Don Quixote

F MATTERS THAT BENENGELI SAYS HE WHO READS THEM WILL KNOW, IF HE READS
THEM WITH ATTENTION
When the brave man flees, treachery is manifest and it is for wise men
to reserve themselves for better occasions. This proved to be the case
with Don Quixote, who, giving way before the fury of the townsfolk and
the hostile intentions of the angry troop, took to flight and, without
a thought of Sancho or the danger in which he was leaving him,
retreated to such a distance as he thought made him safe. Sancho, lying
across his ass, followed him, as has been said, and at length came up,
having by this time recovered his senses, and on joining him let
himself drop off Dapple at Rocinante’s feet, sore, bruised, and
belaboured. Don Quixote dismounted to examine his wounds, but finding
him whole from head to foot, he said to him, angrily enough, “In an
evil hour didst thou take to braying, Sancho! Where hast thou learned
that it is well done to mention the rope in the house of the man that
has been hanged? To the music of brays what harmonies couldst thou
expect to get but cudgels? Give thanks to God, Sancho, that they signed
the cross on thee just now with a stick, and did not mark thee per
signum crucis with a cutlass.”

“I’m not equal to answering,” said Sancho, “for I feel as if I was
speaking through my shoulders; let us mount and get away from this;
I’ll keep from braying, but not from saying that knights-errant fly and
leave their good squires to be pounded like privet, or made meal of at
the hands of their enemies.”

“He does not fly who retires,” returned Don Quixote; “for I would have
thee know, Sancho, that the valour which is not based upon a foundation
of prudence is called rashness, and the exploits of the rash man are to
be attributed rather to good fortune than to courage; and so I own that
I retired, but not that I fled; and therein I have followed the example
of many valiant men who have reserved themselves for better times; the
histories are full of instances of this, but as it would not be any
good to thee or pleasure to me, I will not recount them to thee now.”

Sancho was by this time mounted with the help of Don Quixote, who then
himself mounted Rocinante, and at a leisurely pace they proceeded to
take shelter in a grove which was in sight about a quarter of a league
off. Every now and then Sancho gave vent to deep sighs and dismal
groans, and on Don Quixote asking him what caused such acute suffering,
he replied that, from the end of his back-bone up to the nape of his
neck, he was so sore that it nearly drove him out of his senses.

“The cause of that soreness,” said Don Quixote, “will be, no doubt,
that the staff wherewith they smote thee being a very long one, it
caught thee all down the back, where all the parts that are sore are
situated, and had it reached any further thou wouldst be sorer still.”

“By God,” said Sancho, “your worship has relieved me of a great doubt,
and cleared up the point for me in elegant style! Body o’ me! is the
cause of my soreness such a mystery that there’s any need to tell me I
am sore everywhere the staff hit me? If it was my ankles that pained me
there might be something in going divining why they did, but it is not
much to divine that I’m sore where they thrashed me. By my faith,
master mine, the ills of others hang by a hair; every day I am
discovering more and more how little I have to hope for from keeping
company with your worship; for if this time you have allowed me to be
drubbed, the next time, or a hundred times more, we’ll have the
blanketings of the other day over again, and all the other pranks
which, if they have fallen on my shoulders now, will be thrown in my
teeth by-and-by. I would do a great deal better (if I was not an
ignorant brute that will never do any good all my life), I would do a
great deal better, I say, to go home to my wife and children and
support them and bring them up on what God may please to give me,
instead of following your worship along roads that lead nowhere and
paths that are none at all, with little to drink and less to eat. And
then when it comes to sleeping! Measure out seven feet on the earth,
brother squire, and if that’s not enough for you, take as many more,
for you may have it all your own way and stretch yourself to your
heart’s content. Oh that I could see burnt and turned to ashes the
first man that meddled with knight-errantry or at any rate the first
who chose to be squire to such fools as all the knights-errant of past
times must have been! Of those of the present day I say nothing,
because, as your worship is one of them, I respect them, and because I
know your worship knows a point more than the devil in all you say and
think.”

“I would lay a good wager with you, Sancho,” said Don Quixote, “that
now that you are talking on without anyone to stop you, you don’t feel
a pain in your whole body. Talk away, my son, say whatever comes into
your head or mouth, for so long as you feel no pain, the irritation
your impertinences give me will be a pleasure to me; and if you are so
anxious to go home to your wife and children, God forbid that I should
prevent you; you have money of mine; see how long it is since we left
our village this third time, and how much you can and ought to earn
every month, and pay yourself out of your own hand.”

