Don Quixote

by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

  All of these questions and answers I resolved in an instant in my imagination, and even more important, I began to feel inclined to what was, without my knowing it, my perdition, convinced by Don Fernando's vows, the witnesses he called upon, the tears he shed, and, finally, his disposition and gallantry, which, along with so many displays of true love, were enough to vanquish even a heart as unencumbered and chaste as mine. I called my maid so that a witness on earth might join those in heaven; Don Fernando again repeated and confirmed his vows; as witnesses he added new saints to the earlier ones; he called down on himself a thousand future curses if he did not keep his promise to me; tears filled his eyes again and his sighs increased; he clasped me even tighter in his arms, from which he had never released me; then my maid left the room, I ceased to be one, and he became a traitor and a liar.

  The day following the night of my misfortune did not come as quickly as I think Don Fernando desired, for when the demands of the appetites are met, the greatest pleasure is to leave the place where one has satisfied them. I say this because Don Fernando hastened to leave me, and through the ingenuity of my maid, the same one who had brought him there, before dawn he found himself on the street. And when he took his leave, he said, though not with the same eagerness and fervor as when he had arrived, that I could be certain that his faith was true and his vows steadfast and unalterable; as further confirmation of his word, he removed a magnificent ring from his finger and put it on mine. Then he left, and I do not know if I was sad or happy; I can say that I was confused and pensive and almost beside myself because of this new turn of events; I did not have the heart, or did not think, to reprimand my maid for her treachery at allowing Don Fernando into my bedroom, because I had not yet decided if what had happened to me was good or bad.

  When he left, I told Don Fernando that he could use the same means to visit me on other nights, for now I was his, until such time as he wished to make the matter public. But except for the following night, he did not come again, and I did not see him on the street or in church for more than a month; I tried in vain to communicate with him, for I knew he was in the city and went hunting almost every day; he was an enthusiastic hunter. I can say that for me those days and hours were ominous and filled with shame; and I can say that I began to doubt and even to distrust the good faith of Don Fernando; and I can say that my maid heard then the words she had not heard before, reprimanding her audacity; and I can say that it was necessary for me to contain my tears and control the expression on my face so that my parents would have no reason to ask why I was unhappy, and I would not be obliged to think of a lie to tell them. But all of this came to an abrupt halt when all propriety was trampled, honorable speeches ended, forbearance was lost, and my secret thoughts were made public. And this happened because some days later, the talk was that in a nearby city, Don Fernando had married an extremely beautiful girl, of very distinguished parentage, though not so rich that her dowry would lead her to aspire to so noble a marriage. People said her name was Luscinda, and that certain extraordinary things had happened at the wedding."

  Cardenio heard the name of Luscinda and could do nothing but hunch his shoulders, bite his lips, scowl, and then let tears stream from his eyes. But this did not stop Dorotea from continuing her story, and she said:

  "This sad news reached my ears, and instead of my heart freezing over when I heard it, it flamed with so much rage and fury that I almost took to the streets to cry out and proclaim how he had betrayed and deceived me. But then my anger began to cool when I thought of a plan that I put into effect that very night, which was to put on these clothes, given to me by one of the men, called shepherd's helpers by farmers, who was a servant of my father's; I told him about my misfortune and asked him to accompany me to the city where I believed my enemy would be found. He, after reprimanding me for my rashness and condemning my decision, saw that I was determined and offered to keep me company, as he called it, to the ends of the earth. I quickly put a dress and some jewels and money into a linen pillowcase, in the event I needed them, and in the silence of the night, without saying anything to my treacherous maid, I left my house, accompanied by my servant and many apprehensions, and started out for the city on foot, although my feet flew with the desire to reach my destination, if not to prevent what I considered already accomplished, at least to ask Don Fernando to tell me how he had had the heart to do it.

  I arrived in two and a half days, and as I entered the city I asked for the house of Luscinda's parents, and the first person I asked responded with more than I wished to hear. He told me where their house was located, and everything that had occurred at the wedding of their daughter, which was so well-known that people throughout the city were gathering in groups to talk about it. He told me that on the night Don Fernando married Luscinda, after she had said her yes, she had fallen into a dead faint, and when her husband came to loosen her bodice and give her air, he had found a letter written in Luscinda's own hand, which stated and declared that she could not be Don Fernando's wife because she was the wife of Cardenio, who was, according to what the man told me, a very distinguished gentleman from the same city, and if she had agreed to marry Don Fernando, it was in order not to disobey her parents. In short, he told me that the letter said that she had intended to kill herself when the ceremony was over, and in the letter she gave her reasons for taking her life, all of which, they say, was confirmed by a dagger that was found hidden in her clothing. When Don Fernando saw this, it seemed to him that Luscinda had mocked and scorned and humiliated him, and he threw himself at her while she was still in a swoon, and with the same dagger tried to stab her, and would have done so if her parents and the others present had not stopped him. People also said that Don Fernando left immediately, and Luscinda did not recover from her swoon until the following day, and then she told her parents that she was the true wife of this Cardenio whom I have mentioned.

