Preparations for the Third Sally

(CHAPTERS I-VII)

CHAPTER I. Of the conversation which the curate and the barber had with Don Quixote concerning his malady.

IN THE second part of this history, dealing with Don Quixote’s third sally, Cid Hamete Benengeli tells us that the curate and the barber went nearly a month without seeing their friend, in order not to remind him of what had happened. But they did not for this reason leave off visiting the niece and housekeeper, whom they urged to treat the knight with the greatest of care by seeing to it that he had comforting things to eat and such as would be good for his heart and for his brain as well, the latter being to all appearances the seat of his trouble and the cause of all his misfortunes. The women replied that this was what they were doing, and would continue to do, with a right good will and most attentively; for they had noticed that the master of the house at moments seemed to be in full possession of his senses.

The curate and the barber were well pleased at hearing this, and concluded that they had done the wise thing in having Don Quixote borne away in an ox-cart, as has been related in the last chapter of the First Part of this great and painstaking chronicle. They accordingly determined to visit him and see for themselves what improvement he had made, although they believed it to be all but impossible that he could be any better. They agreed that they would not bring up any subject that had to do with knight-errantry, as they did not wish to run the risk of reopening a wound that was still so sore.

When the pair came to pay their visit, they found their host seated upon the bed, clad in a green baize waistcoat and a red Toledo cap, and looking as withered and dried up as an Egyptian mummy. He received them very well and, when they made inquiries regarding his health, discussed with them this and other matters of a personal nature most sensibly and in words that were very well chosen. In the course of their conversation they came to touch upon what is known as state-craft and forms of government, correcting this abuse, condemning that one, reforming one custom and banishing another, with each of the three setting himself up as a new lawgiver, a modern Lycurgus or newly fledged Solon. In this manner they proceeded to remodel the State, as if they had placed it in a forge and had drawn out something quite different from what they had put in. And all the while Don Quixote displayed such good sound sense in connection with whatever topic was broached as to lead the two examiners to feel that he must undoubtedly be fully recovered and in his right mind.

The niece and housekeeper were present at this conversation and could not thank God enough when they saw how clear-headed their master apparently was. It was then that the curate changed his mind about not bringing up anything that had to do with chivalry; for he wished to make the test complete and assure himself as to whether the knight’s recovery was real or not. And so, speaking of one thing and another, he came to relate various items of news that had just been received from the capital, including a report to the effect that it was looked upon as a certainty that the Turk was bearing down with a powerful fleet, although nothing was known of his plans as yet, nor where so great a storm as this would break, but as a result all Christendom was stirred by that feeling of dread that almost every year summons us to take up arms, and his Majesty had seen to fortifying the coasts of Naples and Sicily and the island of Malta.

“His Majesty,” remarked Don Quixote, “has acted like a most prudent warrior in providing for the safety of his dominions while there is yet time, in order that the enemy may not take him unawares; but if he were to follow my advice, I should counsel him to adopt a measure which I am sure is far from his thoughts at the present moment.”

“Poor Don Quixote,” said the curate to himself when he heard this, “may God help you; for it looks to me as if you have fallen from the high cliff of madness into the abyss of simple-mindedness.”

The same thought had occurred to the barber, who now asked the knight what this measure was that in his opinion should be adopted, adding that perhaps it was one that would have to be added to the long list of impertinent suggestions of the kind commonly offered to princes.

“My suggestion, Master Shaver,” replied Don Quixote, “is not an impertinent one but is very much to the point.”

“That is not what I meant,” said the barber, “but experience has shown that all or most of the expedients that are proposed to his Majesty are either impossible or nonsensical, or else would be detrimental to king and kingdom.”

“But mine,” Don Quixote insisted, “is not impossible nor is it nonsensical, but rather is the easiest, the most reasonable, the readiest, and most expeditious scheme that anyone could devise.”

“It takes your Grace a long time to tell it,” observed the curate.

“I do not care to tell it to you here and now,” said the knight, “and, the first thing tomorrow morning, have it reach the ears of my lords, the councilors, so that some other person may carry off the reward and win the thanks that are rightly due me.”

“For my part,” the barber assured him, “I give you my word, here and before God, that I will say nothing of what your Grace may tell me, to king, rook, or earthly man.¹ That, by the way, is an oath I picked up from the ballad about the curate² who, in the prelude, tells the king of the thief who had robbed him of a hundred doblas³ and his fast-pacing mule.”

“I know nothing about such stories,” said Don Quixote, “but I do know that the oath is a good one by reason of the faith that I have in this worthy man, our master barber.”

“And even if he were not what you take him to be,” the curate went on, “I would go bond and put in an appearance for him, to the effect that in this case he will be as silent as a mute, under pain of any sentence that might be pronounced upon him.”

“And who will go your Grace’s bond?” Don Quixote asked the priest.

“My profession,” was the curate’s reply, “which consists in keeping secrets.”

“Then, damn it, sir!” exclaimed the knight, “what more need his Majesty do than command by public proclamation that all the knights-errant at present wandering over Spain shall assemble in the capital on a given day? Even if no more than half a dozen came, there well might be one among them who alone would be able to overthrow the Turk’s mighty power. Pay attention, your Worships, and listen closely to what I am about to say. Is it by any chance an unheard-of thing for a single knight-errant to rout an army of two hundred thousand men, as if they all had but one throat or were made of sugar paste? Tell me, how many stories do we have that are filled with such marvels? If only, alas for me (I do not care to speak for any other), the famous Don Belianís were alive today, or any of the countless other descendants of Amadis of Gaul! Let one of these but confront the Turk, and my word, they would have the best of him. But God will look after his people and will provide someone who, if not so brave as the knights of old, will not be inferior to them in the matter of courage. God knows what I mean. I need say no more.”

“Oh, dear,” wailed the niece at this point, “may they slay me if my master doesn’t want to go back to being a knight-errant!”

“A knight-errant I shall live and die,” said Don Quixote, “and let the Turk come or go as he will, with all the strength he can muster. Again I say to you, God understands.”

The barber now spoke up. “I beg your Worships to grant me permission to relate to you briefly something that happened in Seville. It is a story that is made for the present occasion, which is why I should like to tell it.”

Don Quixote gave his consent, and the curate and the others prepared to lend him their attention.

“In the madhouse of Seville,” he began, “was a certain individual who had been placed there by his relatives, as being out of his mind. He was a graduate of Osuna, in canon law; but it was the opinion of most people that even if he had been of Salamanca, he would have been mad all the same. After a few years of seclusion, this man took it into his head that he had been wholly cured, and, being so convinced, he wrote to the archbishop, begging that prelate, earnestly and in well-chosen words, to have him released from the misery in which he was living, since he had now recovered his lost reason, even though his family, which was enjoying his share of the estate, insisted upon keeping him there; for contrary to the truth of the matter, they would make him out to be a madman until his dying day.

“Impressed by the many well and sensibly written letters he had received from the man, the archbishop sent one of his chaplains to find out from the superintendent of the madhouse if what the licentiate had written was true or not. The chaplain was further directed to converse with the patient and if he found him to be sane, he was to take him out and set him at liberty. Following these instructions, he was informed by the superintendent that the man was as mad as ever, and that while he very frequently spoke like a person of great intelligence, he would suddenly burst out with so many absurdities that they more than made up, in quantity and in quality, for all the sensible things he had previously said, as was readily to be seen by talking with him. This the chaplain resolved to do, and, sitting down with the patient, he carried on a conversation with him for more than an hour, during all of which time the madman did not make one incoherent or foolish remark but appeared to be so rational in everything he said that his visitor was compelled to believe him sane.

“Among other things, the man stated that the superintendent had it in for him, being motivated by a desire not to lose the gifts that the relatives made him for saying that his ward was still insane with lucid intervals. The greatest misfortune that he had to contend with, the poor fellow added, was his large estate, since it was for the purpose of enjoying his wealth that his enemies belied and cast doubts upon the grace which Our Lord had shown him by turning him from a beast into a man once more. In short, he spoke in such a way as to make the superintendent’s conduct seem highly suspicious, while his relatives were made out to be covetous and heartless creatures; all of which was uttered with such a show of reason that the chaplain made up his mind to take the man with him that the archbishop might see him and come at the truth of this business.

“With this worthy intention, he asked the superintendent to send for the clothes which the licentiate had worn when he entered the place, whereupon that official once more begged him to look well to what he was doing, as there was not the slightest doubt that the patient was still mad; but all these cautions and warnings were lost upon the chaplain, who was bent upon having the man released. Seeing that it was the archbishop’s orders, the superintendent complied, and they then brought the licentiate his clothes, which were new and very presentable. When the latter saw himself dressed like one in his right senses and rid of his madman’s garments, he begged the chaplain to be so kind as to permit him to take leave of his fellow patients. The chaplain consented, remarking that he would like to go along and see the others who were confined in the institution. They accordingly went upstairs, accompanied by some of those who were present, and came to a cell where one who was raving mad was lodged, though at that moment he was calm and quiet.

“‘Brother,’ the licientiate said to him, ‘think if there is anything that I can do for you. I am going home, God in His infinite goodness and mercy, and through no merit of my own, having seen fit to restore my reason to me. I am now cured and sane, since where the power of God is concerned, nothing is impossible. You must have a great hope and confidence in Him, who, just as He has restored me to my former state, will do the same for you if you trust in Him. I will make it a point to send you some good things to eat, and be sure that you do eat them; for as one who has gone through it, I may tell you that in my opinion all our madness comes from having our stomachs empty and our brains full of air. Pluck up your courage, then. Despondency in misfortune only impairs the health and brings death all the sooner.

“Everything the licentiate said was heard by another madman in a cell across the way, and, rising from an old mat where he had been lying stark naked, this man now cried out in a loud voice, demanding to know who it was that was going away cured and sane.

“‘It is I, brother,’ the licentiate replied. ‘I am leaving you. There is no longer any need of my remaining here, thanks be to Heaven for having shown me this mercy.’

“‘Mind what you are saying, licentiate,’ the other warned him, ‘and do not let the devil deceive you. You had best not stir a foot but stay where you are and save yourself the trouble of coming back.’

“‘I know that I am all right,’ was the reply, ‘and that it will not be necessary for me to do the stations again.’ ⁴

“‘You are all right, are you?’ said the madman across the way. ‘We shall see as to that. May God go with you; but I swear to you, in the name of Jupiter whose majesty I represent on earth, that for this one sin which Seville today is committing by releasing you from this place as if you were cured, I shall have to inflict such a punishment upon it as will be remembered throughout all the ages to come. Amen. Do you not know, miserable little licentiate, that I can do this, seeing that, as I have said, I am Jupiter the Thunderer and hold in my hands the fiery bolts with which I am accustomed to threaten the world and by means of which I can destroy it? There is, however, only one way in which I wish to punish this ignorant town, and that is by not raining upon it or anywhere in the entire district and vicinity for three whole years, beginning with the day and moment when this threat is made. You free, cured, in your right senses, and I a madman, sickly minded and confined? I would no more think of sending rain than I would of hanging myself.’