“When I worked for Tom Carrasco, the father of the bachelor Samson
Carrasco that your worship knows,” replied Sancho, “I used to earn two
ducats a month besides my food; I can’t tell what I can earn with your
worship, though I know a knight-errant’s squire has harder times of it
than he who works for a farmer; for after all, we who work for farmers,
however much we toil all day, at the worst, at night, we have our olla
supper and sleep in a bed, which I have not slept in since I have been
in your worship’s service, if it wasn’t the short time we were in Don
Diego de Miranda’s house, and the feast I had with the skimmings I took
off Camacho’s pots, and what I ate, drank, and slept in Basilio’s
house; all the rest of the time I have been sleeping on the hard ground
under the open sky, exposed to what they call the inclemencies of
heaven, keeping life in me with scraps of cheese and crusts of bread,
and drinking water either from the brooks or from the springs we come
to on these by-paths we travel.”

“I own, Sancho,” said Don Quixote, “that all thou sayest is true; how
much, thinkest thou, ought I to give thee over and above what Tom
Carrasco gave thee?”

“I think,” said Sancho, “that if your worship was to add on two reals a
month I’d consider myself well paid; that is, as far as the wages of my
labour go; but to make up to me for your worship’s pledge and promise
to me to give me the government of an island, it would be fair to add
six reals more, making thirty in all.”

“Very good,” said Don Quixote; “it is twenty-five days since we left
our village, so reckon up, Sancho, according to the wages you have made
out for yourself, and see how much I owe you in proportion, and pay
yourself, as I said before, out of your own hand.”

“O body o’ me!” said Sancho, “but your worship is very much out in that
reckoning; for when it comes to the promise of the island we must count
from the day your worship promised it to me to this present hour we are
at now.”

“Well, how long is it, Sancho, since I promised it to you?” said Don
Quixote.

“If I remember rightly,” said Sancho, “it must be over twenty years,
three days more or less.”

Don Quixote gave himself a great slap on the forehead and began to
laugh heartily, and said he, “Why, I have not been wandering, either in
the Sierra Morena or in the whole course of our sallies, but barely two
months, and thou sayest, Sancho, that it is twenty years since I
promised thee the island. I believe now thou wouldst have all the money
thou hast of mine go in thy wages. If so, and if that be thy pleasure,
I give it to thee now, once and for all, and much good may it do thee,
for so long as I see myself rid of such a good-for-nothing squire I’ll
be glad to be left a pauper without a rap. But tell me, thou perverter
of the squirely rules of knight-errantry, where hast thou ever seen or
read that any knight-errant’s squire made terms with his lord, ‘you
must give me so much a month for serving you’? Plunge, scoundrel,
rogue, monster—for such I take thee to be—plunge, I say, into the mare
magnum of their histories; and if thou shalt find that any squire ever
said or thought what thou hast said now, I will let thee nail it on my
forehead, and give me, over and above, four sound slaps in the face.
Turn the rein, or the halter, of thy Dapple, and begone home; for one
single step further thou shalt not make in my company. O bread
thanklessly received! O promises ill-bestowed! O man more beast than
human being! Now, when I was about to raise thee to such a position,
that, in spite of thy wife, they would call thee ‘my lord,’ thou art
leaving me? Thou art going now when I had a firm and fixed intention of
making thee lord of the best island in the world? Well, as thou thyself
hast said before now, honey is not for the mouth of the ass. Ass thou
art, ass thou wilt be, and ass thou wilt end when the course of thy
life is run; for I know it will come to its close before thou dost
perceive or discern that thou art a beast.”

Sancho regarded Don Quixote earnestly while he was giving him this
rating, and was so touched by remorse that the tears came to his eyes,
and in a piteous and broken voice he said to him, “Master mine, I
confess that, to be a complete ass, all I want is a tail; if your
worship will only fix one on to me, I’ll look on it as rightly placed,
and I’ll serve you as an ass all the remaining days of my life. Forgive
me and have pity on my folly, and remember I know but little, and, if I
talk much, it’s more from infirmity than malice; but he who sins and
mends commends himself to God.”

“I should have been surprised, Sancho,” said Don Quixote, “if thou
hadst not introduced some bit of a proverb into thy speech. Well, well,
I forgive thee, provided thou dost mend and not show thyself in future
so fond of thine own interest, but try to be of good cheer and take
heart, and encourage thyself to look forward to the fulfillment of my
promises, which, by being delayed, does not become impossible.”

Sancho said he would do so, and keep up his heart as best he could.
They then entered the grove, and Don Quixote settled himself at the
foot of an elm, and Sancho at that of a beech, for trees of this kind
and others like them always have feet but no hands. Sancho passed the
night in pain, for with the evening dews the blow of the staff made
itself felt all the more. Don Quixote passed it in his never-failing
meditations; but, for all that, they had some winks of sleep, and with
the appearance of daylight they pursued their journey in quest of the
banks of the famous Ebro, where that befell them which will be told in
the following chapter.

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