  I learned more: people were saying that Cardenio had been present at the wedding, and when he saw her married, something he never thought possible, he left the city in despair but first wrote a letter in which he revealed how Luscinda had wronged him, and how he was going to a place where no one would ever see him again. All of this was widely known throughout the city, and everyone was talking about it, and talked about it even more when they learned that Luscinda had disappeared from her parents' house, and from the city, and was nowhere to be found, and that her parents were distraught and did not know what to do to find her. What I heard revived my hopes, and I considered it better not to have found Don Fernando than to have found him married, for it seemed to me that the door to my remedy was still not completely closed, assuming that heaven might have placed that impediment to his second marriage in order to make him realize what he owed the first, and to remember that he was a Christian who had a greater obligation to his soul than to human interests. I resolved all of these things in my imagination and was consoled without consolation, inventing distant faint hopes in order to live a life which I now despise.

  While I was in the city, not knowing what to do since Don Fernando was nowhere to be found, a public proclamation reached my ears, promising a large reward to the person who found me and giving a description of my age and the clothes I was wearing; I heard people saying that I had run off with the servant who accompanied me, and it wounded my very soul to see how my good name had been sullied, besmirched not only by reports of my impetuous departure, but by references to a baseborn person unworthy of my amorous thoughts. As soon as I heard the proclamation, I left the city with my servant, who was already beginning to show signs of wavering in his promise of fidelity to me, and that night we entered a remote part of these mountains, afraid of being discovered. But, as they say, one ill leads to another, and the end of one misfortune tends to be the beginning of another even greater, and that is what happened to me; my good servant, faithful and trustworthy until then, saw me in this desolate place, and inflamed by his own depravity rather than my beauty, attempted
to take advantage of the opportunity which, to his mind, this setting offered him; with little shame and less fear of God or respect for me, he tried to persuade me to make love to him, and seeing that I responded with words of censure and rebuke to his outrageous proposals, he set aside the entreaties that he thought at first would succeed and began to use force. But heaven is just, rarely or never failing to regard and favor righteous intentions, and it favored mine, so that with my scant strength, and not too much effort, I pushed him over a precipice, where I left him, not knowing if he was dead or alive; then, with more speed than my fear and exhaustion really allowed, I entered these mountains; my only thought and plan was to hide, to flee my father and those he had sent to look for me.

  This was my desire when I came here, I do not know how many months ago; I found a drover who took me on as a servant in a place deep in the sierra, and I have worked as a shepherd's helper all this time, trying always to be out in the fields in order to hide this hair that now, so unexpectedly, has been revealed. But all my effort and care was and has been to no avail, for my master learned that I was not a man, and the same wicked desire was born in him as in my servant; since fortune does not always give remedies along with difficulties, I found no precipice or ravine where I could push the master and save myself, as I had with the servant, and so I thought it less difficult to leave him and take refuge again in these desolate places than to test my strength or my reasoning with him. Therefore, as I said, I took to the wilds again to find the place where, without impediment, I could, with sighs and tears, beg heaven to take pity on my misfortune, and favor me with the ability either to leave that misfortune behind or to lose my life in the wilderness, and to let the memory be erased of this unfortunate woman, who, through no fault of her own, has become the subject of talk and gossip in her own and other lands."

  CHAPTER XXIX

  Which recounts the amusing artifice and arrangement that was devised for freeing our enamored knight from the harsh penance he had imposed on himself 1

  "This is, Senores, the true history of my tragedy: now deem and judge if the sighs you heard, the words you listened to, and the tears that flowed from my eyes had sufficient reason to appear in even greater abundance; having considered the nature of my misfortune, you will see that consolation would be useless since the remedy is impossible. All I ask of you (this is something you can and should do very easily) is that you advise me where I can spend my life without being overwhelmed by the fear and terror I have of being discovered by those who are searching for me; although I know the great love my parents have for me guarantees that I shall be welcomed by them, I am filled with so much shame when I think that I must appear before them in a state different from the one they had counted upon that it seems better to exile myself forever from their sight rather than see their faces and think that they are looking at mine when it is far removed from the chastity they had a right to expect of me."

  She fell silent after she said this, and her face flushed with a color that clearly showed the grief and shame in her soul. The souls of those who had listened to her felt as much compassion as astonishment at her misfortune, and although the priest immediately wanted to console and advise her, Cardenio stepped forward first, saying:

  "So then, Senora, you are the beautiful Dorotea, the only child of the wealthy Clenardo?"

  Dorotea was surprised to hear her father's name and to see the wretched condition of the man who named him, for the rags Cardenio wore have already been mentioned, and therefore she said to him:

  "And who are you, friend, that you know my father's name? If I am not mistaken, in recounting the story of my misfortune, I have not spoken his name."

