THE night was somewhat dark, though the moon was in the heavens, but not in a part where she could be seen; for sometimes Señora Diana takes a trip to the antipodes, and leaves the mountains black, and the valleys in the dark. Don Quixote gave way to nature, taking his first sleep, without giving place to a second; quite the reverse of Sancho, who never had a second, one sleep lasting him from night to morning; an evident sign of his good constitution, and few cares. Those of Don Quixote kept him so awake, that he awakened Sancho, and said:
‘I am amazed, Sancho, at the insensibility of your temper; you seem to me to be made of marble, or brass, not susceptible of any emotion or sentiment: I wake, while you sleep; I weep, when you are singing; I am fainting with hunger, while you are lazy and unwieldy with pure cramming: it is the part of good servants to share in their masters’ pains, and to be touched with what affects them, were it but for the sake of decency. Behold the serenity of the night, and the solitude we are in, inviting us, as it were, to intermingle some watching with our sleep. Get up, by your life, and go a little apart from hence, and, with a willing mind and a good courage, give yourself three or four hundred lashes, upon account, for the disenchantment of Dulcinea: and this I ask as a favour; for I will not come to wrestling with you again, as I did before because I know the weight of your arms. After you have laid them on, we will pass the remainder of the night in singing, I absence and you your constancy beginning from this moment our pastoral employment, which we are to follow in our village’
‘Sir,’ answered Sancho, ‘I am of no religious order, to rise out of the midst of my sleep, and discipline myself; neither do I think one can pass from the pain of whipping to music. Suffer me to sleep, and urge not this whipping myself; lest you force me to swear never to touch a hair of my coat, much less of my flesh.’
‘O hardened soul!’ cried Don Quixote; ‘O remorseless squire! O bread ill employed, and favours ill considered, those I have already bestowed upon you, and those I still intend to bestow upon you! To me you owe, that you have been a governor; and to me you owe, that you are in a fair way of being an earl, or of having some title equivalent, and the accomplishment of these things will be delayed no longer than the expiration of this year; for “post tenehras spero lucem”.’*
‘I know not what that means,’ replied Sancho: ‘I only know, that while I am asleep, I have neither fear nor hope, neither trouble nor glory; and, blessings on him who invented sleep, the mantle that covers all human thoughts, the food that appeases hunger, the drink that quenches thirst, the fire that warms cold, the cold that moderates heat, and, lastly, the general coin that purchases all things, the balance and weight that equals the shepherd with the king, and the simple with the wise. One only evil, as I have heard, sleep has in it, namely, that it resembles death; for between a man asleep and a man dead, there is but little difference.’
‘I never heard you, Sancho,’ quoth Don Quixote, ‘talk so elegantly as now; whence I come to know the truth of the proverb you often apply, Not with whom thou art bred, but with whom thou art fed.’
‘Dear master of mine,’ replied Sancho, ‘it is not I that am stringing of proverbs now; for they fall from your worship’s mouth also by couples, faster than from me; only between yours and mine there is this difference, that your worship’s come at the proper season, and mine out of season; but, in short, they are all proverbs.’
They were thus employed, when they heard a kind of [dull] noise, and harsh sound, spreading itself through all those valleys. Don Quixote started up, and laid his hand to his sword; Sancho squatted down under Dapple, and clapped the bundle of armour on one side of him, and the ass’s pannel on the other, trembling no less with fear than Don Quixote with surprise. The noise increased by degrees, and came nearer to the two tremblers, one at least so, for the other’s courage is already sufficiently known.
Now the business was, that certain fellows were driving above six hundred hogs to sell at a fair, and were upon the road with them at that hour; and so great was the din they made with gruntling and blowing, that they deafened the ears of Don Quixote and Sancho, who could not presently guess the occasion of it. The farspreading and gruntling herd came crowding on, and, without any respect to the authority of Don Quixote, or to that of Sancho, trampled over them both, demolishing Sancho’s entrenchment, and overthrowing, not only Don Quixote, but Rosinante to boot. The crowding the gruntling, the hurrying on of those unclean animals put into confusion, and overturned, the pack-saddle, the armour, Dapple, Rosinante, Sancho, and Don Quixote.
Sancho got up as well as he could, and desired his master to lend him his sword, saying, he would kill half a dozen of those unmannerly gentlemen swine, for such by this time he knew them to be. Said Don Quixote to him:
‘Let them alone, friend; for this affront is a punishment for my sin; and it is a just judgement of heaven, that wild dogs should devour, wasps sting, and hogs trample upon, a vanquished knight-errant.’
