Don Quixote

by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

  Gines de Pasamonte responded for all of them, and he said:

  "What your grace, our lord and liberator, orders us to do, is absolutely impossible for us to carry out, because we cannot travel the roads together but must go our separate ways, each man on his own, trying to burrow into the bowels of the earth so as not to be found by the Holy Brotherhood, who, beyond any doubt, will come looking for us. What your grace can do, and it is right and proper that you do so, is to change this service and tribute to the lady Dulcinea of Toboso into a certain number of Ave Marias and Credos, which we will say on your grace's behalf, and this is something that can be done night or day, fleeing or at rest, at peace or at war; but to think that we will go back to our miseries in Egypt, I mean to say, that we will take up our chain and set out for Toboso, is to think that night has fallen now when it is not yet ten in the morning; asking that of us is like asking pears of an elm tree."

  "Well, then, I do swear," said Don Quixote, his wrath rising, "Don Whoreson, Don Ginesillo de Paropillo, or whatever your name is, that you will go alone, your tail between your legs, and the entire chain on your back!"

  Pasamonte was not a man of great forbearance; already aware that Don Quixote was not very sane, for he had done something so foolish as wanting to give them their freedom, and seeing himself spoken to in this way, he winked at his companions, and, moving a short distance away, they began to throw so many stones at Don Quixote that he could not even manage to protect himself with his shield, and poor Rocinante paid no more attention to his master's spurs than if he had been made of bronze. Sancho hid behind his donkey, protecting himself in this way from the hailstorm of rocks pouring down on them. Don Quixote could not shield himself as well as Sancho, for so many stones found their mark on his body, and with so much force, that they knocked him to the ground; as soon as he had fallen, the student attacked him and took the basin from his head and struck him three or four blows with it on his shoulders and smashed it an equal number of times on the ground until he had shattered it. They took a doublet he wore over his armor and would have taken his hose if the greaves of his leg armor had not prevented them from doing so. From Sancho they took his coat, leaving him in shirtsleeves; then, after dividing among themselves the other spoils of battle, each went his separate way, more concerned with escaping the Brotherhood, which they feared, than with picking up the chain and carrying it to the lady Dulcinea of Toboso.

  The donkey and Rocinante, Sancho and Don Quixote, were left alone; the donkey, pensive, with bowed head, twitching his ears from time to time, thinking that the tempest of stones had not yet ended and was still falling around his ears; Rocinante, lying beside his master, for he too had fallen to the ground in the shower of stones; Sancho, in his shirtsleeves and afraid of the Holy Brotherhood; Don Quixote, grief-stricken at seeing himself so injured by the very people for whom he had done so much good.

  CHAPTER XXIII

  Regarding what befell the famous Don Quixote in the Sierra Morena, which was one of the strangest adventures recounted in this true history

  Seeing himself so injured, Don Quixote said to his squire:

  "I have always heard, Sancho, that doing good to the lowborn is throwing water into the sea. If I had believed what you told me, I should have avoided this grief, but what is done is done, and so patience, and let it be a lesson for the future."

  "Your grace will learn the lesson," responded Sancho, "the same way I'm a Turk; but since you say that if you had believed me this trouble could have been avoided, believe me now and avoid one even greater; I'm telling you that you can't use chivalries with the Holy Brotherhood because they wouldn't give two maravedis for all the knights errant in the world; you should also know that their arrows already seem to be buzzing past my ears."

  "You are naturally a coward, Sancho," said Don Quixote, "but so that you will not say that I am stubborn and never do as you advise, on this occasion I want to take your advice and withdraw from the ferocity that frightens you so, but it must be on one condition: that never, in life or in death, are you to tell anyone that I withdrew and retreated from this danger out of fear, but only to satisfy your pleas, and if you say otherwise you will be lying, and from now until then, and then until now, I shall deny it and say that you lie, and will lie every time you think or say it. And do not reply, for merely thinking that I am withdrawing and retreating from any danger, especially this one, which seems to carry with it some small shadow of fear, is enough to make me want to remain and wait here alone, not only for the Holy Brotherhood which you have mentioned and fear so much, but for the brothers of the twelve tribes of Israel, and the seven Maccabees, and Castor and Pollux, and all the brothers and brotherhoods that there are in the world."

