And he stood up and came back in a little while carrying a large wineskin and a meat pie half a meter long, and this is not an exaggeration, because it held a white rabbit so large that Sancho, when he touched it, thought it was a goat, and not a kid, either; and when Sancho saw this, he said:
“Señor, did you bring this with you?”
“Well, what did you think?” responded the other man. “Am I by any chance a run-of-the-mill squire? I carry better provisions on my horse’s rump than a general does when he goes marching.”
Sancho ate without having to be asked twice, and in the dark he wolfed down mouthfuls the size of the knots that hobble a horse. And he said:
“Your grace is a faithful and true, right and proper, magnificent and great squire, as this feast shows, and if you haven’t come here by the arts of enchantment, at least it seems that way to me; but I’m so poor and unlucky that all I have in my saddlebags is a little cheese, so hard you could break a giant’s skull with it, and to keep it company some four dozen carob beans and the same number of hazelnuts and other kinds of nuts, thanks to the poverty of my master and the idea he has and the rule he keeps that knights errant should not live and survive on anything but dried fruits and the plants of the field.”
“By my faith, brother,” replied the Squire of the Wood, “my stomach isn’t made for thistles or wild pears or forest roots. Let our masters have their knightly opinions and rules and eat what their laws command. I have my baskets of food, and this wineskin hanging from the saddlebow, just in case, and I’m so devoted to it and love it so much that I can’t let too much time pass without giving it a thousand kisses and a thousand embraces.”
And saying this, he placed the wineskin in Sancho’s hands, who tilted it back and put it to his mouth and looked at the stars for a quarter of an hour, and when he had finished drinking, he leaned his head to one side, heaved a great sigh, and said:
“O whoreson, you damned rascal, but that’s good!”
“Do you see?” said the Squire of the Wood when he heard Sancho’s “whoreson.” “You complimented the wine by calling it whoreson.”
“And I say,” responded Sancho, “that I confess to knowing it’s no dishonor to call anybody a whoreson when your intention is to compliment him. But tell me, Señor, by the thing you love most: is this wine from Ciudad Real?”
“Bravo! What a winetaster!” responded the Squire of the Wood. “It’s from there and no place else, and it’s aged a few years.”
“You can’t fool me!” said Sancho. “You shouldn’t think it was beyond me to know about this wine. Does it surprise you, Señor Squire, that I have so great and natural an instinct for knowing wines that if I just smell one I know where it comes from, its lineage, its taste, its age, and how it will change, and everything else that has anything to do with it? But it’s no wonder, because in my family, on my father’s side, were the two best winetasters that La Mancha had in many years, and to prove it I’ll tell you a story about them. The two of them were asked to taste some wine from a cask and say what they thought about its condition and quality, and whether it was a good or bad wine. One tasted it with the tip of his tongue; the other only brought it up to his nose. The first said that the wine tasted of iron, the second that it tasted more of tanned leather. The owner said the cask was clean and the wine had not been fortified in a way that could have given it the taste of iron or leather. Even so, the two famous winetasters insisted that what they said was true. Time passed, the wine was sold, and when the cask was cleaned, inside it they found a small key on a leather strap. So your grace can see that a man who comes from that kind of family can give his opinion about matters like these.”
“That’s why I say,” said the Squire of the Wood, “that we should stop looking for adventures, and if we have loaves of bread, we shouldn’t go around looking for cakes, and we ought to go back home: God will find us there, if He wants to.”
“I’ll serve my master until he gets to Zaragoza; after that, we’ll work out something.”
In short, the two good squires spoke so much and drank so much that only sleep could stop their tongues and allay their thirst, for it would have been impossible to take it away altogether; and so, with both of them holding on to the almost empty wineskin, and with mouthfuls of food half-chewed in their mouths, they fell asleep, which is where we shall leave them now in order to recount what befell the Knight of the Wood and the Knight of the Sorrowful Face.
