn me daily I met half my charges.”

Don Quixote, when he heard the lament and learned the cause, consoled
Sancho with the best arguments he could, entreating him to be patient, and
promising to give him a letter of exchange ordering three out of five
ass-colts that he had at home to be given to him. Sancho took comfort at
this, dried his tears, suppressed his sobs, and returned thanks for the
kindness shown him by Don Quixote. He on his part was rejoiced to the
heart on entering the mountains, as they seemed to him to be just the
place for the adventures he was in quest of. They brought back to his
memory the marvellous adventures that had befallen knights-errant in like
solitudes and wilds, and he went along reflecting on these things, so
absorbed and carried away by them that he had no thought for anything
else.

Nor had Sancho any other care (now that he fancied he was travelling in a
safe quarter) than to satisfy his appetite with such remains as were left
of the clerical spoils, and so he marched behind his master laden with
what Dapple used to carry, emptying the sack and packing his paunch, and
so long as he could go that way, he would not have given a farthing to
meet with another adventure.

While so engaged he raised his eyes and saw that his master had halted,
and was trying with the point of his pike to lift some bulky object that
lay upon the ground, on which he hastened to join him and help him if it
were needful, and reached him just as with the point of the pike he was
raising a saddle-pad with a valise attached to it, half or rather wholly
rotten and torn; but so heavy were they that Sancho had to help to take
them up, and his master directed him to see what the valise contained.
Sancho did so with great alacrity, and though the valise was secured by a
chain and padlock, from its torn and rotten condition he was able to see
its contents, which were four shirts of fine holland, and other articles
of linen no less curious than clean; and in a handkerchief he found a good
lot of gold crowns, and as soon as he saw them he exclaimed:

“Blessed be all Heaven for sending us an adventure that is good for
something!”

Searching further he found a little memorandum book richly bound; this Don
Quixote asked of him, telling him to take the money and keep it for
himself. Sancho kissed his hands for the favour, and cleared the valise of
its linen, which he stowed away in the provision sack. Considering the
whole matter, Don Quixote observed:

“It seems to me, Sancho—and it is impossible it can be otherwise—that
some strayed traveller must have crossed this sierra and been attacked and
slain by footpads, who brought him to this remote spot to bury him.”

“That cannot be,” answered Sancho, “because if they had been robbers they
would not have left this money.”

“Thou art right,” said Don Quixote, “and I cannot guess or explain what
this may mean; but stay; let us see if in this memorandum book there is
anything written by which we may be able to trace out or discover what we
want to know.”

He opened it, and the first thing he found in it, written roughly but in a
very good hand, was a sonnet, and reading it aloud that Sancho might hear
it, he found that it ran as follows:

“There is nothing to be learned from that rhyme,” said Sancho, “unless by
that clue there’s in it, one may draw out the ball of the whole matter.”

“What clue is there?” said Don Quixote.

“I thought your worship spoke of a clue in it,” said Sancho.

“I only said Chloe,” replied Don Quixote; “and that no doubt, is the name
of the lady of whom the author of the sonnet complains; and, faith, he
must be a tolerable poet, or I know little of the craft.”

“Then your worship understands rhyming too?”

“And better than thou thinkest,” replied Don Quixote, “as thou shalt see
when thou carriest a letter written in verse from beginning to end to my
lady Dulcinea del Toboso, for I would have thee know, Sancho, that all or
most of the knights-errant in days of yore were great troubadours and
great musicians, for both of these accomplishments, or more properly
speaking gifts, are the peculiar property of lovers-errant: true it is
that the verses of the knights of old have more spirit than neatness in
them.”

“Read more, your worship,” said Sancho, “and you will find something that
will enlighten us.”

Don Quixote turned the page and said, “This is prose and seems to be a
letter.”

“A correspondence letter, señor?”

“From the beginning it seems to be a love letter,” replied Don Quixote.

“Then let your worship read it aloud,” said Sancho, “for I am very fond of
love matters.”

“With all my heart,” said Don Quixote, and reading it aloud as Sancho had
requested him, he found it ran thus:

Thy false promise and my sure misfortune carry me to a place whence the
news of my death will reach thy ears before the words of my complaint.
Ungrateful one, thou hast rejected me for one more wealthy, but not more
worthy; but if virtue were esteemed wealth I should neither envy the
fortunes of others nor weep for misfortunes of my own. What thy beauty
raised up thy deeds have laid low; by it I believed thee to be an angel,
by them I know thou art a woman. Peace be with thee who hast sent war to
me, and Heaven grant that the deceit of thy husband be ever hidden from
thee, so that thou repent not of what thou hast done, and I reap not a
revenge I would not have.