“The bystanders all listened attentively to the madman’s words and cries. Then our licentiate turned to the chaplain and seized his hands. ‘Do not be disturbed, your Grace,’ he pleaded, ‘and pay no attention to what this fellow says. If he is Jupiter and will not rain, then I who am Neptune, father and god of the waters, will do so any time that I feel like it or whenever it may be necessary.’

“‘For all of that, Sir Neptune,’ the chaplain answered him, ‘it would be as well not to annoy Sir Jupiter. Stay here, your Grace, and another day, when we have more time and it is more convenient, we will return for you.’

“The superintendent and the others laughed at this, and the chaplain was greatly embarrassed. They then undressed the licentiate, and he remained where he was, and that is the end of the story.”

“If that is the tale, Master Barber,” said Don Quixote, “what did you mean by saying that it was made for the present occasion, for which reason you could not refrain from telling it? Ah, Master Shaver, Master Shaver, how blind is he who cannot see through a sieve! Is your Grace not aware that comparisons of mind with mind, valor with valor, beauty with beauty, birth with birth, are invariably odious and ill received? I, Master Barber, am not Neptune, god of the waters, nor would I have anyone take me for a wise man when I am not wise. My sole endeavor is to bring the world to realize the mistake it is making in failing to revive that happiest of times when the order of knight-errantry was in the field. But this degenerate age of ours does not deserve to enjoy so great a blessing as that which former ages knew, when wandering men of arms took upon themselves the defense of realms, the protection of damsels, the succor of orphans, the punishment of the proud, and the rewarding of the humble.

“The knights of the present time, for the most part, are accompanied by the rustling of damasks, brocades, and other rich stuffs that they wear, rather than by the rattling of coats of mail. There is none that sleeps in the field, exposed to the inclemency of the heavens and fully armed from head to foot. There is none who, as they say, snatches forty winks without taking foot from stirrup, merely leaning on his lance. There is none who, sallying forth from a wood, will go up onto yonder mountain, and from there come down to tread the barren and deserted shore beside a sea that is almost always angry and tempest-tossed; or who, finding upon the beach a small craft, without oars, sail, mast, or rigging of any kind, will leap into it with intrepid heart and entrust himself to the implacable waves of the stormy deep, waves that now mount heavenward and now drag him down into the abyss. Such a one, breasting the irresistible tempest, may find himself more than three thousand miles from the place where he embarked; in which case, bounding ashore upon the soil of a remote and unknown land, he will meet with such adventures as are worthy of being recorded, not upon parchment, but in bronze.

“Today, sloth triumphs over diligence, idleness and ease over exertion, vice over virtue, arrogance over valor, and theory over practice of the warrior’s art. Tell me, if you will, who was more virtuous or more valiant than the famous Amadis of Gaul? Who more prudent than Palmerin of England? Who more gracious and reasonable than Tirant lo Blanch? Who was more the courtier than Lisuarte of Greece? Who was more slashed or slashing than Don Belianís? Who more intrepid than Peri6n of Gaul? Or who more forward in facing danger than Felixmarte of Hircania? Who was more sincere than Esplandián? More daring than Don Cirongilio of Thrace? Who was braver than Rodamonte? Wiser than King Sobrino? Bolder than Rinaldo? More invincible than Orlando? Who was more gallant and courteous than Ruggiero, from whom the present dukes of Ferrara are descended, according to Turpin in his Cosmography?⁵

“All these and many others whom I could mention, Señor Curate, were knights-errant, the light and glory of chivalry. It is these, or such as these, that I would have carry out my plan, in which case his majesty would be well served and would save himself much expense, while the Turk would be left tearing out his beard. For this reason, I do not propose to remain at home,⁶ even though the chaplain does not take me out; and if Jupiter, as the barber has said, does not choose to rain, then I am here to do so whenever it pleases me. I say this in order that Master Basin may know that I understand him.”

“Really, Señor Don Quixote,” said the barber, “I did not mean it in that way. So help me God, my intentions were of the best, and your Grace ought not to take offense.”

“Whether I take offense or not,” replied Don Quixote, “is for me to decide.”

With this, the curate took a hand in the conversation. “I have hardly said a word up to now, but there is one little doubt that gnaws and pecks at my conscience and that comes from what Don Quixote has just told us.”

“You may go as far as you like, Senor Curate,” said Don Quixote. “Feel perfectly free to state your doubt, for it is not pleasant to have something on one’s conscience.”

“Well, then, with your permission,” the curate continued, “I will say that my doubt arises from the fact that I am unable to persuade myself by any manner of means that all the many knights-errant your Grace has mentioned were in reality flesh-and-blood beings who actually lived in this world. I rather fancy that it is all fiction, fables, and lies, a lot of dreams related by men just awakened from sleep, or, better, still half asleep.”

“That,” declared Don Quixote, “is another error into which many have fallen who do not believe that such knights ever existed; and I many times, with various persons and on various occasions, have endeavored to bring this all too common mistake to the light of truth. Sometimes I have not succeeded in my purpose, but other times, sustained upon the shoulders of the truth, I have been more fortunate. For the truth is so clear that I can almost assure you that I saw with my own eyes Amadis of Gaul. He was a tall man, of fair complexion and with a beard which, though black, was quite handsome. His countenance was half mild, half stern; his words were few, but he was slow to anger and quick to lay aside his wrath. And just as I have depicted Amadis for you, so I might go on, I think, to portray and describe⁷ all the other knights-errant in all the storybooks of the world. For I feel sure that they were what the histories make them out to have been, and from the exploits that they performed and the kind of men they were it would be possible, with the aid of a little sound philosophy, to reconstruct their features, their complexions, and their stature.”

“How big, Señor Don Quixote, was the giant Morgante as your Grace conceives him?” the barber asked.

“On this subject of giants,” replied the knight, “opinions differ as to whether or not there ever were any in this world: but the Holy Scriptures, which do not depart from the truth by one iota, show us plainly that giants did exist, when they tell us the story of that big Philistine of a Goliath, who was seven cubits and a half in height, which is a very great size.⁸ Moreover, in the island of Sicily they have found thigh and shoulder bones so large that they must have belonged to giants as tall as towers.⁹ It is a matter of simple geometry. But for all of this, I should not be able to state with any certainty what Morgante’s size was, although I imagine that he was not exceedingly tall, since I find in that history¹⁰ where special mention is made of his exploits that he very frequently slept under a roof, and inasmuch as he found houses that were large enough to accommodate him, he could not have been too big after all.”

“I agree with you,” said the curate. And merely for the pleasure of listening to such utter nonsense, he went on to ask Don Quixote what he thought the countenances of Rinaldo of Montalbán, Don Orlando, and the other Twelve Peers of France must have been like, seeing that they were all knights-errant.

“Concerning Rinaldo,” Don Quixote answered him, “I would venture to say that he had a broad face, a ruddy complexion, and twinkling, rather prominent eyes, and that he was punctilious, extremely choleric, and a friend of robbers and those beyond the pale of the law. As to Roldán, or Rotolando, or Orlando—for the histories give him all these names—I am of the opinion, indeed I would assert, that he was of medium stature, broad-shouldered, somewhat bowlegged, red-bearded, with a hairy body and a threatening expression, a man of few words, but very courteous and well bred.”

“If Orlando,” observed the curate, “had no more of a gentlemanly appearance than that, I do not wonder that the lady Angélica the Fair should have disdained him or that she should have left him for that downy-faced young Moor who was so gay, so sprightly, and so witty. It seems to me she did wisely in preferring the softness of Medoro¹¹ to Orlando’s ruggedness.”

“That Angélica,” replied the knight, “was a giddy damsel, flighty and capricious, and filled the world with her whims as much as with the fame of her beauty. She spurned a thousand gentlemen of wit and valor and was satisfied with a smooth-faced pageling with no other wealth or claim to fame than his reputation for gratitude, due to the affection that he showed his friend. The great poet who sang of her beauty, the famous Ariosto, either did not dare or did not wish to relate what happened to this lady following her disgraceful surrender, but her adventures could not have been any too edifying, and it is with these lines that the bard takes his leave of her:

How she received the scepter of Cathay,
Another with better plectrum will sing someday.¹²

There can be no doubt that this was a kind of prophecy; for poets are also called vates, which means ‘diviners.’ The truth of this is plainly to be seen in the fact that a famous Andalusian poet wept for her and sang of her tears, while another famous and exceptional one of Castile hymned her beauty.” ¹³

“But tell me, Señor Don Quixote,” said the barber, “among all the poets who have praised her, has there been none to compose a satire on this Lady Angélica?”

“I can well believe,” replied Don Quixote, “that if Sacripante or Orlando had been poets, they would have given the damsel a dressing-down; for when poets have been scorned and rejected by their ladies, whether the ladies in question be real or imaginary¹⁴—in short, when they have been spurned by those whom they have chosen to be the mistresses of their affection—it is natural for them to seek to avenge themselves by means of satires and libels, although, to be sure, this is something that is unworthy of generous hearts; but up to now I have not come upon any defamatory verses¹⁵ directed at the Lady Angélica, who set the world on end.”

“That is very strange,” said the curate.

At that moment they heard the housekeeper and the niece, who had left the room a while ago, shouting at someone in the courtyard, and they all ran out to see what the uproar was about.

CHAPTER II. Which treats of the notable quarrel that Sancho Panza had with Don Quixote’s niece and housekeeper, along with other droll happenings.

THE history tells us that the cries that Don Quixote, the curate, and the barber heard came from the niece and the housekeeper. They were shouting at Sancho Panza, who was struggling to get in to see the knight, while they were doing their best to keep him out.

“What is this vagabond doing here? Home with you, brother; for you and no one else are the one who puts these foolish notions into my master’s head; it is you who lure him away to go wandering over the countryside.”

“You devil’s housekeeper, you!” exclaimed Sancho. “The one who has foolish notions put in his head and is lured away is I and not your master. He has taken me all over this world; and you do not know the half of it. It was through a trick that he persuaded me to leave home, by promising me an island which I am still waiting to see.”

“May you choke on your cursed islands, Sancho, you wretch!” the niece replied. “What are islands anyway? Are they something to eat, glutton that you are?”

“No,” replied Sancho, “they are not something to eat, but something to govern and rule over and better than four cities or four judgeships at court.”

“Well, in spite of all that,” said the housekeeper, “you are not coming in here, you bag of mischief. Go govern that weedpatch of yours and let us hear no more talk of islands¹ or drylands or what have you.”

The curate and the barber greatly enjoyed listening to the conversation of these three; but Don Quixote, fearing that Sancho would talk too much, blurt out a lot of mischievous nonsense, and touch upon certain subjects that would not redound to his master’s credit, now called his squire over to him and at the same time ordered the other two to hold their tongues and let the unwelcome visitor come in. Sancho entered the house as the curate and the barber took their leave. They were in despair over Don Quixote’s state of mind, for they could not help perceiving how firmly fixed his hallucinations were and how imbued he was with those foolish ideas of his about knight-errantry.

