Don Quixote [Trans. by Edith Grossman] (108 page)

Sancho promised very earnestly that he would sew up his mouth or bite his tongue before speaking a word that was not fitting and carefully considered, just as his master had ordered, and Don Quixote did not need to worry about that anymore, for never through him would it be discovered who they really were.

Don Quixote dressed, put on his swordbelt and sword, placed the scarlet mantle over his shoulders, put on a green satin cap that the maidens had given him, and in this attire went into the large room, where he found the maidens standing in two equal lines, all of them prepared to pour water over his hands, which they did, with many courtesies and ceremonies.

Then twelve pages and the butler came to take him in to dinner, for the duke and duchess were waiting for him. They placed themselves around him and with great pomp and majesty escorted him to another room, where a rich table was laid with only four place settings. The duchess and duke came to the door of the room to receive him, and with them was a somber ecclesiastic, one of those who guide the houses of princes; one of those who, since they are not born princes, can never successfully teach those who are how to be princes; one of those who want the greatness of the great to be measured by the meanness of their own spirits; one of those who, wishing to show those they guide how to be restrained, make them only miserly; one of those, I say, was the somber cleric who came forward with the duke and duchess to receive Don Quixote. They exchanged a thousand courteous compliments, and finally, with Don Quixote placed between them, they went to take their seats at the table.

The duke invited Don Quixote to sit at the head of the table, and although he refused, the duke urged him so insistently that he had to agree. The ecclesiastic sat across from him, and the duke and the duchess were on either side.

Sancho was present for all of this, stupefied and amazed to see the honor paid his master by those nobles; and seeing the many ceremonies and entreaties that passed between the duke and Don Quixote in order to have him sit at the head of the table, he said:

“If your graces give me permission, I’ll tell you a story about this business of seats that happened in my village.”

As soon as Sancho said this, Don Quixote began to tremble, no doubt believing he was going to say something foolish. Sancho looked at him, and understood, and said:

“Señor, your grace shouldn’t worry that I’ll be disrespectful or say something that isn’t to the point, for I haven’t forgotten the advice your grace gave me just a little while ago about talking a lot or a little, or well or badly.”

“I do not recall anything, Sancho,” responded Don Quixote. “Say whatever you wish, as long as you say it quickly.”

“Well, what I want to say,” said Sancho, “is so true that my master, Don Quixote, who is here, won’t let me lie.”

“As far as I am concerned,” replied Don Quixote, “you can lie, Sancho, as much as you wish, and I shall not stop you, but watch your tongue.”

“I’ve watched and rewatched it so much that the bell ringer is safe, as you’ll soon see.”

“It would be good,” said Don Quixote, “if your highnesses were to have this fool taken away from here, for he will make a thousand witless remarks.”

“By the life of the duke,” said the duchess, “Sancho is not to go even a smidgen away from me; I love him dearly, because I know he is very wise.”

“May your holiness live many wise days,” said Sancho, “on account of the good opinion you have of me, though I don’t deserve it. And the story I want to tell you is this: an invitation was given by a nobleman in my village, very rich and influential because he was one of the Alamos of Medina del Campo, and he married Doña Mencía de Quiñones, who was the daughter of Don Alonso de Marañón, a knight of the Order of Santiago,
³
who drowned at La Herradura,
⁴
and there was a dispute about
him some years ago in our village, and as I understand it, my master, Don Quixote, took part in it, and Tomasillo the Rogue, the son of Balbastro the blacksmith, was wounded…. Isn’t all of this true, Señor? Say it is, on your life, so that these noble folk won’t take me for a lying babbler.”

“So far,” said the ecclesiastic, “I take you more for a babbler than a liar, but from now on I don’t know what I shall take you for.”

“You cite so many witnesses, Sancho, and so many particulars, that I cannot help but say that you must be telling the truth. But proceed, and shorten the story, because you are on the way to not concluding for another two days.”

“To please me,” said the duchess, “he must not shorten it; rather, he must tell it in the fashion that he knows, even if he does not finish in six days, and if it were to take that long, in my opinion they would be the best days I’d ever spent in my life.”

