Don Quixote

F WHAT TOOK PLACE BETWEEN DON QUIXOTE AND HIS NIECE AND HOUSEKEEPER;
ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT CHAPTERS IN THE WHOLE HISTORY
While Sancho Panza and his wife, Teresa Cascajo, held the above
irrelevant conversation, Don Quixote’s niece and housekeeper were not
idle, for by a thousand signs they began to perceive that their uncle
and master meant to give them the slip the third time, and once more
betake himself to his, for them, ill-errant chivalry. They strove by
all the means in their power to divert him from such an unlucky scheme;
but it was all preaching in the desert and hammering cold iron.
Nevertheless, among many other representations made to him, the
housekeeper said to him, “In truth, master, if you do not keep still
and stay quiet at home, and give over roaming mountains and valleys
like a troubled spirit, looking for what they say are called
adventures, but what I call misfortunes, I shall have to make complaint
to God and the king with loud supplication to send some remedy.”

To which Don Quixote replied, “What answer God will give to your
complaints, housekeeper, I know not, nor what his Majesty will answer
either; I only know that if I were king I should decline to answer the
numberless silly petitions they present every day; for one of the
greatest among the many troubles kings have is being obliged to listen
to all and answer all, and therefore I should be sorry that any affairs
of mine should worry him.”

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

“There are,” replied Don Quixote, “and plenty of them; and it is right
there should be, to set off the dignity of the prince, and for the
greater glory of the king’s majesty.”

“Then might not your worship,” said she, “be one of those that, without
stirring a step, serve their king and lord in his court?”

“Recollect, my friend,” said Don Quixote, “all knights cannot be
courtiers, nor can all courtiers be knights-errant, nor need they be.
There must be all sorts in the world; and though we may be all knights,
there is a great difference between one and another; for the courtiers,
without quitting their chambers, or the threshold of the court, range
the world over by looking at a map, without its costing them a
farthing, and without suffering heat or cold, hunger or thirst; but we,
the true knights-errant, measure the whole earth with our own feet,
exposed to the sun, to the cold, to the air, to the inclemencies of
heaven, by day and night, on foot and on horseback; nor do we only know
enemies in pictures, but in their own real shapes; and at all risks and
on all occasions we attack them, without any regard to childish points
or rules of single combat, whether one has or has not a shorter lance
or sword, whether one carries relics or any secret contrivance about
him, whether or not the sun is to be divided and portioned out, and
other niceties of the sort that are observed in set combats of man to
man, that you know nothing about, but I do. And you must know besides,
that the true knight-errant, though he may see ten giants, that not
only touch the clouds with their heads but pierce them, and that go,
each of them, on two tall towers by way of legs, and whose arms are
like the masts of mighty ships, and each eye like a great mill-wheel,
and glowing brighter than a glass furnace, must not on any account be
dismayed by them. On the contrary, he must attack and fall upon them
with a gallant bearing and a fearless heart, and, if possible, vanquish
and destroy them, even though they have for armour the shells of a
certain fish, that they say are harder than diamonds, and in place of
swords wield trenchant blades of Damascus steel, or clubs studded with
spikes also of steel, such as I have more than once seen. All this I
say, housekeeper, that you may see the difference there is between the
one sort of knight and the other; and it would be well if there were no
prince who did not set a higher value on this second, or more properly
speaking first, kind of knights-errant; for, as we read in their
histories, there have been some among them who have been the salvation,
not merely of one kingdom, but of many.”

“Ah, señor,” here exclaimed the niece, “remember that all this you are
saying about knights-errant is fable and fiction; and their histories,
if indeed they were not burned, would deserve, each of them, to have a
sambenito put on it, or some mark by which it might be known as
infamous and a corrupter of good manners.”

“By the God that gives me life,” said Don Quixote, “if thou wert not my
full niece, being daughter of my own sister, I would inflict a
chastisement upon thee for the blasphemy thou hast uttered that all the
world should ring with. What! can it be that a young hussy that hardly
knows how to handle a dozen lace-bobbins dares to wag her tongue and
criticise the histories of knights-errant? What would Señor Amadis say
if he heard of such a thing? He, however, no doubt would forgive thee,
for he was the most humble-minded and courteous knight of his time, and
moreover a great protector of damsels; but some there are that might
have heard thee, and it would not have been well for thee in that case;
for they are not all courteous or mannerly; some are ill-conditioned
scoundrels; nor is it everyone that calls himself a gentleman, that is
so in all respects; some are gold, others pinchbeck, and all look like
gentlemen, but not all can stand the touchstone of truth. There are men
of low rank who strain themselves to bursting to pass for gentlemen,
and high gentlemen who, one would fancy, were dying to pass for men of
low rank; the former raise themselves by their ambition or by their
virtues, the latter debase themselves by their lack of spirit or by
their vices; and one has need of experience and discernment to
distinguish these two kinds of gentlemen, so much alike in name and so
different in conduct.”