“You will see, my friend,” remarked the curate, “our gentleman will be off again one of these days when we least expect it.”

“I have not the slightest doubt of that,” replied the barber. “But I do not wonder so much at the knight’s madness as I do at the simple-mindedness of his squire, who believes so firmly in that island that no matter what you did to disillusion him, you would never be able to get it out of his head. Such at least is my opinion.”

“God help them,” said the curate, “and let us keep a close watch to see what comes of all this falderal about knight and squire. It would seem they had both been turned out from the same mold and that the madness of the master without the foolishness of the man would not be worth a penny.”

“You are right,” agreed the barber, “and I would give a good deal to know what the two of them are talking about at this moment.”

“I feel certain,” replied the curate, “that the niece or the housekeeper will tell us all about it afterward, for it is not like them to fail to listen.”

In the meanwhile Don Quixote had shut himself up in his room with Sancho.

“It grieves me very much, Sancho,” he began as soon as they were alone, “to hear you saying that it was I who took you away from your cottage. You know very well that I did not remain in my own house. We sallied forth and rode away together, and together we wandered here and there. We shared the same fortune and the same fate, and if they blanketed you once, they flayed me a hundred times; that is the only advantage that I have over you.”

“That is as it should be,” Sancho told him, “for, according to what your Grace says, misfortunes are better suited to knights-errant than to their squires.”

“That is where you are wrong, Sancho,” replied the knight, “in accordance with the proverb ‘Quando caput dolet,’ etc.”

“I understand no other language than my own,” said Sancho.

“I mean,” said Don Quixote, “that when the head suffers, all the other members suffer also. Being your master and lord, I am your head, and you, being my servant, are a part of me; and so it is that the evil which affects me must likewise affect you and your pain must be my own.”

“It may be so,” Sancho answered, “but I know that when they were blanketing me, as a member, my head was on the other side of the wall, watching me fly through the air, without feeling any pain whatever. And it does seem to me that if the members are obliged to suffer with the head, the head ought to suffer with them.”

“Do you mean to stand there and tell me, Sancho, that I felt nothing when they were tossing you in the blanket? You must not say or think such a thing as that, for I felt more pain in my mind than you did in your body. However, let us put all this to one side; for there will be time enough later for us to consider this point and reach a conclusion. Rather, Sancho my friend, tell me, what are they saying about me here in the village? What opinion do the people have of me, and what do the gentry think, the hidalgos and the caballeros?² What do they say of my valor, of my exploits, of my courtesy? What kind of talk is there about my having undertaken to restore to the world the forgotten order of chivalry? In brief, Sancho, I would have you tell me everything that you have heard on this subject; and this you are to do without adding to the good or keeping back any of the bad; for it is fittng that loyal vassals should tell the truth to their lords, just as it is, without magnifying it out of adulation or diminishing it out of a feeling of false respect. I may tell you, Sancho, that if the naked truth could only reach the ears of princes, stripped of the garments of flattery, the times would be quite different from what they are and other eras would be known as the age of iron, not ours, which indeed I hold to be a golden epoch among those of the modem world. Give heed to this advice, Sancho, in order that you may be able to answer my questions intelligently and faithfully and tell me what you know to be the truth about these things.”

“That I will do right willingly, my master,” Sancho replied, “on condition that your Grace will not be angry at what I tell you, seeing that you would have me give it to you stark naked, without putting any other clothes on it than those in which it came to me.”

“Of course I shall not be angry,” said Don Quixote. “You may speak freely, Sancho, without any beating around the bush.”

“Well, in the first place, the common people look upon your Grace as an utter madman and me as no less a fool. The hidalgos are saying that, not content with being a gentleman, you have had to put a ‘Don’ ³ in front of your name and at a bound have made yourself into a caballero, with four vinestocks, a couple of acres⁴ of land, and one tatter in front and another behind. The caballeros, on the other hand, do not relish having the hidalgos set up in opposition to them, especially those gentlemen who perform the duties of a squire by polishing their own shoes and darning their black stockings with green silk.”

“That,” said the knight, “has nothing to do with me, since I always go well dressed and never in patches. Ragged I well may be, but rather from the wear and tear of armor than of time.” ⁵

“So far as your Grace’s valor is concerned,” Sancho went on, “your courtesy, exploits, and undertaking, there are different opinions. Some say: ‘Crazy but amusing’; others: ‘Brave but unfortunate’; others still: ‘Courteous but meddlesome’; and they go on clacking their tongues about this thing and that until there is not a whole bone left in your Grace’s body or in mine.”

“Look you, Sancho,” replied his master, “wherever virtue exists in an outstanding degree, it is always persecuted. Few or none of the famous men of the past have escaped without being slandered by the malicious. Julius Caesar, a most courageous, wise, and valiant captain, was charged with ambition and with being none too clean either in his dress or in his morals. Alexander, whose deeds won him the title of Great, was reported to be somewhat of a drunkard. Hercules—he of the many labors—if we are to believe what they say of him, was lascivious and inclined to effeminacy. Of Don Galaor, brother of Amadis of Gaul, it was whispered about that he was far too quarrelsome, while Amadis himself was called a whiner. So you see, Sancho, when good men have been traduced in this fashion, what they say about me may be overlooked, if it is no more than what you have told me.”

“Body of my father!” exclaimed Sancho, “but there’s the rub.”

“What?” Don Quixote asked. “Is there more then?”

“That there is,” said Sancho. “The tail is yet to be skinned.⁶ All so far has been tarts and fancy cakes;⁷ but if your Grace really wants to know what they are saying, I can bring you here at once one who will tell you everything, without leaving out the least particle of it. Bartolomé Carrasco’s son came home last night. He has been studying at Salamanca and has just been made a bachelor. When I went to welcome him, he told me that the story of your Grace has already been put into a book called The Ingenious Gentleman, Don Quixote de la Mancha.And he says they mention me in it, under my own name, Sancho Panza, and the lady Dulcinea del Toboso as well, along with things that happened to us when we were alone together. I had to cross myself, for I could not help wondering how the one who wrote all those things down could have come to know about them.”

“I can assure you, Sancho,” said Don Quixote, “that the author of our history must be some wise enchanter; for nothing that they choose to write about is hidden from those who practice that art.”

“What do you mean by saying he was an enchanter?” Sancho asked. “Why, the bachelor Sanson Carrasco—which is the name of the man I was telling you of—says that the one who wrote the story is called Cid Hamete Berenjena.”

“That,” said Don Quixote, “is a Moorish name.”

“It may be,” replied Sancho; “for I have generally heard it said that the Moors are great lovers of eggplant.” ⁸

“You must have made some mistake,” said the knight, “regarding the surname of this Cid, a title which in Arabic means ‘Señor.”’

“Maybe I did,” replied Sancho; “but if your Grace would like me to bring the man here, I will go for him in a jiffy.”

“It would give me much pleasure, my friend,” said Don Quixote, “for I am astonished by what you have told me and shall not eat a mouthful that sets well on my stomach until I have learned all about it.”

“Very well, then,” said Sancho, “I will go fetch him.” And, leaving his master, he went out to look for the bachelor. He returned with him a short while later, and the three of them then had a most amusing conversation.

CHAPTER III. Of the laughable conversation that took place between Don Quixote, Sancho Panza, and the bachelor Sansón Carrasco.

DON QUIXOTE remained in a thoughtful mood as he waited for the Bachelor Carrasco, from whom he hoped to hear the news as to how he had been put into a book, as Sancho had said He could not bring himself to believe that any such history existed, since the blood of the enemies he had slain was not yet dry on the blade of his sword; and here they were trying to tell him that his high deeds of chivalry were already circulating in printed form. But, for that matter, he imagined that some sage, either friend or enemy, must have seen to the printing of them through the art of magic. If the chronicler was a friend, he must have undertaken the task in order to magnify and exalt Don Quixote’s exploits above the most notable ones achieved by knights-errant of old. If an enemy, his purpose would have been to make them out as nothing at all, by debasing them below the meanest acts ever recorded of any mean squire. The only thing was, the knight reflected, the exploits of squires never were set down in writing. If it was true that such a history existed, being about a knight-errant, then it must be eloquent and lofty in tone, a splendid and distinguished piece of work and veracious in its details.

This consoled him somewhat, although he was a bit put out at the thought that the author was a Moor, if the appellation “Cid” was to be taken as an indication, and from the Moors you could never hope for any word of truth, seeing that they are all of them cheats, forgers, and schemers. He feared lest his love should not have been treated with becoming modesty but rather in a way that would reflect upon the virtue of his Lady Dulcinea del Toboso. He hoped that his fidelity had been made clear, and the respect he had always shown her, and that something had been said as to how he had spurned queens, empresses, and damsels of every rank while keeping a rein upon those impulses that are natural to a man. He was still wrapped up in these and many other similar thoughts when Sancho returned with Carrasco.

Don Quixote received the bachelor very amiably. The latter, although his name was Sans6n, or Samson, was not very big so far as bodily size went, but he was a great joker, with a sallow complexion and a ready wit. He was going on twenty-four and had a round face, a snub nose, and a large mouth, all of which showed him to be of a mischievous disposition and fond of jests and witticisms. This became apparent when, as soon as he saw Don Quixote, he fell upon his knees and addressed the knight as follows:

“0 mighty Don Quixote de la Mancha, give me your hands; for by the habit of St. Peter¹ that I wear—though I have received but the first four orders—your Grace is one of the most famous knights-errant that ever have been or ever will be anywhere on this earth. Blessings upon Cid Hamete Benengeli who wrote down the history of your great achievements, and upon that curious-minded one who was at pains to have it translated from the Arabic into our Castilian vulgate for the universal entertainment of the people.”

Don Quixote bade him rise. “Is it true, then,” he asked, “that there is a book about me and that it was some Moorish sage who composed it?”

“By way of showing you how true it is,” replied Sansón, “I may tell you that it is my belief that there are in existence today more than twelve thousand copies of that history. If you do not believe me, you have but to make inquiries in Portugal, Barcelona, and Valencia, where editions have been brought out, and there is even a report to the effect that one edition was printed at Antwerp.² In short, I feel certain that there will soon not be a nation that does not know it or a language into which it has not been translated.”

“One of the things,” remarked Don Quixote, “that should give most satisfaction to a virtuous and eminent man is to see his good name spread abroad during his own lifetime, by means of the printing press, through translations into the languages of the various peoples. I have said ‘good name,’ for if he has any other kind, his fate is worse than death.”

“If it is a matter of good name and good reputation,” said the bachelor, “your Grace bears off the palm from all the knights-errant in the world; for the Moor in his tongue and the Christian in his have most vividly depicted your Grace’s gallantry, your courage in facing dangers, your patience in adversity and suffering, whether the suffering be due to wounds or to misfortunes of another sort, and your virtue and continence in love, in connection with that platonic relationship that exists between your Grace and my lady Dona Dulcinea del Toboso.”