CHAPTER XIV
In which the adventure of the Knight of the Wood continues
Among the many words that passed between Don Quixote and the Knight of the Forest, the history says that the Knight of the Wood said to Don Quixote:
“Finally, Señor Knight, I want you to know that my destiny or, I should say, my own free choice, led me to fall in love with the peerless Casildea of Vandalia. I call her without peer because she has none, in the greatness of her stature or in the loftiness of her rank and beauty. This Casildea, then, whom I am describing to you, repaid my virtuous thoughts and courteous desires by having me, as his stepmother did with Hercules, engage in many different kinds of dangers, promising me at the end of each one that at the end of the next my hopes would be realized; but my labors have been linked together for so long that I have lost count, nor do I know which will be the final one that initiates the satisfaction of my virtuous desires. On one occasion she ordered me to challenge that famous giantess of Sevilla called La Giralda,1 who is as valiant and strong as if she were made of bronze and, without moving from one spot, is the most changeable and fickle woman in the world. I came, I saw, I conquered her, and I made her keep still and to the point, because for more than a week only north winds blew. Another time she ordered me to weigh the ancient stones of the corpulent Bulls of Guisando,2 an undertaking better suited to laborers than to knights. On yet another occasion she ordered me to hurl and fling myself into the abyss of Cabra,3 a singular and most fearful danger, and bring her a detailed report of what lies in its dark depths. I halted the movement of La Giralda, I weighed the Bulls of Guisando, I threw myself into the chasm and brought to light what lay hidden there in darkness, and my hopes are deader than dead, and her commands and disdain are more alive than ever. In short, most recently she has ordered me to travel through all the provinces of Spain and have all the knights errant wandering there confess that she alone is the greatest beauty of all the ladies in the world today, and that I am the most valiant and most perfectly enamored knight on earth; to satisfy this request I have already traveled most of Spain and conquered many knights who dared contradict me. But what gratifies me the most and makes me proudest is having conquered in single combat that most famous knight, Don Quixote of La Mancha, and forced him to confess that my Casildea is more beautiful than his Dulcinea; with this one conquest I consider that I have conquered all the knights in the world, because Don Quixote has conquered them all, and since I conquered him, his glory, fame, and honor have passed and been transferred to my person.
The conqueror enjoys more fame and glory
the greater the distinction of the vanquished;4
and as a consequence, the innumerable deeds of the aforementioned Don Quixote are mine and redound to my credit.”
Don Quixote was stunned at what he heard the Knight of the Wood say and was about to tell him he was lying a thousand times over, and he had the You lie on the tip of his tongue but did his best to restrain himself in order to have the Knight of the Wood confess his lie with his own mouth, and so, very calmly, he said:
“With regard to your grace, Señor Knight, having vanquished almost all the knights errant in Spain, and even the world, I say nothing; but your having conquered Don Quixote of La Mancha: about that I do have my doubts. It might have been another who resembled him, although there are few men who do.”
“What do you mean?” replied the Knight of the Wood. “By the heaven above us, I fought with Don Quixote, and I conquered and defeated him; he is a man of tall stature, a dry
face, long, lanky limbs, graying hair, an aquiline, somewhat hooked nose, and a large, black, drooping mustache. He does battle under the name The Knight of the Sorrowful Face, and for a squire he has a peasant named Sancho Panza; he sits on the back and holds the reins of a famous horse called Rocinante; finally, the lady of his desire, at one time known as Aldonza Lorenzo, is a certain Dulcinea of Toboso, like my lady, who is named Casildea and comes from Andalucía and therefore is called Casildea of Vandalia. If all this is not enough to validate the truth of what I say, here is my sword, which will oblige incredulity itself to give me credence.”
