Don Quixote

by Miguel de Cervantes

  “Be quiet, Señor,” replied Sancho, “for by my faith, if I start asking and answering, I won’t finish until tomorrow. As for asking fool questions and giving nonsensical answers, I don’t need to go around asking my neighbors for help.”

  “You have said more, Sancho, than you realize,” said Don Quixote, “for there are some who exhaust themselves learning and investigating things that, once learned and investigated, do not matter in the slightest to the understanding or the memory.”

  The day was spent in this agreeable conversation, and others like it, and at night they stayed in a small village which, the cousin told Don Quixote, was no more than two leagues from the Cave of Montesinos, and if he was determined to go inside, he would need to have ropes so that he could tie them around himself and lower himself into its depths.

  Don Quixote said that even if the cave went down into the abyss, he had to see where it ended, and so they bought almost a hundred fathoms of rope, and the next day, at two in the afternoon, they reached the cave, whose mouth is spacious and wide but filled with brambles and box thorn, wild fig trees and briars, so thick and intertwined that they completely cover and hide it. As soon as they saw it, the cousin, Sancho, and Don Quixote dismounted, and the first two tied him very securely with the ropes, and while they were wrapping them around him and tightening them, Sancho said:

  “Señor, your grace should think about what you’re doing: you don’t want to be buried alive, or be in a place where you’re like a jar that’s hung down a well to cool. Oh yes, it isn’t your grace’s concern or business to go exploring this place that must be worse than a dungeon.”

  “Tie the rope and be quiet,” responded Don Quixote, “for an undertaking like this, Sancho my friend, was intended only for me.”9

  And then their guide said:

  “I beg your grace, Señor Don Quixote, that you observe carefully and scrutinize with a thousand eyes what you find inside: perhaps there are things I can put in my book Transformations.”

  “The tambourine’s in just the right hands,”10 responded Sancho Panza.

  This being said, and Don Quixote’s ropes having been secured—they were attached not to his armor, but to the doublet he wore under-neath—Don Quixote said:

  “It was an oversight not to have bought a small cowbell to tie next to me on this rope, for its sound would let you know that I was still descending and still alive; but since that is no longer possible, may the hand of God guide me.”

  And then he kneeled and said a prayer in a quiet voice, asking God to help him and grant him good fortune in this apparently dangerous new adventure, and then he said aloud:

  “O lady of my actions and movements, most illustrious and peerless Dulcinea of Toboso! If it is possible that the prayers and supplications of this thy fortunate lover reach thine ears, for the sake of thy extraordinary beauty I implore thee to hear them, for they beg thee only not to deny me thy favor and protection now that I am in such great need of them. I am going to hurl myself, throw myself, and plunge into the abyss I see here before me, so that the world may know that if thou favorest me, nothing is impossible for me to undertake and bring to a happy conclusion.”

  And saying this, he approached the chasm; he saw that it was not possible to lower himself or make his way to the entrance except by the strength of his arm or the thrusts of his blade, and so he put his hand to his sword and began to slash and cut the thicket at the mouth of the cave; with the clamor and din, an infinite number of huge crows and rooks flew out of it, and there were so many flying so quickly that they knocked Don Quixote to the ground; if he were as much of a soothsayer as he was a Catholic Christian, he would have taken this as a bad omen and refused to go down into such a place.

  At last he stood, and seeing that no more crows or other nocturnal birds such as bats, which had come out along with the crows, were flying about, and with the cousin and Sancho gradually letting out the rope, he began to lower himself down to the bottom of the fearful cavern; and as he entered, Sancho blessed him and made the sign of a thousand crosses over him, saying:

  “May God be your guide, and the Peña de Francia,11 together with the Trinidad de Gaeta,12 O flower and cream and skimmings of all knights errant! There you go, the bravest in the world, heart of steel, arms of bronze! Again, may God be your guide and bring you back safe and sound and free to the light of this life that you are leaving to bury yourself in the darkness you are looking for!”

  The cousin said almost the same prayers and entreaties.