At this point Sancho spoke up. “Never in my life,” he said, “have I heard my lady Dulcinea called ‘Doña,’ but only ‘la Senora Dulcinea del Toboso’; so on that point, already, the history is wrong.”

“That is not important,” said Carrasco.

“No, certainly not,” Don Quixote agreed. “But tell me, Señor Bachelor, what adventures of mine as set down in this book have made the deepest impression?”

“As to that,” the bachelor answered, “opinions differ, for it is a matter of individual taste. There are some who are very fond of the adventure of the windmills—those windmills which to your Grace appeared to be so many Briareuses and giants. Others like the episode at the fulling mill. One relishes the story of the two armies which took on the appearance of droves of sheep, while another fancies the tale of the dead man whom they were taking to Segovia for burial. One will assert that the freeing of the galley slaves is the best of all, and yet another will maintain that nothing can come up to the Benedictine giants and the encounter with the valiant Biscayan.”

Again Sancho interrupted him. “Tell me, Senor Bachelor,” he said, “does the book say anything about the adventure with the Yanguesans, that time our good Rocinante took it into his head to go looking for tidbits in the sea?”

“The sage,” replied Sansón, “has left nothing in the inkwell. He has told everything and to the point, even to the capers which the worthy Sancho cut as they tossed him in the blanket.”

“I cut no capers in the blanket,” objected Sancho, “but I did in the air, and more than I liked.”

“I imagine,” said Don Quixote, “that there is no history in the world, dealing with humankind, that does not have its ups and downs, and this is particularly true of those that have to do with deeds of chivalry, for they can never be filled with happy incidents alone.”

“Nevertheless,” the bachelor went on, “there are some who have read the book who say that they would have been glad if the authors had forgotten a few of the innumerable cudgelings³ which Senor Don Quixote received in the course of his various encounters.”

“But that is where the truth of the story comes in,” Sancho protested.

“For all of that,” observed Don Quixote, “they might well have said nothing about them; for there is no need of recording those events that do not alter the veracity of the chronicle, when they tend only to lessen the reader’s respect for the hero. You may be sure that Aeneas was not as pious as Vergil would have us believe, nor was Ulysses as wise as Homer depicts him.”

“That is true enough,” replied Sansón, “but it is one thing to write as a poet and another as a historian. The former may narrate or sing of things not as they were but as they should have been; the latter must describe them not as they should have been but as they were, without adding to or detracting from the truth in any degree whatsoever.”

“Well,” said Sancho, “if this Moorish gentleman is bent upon telling the truth, I have no doubt that among my master’s thrashings my own will be found; for they never took the measure of his Grace’s shoulders without measuring my whole body. But I don’t wonder at that; for as my master himself says, when there’s an ache in the head the members have to share it.”

“You are a sly fox, Sancho,” said Don Quixote. “My word, but you can remember things well enough when you choose to do so!”

“Even if I wanted to forget the whacks they gave me,” Sancho answered him, “the welts on my ribs wouldn’t let me, for they are still fresh.”

“Be quiet, Sancho,” his master admonished him, “and do not interrupt the bachelor. I beg him to go on and tell me what is said of me in this book.”

“And what it says about me, too,” put in Sancho, “for I have heard that I am one of the main presonages in it—”

“Personages, not presonages, Sancho my friend,” said Sansón.

“So we have another one who catches you up on everything you say,” was Sancho’s retort. “If we go on at this rate, we’ll never be through in a lifetime.”

“May God put a curse on my life,” the bachelor told him, “if you are not the second most important person in the story; and there are some who would rather listen to you talk than to anyone else in the book. It is true, there are those who say that you are too gullible in believing it to be the truth that you could become the governor of that island that was offered you by Señor Don Quixote, here present.”

“There is still sun on the top of the wall,” ⁴ said Don Quixote, “and when Sancho is a little older, with the experience that the years bring, he will be wiser and better fitted to be a governor that he is at the present time.”

“By God, master,” said Sancho, “the island that I couldn’t govern right now I’d never be able to govern if I lived to be as old as Methuselah. The trouble is, I don’t know where that island we are talking about is located; it is not due to any lack of noddle on my part.”

“Leave it to God, Sancho,” was Don Quixote’s advice, “and everything will come out all right, perhaps even better than you think; for not a leaf on the tree stirs except by His will.”

“Yes,” said Sansón, “if it be God’s will, Sancho will not lack a thousand islands to govern, not to speak of one island alone.”

“I have seen governors around here,” said Sancho, “that are not to be compared to the sole of my shoe, and yet they call them ‘your Lordship’ and serve them on silver plate.”

“Those are not the same kind of governors,” Sans6n informed him. “Their task is a good deal easier. The ones that govern islands must at least know grammar.”

“I could make out well enough with the gram,” replied Sancho, “but with the mar⁵I want nothing to do, for I don’t understand it at all. But leaving this business of the governorship in God’s hands—for He will send me wherever I can best serve Him—I will tell you, Señor Bachelor Sansón Carrasco, that I am very much pleased that the author of the history should have spoken of me in such a way as does not offend me; for, upon the word of a faithful squire, if he had said anything about me that was not becoming to an old Christian, the deaf would have heard of it.”

“That would be to work miracles,” said Sansón.

“Miracles or no miracles,” was the answer, “let everyone take care as to what he says or writes about people and not be setting down the first thing that pops into his head.”

“One of the faults to be found with the book,” continued the bachelor, “is that the author has inserted in it a story entitled The One Who Was Too Curious for His Own Good. It is not that the story in itself is a bad one or badly written; it is simply that it is out of place there, having nothing to do with the story of his Grace, Señor Don Quixote.”

“I will bet you,” said Sancho, “that the son of a dog has mixed the cabbages with the baskets.” ⁶

“And I will say right now,” declared Don Quixote, “that the author of this book was not a sage but some ignorant prattler who at haphazard and without any method set about the writing of it, being content to let things turn out as they might. In the same manner, Orbaneja,⁷ the painter of Ubeda, when asked what he was painting would reply, ‘Whatever it turns out to be.’ Sometimes it would be a cock, in which case he would have to write alongside it, in Gothic letters, ‘This is a cock.’ And so it must be with my story, which will need a commentary to make it understandable.”

“No,” replied Sans6n, “that it will not; for it is so clearly written that none can fail to understand it. Little children leaf through it, young people read it, adults appreciate it, and the aged sing its praises. In short, it is so thumbed and read and so well known to persons of every walk in life that no sooner do folks see some skinny nag than they at once cry, ‘There goes Rocinante!’ Those that like it best of all are the pages; for there is no lord’s antechamber where a Don Quixote is not to be found. If one lays it down, another will pick it up; one will pounce upon it, and another will beg for it. It affords the pleasantest and least harmful reading of any book that has been published up to now. In the whole of it there is not to be found an indecent word or a thought that is other than Catholic.” ⁸

“To write in any other manner,” observed Don Quixote, “would be to write lies and not the truth. Those historians who make use of falsehoods ought to be burned like the makers of counterfeit money. I do not know what could have led the author to introduce stories and episodes that are foreign to the subject matter when he had so much to write about in describing my adventures. He must, undoubtedly, have been inspired by the old saying, ‘With straw or with hay ...’⁹ For, in truth, all he had to do was to record my thoughts, my sighs, my tears, my lofty purposes, and my undertakings, and he would have had a volume bigger than, or at least as big as, that which the works of El Tostado¹⁰ would make. To sum the matter up, Señor Bachelor, it is my opinion that, in composing histories or books of any sort, a great deal of judgment and ripe understanding is called for. To say and write witty and amusing things is the mark of great genius. The cleverest character in a comedy is the clown, since he who would make himself out to be a simpleton cannot be one. History is a near-sacred thing, for it must be true, and where the truth is, there is God. And yet there are those who compose books and toss them out into the world as if they were no more than fritters.”

“There is no book so bad,” opined the bachelor, “that there is not some good in it.” ¹¹

“Doubtless that is so,” replied Don Quixote, “but it very often happens that those who have won in advance a great and well-deserved reputation for their writings, lose it in whole or in part when they give their works to the printer.”

“The reason for it,” said Sans6n, “is that, printed works being read at leisure, their faults are the more readily apparent, and the greater the reputation of the author the more closely are they scrutinized. Men famous for their genius, great poets, illustrious historians, are almost always envied by those who take a special delight in criticizing the writings of others without having produced anything of their own.”

“That is not to be wondered at,” said Don Quixote, “for there are many theologians who are not good enough for the pulpit but who are very good indeed when it comes to detecting the faults or excesses of those who preach.”

“All of this is very true, Señor Don Quixote,” replied Carrasco, “but, all the same, I could wish that these self-appointed censors were a bit more forbearing and less hypercritical; I wish they would pay a little less attention to the spots on the bright sun of the work that occasions their fault-finding. For if aliquando bonus dormitat Homerus,¹²let them consider how much of his time he spent awake, shedding the light of his genius with a minimum of shade. It well may be that what to them seems a flaw is but one of those moles which sometimes add to the beauty of a face. In any event, I insist that he who has a book printed runs a very great risk, inasmuch as it is an utter impossibility to write it in such a manner that it will please all who read it.”

“This book about me must have pleased very few,” remarked Don Quixote.

“Quite the contrary,” said Sansón, “for just as stultorum infinitus est numerus,¹³so the number of those who have enjoyed this history is likewise infinite. Some, to be sure, have complained of the author’s forgetfulness, seeing that he neglected to make it plain who the thief was who stole Sancho’s gray; for it is not stated there, but merely implied, that the ass was stolen; and, a little further on, we find Sancho mounted on the same beast, although it has not made its reappearance in the story. They also say that the author forgot to tell us what Sancho did with those hundred crowns that he found in the valise on the Sierra Morena, as nothing more is said of them and there are many who would like to know how he disposed of the money or how he spent it. This is one of the serious omissions to be found in the work.”

To this Sancho replied, “I, Senor Sans6n, do not feel like giving any account or accounting just now; for I feel a little weak in my stomach, and if I don’t do something about it by taking a few swigs of the old stuff, I’ll be sitting on St. Lucy’s thorn.¹⁴ I have some of it at home, and my old woman is waiting for me. After I’ve had my dinner, I’ll come back and answer any questions your Grace or anybody else wants to ask me, whether it’s about the loss of the ass or the spending of the hundred crowns.”

And without waiting for a reply or saying another word, he went on home. Don Quixote urged the bachelor to stay and take potluck with him,¹⁵ and Sans6n accepted the invitation and remained. In addition to the knight’s ordinary fare, they had a couple of pigeons, and at table their talk was of chivalry and feats of arms. Carrasco was careful to humor his host, and when the meal was over they took their siesta. Then Sancho returned and their previous conversation was resumed.