  "Senor," responded Sancho, "withdrawing is not running away, and waiting is not sensible when danger outweighs hope, and wise men know to save something for tomorrow and not risk everything in a single day. And you should know that even though I'm rough and lowborn, I still know something about what people call proper behavior, and so don't repent of taking my advice but mount Rocinante if you can, and if not I'll help you, and follow me, because my brains tell me we need our feet now more than our hands."

  Don Quixote mounted, not saying another word, and with Sancho leading the way on his donkey, they entered a part of the Sierra Morena that was close by, it being Sancho's intention to cross the entire range and come out at Viso, or Almodovar del Campo, and hide for a few days in that rugged terrain and not be found if the Brotherhood came looking for them. He had been encouraged to do so when he saw that the provisions carried on his donkey had escaped the skirmish with the galley slaves, which he deemed a miracle considering everything else they had taken away.1

  As soon as Don Quixote entered those mountains his heart filled with joy, for it was a landscape that seemed suited to the adventures he was seeking. What he recalled were the marvelous events that had befallen knights errant in similarly desolate and wild places. He rode along, thinking of these things, so enthralled and transported that he thought of nothing else. And Sancho's only care--after deciding that the way was safe--was to satisfy his stomach with what remained of their clerical spoils; and so he rode behind his master, sitting sidesaddle on his donkey as he took things out of a sack and packed them away in his belly, and did not care at all about finding any greater fortune as long as he could go along in this fashion.

  Then he looked up and saw that his master had stopped and with the tip of his lance was attempting to lift some kind of bundle lying on the ground, and therefore he hurried to offer his help, if necessary; he reached Don Quixote just as he lifted, with the tip of his lance, a saddle cushion with a traveling case attached to it, half rotting, or completely rotting and falling to pieces, but weighing so much that Sancho had to dismount and pick them up, and his master told him to see what was in the traveling case.

  Sancho did so very quickly, and although the case was closed with a chain and padlock, it was so worn and rotten that he could see what was inside: four shirts of fine cambric and some other items of linen as curious as they were clean, and in a handkerchief he found a nice pile of gold escudos; and when he saw them, he said:

  "Glory be to heaven for sending us a profitable adventure!"

  And, searching further, he discovered a small diary that was richly decorated. Don Quixote asked for this but told him to keep the money for himself. Sancho kissed his hands in gratitude and emptied the case of its linen, which he packed away in the sack of provisions. All of this was observed by Don Quixote, who said:

  "It seems to me, Sancho, and it cannot be otherwise, that some traveler lost his way in these mountains and was set upon by ruffians, who must have killed him and carried him to this remote spot to bury him."

  "That can't be right," responded Sancho, "because if they were thieves, they wouldn't have left the money here."

  "That is true," said Don Quixote, "and therefore I cannot guess or surmise what this may be; but wait: we shall see if t
here is something written in this diary that will allow us to investigate and learn what we wish to know."

  He opened the book, and the first thing he found there, in a kind of rough draft, though written in a very fine hand, was a sonnet, and reading aloud so that Sancho could hear the poem, he read:

  Either Love has too little understanding,

  or too much cruelty, or else my grief'

  s not equal to its cause though it condemns me

  to suffer this, the harshest kind of torment.

  But if Love is a god, then logic tells us

  that he is ignorant of nothing, teaches

  that a god's not cruel. Then, who has ordained

  this terrible anguish that I adore?

  If I say you, Phyllis, then I am wrong,

  for evil has no place in so much good,

  nor does my woe rain down on me from heav'n.

  Soon I must die, of that I can be sure;

  when the cause of the sickness is unknown

  only a miracle can find the cure.

  "From this poem," said Sancho, "you can't learn anything, unless that filly there's the one that leads the way out of the tangle."

  "What filly?" said Don Quixote.

  "It seems to me," said Sancho, "that your grace mentioned some filly there."