“Be calm, Señor Knight,” said Don Quixote, “and hear what I wish to tell you. You should know that this Don Quixote whom you have mentioned is the dearest friend I have in the world; I could even say that I value him as I do my own person, and by the description you have given me, which is detailed and accurate, I can only think that he is indeed the one you have conquered. On the other hand, I see with my eyes and touch with my hands the impossibility of his being the one, and yet there are many enchanters who are his enemies, especially one who ordinarily pursues him, and one of these may have taken on his appearance and allowed himself to be vanquished in order to cheat Don Quixote of the fame that his high chivalric deeds have earned and won for him throughout the known world. And as confirmation of this, I also want you to know that these enchanters, his adversaries, only two days ago transformed the figure and person of the beauteous Dulcinea of Toboso into a foul, lowborn peasant girl, and in the same fashion they must have transformed Don Quixote; if this is not enough to persuade you of the truth of what I say, here is Don Quixote himself, who will sustain it with arms, on foot or on horseback, or in whatever manner pleases you.”
And saying this, he rose to his feet and grasped his sword, waiting to see what decision would be made by the Knight of the Wood, who responded in the same tranquil voice, saying:
“The man who pays his debts does not mind guaranties: the man, Señor Don Quixote, who could vanquish you transformed can certainly hope to defeat you in your own person. But since it is not right for knights to engage in feats of arms in the dark, like robbers and thieves, let us wait for day so that the sun may see our deeds. And a condition of our combat must be that the vanquished submits to the will of the victor and does everything he desires as long as his commands respect a knight’s virtue.”
“I am more than happy with this condition and agreement,” responded Don Quixote.
And, having said this, they went to the place where their squires were and found them snoring, in the same positions they were in when sleep overcame them. The knights woke them and ordered them to ready the horses, because as soon as the sun rose, the two of them would have to engage in bloody, single, and unequaled combat; at this news, Sancho was surprised and stunned and fearful for the health of his master because of the brave deeds the Squire of the Wood had attributed to his knight; but, without saying a word, the squires went to find their animals, for by this time all three horses and the donkey had smelled one another and were standing close together.
On the way, the Squire of the Wood said to Sancho:
“You should know, brother, that it’s the custom among fighting men in Andalucía, when they are seconds in any dispute, not to stand idly by with their hands folded while the challengers do battle. I say this so you’ll know that while our masters are fighting, we have to fight, too, and smash each other to pieces.”
“That custom, Señor Squire,” responded Sancho, “may be accepted and allowed by the ruffians and fighting men you’ve mentioned, but for the squires of knights errant it doesn’t apply at all. At least, I haven’t heard my master mention that custom, and he knows all the rules of knight errantry by heart. No matter how much I’d like it to be true that there’s a specific rule that squires have to fight when their masters fight, still, I wouldn’t obey it, and I’d pay whatever fine they make peaceable squires pay, and I bet it wouldn’t be more than two pounds of wax,5 and I’d be happy to pay those pounds, because I know they’ll cost me less than the bandages I’ll need to heal my head: I already count it as split and broken in two. And there’s something else: it’s impossible for me to fight because I don’t have a sword, and I’ve never worn one in my whole life.”
“I know a good remedy for that,” said the Squire of the Wood. “I have two burlap sacks here, and they’re both the same size; you’ll take one and I’ll take the other, and we’ll hit each other with the sacks, and our weapons will be equal.”
“Well then, let’s do it that way,” responded Sancho, “because that kind of fight will dust us off more than it’ll hurt us.”
“No, it won’t be like that,” replied the other man, “because we have to put half a dozen nice smooth stones, all of them the same weight, inside the sacks so they don’t blow away, and then we can hit each other and not do any harm or damage.”
“I swear by my father,” responded Sancho, “just think of all the sable pelts or tufts of carded cotton you’ll have to put in the sacks so our skulls don’t get crushed and our bones ground to dust! But even if you fill them with silk cocoons, let me tell you, Señor, I won’t fight; let our masters fight, and welcome to it, and let us drink and live, for time is bound to take our lives, and we don’t have to go around looking for reasons to end our lives before their time and season, when they’re ripe and ready to fall.”