  "I am, Senora," responded Cardenio, "that luckless man who, as you have told us, Luscinda declared to be her husband. I am the unfortunate Cardenio, and the wicked purpose of the man who has brought you to the condition in which you find yourself has driven me to the one in which you see me now: ragged, naked, bereft of all human consolation, and, what is worse, bereft of reason, except when it pleases heaven to grant it to me for some brief time. I, Dorotea, am the one who witnessed the wrongs committed by Don Fernando, the one who waited until Luscinda spoke the words that made her his wife. I am the one who did not have the courage to see the consequences of her swoon or the outcome of the letter found in her bosom, because my soul could not bear to see so many misfortunes together; and so I abandoned the house, and my forbearance, and gave a letter to the man who was my host, asking him to deliver it into Luscinda's hands, and came to this solitary place where I intended to end my life, which from that moment on I despised as if it were my mortal enemy. But fate has not wished to take it from me, being satisfied with taking my reason, perhaps wanting to preserve me for the good fortune I have had in finding you; for if what you have recounted is true, as I believe it is, it well might be that heaven has in store a more favorable conclusion to our calamities than we can imagine. Since Luscinda cannot marry Don Fernando because she is mine, and Don Fernando cannot marry her because he is yours, and she has openly declared this, we can reasonably hope that heaven will restore to each of us what is ours, for it is still intact, not given away or destroyed. And since we have this consolation, not born of remote hopes, or founded on wild imaginings, I beg you, Senora, to come to another decision in your honorable thoughts, as I intend to do in mine, and prepare to expect better fortune; I give you my vow as a gentleman and a Christian not to abandon you until I see that you are Don Fernando's, and if reason cannot persuade him to recognize his duty to you, then I shall use the prerogative I have as a gentleman to legitimately challenge him and right the wrong he has done you; and I shall not think of the offenses committed against me, vengeance for which I leave to heaven so that here on earth I may attend to those committed against you."

  Dorotea was overwhelmed when she heard Cardenio's words, and because she did not know how to express her thanks for so noble an offer, she attempted to kiss his feet, but Cardenio would not permit it, and the licentiate responded for himself and the barber and approved Cardenio's fine speech and in particular asked, advised, and urged them to accompany him to his village, where they could obtain the things they lacked, and decide how to find Don Fernando, or return Dorotea to her parents, or do whatever they thought most appropriate. Cardenio and Dorotea thanked him and accepted his offer of help. The barber, who had reacted to everything with amazement and silence, also made a courteous speech and offered, with no less enthusiasm than the priest, to serve them in any way he could.

  He also recounted briefly the reason that had brought them there, the strangeness of Don Quixote's madness, and how they were waiting for his squire, who had gone to find him. Cardenio recalled, as if it had been a dream, his altercation with Don Quixote, and he told the others about it but could not tell them the reason for the dispute.

  Then they heard shouting and recognized Sancho Panza's voice, for when he did not find them in the place where he had left them, he began to call their names. They came out to meet him, and when they asked about Don Quixote, he said he had found him naked except for his shirt, thin, yellow, famished, and sighing for his lady Dulcinea; although he had told his master that she had ordered him to leave that place and go to Toboso, where she was waiting for him, Don Quixote had responded that he was resolved not to come before her beauteousness until such time as he had performed such feats as would render him deserving of her grace. And Sancho said that if this went on much longer, Don Quixote ran the risk of not becoming an emperor, as he was obliged to do, or even an archbishop, which was the least he could be. For this reason, they should think about what had to be done to get him out of there.

  The licentiate responded that he should not worry, for they would take his master away from there even if he did not wish to go. Then he told Cardenio and Dorotea what they had planned as a remedy for Don Quixote or, at least, as a way to take him home. To which Dorotea replied that she could play the afflicted damsel better than the barber, an
d, what is more, she had with her the clothes to play the part naturally, and they could trust her to know how to do everything necessary to carry their intention forward, as she had read many books of chivalry and knew very well the style used by damsels in distress when they begged boons of knights errant.

  "Well, nothing else is necessary," said the priest, "than to put the plan into effect immediately; Fortune no doubt favors us since she has begun so unexpectedly to open the door to your remedy, my friends, and has provided us with what we needed."

  Then Dorotea took from her pillow slip a dress made of a certain fine woolen cloth and a mantilla made of another attractive green fabric, and from a small box she took a necklace and other jewels, and with these she adorned herself and in a moment resembled a rich, great lady. All of this, and more, she said she had removed from her house in the event she needed them, and until now she had not had the opportunity to make use of them. Her extreme grace, charm, and comeliness delighted everyone and confirmed that Don Fernando was a man of limited understanding for having cast aside so much beauty.

  But most astonished of all was Sancho Panza, for it seemed to him--and it was true--that never in all his days had he seen so beautiful a creature; and so he asked the priest very eagerly to tell him who the beautiful lady was and what she was doing in this remote place.

  "This beautiful lady, brother Sancho," responded the priest, "is, and it is no small thing, the heir by direct male line of the great kingdom of Micomicon, and she has come looking for your master to beg of him a boon, which is that he right a wrong or correct an injustice done to her by an evil giant; and because of the fame your master has throughout the known world as a brave and virtuous knight, this princess has come all the way from Guinea to find him."