CHAPTER IV. Wherein Sancho Panza answers the bachelor’s questions and removes his doubts, together with other events that are worthy of being known and set down.

RETURNING to Don Quixote’s house, Sancho began where they had left off.

“Señor Sansón has said that he would like to know who it was that stole my ass and how and when it was done. In answer to that, I can tell him that it was the same night that we went up onto the Sierra Morena, to get away from the Holy Brotherhood. It was after the adventure of the galley slaves and that of the dead man that they were taking to Segovia. My master and I had gone into a thicket; and there, with him leaning on his lance and me seated on my gray and the both of us bruised and tired from the scuffles we had been through, we dozed off and slept as if we had had four feather beds beneath us. As for me, I was so dead to the world that whoever it was that came along was able to put four stakes under the four sides of my packsaddle and leave me sitting astraddle of it while he took my gray out from under me without my knowing anything about it.”

“That,” said Sans6n, “is an easy thing to do and has been done before. It happened to Sacripante when, at the siege of Albraca, the famous thief known as Brunello, ¹ employing the same device, took the horse out from between the knight’s legs.”

“Well,” Sancho went on, “morning came, and when I went to stretch myself the stakes gave way and I took a mighty tumble. I looked around for the ass and could not see it, and then the tears came to my eyes and I set up such a howling that if the author of the book did not put it in, then he left out something very good. After I don’t know how many days, going along with her Ladyship, the Princess Micomicona, I caught sight of Ginés de Pasamonte coming down the road dressed like a gypsy and mounted on my beast—he was that big rogue and trickster that my master and I freed from the galley slaves’ chain.”

“That is not where the error lies,” replied Sans6n, “but rather in the fact that before the ass turns up again the author has Sancho riding on it.”

“I don’t know what answer to give you,” said Sancho, “except that the one who wrote the story must have made a mistake, or else it must be due to carelessness on the part of the printer.”

“No doubt that is it,” said Sans6n, “but what became of the hundred crowns? Did they vanish into thin air?”

“I spent them on myself and on my wife and young ones, and that is why it is she puts up with my wanderings along the highways and byways in the service of my master Don Quixote; for if after all that time I had come home without my gray or a penny to my name, I would have had one devil of a welcome. If there is anything else you would like to know about me, here I am, ready to answer in person to the king himself, and it is nobody’s business whether I took it or did not take it, whether I spent it or didn’t spend it. If all the whacks they gave me on those journeys had to be paid for in money, even if they valued them only at four maravedis apiece, another hundred crowns would not be enough to pay for the half of them. Let every man look after himself and not be trying to make out that white is black and black is white; for each one is as God made him, and a good deal worse a lot of times.”

“I shall make it a point,” said Carrasco, “to remind the author that if he has another edition printed, he is by no means to forget what the good Sancho has told us, which I am sure will greatly improve the book.” ²

“Are there any other corrections to be made in this work?” Don Quixote inquired.

“There probably are,” the bachelor replied, “but the ones we have mentioned are the most important.”

“And does the author by any chance promise a second part?”

“Yes, he does,” said Sans6n, “but he states that he has not yet come upon it, nor does he know in whose possession it is, and accordingly there is a doubt as to whether it will appear or not. Indeed, there is some question as to whether a second part is desirable. There are those who say, ‘Sequels are never good,’ while others assert, ‘Enough has been written already about Don Quixote.’ But certain ones who are more jovially inclined and not of so morose a disposition will tell you, ‘Let us have more of these Quixotic adventures; let Don Quixote lay on and Sancho talk, and, come what may, we shall be satisfied.”’

“And how does the author feel about it?”

“If he finds the history he is looking for so diligently,” said Sans6n, “he will send it to the printer at once, being more interested in the profit that may come to him from it than in any praise it may earn him.”

Sancho now put in his word. “So, he is interested in money, is he? Then it will be a wonder if he doesn’t botch the job, for it will be nothing but hurry, hurry, hurry, as at the tailors on Easter Eve, and work done in haste is never done as it should be. Let that Moorish gentleman, or whoever he is, pay attention, and my master and I will supply him with enough stuff,³ ready at hand, in the way of adventures and other happenings, to make not only one second part but a hundred of them. The good man thinks, no doubt, that we are asleep here in the straw, but let him hold up our hoofs to be shod and he will see which foot is the lame one. All I have to say is that if my master would take my advice, we would be in the field this minute, avenging outrages and righting wrongs as is the use and custom of good knights-errant.”

No sooner had Sancho said this than they heard the whinnying of Rocinante, which Don Quixote took to be a very good omen; and he resolved then and there that they would sally forth again within the next three or four days. Announcing his intention to Carrasco, he asked the bachelor to advise him as to what direction he should take; whereupon Sans6n replied that in his opinion the knight ought to head for the kingdom of Aragon and the city of Saragossa, as they were to have some ceremonious joustings there very shortly, in honor of the feast of St. George,⁴ in which tournament Don Quixote might win a renown above that of all the knights of Aragon, who in turn would be sure to vanquish all others in the world. Sansón went on to praise his host’s highly praiseworthy and valiant undertaking, but warned him to be a little more careful in confronting dangers, since his life was not his own but belonged to all those who had need of his succor and protection in the misfortunes that befell them.

“That is what I don’t like about it, Senor Sans6n,” said Sancho. “My master will attack a hundred armed men just like a greedy boy falling on a half-dozen melons. Body of the world,⁵ Señor Bachelor, but there is a time to attack and a time to retreat! Everything is not ‘Santiago, and close in upon them, Spainl’⁶ For I have heard it said—and I think my master himself was the one who said it—that true bravery lies somewhere in between being a coward and being foolhardy; and, for this reason, I would not have him run away when there is not good reason for it, nor have him attack when the odds are all against him. But, above everything else, I want to warn him that if he is going to take me with him, it will have to be on condition that he does all the fighting, it being understood that all I am to do is to look after his person and see to keeping him clean and comfortable. When it comes to that, I will be at his beck and call; but to look for me to lay hand to sword, even against the most rascally villains of hatchet and hood, is a waste of thinking.

“I do not expect, Señor Sansón,” he continued, “to win fame as a fighting man, but only as the best and most loyal squire that ever served a knight-errant; and if my master Don Quixote, as a reward for my many faithful services, see fit to give me some island of all those that his Grace says are to be had, I will accept it as a great favor; but if he does not give it to me, well, I was born like everyone else, and a man should depend on no one but God, and what is more, my bread will taste as good, and it may be even better, without a governorship than if I was a governor. How do I know that in connection with governments the devil has not prepared some trap for me where I may stumble and fall and knock my grinders out? Sancho was born and Sancho expects to die; but, for all of that, if without much risk or trouble on my part Heaven should provide me with an island, fair and square, I am not such a fool as to refuse it. For they also have a saying, ‘When they offer you a heifer, come running with a halter,’ and, ‘When good luck comes along, open the door and let it in.’”⁷

“Spoken like a professor, brother Sancho,” said Carrasco. “Put your trust in God and in Señor Don Quixote, and your master will see to it that you are provided with a kingdom and no mere island.”

“More or less, it is all the same to me,” replied Sancho. “I may tell you, Señor Carrasco, that my master would not be tossing that kingdom he is going to give me into a sack that was full of holes. I have taken my own pulse, and I find that I am man enough to rule over realms and govern islands, and I have already told him as much any number of times.”

“But see here, Sancho,” said the bachelor, “manners change when honors come,⁸ and it may be that when you get to be governor you will not know the mother who bore you.”

“That may be true of those that were born in the mallows,⁹ but not of one like me with the fat of an old Christian four fingers deep on his soul. Do I look to you like the kind of man who would be ungrateful to anyone?”

“God’s will be done,” said Don Quixote. “We can tell better when the governorship comes, and it seems to me I can see it already.”

Having said this, he turned to the bachelor and inquired if that gentleman was a poet. If so, would he do him the favor of composing some farewell verses for my lady Dulcinea del Toboso, each line to begin with a letter of her name, so that when the poem was complete those letters would spell out the name. Carrasco replied that, although he was not one of the famous poets of Spain—of whom, he said, there were but three and a half altogether¹⁰—he would not fail to do as Don Quixote had requested, although he found the task rather difficult, seeing that there were seventeen letters to be accounted for; if he made four stanzas of four lines each, there would be one letter left over, while if he employed one of those five-line stanzas known as décimas or redondillas,¹¹he would be three letters short. Nevertheless, he would try, some way or other, to drop a letter in order that he might get the name Dulcinea del Toboso into a set of four-line stanzas.

“You must manage it somehow,” said Don Quixote; “for if the name is not plainly to be made out, no woman would believe that the verses were written expressly for her.”

This point having been settled, it was decided that the knight’s departure should be one week from that day. The bachelor was charged to keep it secret, especially from the curate and Master Nicholas, and from the niece and housekeeper as well, in order that they might not prevent the carrying out of this commendable and valorous undertaking. Carrasco gave his promise and took his leave, and as he did so he urged Don Quixote to keep him informed, whenever the opportunity presented itself, of any good or ill fortune that might come to master and man. Thus they parted, and Sancho went away to make the necessary preparations for the expedition.

CHAPTER V. Of the shrewd and droll remarks that passed between Sancho Panza and his wife, Teresa Panza, with other matters of a pleasant nature that deserve to be recorded.

AS HE comes to set down this fifth chapter of our history, the translator desires to make it plain that he looks upon it as apocryphal, since in it Sancho Panza speaks in a manner that does not appear to go with his limited intelligence and indulges in such subtle observations that it is quite impossible to conceive of his saying the things attributed to him. However, the translator in question did not wish to leave his task unfinished; and the narrative is accordingly herewith resumed.

As Sancho approached his house, he was feeling so happy and so gay that his wife could tell it at the distance of a crossbow shot.

“What do you bring with you, friend Sancho,” she asked, “that makes you so merry?”

“Wife,” he replied, “if it was God’s will, I’d be glad not to be as happy as I am.”

“I don’t understand you, husband,” said she. “I don’t know what you mean by wishing you were not as happy as you are. I may be a fool, but I fail to see how you can find pleasure in not having it.”

“Look here, Teresa,” said Sancho, “I am happy because I have made up my mind to go back to serving my master Don Quixote, who wants to go out a third time in search of adventures, and I mean to go with him. It is necessity that leads me to do this, and then, too, I like to think that I may be able to come upon another hundred crowns to take the place of those we’ve spent, although, naturally, it makes me sad to have to leave you and the young ones. If God would only let me eat my bread at home, dryshod, without dragging me through the byways and crossroads—and it would not cost Him anything, all He has to do is will it—it goes without saying that my happiness would be more solid and lasting than it is, whereas now it is mixed up with my sorrow at leaving you. That is what I meant when I said that I’d be glad if, God willing, I was not so happy.”

“Listen to me, Sancho,” his wife replied. “Ever since you joined up with a knight-errant, you’ve been talking in such a roundabout way that there’s no understanding you.”