“Even so,” replied the Squire of the Wood, “we have to fight for at least half an hour.”
“Oh no,” responded Sancho, “I’m not discourteous and ungrateful enough to have a quarrel, even a little one, with a man after eating and drinking with him; especially if there’s no anger and no insult, who the devil could start a fight just like that?”
“For that,” said the Squire of the Wood, “I have just the remedy: before we begin the fight, I’ll just come up to your grace and give you three or four slaps in the face that will knock you down, and that’ll be enough to wake up your anger even if it’s sleeping like a baby.”
“Well, I know another move just as good to match that,” responded Sancho. “I’ll just pick up a stick, and before your grace comes over to wake up my anger, with a few whacks I’ll put yours into a sleep that’ll last into the next world, where they know I’m not a man to let anybody lay hands on my face. Let each man look out for himself, though the best thing would be to let everybody’s anger stay asleep; nobody knows an-other man’s heart, and many who come for wool go home clipped and shorn, and God blessed peace and cursed fights, because if a cat that’s hunted and locked up and treated badly turns into a lion, then since I’m a man, God knows what I could turn into, and so from now on I’m letting your grace know, Señor Squire, that all the harm and damage that result from our quarrel will be on your head.”
“That’s all right,” replied the Squire of the Wood. “God’s day will dawn and we’ll be fine.”
By this time a thousand different kinds of brightly colored birds began to warble in the trees, and with their varied and joyous songs they seemed to welcome and greet the new dawn, who, through the doors and balconies of the Orient, was revealing the beauty of her face and shaking from her hair an infinite number of liquid pearls whose gentle liquor bathed the plants that seemed, in turn, to send forth buds and rain down tiny white seed pearls; the willows dripped their sweet-tasting manna, the fountains laughed, the streams murmured, the woods rejoiced, and the meadows flourished with her arrival. But as soon as the light of day made it possible to see and distinguish one thing from another, the first thing that appeared before Sancho Panza’s eyes was the nose of the Squire of the Wood, which was so big it almost cast a shadow over the rest of his body. In fact, it is recounted that his nose was outlandishly large, hooked in the middle, covered with warts, and of a purplish color like an eggplant; it came down the width of two fingers past his mouth, and its size, color, warts, and curvature made his face so hideous that when Sancho saw him his feet and hands began to tremble, like a c
hild having seizures, and he decided in his heart to let himself be slapped two hundred times before he would allow his anger to awaken and then fight with that monster.
Don Quixote looked at his opponent and found that his sallet was already lowered, so he could not see his face, but he noticed that his rival was a husky man, though not very tall. Over his armor he wore a kind of long jacket or coat, the cloth apparently made of finest gold, and on it were scattered many small moons of gleaming mirrors, making him look extraordinarily splendid and elegant; waving above his helmet were a large number of green, yellow, and white plumes; his lance, leaning against a tree, was extremely large and thick and plated with more than a span’s length of iron.
Don Quixote looked at everything and noted everything and judged from what he had seen and noted that the aforementioned knight must be exceptionally strong, but for that reason he was not, like Sancho Panza, afraid; rather, with gallant courage, he said to the Knight of the Mirrors:
“If, Señor Knight, your great desire to fight does not consume your courtesy, I ask you for courtesy’s sake to raise your visor a little so that I may see if the elegance of your face corresponds to that of your accoutrements.”
“Regardless of whether you emerge from this undertaking as the vanquished or the victor, Señor Knight,” responded the Knight of the Mirrors, “you will have more than enough time and opportunity to see me; and if I do not satisfy your desire now, it is because I think I would give notable offense to the beauteous Casildea of Vandalia if I were to delay the length of time it would take me to raise my visor without first obliging you to confess what you already know I desire.”
“Well, as we mount our horses,” said Don Quixote, “you can certainly tell me if I am the same Don Quixote you claim to have defeated.”
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