“Well, then, Señores,” Sancho continued, “I say that this nobleman, and I know him like I know my own hands because it’s only the distance of a crossbow shot from my house to his, gave an invitation to a farmer who was poor but honorable.”

“Go on, brother,” the cleric said at this point. “You’re on the way to not finishing your story until you’re in the next world.”

“I’ll stop when I’m less than halfway there, God willing,” responded Sancho. “And so, I say that when this farmer came to the house of this nobleman, and may his soul rest in peace because he’s dead now, and he died the death of an angel from what people tell me, since I wasn’t present at the time because I had gone to Tembleque to work in the harvest—”

“On your life, my son, return quickly from Tembleque, and without burying the nobleman, and unless you want more funerals, finish your story.”

“Well, the fact of the matter is,” replied Sancho, “that when the two of them were ready to sit down at the table, and it seems to me I can see both of them now as clear as ever…”

The duke and duchess greatly enjoyed the annoyance the good cleric was displaying at the delays and pauses used by Sancho in the recounting of his story, but Don Quixote was consumed with rage and fury.

“And so I say,” said Sancho, “that, like I said, when the two of them were going to sit down at the table, the farmer insisted that the nobleman should sit at the head of the table, and the nobleman also insisted that the farmer should sit there because in his house his orders had to be
followed; but the farmer, who was proud of his courtesy and manners, refused to do it, until the nobleman became angry, and putting both hands on his shoulders, he forced him to sit down, saying:

‘Sit down, you imbecile; wherever I sit will be the head of the table for you.’

And that’s my story, and I don’t believe it was out of place here.”

Don Quixote turned a thousand different colors that looked like marbling on his dark skin, and the duke and duchess, having understood Sancho’s sly intent, hid their laughter so that Don Quixote would not lose his temper; and in order to change the subject and keep Sancho from further insolence, the duchess asked Don Quixote what news he had of the lady Dulcinea, and if he had recently sent her any giants or malefactors as presents, for surely he had defeated a good number of them. To which Don Quixote responded:

“Señora, my misfortunes, although they had a beginning, will never have an end. I have vanquished giants, and I have sent villains and malefactors to her, but where can they find her if she has been enchanted and transformed into the ugliest peasant girl anyone can imagine?”

“I don’t know,” said Sancho Panza. “To me she looks like the most beautiful creature in the world, at least, as far as speed and jumping are concerned, I know that no acrobat could compete with her; by my faith, Señora Duchess, she can leap from the ground onto the back of a donkey just like a cat.”

“Have you seen her enchanted, Sancho?” asked the duke.

“Of course I’ve seen her!” responded Sancho. “Who the devil else but me was the first to catch on to this matter of enchantment? She’s as enchanted as my father!”

The ecclesiastic, who heard talk of giants, villains, and enchantments, realized that this must be Don Quixote of La Mancha, whose history was the duke’s customary reading, for which he had often reprimanded him, saying that it was foolishness to read such foolishness; and knowing that what he suspected was true, he spoke to the duke with a good deal of anger, saying:

“Your Excellency, Señor, must give an accounting to Our Lord for what this good man does. I imagine that this Don Quixote, or Don Half-wit, or whatever his name is, is not so great a fool as Your Excellency wants him to be when you provide him with opportunities to continue his absurdities and nonsense.”

And turning to Don Quixote, he said:

“And you, you simpleminded man, whoever put it into your head that you are a knight errant and defeat giants and capture villains? Go now in peace, and in peace I shall say to you: return to your home, and rear your children, if you have any, and tend to your estate, and stop wandering the world and wasting your time and being a laughingstock to all who know you and all who do not. Where the devil did you get the idea that there once were knights errant or that there are any now? Where are there giants in Spain, or malefactors in La Mancha, or enchanted Dulcineas, or any of the endless nonsense that people tell about you?”

Don Quixote listened attentively to the words of that venerable man, and seeing that he had fallen silent, and without regard for the duke and duchess, he rose to his feet, and with an angry countenance and a wrathful face, he said…

But this response deserves its own chapter.