“It is enough, wife, if God understands me; for He understands everything, and that is good enough for me. And I want to warn you, sister, that you are to keep an eye on the gray these next few days so that he will be in condition to take up arms. Give him double rations, and look after the packsaddle and the other harness, for it’s not to a wedding that we’re bound; we’re out to roam the world and play give and take with giants, dragons, and other monsters. We’ll be hearing hissings and roarings and bellowings and bowlings. But all that would be lavender if we didn’t have to count upon meeting with Yanguesans and enchanted Moors.”

“I know well, my husband,” said Teresa, “that the squires of knights-errant have to earn the bread they eat, and so I will keep on praying to Our Lord to get you out of all this hard luck.”

“I can tell you one thing, wife,” said Sancho, “that if I did not expect to see myself the governor of an island before long, I would die right here and now.”

“No, not that, my husband,” Teresa protested. “Let the hen live even though she may have the pip,¹ and in the same way you should go on living and to the devil with all the governorships in the world. Without a governorship you came out of your mother’s belly, without a governorship you’ve lived up to now, and without a governorship you will go, or they will carry you, to your grave when God so wills. There are plenty of folk in this world who manage to get along without being governors, yet they do not for that reason give up but are still numbered among the living. The best sauce in the world is hunger, and since this is something they never lack, the poor always have an appetite. But look, Sancho, if by any chance you do fall in with a governorship, don’t forget me and your children. Remember that little Sancho is already turned fifteen, and it is only right that he should go to school, if his uncle, the abbot, means to have him trained for the Church. Remember, too, that your daughter, Mari-Sancha, would not drop dead if we married her off; for I have my suspicions that she is as anxious for a husband as you are to be a governor, and, when all is said and done, a daughter badly married is better than one well kept outside of marriage.”

“I promise you, wife,” replied Sancho, “that if God only sees to it that I get hold of any kind of an island at all, I will get Mari-Sancha a husband so high up in the world that no one will be able to come near her without calling her ‘my ladyship.”’

“No, Sancho,” said his wife. “Marry her to someone who is her equal; that’s the best way. If you take her out of wooden shoes and put her into pattens, if you take her out of gray flannel petticoat and put her into silken hoop skirts, if you stop saying ‘thou’ to her and change her from ‘Marica’ into ‘Doña So-and-So’ and ‘my lady,’ then the poor girl will not know where she is and every step she takes she will be making a thousand blunders and showing the thread of the coarse home-spun stuff she’s made of.”

“Be quiet, foolish woman,” said Sancho. “All she will need is two or three years to get used to it, and, after that, dignity and fine manners will fit her like a glove; and if not, what does it matter? Let her be ‘your Ladyship’ and come what may.”

“Better keep to your own station, Sancho,” Teresa admonished him, “and not be trying to lift yourself up to a higher one. Remember the old saying, ‘Wipe the nose of your neighbor’s son and take him into your house.’ ² It would be a fine thing, wouldn’t it, to have our Maria married to some great count or high and mighty gentleman who every time he happened to feel like it would call her an upstart, a clodhopper’s daughter, a country wench who ought to be at the spinning wheel. No, as I live, my husband, it was not for this that I brought up my daughter! You bring home the money, Sancho, and leave the marrying of her to me. There is Lope Tocho, Juan Toche’s boy. He’s a strong, healthy lad and we know him well, and I can see he rather likes our lass. He’s our kind, and she’ll be making no mistake in marrying him. That way, we’ll be able to keep an eye on her, and we’ll all be together, parents and children, grandchildren, sons-in-law and daughters-in-law, and peace and God’s blessing will be upon us. So don’t go marrying her off in those courts and grand palaces where she will be a stranger to others and to herself.”

“Why, you stupid creature!” exclaimed Sancho. “You wife of Barabbas! ³ What do you mean by trying to keep me from marrying my daughter to someone who will give me grandchildren that will be called ‘your Lordship’ and ‘your Ladyship’? Look, Teresa, I have always heard the old folks say that the one that doesn’t know how to make the most of luck when it comes his way has no business complaining if it passes him by. And now that luck is knocking at our door, we don’t want to shut it out. Let us go with the favoring breeze that fills our sail.” (It was this way of speaking, and what Sancho has to say a little further on, that led the translator of the history to remark that he looked upon this chapter as apocryphal.)

“Can’t you see, you ninny,” Sancho went on, “what a fine thing it will be for me to fall into some nice governorship or other that will help us get our feet out of the mud? Just let me find the husband I choose for Mari-Saneha, and you’ll see how they’ll be calling you ‘Doña Teresa Panza,’ and you will sit in church on a rug and cushions and fancy drapes in spite of the highborn ladies of the village. But no, you’d better stay the way you are, neither bigger nor smaller, like a figure on a tapestry, and we’ll say no more about it. Little Sancha is going to be a countess, no matter what you think.” ⁴

“Husband,” said Teresa, “are you sure you know what you are talking about? For I am very much afraid that if my daughter becomes a countess it will be her ruination. You can do what you like, you can make a duchess or a princess of her, but I want to tell you it will be without my will or consent. I always did believe in equality, brother, and I can’t bear to see people put on airs without any reason for it. Teresa was the name they gave me when I was baptized, without any tags, or strings, or trimmings; there were no ‘Dons’ or ‘Doñas’ in my family. My father’s name was Cascajo. As your wife, I am now called Teresa Panza, though by rights I should be known as Teresa Cascajo. But kings go where the laws would have them go,⁵ and the name I have is good enough for me without their putting a ‘Doña’ on top of it and making it so heavy I can’t carry it. I don’t want to give people a chance to talk when they see me dressed like a countess or a governor’s wife and have them saying, ‘Just see the airs that hog-feeder puts on, will you? Only yesterday she was spinning flax and went to mass with the tail of her petticoat over her head in place of a mantle, and today she goes in hoops, with her brooches and her nose in the air, as if we didn’t know her!’

“If God lets keep my six or seven senses, or whatever number it is that I have, I don’t propose to give them a chance to see me in such a predicament. You, brother, go ahead and govern your island and strut all you like, but I tell you in the name of my sainted mother that neither my daughter nor I is going to stir one step from our village. The respectable woman has a broken leg and stays at home,⁶ and to be busy at something is a feast day for the maid that is virtuous. Go, then, to look for adventures with that Don Quixote of yours, and leave us to our misadventures; for God will make things better for us if we deserve it. I’m sure I don’t know,” she added, “who made him a ‘Don,’ for neither his father nor his grandfather was one before him.”

“I do declare,” said Sancho, “you must have a devil in you. God help you, wife, but what a lot of things you have strung together so that there’s no making head nor tail of any of them! What do the name Cascajo and brooches and proverbs and haughty airs have to do with what I’m saying? Look here, you foolish, ignorant woman—for I have a right to call you that, seeing you won’t listen to reason but run away from good fortune. If I had said that my daughter was to throw herself from a tower or go wandering about the world as the Infanta Doña Uracca⁷ threatened to do, you would be right in not agreeing with me; but when I want to put a ‘Doña’ or a ‘ladyship’ on her back and in the blink of an eye take her out of the stubble and seat her on a dais under a canopy or on a divan with more velvet cushions⁸ than the Almohades of Morocco had Moors in their family tree, why won’t you give your consent and let me have it my way?”

“Do you want to know why, husband?” Teresa asked him. “It’s on account of the proverb that says, ‘He who covers you discovers you.’ To the poor, people give only a passing glance, but the rich man holds their gaze; and if he was poor once upon a time, then it is that the whispering and the evil gossip and the spitework begin, for the slanderers in these streets are as thick as a swarm of bees.”

“Pay attention, Teresa,” said Sancho, “and listen to what I am about to tell you. It may be that you have never heard it in all the days of your life. I am not speaking for myself but am giving you the opinions of the reverend father who preached in this village during Lent, the last time. If I remember rightly, he said that all present things which our eyes behold make much more of an impression on us and remain better fixed in our memories than things that are past.” (These remarks of Sancho’s are another reason for the translator’s saying what he did about the apocryphal character of this chapter, since they are beyond the mental capacity of the squire.) “Hence it is that when we see some person richly dressed and making a fine appearance, accompanied by a retinue of servants, we feel compelled to respect him, even though our memory at the moment may remind us of some lowly condition in which we had previously seen him. That condition, whether due to poverty or humble birth, being a thing of the past, does not exist, since the only thing that is real to us is what we have before our eyes. And—these were the padre’s very words—if the one fortune has thus raised up out of the depths to the height of prosperity is well bred, generous, and courteous toward all and does not seek to vie with those that come of an old and noble line, then you may depend upon it, Teresa, there will be no one to remember what he was, but instead they will respect him for what he is, unless it be the envious, for no good fortune is safe against them.”

“I do not understand you, husband,” replied Teresa. “Do as you like and don’t be addling my brains with your flowery speeches. If you have revolved to do what .you say—”

“You mean resolved, wife, not revolved.”

“Don’t dispute my word,” said Teresa. “I talk the way God would have me talk without beating around the bush. What I say is, if you are determined to be a governor, take your son Sancho with you so that you can teach him how to govern also; for it is a good thing for sons to learn and follow their father’s trade.”

“As soon as I have a government,” said Sancho, “I will send for him posthaste. I will send you some money too; for there are always plenty of people to lend it to governors that do not have it. And I want you to dress him up in such a way as to hide what he is and make him look like what he is not.”

“You send the money,” Teresa replied, “and I’ll see to that.” ⁹

“So, then, it’s understood, is it, that our daughter is to be a countess?”

“The day that I see her a countess,” was Teresa’s answer, “I’ll feel that I am laying her in her grave. But I tell you again: do as you like; for we women are born with the obligation of obeying our husbands, however stupid they may be.”

Saying this, she began weeping in earnest, as though she already saw her Sanchica dead and buried. Sancho consoled her by assuring her that, while he might have to make his daughter a countess, he would put off doing so as long as he could. Thus ended the conversation, and Sancho went back to see Don Quixote to make arrangements for their departure.

CHAPTER VI. Of what took place between Don Quixote and his niece and housekeeper, which is one of the most important chapters in the entire history.

WHILE Sancho Panza and his wife, Teresa Cascajo, were engaged in the irrelevant conversation that has just been reported, Don Quixote’s niece and housekeeper were by no means idle, for they could tell by any number of signs that their uncle and master was about to slip away a third time and return to what they looked upon as being his ill-errant conception of knighthood. They accordingly strove in every way possible to get so evil a thought out of his mind, but all this was like preaching in the desert or hammering cold iron.

“In truth, my master,” the housekeeper said to him in the course of their many talks on the subject, “if you do not make up your mind to stay quietly at home and stop wandering over mountains and valleys like a lost soul, seeking what I am told are called adventures but which I call misfortunes, there will be nothing for me to do but raise my voice to God and the king, as loud as I can, so that they may do something about it.”