“God bless me!” said the niece, “that you should know so much,
uncle—enough, if need be, to get up into a pulpit and go preach in the
streets—and yet that you should fall into a delusion so great and a
folly so manifest as to try to make yourself out vigorous when you are
old, strong when you are sickly, able to put straight what is crooked
when you yourself are bent by age, and, above all, a caballero when you
are not one; for though gentlefolk may be so, poor men are nothing of
the kind!”

“There is a great deal of truth in what you say, niece,” returned Don
Quixote, “and I could tell you somewhat about birth that would astonish
you; but, not to mix up things human and divine, I refrain. Look you,
my dears, all the lineages in the world (attend to what I am saying)
can be reduced to four sorts, which are these: those that had humble
beginnings, and went on spreading and extending themselves until they
attained surpassing greatness; those that had great beginnings and
maintained them, and still maintain and uphold the greatness of their
origin; those, again, that from a great beginning have ended in a point
like a pyramid, having reduced and lessened their original greatness
till it has come to nought, like the point of a pyramid, which,
relatively to its base or foundation, is nothing; and then there are
those—and it is they that are the most numerous—that have had neither
an illustrious beginning nor a remarkable mid-course, and so will have
an end without a name, like an ordinary plebeian line. Of the first,
those that had an humble origin and rose to the greatness they still
preserve, the Ottoman house may serve as an example, which from an
humble and lowly shepherd, its founder, has reached the height at which
we now see it. For examples of the second sort of lineage, that began
with greatness and maintains it still without adding to it, there are
the many princes who have inherited the dignity, and maintain
themselves in their inheritance, without increasing or diminishing it,
keeping peacefully within the limits of their states. Of those that
began great and ended in a point, there are thousands of examples, for
all the Pharaohs and Ptolemies of Egypt, the Cæsars of Rome, and the
whole herd (if I may apply such a word to them) of countless princes,
monarchs, lords, Medes, Assyrians, Persians, Greeks, and barbarians,
all these lineages and lordships have ended in a point and come to
nothing, they themselves as well as their founders, for it would be
impossible now to find one of their descendants, and, even should we
find one, it would be in some lowly and humble condition. Of plebeian
lineages I have nothing to say, save that they merely serve to swell
the number of those that live, without any eminence to entitle them to
any fame or praise beyond this. From all I have said I would have you
gather, my poor innocents, that great is the confusion among lineages,
and that only those are seen to be great and illustrious that show
themselves so by the virtue, wealth, and generosity of their
possessors. I have said virtue, wealth, and generosity, because a great
man who is vicious will be a great example of vice, and a rich man who
is not generous will be merely a miserly beggar; for the possessor of
wealth is not made happy by possessing it, but by spending it, and not
by spending as he pleases, but by knowing how to spend it well. The
poor gentleman has no way of showing that he is a gentleman but by
virtue, by being affable, well-bred, courteous, gentle-mannered, and
kindly, not haughty, arrogant, or censorious, but above all by being
charitable; for by two maravedis given with a cheerful heart to the
poor, he will show himself as generous as he who distributes alms with
bell-ringing, and no one that perceives him to be endowed with the
virtues I have named, even though he know him not, will fail to
recognise and set him down as one of good blood; and it would be
strange were it not so; praise has ever been the reward of virtue, and
those who are virtuous cannot fail to receive commendation. There are
two roads, my daughters, by which men may reach wealth and honours; one
is that of letters, the other that of arms. I have more of arms than of
letters in my composition, and, judging by my inclination to arms, was
born under the influence of the planet Mars. I am, therefore, in a
measure constrained to follow that road, and by it I must travel in
spite of all the world, and it will be labour in vain for you to urge
me to resist what heaven wills, fate ordains, reason requires, and,
above all, my own inclination favours; for knowing as I do the
countless toils that are the accompaniments of knight-errantry, I know,
too, the infinite blessings that are attained by it; I know that the
path of virtue is very narrow, and the road of vice broad and spacious;
I know their ends and goals are different, for the broad and easy road
of vice ends in death, and the narrow and toilsome one of virtue in
life, and not transitory life, but in that which has no end; I know, as
our great Castilian poet says, that-

It is by rugged paths like these they go
That scale the heights of immortality,
Unreached by those that falter here below.”

“Woe is me!” exclaimed the niece, “my lord is a poet, too! He knows
everything, and he can do everything; I will bet, if he chose to turn
mason, he could make a house as easily as a cage.”

“I can tell you, niece,” replied Don Quixote, “if these chivalrous
thoughts did not engage all my faculties, there would be nothing that I
could not do, nor any sort of knickknack that would not come from my
hands, particularly cages and tooth-picks.”

At this moment there came a knocking at the door, and when they asked
who was there, Sancho Panza made answer that it was he. The instant the
housekeeper knew who it was, she ran to hide herself so as not to see
him; in such abhorrence did she hold him. The niece let him in, and his
master Don Quixote came forward to receive him with open arms, and the
pair shut themselves up in his room, where they had another
conversation not inferior to the previous one.

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