Don Quixote

N WHICH ARE CONTINUED THE REFINEMENTS WHEREWITH DON QUIXOTE PLAYED THE
PART OF A LOVER IN THE SIERRA MORENA
Returning to the proceedings of him of the Rueful Countenance when he
found himself alone, the history says that when Don Quixote had
completed the performance of the somersaults or capers, naked from the
waist down and clothed from the waist up, and saw that Sancho had gone
off without waiting to see any more crazy feats, he climbed up to the
top of a high rock, and there set himself to consider what he had
several times before considered without ever coming to any conclusion
on the point, namely whether it would be better and more to his purpose
to imitate the outrageous madness of Roland, or the melancholy madness
of Amadis; and communing with himself he said:

“What wonder is it if Roland was so good a knight and so valiant as
everyone says he was, when, after all, he was enchanted, and nobody
could kill him save by thrusting a corking pin into the sole of his
foot, and he always wore shoes with seven iron soles? Though cunning
devices did not avail him against Bernardo del Carpio, who knew all
about them, and strangled him in his arms at Roncesvalles. But putting
the question of his valour aside, let us come to his losing his wits,
for certain it is that he did lose them in consequence of the proofs he
discovered at the fountain, and the intelligence the shepherd gave him
of Angelica having slept more than two siestas with Medoro, a little
curly-headed Moor, and page to Agramante. If he was persuaded that this
was true, and that his lady had wronged him, it is no wonder that he
should have gone mad; but I, how am I to imitate him in his madness,
unless I can imitate him in the cause of it? For my Dulcinea, I will
venture to swear, never saw a Moor in her life, as he is, in his proper
costume, and she is this day as the mother that bore her, and I should
plainly be doing her a wrong if, fancying anything else, I were to go
mad with the same kind of madness as Roland the Furious. On the other
hand, I see that Amadis of Gaul, without losing his senses and without
doing anything mad, acquired as a lover as much fame as the most
famous; for, according to his history, on finding himself rejected by
his lady Oriana, who had ordered him not to appear in her presence
until it should be her pleasure, all he did was to retire to the Peña
Pobre in company with a hermit, and there he took his fill of weeping
until Heaven sent him relief in the midst of his great grief and need.
And if this be true, as it is, why should I now take the trouble to
strip stark naked, or do mischief to these trees which have done me no
harm, or why am I to disturb the clear waters of these brooks which
will give me to drink whenever I have a mind? Long live the memory of
Amadis and let him be imitated so far as is possible by Don Quixote of
La Mancha, of whom it will be said, as was said of the other, that if
he did not achieve great things, he died in attempting them; and if I
am not repulsed or rejected by my Dulcinea, it is enough for me, as I
have said, to be absent from her. And so, now to business; come to my
memory ye deeds of Amadis, and show me how I am to begin to imitate
you. I know already that what he chiefly did was to pray and commend
himself to God; but what am I to do for a rosary, for I have not got
one?”

And then it occurred to him how he might make one, and that was by
tearing a great strip off the tail of his shirt which hung down, and
making eleven knots on it, one bigger than the rest, and this served
him for a rosary all the time he was there, during which he repeated
countless ave-marias. But what distressed him greatly was not having
another hermit there to confess him and receive consolation from; and
so he solaced himself with pacing up and down the little meadow, and
writing and carving on the bark of the trees and on the fine sand a
multitude of verses all in harmony with his sadness, and some in praise
of Dulcinea; but, when he was found there afterwards, the only ones
completely legible that could be discovered were those that follow
here:

Ye on the mountainside that grow,
Ye green things all, trees, shrubs, and bushes,
Are ye aweary of the woe
That this poor aching bosom crushes?
If it disturb you, and I owe
Some reparation, it may be a
Defence for me to let you know
Don Quixote’s tears are on the flow,
And all for distant Dulcinea
Del Toboso.

The lealest lover time can show,
Doomed for a lady-love to languish,
Among these solitudes doth go,
A prey to every kind of anguish.
Why Love should like a spiteful foe
Thus use him, he hath no idea,
But hogsheads full—this doth he know—
Don Quixote’s tears are on the flow,
And all for distant Dulcinea
Del Toboso.

Adventure-seeking doth he go
Up rugged heights, down rocky valleys,
But hill or dale, or high or low,
Mishap attendeth all his sallies:
Love still pursues him to and fro,
And plies his cruel scourge—ah me! a
Relentless fate, an endless woe;
Don Quixote’s tears are on the flow,
And all for distant Dulcinea
Del Toboso.