‘It is also, I suppose, a judgement of heaven,’ answered Sancho, ‘that the squires of vanquished knights-errant should be stung by flies, eaten up by lice, and besieged by hunger. If we squires were the sons of the knights we serve, or very near of kin to them, it would be no wonder if the punishment of their faults should overtake us to the fourth generation: but what have the Panzas to do with the Quixotes? Well, let us compose ourselves again, and sleep out the little remainder of the night, and God will send us a new day, and we shall have better luck.’
‘Sleep you, Sancho,’ answered Don Quixote; ‘for you were born to sleep, whilst I, who were born to watch, in the space between this and day, give the reins to my thoughts, and cool their heat in a little madrigal, which, unknown to you, I composed to-night in my mind.’
‘Methinks,’ quoth Sancho, ‘the thoughts which give way to the making of couplets, cannot be many. Couplet it as much as your worship pleases, and I will sleep as much as I can.’
Then taking as much ground as he wanted, he bundled himself up, and fell into a sound sleep, neither suretyship, nor debts, nor any troubles disturbing him. Don Quixote, leaning against a beech or cork-tree (for Cid Hamet Ben Engeli does not distinguish what tree it was) to the music of his own sighs, sung as follows:—
‘O Love, when, sick of heartfelt grief,
I sigh, and drag thy cruel chain,
To Death I fly, the sure relief
Of those who groan in ling’ring pain.
‘But coming to the fatal gates,
The port in this my sea of woe,
The joy I feel new life creates,
And bids my spirits brisker flow.
‘Thus dying every hour I live,
And living, I resign my breath:
Strange power of love, that thus can give
A dying life and living death!’*
He accompanied each stanza with a multitude of sighs, and not a few tears, like one whose heart was pierced through by the grief of being vanquished, and by the absence of Dulcinea.
Now the day appeared, and the sun began to dart his beams in Sancho’s eyes. He awaked, roused, and shook himself, and stretched his lazy limbs, and beheld what havoc the hogs had made in his cupboard; and cursed the drove, and somebody else besides. Finally, they both set forward on their journey; and towards the decline of the afternoon, they discovered about half a score men on horseback, and four or five on foot, advancing towards them. Don Quixote’s heart leaped with surprise and Sancho’s with fear; for the men that were coming up carried spears and targets, and advanced in a very warlike array. Don Quixote turned to Sancho, and said:
‘Sancho, if I could but make use of my arms, and my promise had not tied up my hands, this machine that is coming towards us I would make no more of than I would of so many tarts and cheesecakes. But it may be something else than what we fear.’
By this time the horsemen were come up: and lifting up their lances, without speaking a word, they surrounded Don Quixote, and clapped their spears to his back and breast, threatening to kill him. One of those on foot, putting his finger to his mouth, to signify that he should be silent, laid hold on Rosinante’s bridle, and drew him out of the road; and the others on foot, driving Sancho and Dapple before them, all keeping a marvellous silence, following the steps of him who led Don Quixote, who had a mind three or four times to ask, whither they were carrying him or what they would have. But scarcely did he begin to move his lips, when they were ready to close them with the points of their spears. And the like befell Sancho, for no sooner did he show an inclination to talk, than one of those on foot pricked him with a goad, and did as much to Dapple, as if he had a mind to talk too. It grew night; they mended their pace; the fear of the two prisoners increased, especially when they heard the fellows ever and anon say to them:
‘On, on, ye Troglodytes!’ ‘Peace, ye barbarous slaves!’ ‘Pay, ye Anthropophagi!’ ‘Complain not, ye Scythians!’ ‘Open not your eyes, ye murdering Polyphemuses, ye butcherly lions!’ and other the like names, with which they tormented the ears of the miserable pair, master and man. Sancho went along, saying to himself:
‘We Ortolans? we Barber’s slaves? we Andrew popinjays? we Citadels? we Polly famouses? I do not like these names at all; this is a bad wind for winnowing our corn; the whole mischief comes upon us together, like kicks to a cur; and would to God this disventurous adventure, that threatens us, may end in no worse!’
Don Quixote marched along, quite confounded, and not being able to conjecture, by all the conclusions he could make, why they called them by those reproachful names from which he could only gather, that no good was to be expected, and much harm to be feared. In this condition, about an hour after nightfall, they arrived at a castle, which Don Quixote presently knew to be the duke’s, where he had so lately been.
‘God be my aid!’ said he, as soon as he knew the place, ‘what will this end in? In this house all is courtesy and civil usage: but to the vanquished good is converted into bad, and bad into worse.’
They entered into the principal court of the castle, and saw it decorated and set out in such a manner, that their admiration increased and their fear doubled, as will be seen in the following chapter.