When he had finished the letter, Don Quixote said, “There is less to be
gathered from this than from the verses, except that he who wrote it is
some rejected lover;” and turning over nearly all the pages of the book he
found more verses and letters, some of which he could read, while others
he could not; but they were all made up of complaints, laments,
misgivings, desires and aversions, favours and rejections, some rapturous,
some doleful. While Don Quixote examined the book, Sancho examined the
valise, not leaving a corner in the whole of it or in the pad that he did
not search, peer into, and explore, or seam that he did not rip, or tuft
of wool that he did not pick to pieces, lest anything should escape for
want of care and pains; so keen was the covetousness excited in him by the
discovery of the crowns, which amounted to near a hundred; and though he
found no more booty, he held the blanket flights, balsam vomits, stake
benedictions, carriers’ fisticuffs, missing alforjas, stolen coat, and all
the hunger, thirst, and weariness he had endured in the service of his
good master, cheap at the price; as he considered himself more than fully
indemnified for all by the payment he received in the gift of the
treasure-trove.

The Knight of the Rueful Countenance was still very anxious to find out
who the owner of the valise could be, conjecturing from the sonnet and
letter, from the money in gold, and from the fineness of the shirts, that
he must be some lover of distinction whom the scorn and cruelty of his
lady had driven to some desperate course; but as in that uninhabited and
rugged spot there was no one to be seen of whom he could inquire, he saw
nothing else for it but to push on, taking whatever road Rocinante chose—which
was where he could make his way—firmly persuaded that among these
wilds he could not fail to meet some rare adventure. As he went along,
then, occupied with these thoughts, he perceived on the summit of a height
that rose before their eyes a man who went springing from rock to rock and
from tussock to tussock with marvellous agility. As well as he could make
out he was unclad, with a thick black beard, long tangled hair, and bare
legs and feet, his thighs were covered by breeches apparently of tawny
velvet but so ragged that they showed his skin in several places.

He was bareheaded, and notwithstanding the swiftness with which he passed
as has been described, the Knight of the Rueful Countenance observed and
noted all these trifles, and though he made the attempt, he was unable to
follow him, for it was not granted to the feebleness of Rocinante to make
way over such rough ground, he being, moreover, slow-paced and sluggish by
nature. Don Quixote at once came to the conclusion that this was the owner
of the saddle-pad and of the valise, and made up his mind to go in search
of him, even though he should have to wander a year in those mountains
before he found him, and so he directed Sancho to take a short cut over
one side of the mountain, while he himself went by the other, and perhaps
by this means they might light upon this man who had passed so quickly out
of their sight.

“I could not do that,” said Sancho, “for when I separate from your worship
fear at once lays hold of me, and assails me with all sorts of panics and
fancies; and let what I now say be a notice that from this time forth I am
not going to stir a finger’s width from your presence.”

“It shall be so,” said he of the Rueful Countenance, “and I am very glad
that thou art willing to rely on my courage, which will never fail thee,
even though the soul in thy body fail thee; so come on now behind me
slowly as well as thou canst, and make lanterns of thine eyes; let us make
the circuit of this ridge; perhaps we shall light upon this man that we
saw, who no doubt is no other than the owner of what we found.”

To which Sancho made answer, “Far better would it be not to look for him,
for, if we find him, and he happens to be the owner of the money, it is
plain I must restore it; it would be better, therefore, that without
taking this needless trouble, I should keep possession of it until in some
other less meddlesome and officious way the real owner may be discovered;
and perhaps that will be when I shall have spent it, and then the king
will hold me harmless.”

“Thou art wrong there, Sancho,” said Don Quixote, “for now that we have a
suspicion who the owner is, and have him almost before us, we are bound to
seek him and make restitution; and if we do not see him, the strong
suspicion we have as to his being the owner makes us as guilty as if he
were so; and so, friend Sancho, let not our search for him give thee any
uneasiness, for if we find him it will relieve mine.”

And so saying he gave Rocinante the spur, and Sancho followed him on foot
and loaded, and after having partly made the circuit of the mountain they
found lying in a ravine, dead and half devoured by dogs and pecked by
jackdaws, a mule saddled and bridled, all which still further strengthened
their suspicion that he who had fled was the owner of the mule and the
saddle-pad.

As they stood looking at it they heard a whistle like that of a shepherd
watching his flock, and suddenly on their left there appeared a great
number of goats and behind them on the summit of the mountain the goatherd
in charge of them, a man advanced in years. Don Quixote called aloud to
him and begged him to come down to where they stood. He shouted in return,
asking what had brought them to that spot, seldom or never trodden except
by the feet of goats, or of the wolves and other wild beasts that roamed
around. Sancho in return bade him come down, and they would explain all to
him.

The goatherd descended, and reaching the place where Don Quixote stood, he
said, “I will wager you are looking at that hack mule that lies dead in
the hollow there, and, faith, it has been lying there now these six
months; tell me, have you come upon its master about here?”

“We have come upon nobody,” answered Don Quixote, “nor on anything except
a saddle-pad and a little valise that we found not far from this.”

“I found it too,” said the goatherd, “but I would not lift it nor go near
it for fear of some ill-luck or being charged with theft, for the devil is
crafty, and things rise up under one’s feet to make one fall without
knowing why or wherefore.”