“My good woman,” replied Don Quixote, “what answer God will make to your complaints, or his Majesty either, for that matter, I am sure I do not know. But I do know that if I were king, I would not trouble to reply to all the innumerable and foolish petitions presented to me every day. One of the greatest of the many trials kings have to endure is that of being obliged to listen to everybody and give everyone some kind of answer, and I do not care to add my troubles to the burden that his Majesty has to bear.”

“Tell us one thing,” said the housekeeper, “are there no knights at his Majesty’s court?”

“There are, and many of them; and it is right and proper that there should be, to set off the greatness of princes and show forth the majesty of royal power.”

“Well, then,” persisted the housekeeper, “could not your Grace be one of those who, without stirring a foot, serve their lord and king at court?”

“Look, my friend,” said Don Quixote, “not all knights can be courtiers, nor can all courtiers be, nor should they be, knights-errant. There have to be all kinds in this world, and even though we may all be knights, there is a great deal of difference between us. For the courtiers, without leaving their rooms or the threshold of the court, may travel all over the earth merely by looking at a map; it does not cost them anything and they do not suffer heat or cold, hunger or thirst. But those of us who are real knights-errant, we take the measure of the entire globe with our feet, beneath the sun of day and in the cold of night, out in the open and exposed to all the inclemencies of the weather. We know our enemies not from pictures but as they really are, and we attack them on every occasion and under no matter what conditions of combat. We pay no attention to the childish rules that are supposed to govern knightly duels; we are not concerned as to whether one has a longer lance or sword than the-other or may carry upon him holy relics or some secret contrivance; we do not worry about the proper placing of the combatants with regard to the sun¹ nor any of the other ceremonious usages of this sort that commonly prevail in man-to-man encounters, with which you are unfamiliar but which I know well.

“And let me tell you something else. The good knight-errant, even though he may behold ten giants with heads that not merely touch but rise above the clouds; and even though each of these giants may have two tallest towers for legs while his arms resemble the masts of huge and powerful ships; even though each may have eyes that are like great mill wheels and that glow more brightly than any glass furnace—in spite of all this, he is not to be in the least frightened but with highborn mien and intrepid heart is to give them battle and if possible vanquish and destroy them in a moment’s time. And this, though they bear armor made of the shells of a certain fish that are said to be harder than diamonds, and in place of swords carry keen-edged blades of Damascus steel or clubs studded with spikes of the same material such as I have more than once seen. I tell you all this, my good woman, in order that you may perceive what a difference there is between knights; and it would be well if there were no prince who did not more esteem this second, or, rather, first, variety of knight-errant. For the history books tell us that some of the latter have been the salvation not of one kingdom alone but of many.”

“Ah, sir!” cried the niece at this point, “your Grace must remember that all this you are saying about knights-errant is a fable and a lie. And as for those history books, if they are not to be burned, they ought all to wear the sambenito²or some other sign to show how infamous they are and how they corrupt good manners.”

“By the God who sustains me!” exclaimed Don Quixote, “if you were not my flesh-and-blood niece, being the daughter of my own sister, I would so punish you for the blasphemy you have uttered that all the world would hear about it. How comes it that a lass who barely knows how to handle a dozen lace bobbins should set her tongue to wagging and presume to criticize these knightly histories? What would my lord Amadis say if he could hear such a thing? To be sure, he would pardon you, since he was the most humble and courteous knight of his age, and was, moreover, a great protector of damsels. But there are others who might have heard you, and in that case it would not have gone so well with you. For they were not all courteous and circumspect; some of them were the most unmannerly of rascals.

“By no means all of those that call themselves knights, or gentlemen, are what they pretend to be. Some are of pure gold, others are a base alloy. They all look the part, but not all can stand the touchstone of truth. Some there are of low degree who split themselves trying to appear gentlemanly. On the other hand, there are those of high station who, one would wager, are dying to be mistaken for their inferiors. The former pull themselves up through ambition or by reason of their merits, while the latter debase themselves by slothfulness or vice. And a good deal of wisdom is required to distinguish beween these two kinds of gentlemen who are alike in name but whose conduct is so different.”

“So help me God, uncle,” said the niece, “your Grace knows so much that in a pinch you could get right up in the pulpit or go out and start preaching in the streets. And yet, to think that you could be so blind and foolish as to try to make out that you are a hero when you are really an old man, that you are strong when you are sick, that you are able to straighten out the wrongs of the world when you yourself are bent with age, and, above all, that you are a knight; for, while the real gentry³ may become knights, the poor never can.”

“There is much in what you say, my niece,” replied Don Quixote. “I could tell you things having to do with family trees that would astonish you; but since I do not wish to mix the human with the divine, I shall not mention them. You see, my friends—and pay attention to what I say—so far as family is concerned, all the people in this world may be divided into four classes: those who from humble beginnings have grown and expanded until they have attained a pinnacle of greatness; those who were great to begin with and who have since consistently maintained their original state; those who have arrived at a pyramidal point, having progressively diminished and consumed the greatness that was theirs at the start until, like the point of the pyramid with respect to its base or foundation, they have come to be nothing at all; and, finally, there is the vast majority who had neither a good start nor a subsequent history that was in any way out of the ordinary and who accordingly will have a nameless end, like the ordinary plebeian stock.

“Of the first group, who rose from humble origins to a greatness which they continue to maintain, the House of Ottoman may serve as an example; for it was founded by a lowly shepherd and later attained the heights which we now see it occupying. Of the second class, those who have maintained their original greatness without adding to or detracting from it, I may cite the case of many princes who have been content to remain peacefully within the confines of their kingdoms. As for those that began great only to taper away in a point, there are thousands of examples. For all the Pharaohs and Ptolemies of Egypt, the Caesars of Rome, and the countless drove (if I may employ that word) of princes, monarchs, and lords, of Medes, Persians, Greeks, and barbarians—all these royal and noble lines have ended in the point of nothingness, both they and their founders, and today it would be impossible to find a single one of their descendants, or if one did come upon any of them, they would be in some low and humble station. Of the plebeians I have nothing to say, except that they serve to increase the number of the living without any other claim to fame, since they have achieved no form of greatness that entitles them to praise.

“My reason for telling you all this, my innocent ones, is that you may see how much confusion exists with regard to the subject of family descent. They alone impress us as being great and illustrious that show themselves to be virtuous, rich, and generous. I say this for the reason that the great man who was also vicious would be no more than an outstanding example of vice, and the rich man who was not generous would be but a miserly beggar. What brings happiness to the possessor of wealth is not the having but the spending of it, and by that I mean, spending it well and not simply to gratify his own whims. The gentleman who is poor, however, has no other means of proving that he is a gentleman than by following the path of virtue, by being affable, well bred, courteous and polite, and prompt to do favors for others; he will not be proud and haughty or a backbiter, and, above all, he will be charitable. With the two maravedis that he gives with a cheerful heart to the poor he will show himself to be as generous as the one who distributes alms to the ringing of a bell, and no one who sees him adorned with the virtues that I have mentioned, even though he may not know him, will fail to regard him as coming of good stock. It would be a wonder if it were not so, for praise has ever been the reward of virtue, and those who are virtuous are bound to be commended.

“There are two paths, my daughters, by which men may succeed in becoming rich and honored. One is that of letters, the other that of arms. For my part, I am more inclined to the latter than to the former. Indeed, so strong is my inclination that it would seem that I must have been born under the influence of the planet Mars. And so I am practically compelled to follow that path, and I shall keep to it in spite of all the world. It is useless for you to wear yourselves out trying to persuade me not to do what Heaven wills, fate ordains, reason asks, and, above all, my own will desires. Knowing as I do all the innumerable hardships that go with knight-errantry, I also know the infinite number of good things that are to be attained by it. I am aware that the path of virtue is a straight and narrow one, while that of vice is a broad and spacious highway. I realize that the ends and goals are different in the two cases, the highroad of vice leading to death, while virtue’s narrow, thorny trail conducts us to life, and not a life that has a mortal close, but life everlasting. As our great Castilian poet has put it:

This is the rugged path, the toilsome way
That leads to immortality’s fair heights,
Which none e’er reach who from that path do stray.“⁴

“Oh, dear me!” said the niece, “my master is a poet, too. He knows everything and can do everything. I’ll bet that if he chose to turn mason he could build a house as easily as he could a birdcage.”

“I can tell you one thing, niece,” replied Don Quixote, “that if my mind were not so wholly occupied with thoughts of chivalry, there is nothing that I could not do, no trinket that I could not turn out with my own hands, especially birdcages and toothpicks.”

At that moment there was a knock at the door, and when they asked who was there, Sancho replied that it was he. No sooner did the housekeeper hear this than she ran and hid herself, so great was her abhorrence of the squire. The niece opened the door and Don Quixote came forward to meet the visitor with open arms, after which the two of them shut themselves up in the knight’s room where they had another conversation that was in no way surpassed by their previous one.

CHAPTER VII. Of what passed between Don Quixote and his squire, with other very famous incidents.

SEEING her master and Sancho Panza closeted together, the housekeeper at once suspected what they were up to. Feeling certain that as a result of their consultation they would resolve to sally forth a third time, she snatched up her mantle and, full of anxiety and deeply distressed, went out to look for the bachelor Sansón Carrasco; for it seemed to her that, being a well-spoken young man and a new acquaintance of Don Quixote’s, he might be able to persuade the knight to give up so insane an undertaking. She found the bachelor walking up and down the patio of his house, and the moment she caught sight of him she ran up to him and fell on her knees in front of him, sweating all over and giving every evidence of affliction. Carrasco was surprised to see her so upset and grief-stricken.

“What is the meaning of this, Mistress Housekeeper?” he asked. “What has happened to cause you to appear so heartbroken?”

“It is nothing, Senor Sans6n,” she replied, “except that my master is breaking out again, there’s no doubt of that.”

“Breaking out where, Senora? Has he burst any part of his body?”

“No,” said she, “it’s through the door of his madness that he’s bursting. I mean to say, my dear Senor Bachelor, that he wants to leave home again, which will be the third time, to go roaming the world and looking for what he calls ventures,¹ though for the life of me I can’t see why he gives them that name. The first time he came home to us slung over the back of an ass and nearly clubbed to death. The second time it was in an oxcart, locked in a cage, where he said he had been put through some magic spell or other, and such a sorry-looking sight he was that the mother who bore him would not have recognized him. He was lean and yellow and his eyes were deep-sunken in his head, and in order to bring him around again to something of his old self I had to use more than six hundred eggs, as God knows, and all the world and my hens as well, for they wouldn’t let me lie.”

“I can well believe,” the bachelor assured her, “that those hens of yours are so good, so fat, and so well brought up that they would not say one thing in place of another even if they burst. In short, Mistress Housekeeper, nothing has happened except what you fear that Senor Don Quixote may do?”

“Nothing else,” she said.