  Don Quixote kept calling out for rope, more rope, and they paid it out slowly; and when his cries, which were channeled out of the cave, could no longer be heard, they had already unwound the hundred fathoms of rope, and it seemed to them that they ought to bring Don Quixote up again since they could not give him more rope. But they waited for about half an hour, and at the end of that time they began to pull up the rope, very easily, and with no weight on it at all, which made them imagine that Don Quixote had remained inside, and because he believed this, Sancho began to cry bitterly and to pull very quickly in order to learn the truth; but when there was a little more than eighty fathoms of rope left, they felt a weight, which made them extremely happy. Finally, when there were ten fathoms remaining, they saw Don Quixote clearly and Sancho began to shout to him, saying:

  “A very hearty welcome to your grace, Señor; we thought you were going to stay down there and start a family.”

  But Don Quixote did not say a word, and when they had pulled him all the way out, they saw that his eyes were closed, as if he were sleeping. They laid him on the ground and untied him, and still he did not awaken, but they turned him this way and that, and shook him and moved him so much, that after a fairly long time he regained consciousness, stretching as if he were waking from a deep and profound sleep, and looking around, as if in alarm, he said:

  “May God forgive you, friends, for you have taken me away from the sweetest life and most pleasant sights that any human being has ever seen or experienced. In truth, now I realize that all the pleasures of this life pass like shadows and dreams, or wither like the flowers in the field. O unfortunate Montesinos! O gravely wounded Durandarte! O luckless Belerma! O weeping Guadiana, and you unhappy daughters of Ruidera, who show in your waters the number of tears shed by your beautiful eyes!”

  The cousin and Sancho listened to the words of Don Quixote, who spoke them as if he were tearing them with great sorrow from the very depths of his being. They begged him to explain what he was saying and to tell them what he had seen in that hell.

  “You call it hell?” said Don Quixote. “Do not call it that, for it does not deserve the name, as you shall soon see.”

  He asked them to give him something to eat, for he was very hungry. They spread the cousin’s burlap on the green grass, had recourse to the provisions in the saddlebags, and the three of them sat in companionable friendship and ate both dinner and supper at the same time. When the burlap had been cleared, Don Quixote of La Mancha said:

  “Let no one get up, my friends, and listen to me carefully.”

  CHAPTER XXIII

  Regarding the remarkable things that the great Don Quixote said he saw in the depths of the Cave of Montesinos, so impossible and extraordinary that this adventure has been considered apocryphal

  It must have been four in the afternoon when the sun, hidden by clouds, its light faint and its rays temperate, gave Don Quixote an opportunity free of oppressive heat to recount what he had seen in the Cave of Montesinos to his two illustrious listeners, and he began in the following manner:

  “In this dungeon, at a depth of approximately twelve or fourteen escudos,1 on the right-hand side there is a concavity, a space capable of holding a large wagon with its mules. A small amount of light comes in through openings in the earth’s surface. I saw this concavity and space when I was already weary and tired of hanging and being suspended from the rope as I moved through that dark nether region without a fixed and certain route, and
so I decided to go into the space and rest a while. I shouted to you, asking that you not let out more rope until I told you to, but you probably did not hear me. I picked up the rope you sent down, made it into a coil or ring, and sat on it, becoming very thoughtful as I considered how I would reach the bottom without anything to support me; and when I was deep in this thought and confusion, suddenly, and without my wishing it, I was overcome by a profound sleep; and when I least expected it, not knowing how or why, I awoke and found myself in the midst of the most beautiful, pleasant, and charming meadow that nature could create or the most discerning human mind imagine. I opened my eyes wide, rubbed them, and saw that I was not sleeping but really was awake; even so, I felt my head and chest to verify whether it was I myself or some false and counterfeit phantom sitting there, but my sense of touch, my feelings, the reasoned discourse I held with myself, verified for me that, there and then, I was the same person I am here and now. Then there appeared before my eyes a royal and sumptuous palace or castle whose walls and ramparts seemed to be made of clear and transparent crystal; two large doors opened, and I saw that through them there emerged and came toward me a venerable ancient dressed in a long hooded cloak of purple baize that trailed after him on the ground; around his shoulders and chest he wore a scholar’s sash and hood of green satin,2 his head was covered by a black Milanese cap,3 and a snow white beard reached down below his waist; he carried no weapons of any kind, but held a rosary in his hand, the smaller beads larger than medium-sized walnuts, and the larger ones the size of medium-sized ostrich eggs; his bearing, pace, gravity, and proud demeanor, each one taken separately and all of them taken together, filled me with wonder and amazement. He came up to me, and the first thing he did was to embrace me closely, and then he said:

  ‘For many long years, O valiant knight Don Quixote of La Mancha, we who dwell in this enchanted solitude have waited to see thee, so that thou couldst inform the world of what lies contained and hidden in the deep cave which thou hast entered, called the Cave of Montesinos: a feat reserved only for thy invincible heart and wondrous courage. Come thou with me, illustrious knight, for I wish to show thee the marvels hidden within this transparent castle, of which I am warden and perpetual chief guardian, for I am the same Montesinos after whom the cave is named.’

  When he told me that he was Montesinos,4 I asked him if the story told about him in the world up here was true: that with a small dagger he had cut out of his chest the heart of his great friend Durandarte5 and carried it to the lady Belerma, as his friend had commanded when he was at the point of death. He responded that everything people said was true except for the dagger, because it was not a dagger and it was not small, but a blade striated on three sides and sharper than an awl.”

  “That blade,” said Sancho, “must have been made by Ramón de Hoces, the Sevillan.”

  “I do not know,” continued Don Quixote, “but it probably was not the work of that knifemaker, since Ramón de Hoces lived yesterday, and the battle at Roncesvalles, where this misfortune occurred, happened many years ago; this inquiry is of no importance, for it does not disturb or confound the truth and validity of the history.”

  “That is true,” responded the cousin. “Your grace should continue, Señor Don Quixote, for I am listening to you with the greatest pleasure in the world.”

  “With no less pleasure do I recount it,” responded Don Quixote. “And so I say that the venerable Montesinos led me into the crystalline palace, where, in a downstairs chamber that was exceptionally cool and made all of alabaster, there was a marble sepulcher crafted with great skill, and on it I saw a knight stretched out to his full length, and made not of bronze, or marble, or jasper, as is usual on other sepulchers, but of pure flesh and pure bone. His right hand, which seemed somewhat hairy and sinewy to me, a sign that its owner was very strong, lay over his heart, and before I could ask anything of Montesinos, who saw me looking with wonder at the figure on the sepulcher, he said:

  ‘This is my friend Durandarte, the flower and model of enamored and valiant knights of his time; here he lies, enchanted, as I and many others are enchanted, by Merlin, the French enchanter who was, people say, the son of the devil; and what I believe is that he was not the son of the devil but knew, as they say, a point or two more than the devil. How and why he enchanted us no one knows, but that will be revealed with the passage of time, and is not too far off now, I imagine. What astonishes me is that I know, as well as I know that it is day, that Durandarte ended the days of his life in my arms, and that when he was dead I removed his heart with my own hands; and the truth is that it must have weighed two pounds, because according to naturalists, the man who has a larger heart has greater courage than the man whose heart is small. If this is the case, and if this knight really died, why does he now moan and sigh from time to time, as if he were alive?’

  When this was said, the wretched Durandarte gave a great shout and said:

  ‘O my cousin Montesinos!