  "I said Phyllis," responded Don Quixote, "which is undoubtedly the name of the lady about whom the author of this sonnet is complaining; and, by my faith, he seems a reasonable poet, or I know little of the art."

  "Then," said Sancho, "does your grace also know about poems?"

  "More than you think," responded Don Quixote, "as you will see when you carry a letter, written in verse from top to bottom, to my lady Dulcinea of Toboso. Because I want you to know, Sancho, that all or most of the knights errant of a bygone day were great troubadours and great musicians; for these two talents, or endowments, I should say, are attributes of enamored knights errant. Although the truth is that the strophes of the knights of long ago have more spirit in them than skill."

  "Your grace, read some more," said Sancho, "and soon you'll find something that will satisfy us."

  Don Quixote turned the page and said:

  "This is prose and seems to be a letter."

  "The kind of letter that's a message, Senor, or the legal kind?" asked Sancho.

  "It seems at first glance to be a love letter," responded Don Quixote.

  "Read it aloud, your grace," said Sancho. "I really like things that have to do with love."

  "I should be happy to," said Don Quixote.

  And, reading it aloud, as Sancho had requested, he saw that it said:

  Your false promise and my certain misfortune have taken me to a place from which news of my death will reach your ears before the words of my lament. You rejected me, O ungrateful lady, for one who has more than I, but not one of greater worth; but if virtue were the wealth that is held in high esteem, I would not envy the fortunes of others or weep for my own misfortunes. What your beauty erected was demolished by your actions; from the former I understood that you were an angel, and from the latter I know that you are a woman. Go in peace, cause of my conflict, and may heaven grant that the deceptions of your husband remain forever hidden, so that you need not repent of what you did, nor I take my revenge for what I do not desire.

  When he had finished reading the letter, Don Quixote said:

  "Less from this than from the verses, one can assume that the man who wrote it is a scorned lover."

  And leafing through almost the entire notebook, he found other verses and letters, some of which he could read and others not; but what they all contained were complaints, laments, suspicions, joys and sorrows, kindnesses and slights, either celebrated or wept over.

  While Don Quixote was looking through the book, Sancho looked through the traveling case, and every corner of it and the cushion was searched, scrutinized, and investigated, every seam pulled apart, every tuft of wool untangled, so that nothing would be left behind for want of effort or diligence, for the escudos he had discovered, which amounted to more than a hundred, had awakened an enormous appetite in him. And though he did not find more than he had already found, he considered as time well spent the tossing in the blanket, the vomiting of the potion, the blessings of the staffs, the fists of the muledriver, the loss of his saddlebags, the theft of his coat, and all the hunger, thirst, and weariness he had endured in the service of his worthy lord, for it seemed to him he had been more than well-rewarded when his master favored him and presented his find to him as a gift.

  The Knight of the Sorrowful Face was left with a great desire to know who the owner of the traveling case might be, supposing, on the basis of the sonnet and letter, the gold coins and excellent shirts, that he must be a wellborn and noble lover driven to some desperate end by his lady's scorn and harsh treatment. But since no person appeared in that desolate and rugged place whom he could question, his only concern was to move on, following no other path than the one chosen by Rocinante, which tended to be the one the horse could travel most easily, and always imagining that there was bound to be some extraordinary adventure waiting for him in the thickets.

  Riding along, thinking these thoughts, at the top of a hill that lay ahead of him Don Quixote saw a man leaping from crag to crag and bush to bush with uncommon speed. The man appeared to be half-dressed, and he had a heavy black beard, long disheveled hair, no shoes on his feet, and nothing at all on his calves; his thighs were covered by breeches that seemed to be made of tawny velvet but were so tattered and torn that in many places his skin showed through. His head was bare, and though he moved with the speed we have mentioned, the Knight of the Sorrowful Face saw and noted all these details; he tried to follow him but could not because it was beyond the strength of Rocinante to travel that rugged ground, especially since he was by nature slow-paced and phlegmatic. Then Don Quixote imagined that the man was the owner of the saddle cushion and traveling case, and he resolved to look for him until he found him, even if he was obliged to spend a year in those mountains, and so he ordered Sancho to get off his donkey and go around one part of the mountain, and he would go around the other, and in this way they might encounter the man who had so quickly disappeared from view.