“Well, then,” he told her, “don’t worry, but go on home and prepare me a warm breakfast, and on the way you might repeat St. Apollonia’s prayer, if you happen to know it. I will be with you shortly, and you shall see miracles.”

“Ah, poor me!” said the housekeeper, “so it’s St. Apollonia’s prayer that I should be saying, is it? That would be all right if my master had the toothache,² but his trouble is not in his teeth but in his brains.”

“I know what I am talking about, Mistress Housekeeper; so run along and do not dispute my word, for, as you know, I am a bachelor of Salamanca and that means the best there is.” ³

With this, the housekeeper returned home and Carrasco went to hunt up the curate and make certain arrangements with him which will be duly narrated when the time comes.

When they were shut up together, Don Quixote and Sancho had a conversation which the historian has very minutely and truthfully reported.

“Sir,” began Sancho, “I have reduced my wife to let me go with your Grace wherever you choose to take me.”

“Induced, you mean to say, Sancho, not reduced.”

“Once or twice before, if I remember rightly,” said Sancho, “I have begged your Grace not to correct my words so long as you understand what I mean by them. When you don’t understand, all you have to do is to say, ‘Sancho, I don’t know what the devil you mean’; and then, if I don’t make myself plain, you can go ahead and correct me all you want to. You know how focile I am.”

“I fail to understand you right now, Sancho,” said Don Quixote, “for I’m sure I don’t know what you mean when you say, ‘I am so focile.’”

“So focile,” replied Sancho, “means, ‘I am so much that way.”’

“I understand you less than ever,” said his master.

“Well, if you can’t make it out,” answered the squire, “I don’t know what to say to you. That’s the best I can do, so help me God.”

“Ahl I get it. What you mean to say is that you are so docile, easygoing, and tractable that you will accept whatever I say to you and follow my teachings.”

“I will bet you,” said Sancho, “that you understood what I meant all the time and just wanted to mix me up so that you could hear me make a lot more blunders.”

“You may be right,” replied Don Quixote, “but tell me, exactly what was it that Teresa said?”

“She said that I should get everything down in black and white with your Grace, to let papers talk and beards be still,⁴ since he who binds does not wrangle,⁵ and one ‘take’ is worth a couple of ‘I’ll give you’s.’ ⁶ And I can tell you that a woman’s advice is of little worth and he who won’t take it is a fool.” ⁷

“And so say I,” observed Don Quixote. “Go on, friend Sancho, you are in rare form today.” ⁸

“The fact of the matter is, as your Grace well knows,” continued Sancho, “we are all of us subject to death, we are here today and gone tomorrow, and the lamb goes as soon as the sheep,⁹ and no one can promise himself more hours of life in this world than God may see fit to give him, for death is deaf, and when it comes to knock at the door of our life it is always in a hurry, and neither prayers nor force nor scepters nor miters can hold it back, all of which is a matter of common talk and knowledge and we hear it from the pulpit right along.”

“That is all very true,” said Don Quixote, “but I can’t see what you are getting at.”

“What I am getting at,” replied Sancho, “is that your Grace ought to give me a fixed wage to be paid to me every month during the time that I am in your service, out of your estate. I don’t like to depend on favors that come late or never and may not be what you expect—God help me where those that I am expecting are concerned. The short of it is, I’d like to know what I am earning, however much or little it may be; for a hen will set on one egg, and many littles make a much, and so long as something’s gained nothing’s lost. If it should turn out to be true—which I neither believe nor expect —that your Grace is going to give me that island you promised me, I am not so ungrateful nor would I go so far as to say that you shouldn’t take what the income from the island amounts to out of my wages on a pro cata basis.”

“Friend Sancho,” remarked Don Quixote, “a cat may sometimes be as good as a rat.”

“I get you,” was Sancho’s answer. “I’ll bet you that what I should have said was pro rata and not pro cata, but it makes no difference, since your Grace understood me anyway.”

“I understand you so well,” said Don Quixote, “that I can read you like a book. I know what the bull’s-eye is you’re shooting at with all those proverbs of yours. Look, Sancho, I should be glad to give you a fixed wage if I could find in the histories of knights-errant any instance that would afford me the slightest hint as to what their squires used to receive by the month or by the year. I have read all or most of those histories, and I cannot recall any knight who paid his squire such a wage. Rather, they all served for the favors that came to them; and when they least expected it, if things had gone well with their masters, they would find themselves rewarded with an island or something else that amounted to the same thing, or at the least they would have a title and a seigniory.

“If for the sake of these hopes and inducements, Sancho,” the knight went on, “you choose to return to my service, well and good; but you are wasting your time if you think that I am going to violate and unhinge the ancient customs of chivalry. And so, my good Sancho, go back home and tell your Teresa how I feel about it, and if she and you are willing to depend upon my favors, bene quidem, and if not, we will be as good friends as we were before; for if there is no lack of food in the pigeon house, it will not lack pigeons. And remember, my son, a good hope is better than a bad holding,¹⁰ and a good complaint better than bad pay.¹¹ If I speak in this manner, Sancho, it is to show you that I, too, can scatter proverbs like showers. In conclusion, I would say to you that if you do not choose to come with me on these terms and take the same chance that I do, may God keep you and make you a saint, for I shall not fail to find other squires who will be more obedient, more diligent, and not so stupid or so talkative as you.”

When Sancho saw how firmly resolved his master was on this point, the heavens darkened over for him and the wings of his heart drooped; for he had felt certain that Don Quixote would not go without him for anything in the world. He was very much astonished and was still lost in thought when Sans6n Carrasco, accompanied by the housekeeper and the niece,¹² entered the room; for the womenfolk wished to hear the arguments which the bachelor would employ in persuading their master not to go back to seeking adventures. Sansón, that famous wag, now came forward and embraced Don Quixote as he had done on the previous occasion, and, raising his voice, he addressed him as follows:

“0 flower of knight-errantry, 0 shining light of the profession of arms, 0 honor and mirror of the Spanish nation! May it please Almighty God in His infinite power that the person or persons who would prevent or impede your third sally never find their way out of the labyrinth of their schemings nor ever succeed in accomplishing what they most desire.”

Turning then to the housekeeper, he went on, “Mistress Housekeeper, you may just as well leave off saying St. Apollonia’s prayer; for I now realize that it has been definitely determined by the spheres that Don Quixote shall carry out his new and lofty undertakings, and I should be laying a great burden upon my conscience if I did not urge and entreat this knight to keep his good right arm and valiant spirit curbed and confined no longer, since by his tarrying here he is cheating the wronged of their rights, orphans of his protection, damsels of the honor he might save for them, widows of the favors he might bestow upon them, and wives of the support with which he might provide them, along with other things of the sort that have to do with, appertain to, and are the proper appurtenances of, the order of knight-errantry. Come, then, my dear Señor Don Quixote, so handsome and so brave, let it be today rather than tomorrow that your Grace and Highness takes the road, and if anything be lacking for the carrying out of your plan, here am I to supply the need. My person and my fortune are at your disposal, and, if needs be, I will even serve your Magnificence as squire. Indeed, I should count myself most fortunate in being allowed to do so.”

At this point Don Quixote spoke up. “Did not I tell you, Sancho,” he said, “that I would have no trouble in finding squires? Look who is now offering to serve me. None other than the distinguished bachelor, Sans6n Carrasco, the darling and perpetual delight of the Salamancan schools. He is sound in body, agile-limbed, and discreet, and can stand heat as well as cold, hunger as well as thirst. In brief, he has all the qualifications that are required of a squire to a knight-errant. But Heaven forbid that, to gratify my own inclinations, I should shatter this pillar of letters and vase of learning and cut down this towering palm of the fine and liberal arts. Let this new Samson remain in his own country, bringing honor to it and at the same time to the gray hairs of his aged parents. As for me, I shall make out with any squire that comes along, seeing that Sancho does not deign to come with me.”

“I do deign to come,” Sancho protested. He was deeply moved and his eyes were filled with tears. “It shall not be said of me, my master,” he went on, “that ‘once the bread is eaten, the company breaks up.’ I do not come of ungrateful stock; for all the world, and especially my village, knows who the Panzas were, and I am descended from them. What’s more, I know from the many kind things you have done and the kind words you have spoken how much your Grace desires to show me favor. If I seem to have haggled a bit over my wages, that was to please my wife. When she undertakes to get you to do something, there’s no mallet that drives in the hoops of a cask the way she drives you until you’ve done it. But, after all, a man has to be a man and a woman a woman; and, seeing that I’m a man wherever I am, which there’s no denying, I mean to be one in my own house as well, whatever anybody says. So, then, there is nothing more to be done except for your Grace to draw up your will, with a codicil that can’t be provoked, and we will set out at once. That way, Señor Sansón will not have to suffer any more, for he says his conscience is nagging at him to persuade your Grace to sally out into the world a third time. And I offer to serve your Grace faithfully and loyally, as well as and better than all the squires that have served knights-errant in times past or present.”

The bachelor was amazed at Sancho Panza’s way of talking; for, although he had read the First Part of the history, he never would have believed that the squire was as droll as he was depicted there. But as he now heard him speaking of a will and codicil that could not be provoked (in place of revoked), he was convinced of the truth of it all and came to the conclusion that this was one of the greatest simpletons of the age. Never before in the world, he told himself, had the like been seen of such a pair of madmen as this master and his servant.

In the end, Don Quixote and Sancho embraced and were friends once more; and with the advice and approval of the great Carrasco, who for the present was their oracle, they set the date for their departure at three days from then, which would give them time enough to make the necessary preparations and look for a closed helmet, as Don Quixote insisted that he must by all means have one to take with him. Sansón offered to see to this, saying a friend of his had such a piece and would not refuse it to him, although, to be sure, it was not bright and clean as polished steel ought to be but was covered with rust and mildew.

The curses which the two women, the housekeeper and the niece, heaped upon the bachelor’s head were innumerable. They tore their hair, clawed their faces, and, like the hired mourners of old, set up such a wailing over their master’s departure that one would have thought it was his death they were lamenting. In thus persuading the knight to sally forth again, Sans6n had a plan in mind which the history relates further on. All that he did was on the advice of the curate and the barber, with whom he had previously discussed the matter.

The short of it is, in the course of those three days Don Quixote and Sancho provided themselves with what they thought was necessary, and, the squire having pacified his wife and the knight having calmed his niece and housekeeper, the two of them set out at nightfall for El Toboso, without being seen by anyone except the bachelor, who expressed a desire to accompany them for a distance of half a league from the village. Don Quixote was mounted upon his good Rocinante and Sancho upon his ancient gray, his saddlebags stuffed with certain victuals and his pocket with money which his master had given him for whatever might come up. Sans6n gave the knight a farewell embrace, urging him to send back word of the good or ill fortune that the pair met with, in order that he, Carrasco, as the laws of friendship demanded, might rejoice over the former or grieve over the latter. Don Quixote promised that he would do so, and the bachelor thereupon returned to the village while the other two took the highway for the great city of El Toboso.