The addition of “Del Toboso” to Dulcinea’s name gave rise to no little
laughter among those who found the above lines, for they suspected Don
Quixote must have fancied that unless he added “del Toboso” when he
introduced the name of Dulcinea the verse would be unintelligible;
which was indeed the fact, as he himself afterwards admitted. He wrote
many more, but, as has been said, these three verses were all that
could be plainly and perfectly deciphered. In this way, and in sighing
and calling on the fauns and satyrs of the woods and the nymphs of the
streams, and Echo, moist and mournful, to answer, console, and hear
him, as well as in looking for herbs to sustain him, he passed his time
until Sancho’s return; and had that been delayed three weeks, as it was
three days, the Knight of the Rueful Countenance would have worn such
an altered countenance that the mother that bore him would not have
known him: and here it will be well to leave him, wrapped up in sighs
and verses, to relate how Sancho Panza fared on his mission.

As for him, coming out upon the high road, he made for El Toboso, and
the next day reached the inn where the mishap of the blanket had
befallen him. As soon as he recognised it he felt as if he were once
more living through the air, and he could not bring himself to enter it
though it was an hour when he might well have done so, for it was
dinner-time, and he longed to taste something hot as it had been all
cold fare with him for many days past. This craving drove him to draw
near to the inn, still undecided whether to go in or not, and as he was
hesitating there came out two persons who at once recognised him, and
said one to the other:

“Señor licentiate, is not he on the horse there Sancho Panza who, our
adventurer’s housekeeper told us, went off with her master as esquire?”

“So it is,” said the licentiate, “and that is our friend Don Quixote’s
horse;” and if they knew him so well it was because they were the
curate and the barber of his own village, the same who had carried out
the scrutiny and sentence upon the books; and as soon as they
recognised Sancho Panza and Rocinante, being anxious to hear of Don
Quixote, they approached, and calling him by his name the curate said,
“Friend Sancho Panza, where is your master?”

Sancho recognised them at once, and determined to keep secret the place
and circumstances where and under which he had left his master, so he
replied that his master was engaged in a certain quarter on a certain
matter of great importance to him which he could not disclose for the
eyes in his head.

“Nay, nay,” said the barber, “if you don’t tell us where he is, Sancho
Panza, we will suspect as we suspect already, that you have murdered
and robbed him, for here you are mounted on his horse; in fact, you
must produce the master of the hack, or else take the consequences.”

“There is no need of threats with me,” said Sancho, “for I am not a man
to rob or murder anybody; let his own fate, or God who made him, kill
each one; my master is engaged very much to his taste doing penance in
the midst of these mountains;” and then, offhand and without stopping,
he told them how he had left him, what adventures had befallen him, and
how he was carrying a letter to the lady Dulcinea del Toboso, the
daughter of Lorenzo Corchuelo, with whom he was over head and ears in
love. They were both amazed at what Sancho Panza told them; for though
they were aware of Don Quixote’s madness and the nature of it, each
time they heard of it they were filled with fresh wonder. They then
asked Sancho Panza to show them the letter he was carrying to the lady
Dulcinea del Toboso. He said it was written in a notebook, and that his
master’s directions were that he should have it copied on paper at the
first village he came to. On this the curate said if he showed it to
him, he himself would make a fair copy of it. Sancho put his hand into
his bosom in search of the notebook but could not find it, nor, if he
had been searching until now, could he have found it, for Don Quixote
had kept it, and had never given it to him, nor had he himself thought
of asking for it. When Sancho discovered he could not find the book his
face grew deadly pale, and in great haste he again felt his body all
over, and seeing plainly it was not to be found, without more ado he
seized his beard with both hands and plucked away half of it, and then,
as quick as he could and without stopping, gave himself half a dozen
cuffs on the face and nose till they were bathed in blood.

Seeing this, the curate and the barber asked him what had happened him
that he gave himself such rough treatment.

“What should happen to me?” replied Sancho, “but to have lost from one
hand to the other, in a moment, three ass-colts, each of them like a
castle?”

“How is that?” said the barber.

“I have lost the notebook,” said Sancho, “that contained the letter to
Dulcinea, and an order signed by my master in which he directed his
niece to give me three ass-colts out of four or five he had at home;”
and he then told them about the loss of Dapple.

The curate consoled him, telling him that when his master was found he
would get him to renew the order, and make a fresh draft on paper, as
was usual and customary; for those made in notebooks were never
accepted or honoured.

Sancho comforted himself with this, and said if that were so the loss
of Dulcinea’s letter did not trouble him much, for he had it almost by
heart, and it could be taken down from him wherever and whenever they
liked.

“Repeat it then, Sancho,” said the barber, “and we will write it down
afterwards.”

Sancho Panza stopped to scratch his head to bring back the letter to
his memory, and balanced himself now on one foot, now the other, one
moment staring at the ground, the next at the sky, and after having
half gnawed off the end of a finger and kept them in suspense waiting
for him to begin, he said, after a long pause, “By God, señor
licentiate, devil a thing can I recollect of the letter; but it said at
the beginning, ‘Exalted and scrubbing Lady.’”