  The last thing I asked of you

  was, when I had breathed my last

  and my soul had flown away,

  to cut my heart out of my breast

  with a dagger or a blade,

  and bear it as an offering

  to my lady, fair Belerma.’6

  Hearing this, the venerable Montesinos fell to his knees before the doleful knight and, with tears in his eyes, said to him:

  ‘Oh, Señor Durandarte, my beloved cousin, I did what you commanded on the ill-fated day of our defeat: I removed your heart the best I could, not leaving any fragments behind in your chest; I cleaned it with a lace handkerchief; I took it and hurried away to France, having first placed you in the bosom of the earth, shedding so many tears that they were enough to wash away the blood that covered my hands after I had put them inside your body; and furthermore, my dearest cousin, in the first village I came to after I left Roncesvalles, I sprinkled a little salt on your heart so that it would not smell bad and would be, if not fresh, at least dried and salted, in the presence of the lady Belerma, who, along with you, and me, and Guadiana, your squire, and her lady-in-waiting, Ruidera, and her seven daughters and two nieces, and many more of your friends and acquaintances the wise Merlin has kept here, enchanted, for many years; and although more than five hundred have passed, none of us has died: the only ones missing are Ruidera and her daughters and nieces, who wept so much that Merlin must have taken pity on them, for he transformed them into lakes, and now, in the world of the living and in the province of La Mancha, they are called the Lakes of Ruidera; seven of them belong to the kings of Spain, and the two nieces belong to the knights of a most holy order called St. John.7 Guadiana, your squire, also lamented your misfortune and was transformed into a river that bears his name; when he reached the surface of the earth and saw the sun in another sky, the grief he felt at leaving you was so great that he descended again to the bowels of the earth; but since it is not possible to resist the natural course of his current, from time to time he emerges and shows himself where the sun and all people may see him. The lakes I have mentioned provide him with their waters, and with these and many others that flow into him, he enters Portugal with magnificence and grandeur. But despite this, wherever he goes he displays his sadness and melancholy, and does not boast of breeding valuable and highly esteemed fish in his waters, but only ones that are coarse and disagreeable, unlike those found in the golden Tajo; and what I am telling you now, my dear cousin, I have told you many times before; and since you do not respond, I imagine that you do not believe me, or do not hear me, and God knows the grief that causes me. Now I wish to give you some news, and if it does not assuage your sorrow, at least it will not increase it in any way. Know that here in your presence—if you open your eyes you will see him—you have that great knight about whom the wise Merlin has made so many prophecies: I mean Don Quixote of La Mancha, who once again, and to greater advantage than in past times, has revived in the present a long-forgotten knight errantry, and through hi
s mediation and by his favor it may be that the spell over us will be broken, for great deeds are reserved for great men.’

  ‘And if this is not the case,’ responded the mournful Durandarte in a low, faint voice, ‘if this is not the case, dear cousin, I say have patience and shuffle the deck.’

  And turning on his side, he resumed his customary silence and did not utter another word. At this point a great weeping and wailing was heard, along with deep moans and anguished sobs; I turned my head and saw through the crystal walls a procession of two lines of beautiful maidens passing through another chamber, all of them dressed in mourning and wearing white turbans on their heads, in the Turkish fashion. At the very end and conclusion of the two lines came a matron, for her gravity made her seem one, also dressed in black, and wearing a white train so lengthy and long it brushed the ground. Her turban was twice as large as the largest of the others; she was beetle-browed and snub-nosed; her mouth was large, but her lips were red; her teeth, which she may have shown, were few in number and crooked, though as white as peeled almonds; in her hands she carried a delicate cloth, and in it, as far as I could tell, was a heart that had been mummified, it looked so dry and shriveled. Montesinos told me that all the people in the procession were servants of Durandarte and Belerma, enchanted along with their master and mistress, and that the last one, who carried the heart in the cloth, was Señora Belerma herself, who along with her maidens walked in that procession four days a week and sang, or rather wept, dirges over the body and wounded heart of his cousin; and if she had seemed rather ugly, and not as beautiful as her fame proclaimed, the cause was the bad nights and worse days she had spent in that enchantment, as one could see in the deep circles under her eyes and her sickly color.

  ‘And her sallow complexion and deep circles arise not from the monthly distress common in women, because for many months, even years, she has not had it nor has it appeared at her portals, but from the sorrow her heart feels for the one she continually holds in her hands, which always renews and brings to mind the affliction of her unfortunate lover; if this were not the case, then the great Dulcinea of Toboso, so celebrated here and in the rest of the world, would barely be her equal in beauty, grace, and charm.’