CHAPTER XXXII

Don Quixote, then, rose to his feet, and trembling from head to toe like quicksilver, he spoke quickly and with great agitation, saying:

“The place where I am now, and the presence in which I find myself, and the respect I always have had, and have now, for the vocation your grace professes, bind and restrain the censure of my righteous anger; and for the reasons I have said, and because I know that everyone knows that the weapons of men in cassocks are the same as those of women, which is to say, their tongues, I shall with mine enter into equal combat with your grace, from whom one ought to have expected good counsel rather than base vituperation. Holy and well-intentioned rebukes require different circumstances and demand different occasions: at least, your having rebuked me in public, and so harshly, has gone beyond all the bounds of legitimate reproof, which is based more on gentleness than on asperity, nor is it just, having no knowledge of
the sin that is being rebuked, so thoughtlessly to call the sinner a simpleton and a fool. Otherwise tell me, your grace: for which of the inanities that you have seen in me do you condemn and revile me, and order me to return to my house and tend to it and my wife and my children, not knowing if I have one or the other? Or is it enough for clerics simply to enter other people’s houses willy-nilly to guide the owners, even though some have been brought up in the narrow confines of a boarding school and never have seen more of the world than the twenty or thirty leagues of their district, and then suddenly decide to dictate laws to chivalry and make judgments concerning knights errant? Is it by chance frivolous, or is the time wasted that is spent wandering the world, not seeking its rewards but the asperities by which the virtuous rise to the seat of immortality?

If knights, and the great, the generous, and the highborn considered me a fool, I would take it as an irreparable affront; but that I am thought a simpleton by students who never walked or followed the paths of chivalry does not concern me in the least: a knight I am, and a knight I shall die, if it pleases the Almighty. Some men walk the broad fields of haughty ambition, or base and servile adulation, or deceptive hypocrisy, and some take the road of true religion; but I, influenced by my star, follow the narrow path of knight errantry, and because I profess it I despise wealth but not honor. I have redressed grievances, righted wrongs, punished insolence, vanquished giants, and trampled monsters; I am in love, simply because it is obligatory for knights errant to be so; and being so, I am not a dissolute lover, but one who is chaste and platonic. I always direct my intentions to virtuous ends, which are to do good to all and evil to none; if the man who understands this, and acts on this, and desires this, deserves to be called a fool, then your highnesses, most excellent Duke and Duchess, should say so.”

“By God, that’s wonderful!” said Sancho. “My lord and master, your grace should say no more on your own behalf, because there’s nothing more to say, or to think, or to insist on in this world. Besides, since this gentleman is denying, and has denied, that there ever were knights errant in the world, or that there are any now, is it any wonder he doesn’t know any of the things he’s talked about?”

“By any chance, brother,” said the ecclesiastic, “are you the Sancho Panza to whom, they say, your master has promised an ínsula?”

“I am,” responded Sancho, “and I’m the one who deserves it as much
as anybody else; I’m a ‘Stay close to good men and become one’; and I’m a ‘Birds of a feather flock together’; and a ‘Lean against a sturdy trunk if you want good shade.’ I have leaned against a good master, and traveled with him for many months, and I’ll become just like him, God willing; long life to him and to me, and there’ll be no lack of empires for him to rule or ínsulas for me to govern.”

“No, certainly not, Sancho my friend,” said the duke, “for I, in the name of Señor Don Quixote, promise you the governorship of a spare one that I own, which is of no small quality.”

“Down on your knees, Sancho,” said Don Quixote, “and kiss the feet of His Excellency for the great favor he has done you.”

Sancho did so, and when the ecclesiastic saw this he rose from the table in a fury, saying:

“By the habit I wear, I must say that Your Excellency is as much a simpleton as these sinners. Consider that of course they must be mad, since the sane applaud their madness! Stay with them, Your Excellency, and for as long as they are in this house, I shall be in mine, and I exempt myself from reproving what I cannot remedy.”