“It cannot have said ‘scrubbing,’” said the barber, “but ‘superhuman’
or ‘sovereign.’”

“That is it,” said Sancho; “then, as well as I remember, it went on,
‘The wounded, and wanting of sleep, and the pierced, kisses your
worship’s hands, ungrateful and very unrecognised fair one; and it said
something or other about health and sickness that he was sending her;
and from that it went tailing off until it ended with ‘Yours till
death, the Knight of the Rueful Countenance.’”

It gave them no little amusement, both of them, to see what a good
memory Sancho had, and they complimented him greatly upon it, and
begged him to repeat the letter a couple of times more, so that they
too might get it by heart to write it out by-and-by. Sancho repeated it
three times, and as he did, uttered three thousand more absurdities;
then he told them more about his master but he never said a word about
the blanketing that had befallen himself in that inn, into which he
refused to enter. He told them, moreover, how his lord, if he brought
him a favourable answer from the lady Dulcinea del Toboso, was to put
himself in the way of endeavouring to become an emperor, or at least a
monarch; for it had been so settled between them, and with his personal
worth and the might of his arm it was an easy matter to come to be one:
and how on becoming one his lord was to make a marriage for him (for he
would be a widower by that time, as a matter of course) and was to give
him as a wife one of the damsels of the empress, the heiress of some
rich and grand state on the mainland, having nothing to do with islands
of any sort, for he did not care for them now. All this Sancho
delivered with so much composure—wiping his nose from time to time—and
with so little common-sense that his two hearers were again filled with
wonder at the force of Don Quixote’s madness that could run away with
this poor man’s reason. They did not care to take the trouble of
disabusing him of his error, as they considered that since it did not
in any way hurt his conscience it would be better to leave him in it,
and they would have all the more amusement in listening to his
simplicities; and so they bade him pray to God for his lord’s health,
as it was a very likely and a very feasible thing for him in course of
time to come to be an emperor, as he said, or at least an archbishop or
some other dignitary of equal rank.

To which Sancho made answer, “If fortune, sirs, should bring things
about in such a way that my master should have a mind, instead of being
an emperor, to be an archbishop, I should like to know what
archbishops-errant commonly give their squires?”

“They commonly give them,” said the curate, some simple benefice or
cure, or some place as sacristan which brings them a good fixed income,
not counting the altar fees, which may be reckoned at as much more.”

“But for that,” said Sancho, “the squire must be unmarried, and must
know, at any rate, how to help at mass, and if that be so, woe is me,
for I am married already and I don’t know the first letter of the A B
C. What will become of me if my master takes a fancy to be an
archbishop and not an emperor, as is usual and customary with
knights-errant?”

“Be not uneasy, friend Sancho,” said the barber, “for we will entreat
your master, and advise him, even urging it upon him as a case of
conscience, to become an emperor and not an archbishop, because it will
be easier for him as he is more valiant than lettered.”

“So I have thought,” said Sancho; “though I can tell you he is fit for
anything: what I mean to do for my part is to pray to our Lord to place
him where it may be best for him, and where he may be able to bestow
most favours upon me.”

“You speak like a man of sense,” said the curate, “and you will be
acting like a good Christian; but what must now be done is to take
steps to coax your master out of that useless penance you say he is
performing; and we had best turn into this inn to consider what plan to
adopt, and also to dine, for it is now time.”

Sancho said they might go in, but that he would wait there outside, and
that he would tell them afterwards the reason why he was unwilling, and
why it did not suit him to enter it; but he begged them to bring him
out something to eat, and to let it be hot, and also to bring barley
for Rocinante. They left him and went in, and presently the barber
brought him out something to eat. By-and-by, after they had between
them carefully thought over what they should do to carry out their
object, the curate hit upon an idea very well adapted to humour Don
Quixote, and effect their purpose; and his notion, which he explained
to the barber, was that he himself should assume the disguise of a
wandering damsel, while the other should try as best he could to pass
for a squire, and that they should thus proceed to where Don Quixote
was, and he, pretending to be an aggrieved and distressed damsel,
should ask a favour of him, which as a valiant knight-errant he could
not refuse to grant; and the favour he meant to ask him was that he
should accompany her whither she would conduct him, in order to redress
a wrong which a wicked knight had done her, while at the same time she
should entreat him not to require her to remove her mask, nor ask her
any question touching her circumstances until he had righted her with
the wicked knight. And he had no doubt that Don Quixote would comply
with any request made in these terms, and that in this way they might
remove him and take him to his own village, where they would endeavour
to find out if his extraordinary madness admitted of any kind of
remedy.

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