“That’s exactly what I say,” said Sancho; “I found it too, and I would not
go within a stone’s throw of it; there I left it, and there it lies just
as it was, for I don’t want a dog with a bell.”

“Tell me, good man,” said Don Quixote, “do you know who is the owner of
this property?”

“All I can tell you,” said the goatherd, “is that about six months ago,
more or less, there arrived at a shepherd’s hut three leagues, perhaps,
away from this, a youth of well-bred appearance and manners, mounted on
that same mule which lies dead here, and with the same saddle-pad and
valise which you say you found and did not touch. He asked us what part of
this sierra was the most rugged and retired; we told him that it was where
we now are; and so in truth it is, for if you push on half a league
farther, perhaps you will not be able to find your way out; and I am
wondering how you have managed to come here, for there is no road or path
that leads to this spot. I say, then, that on hearing our answer the youth
turned about and made for the place we pointed out to him, leaving us all
charmed with his good looks, and wondering at his question and the haste
with which we saw him depart in the direction of the sierra; and after
that we saw him no more, until some days afterwards he crossed the path of
one of our shepherds, and without saying a word to him, came up to him and
gave him several cuffs and kicks, and then turned to the ass with our
provisions and took all the bread and cheese it carried, and having done
this made off back again into the sierra with extraordinary swiftness.
When some of us goatherds learned this we went in search of him for about
two days through the most remote portion of this sierra, at the end of
which we found him lodged in the hollow of a large thick cork tree. He
came out to meet us with great gentleness, with his dress now torn and his
face so disfigured and burned by the sun, that we hardly recognised him
but that his clothes, though torn, convinced us, from the recollection we
had of them, that he was the person we were looking for. He saluted us
courteously, and in a few well-spoken words he told us not to wonder at
seeing him going about in this guise, as it was binding upon him in order
that he might work out a penance which for his many sins had been imposed
upon him. We asked him to tell us who he was, but we were never able to
find out from him: we begged of him too, when he was in want of food,
which he could not do without, to tell us where we should find him, as we
would bring it to him with all good-will and readiness; or if this were
not to his taste, at least to come and ask it of us and not take it by
force from the shepherds. He thanked us for the offer, begged pardon for
the late assault, and promised for the future to ask it in God’s name
without offering violence to anybody. As for fixed abode, he said he had
no other than that which chance offered wherever night might overtake him;
and his words ended in an outburst of weeping so bitter that we who
listened to him must have been very stones had we not joined him in it,
comparing what we saw of him the first time with what we saw now; for, as
I said, he was a graceful and gracious youth, and in his courteous and
polished language showed himself to be of good birth and courtly breeding,
and rustics as we were that listened to him, even to our rusticity his
gentle bearing sufficed to make it plain.

“But in the midst of his conversation he stopped and became silent,
keeping his eyes fixed upon the ground for some time, during which we
stood still waiting anxiously to see what would come of this abstraction;
and with no little pity, for from his behaviour, now staring at the ground
with fixed gaze and eyes wide open without moving an eyelid, again closing
them, compressing his lips and raising his eyebrows, we could perceive
plainly that a fit of madness of some kind had come upon him; and before
long he showed that what we imagined was the truth, for he arose in a fury
from the ground where he had thrown himself, and attacked the first he
found near him with such rage and fierceness that if we had not dragged
him off him, he would have beaten or bitten him to death, all the while
exclaiming, ‘Oh faithless Fernando, here, here shalt thou pay the penalty
of the wrong thou hast done me; these hands shall tear out that heart of
thine, abode and dwelling of all iniquity, but of deceit and fraud above
all; and to these he added other words all in effect upbraiding this
Fernando and charging him with treachery and faithlessness.

“We forced him to release his hold with no little difficulty, and without
another word he left us, and rushing off plunged in among these brakes and
brambles, so as to make it impossible for us to follow him; from this we
suppose that madness comes upon him from time to time, and that some one
called Fernando must have done him a wrong of a grievous nature such as
the condition to which it had brought him seemed to show. All this has
been since then confirmed on those occasions, and they have been many, on
which he has crossed our path, at one time to beg the shepherds to give
him some of the food they carry, at another to take it from them by force;
for when there is a fit of madness upon him, even though the shepherds
offer it freely, he will not accept it but snatches it from them by dint
of blows; but when he is in his senses he begs it for the love of God,
courteously and civilly, and receives it with many thanks and not a few
tears. And to tell you the truth, sirs,” continued the goatherd, “it was
yesterday that we resolved, I and four of the lads, two of them our
servants, and the other two friends of mine, to go in search of him until
we find him, and when we do to take him, whether by force or of his own
consent, to the town of Almodovar, which is eight leagues from this, and
there strive to cure him (if indeed his malady admits of a cure), or learn
when he is in his senses who he is, and if he has relatives to whom we may
give notice of his misfortune. This, sirs, is all I can say in answer to
what you have asked me; and be sure that the owner of the articles you
found is he whom you saw pass by with such nimbleness and so naked.”