  "I can't do that," responded Sancho, "because when I leave your grace I'm filled with fear that plagues me with a thousand different kinds of sudden frights and visions. And I just want to let you know this, so that from now on I won't have to move a finger's width from your presence."

  "So be it," said the Knight of the Sorrowful Face. "I am very pleased that you wish to take advantage of my courage, which will not fail you even if your spirit fails your body. Come now, and follow after me slowly, or however you can, and let your eyes be like lanterns; we shall circle round this hillock, and perhaps we shall come across that man we saw who is, beyond any doubt, the owner of what we have found."

  To which Sancho responded:

  "It would be much better not to look for him, because if we find him and he's the owner of the money, of course I'll have to return it to him, so it would be better not to undertake a useless task, and let me keep it in good faith until its rightful owner appears in a way that's not so strange or troublesome, and maybe by that time I'll have spent it, and then by the king's law I won't have to pay because I'll be a pauper."

  "You are mistaken about that, Sancho," responded Don Quixote, "for now that we have begun to suspect who the owner is, and have had him practically in front of us, we are obliged to search for him and return the money, and if we do not search for him, the strong suspicion we have that he is the owner makes us as culpable as if he really were. Therefore, Sancho my friend, do not let the search for him grieve you, for my grief will be taken away if I find him."

  And so he spurred Rocinante, and Sancho followed on his customary donkey,2 and when they had ridden around part of the mountain, they discovered in a stream, lying dead and half-eaten by dogs and pecked at by crows, a mule that was saddled a
nd bridled, which was further confirmation of their suspicion that the fleeing man was the owner of both the mule and the saddle cushion.

  As they were looking at the mule, they heard a whistle like that of a shepherd tending his flock, and suddenly, on their left, they saw a good number of goats and, behind the goats, at the top of the mountain, the goatherd, who was a very old man. Don Quixote called to him and asked him to come down. He shouted in response, asking what had brought them to this place that was rarely, if ever, visited except by goats or wolves or the other animals that lived there. Sancho responded that he should come down, and they would give him a good accounting of everything. The goatherd came down, and when he reached Don Quixote, he said:

  "I'll wager you're looking at the mule that's lying dead in that gully. By my faith, it's been there for six months. Tell me: have you run across the owner?"

  "We have not run across anyone," responded Don Quixote, "but we found a saddle cushion and traveling case not far from here."

  "I found them, too," responded the goatherd, "but I never wanted to pick them up or go near them because I was afraid there'd be trouble and they'd say I stole them; the devil's sly, and he puts things under our feet that make us stumble and fall, and we don't know how or why."

  "That's just what I say," responded Sancho. "I found them, too, and I didn't want to get within a stone's throw of them: I left them there, and there they remain, just as they were; I don't want a dog with a bell around its neck."3

  "Tell me, my good man," said Don Quixote, "do you know who the owner of these articles might be?"

  "What I can tell you," said the goatherd, "is that there's a sheepfold about three leagues from here, and about six months ago, more or less, a young gentleman came there, very courteous in his manner and bearing, riding on that same mule that's lying there dead, and with the same saddle cushion and traveling case you say you found and didn't touch. He asked us which part of this country was the most rugged and remote; we told him it was here where we are now, and that's the truth, because if you go in just half a league more, maybe you won't be able to find your way out; I'm surprised you even got this far, because there's no road or path that leads to this spot. Anyway, as I was saying, when the young man heard our answer, he turned and rode off to the place we told him about, leaving us all pleased by his good looks and surprised at his question and at how fast we saw him riding back toward the sierra; and then we didn't see him again until a few days later, when he crossed paths with one of our shepherds, and without saying a word he went up to him and began to punch and kick him, and then he went to the donkey with the provisions and took all the bread and cheese it was carrying; and then, with that strange speed of his, he ran back and hid in the sierra.