Don Quixote [Trans. by Edith Grossman] (146 page)

“It seems to me,” responded Sancho, “that your grace is like the pot calling the kettle black. You reprove me for saying proverbs, and your grace strings them together two at a time.”

“Look, Sancho,” responded Don Quixote, “I say proverbs when they are appropriate, and when I say them they fit like the rings on your fingers, but you drag them in by the hair, and pull them along, and do not guide them, and if I remember correctly, I have already told you that proverbs are brief maxims derived from the experience and speculation of wise men in the past, and if the proverb is not to the point, it is not a maxim, it is nonsense. But let us leave this for now, and since night is approaching, let us withdraw some distance from the king’s highway, and spend the night there, and God alone knows what tomorrow will bring.”

They withdrew and had a scant, late supper, much against the will of Sancho, to whom it seemed that the austerities of knight errantry were common in the forests and mountains, while abundance was displayed in castles and houses, as much in the house of Don Diego de Miranda or Don Antonio Moreno as at the wedding of the wealthy Camacho, but he considered that it could not always be day, and it could not always be night, and so he spent that night sleeping, while his master kept watch.

CHAPTER LXVIII

The night was somewhat dark although the moon was in the sky, but not in a place where she could be seen: perhaps the lady Diana had taken a trip to the Antipodes and left the mountains black and the valleys dark. Don Quixote fulfilled his obligations to nature by sleeping his first sleep,
¹
but not giving way to his second, unlike Sancho, who never had a second sleep because his sleep lasted from nightfall until morning, prov
ing he had a strong constitution and few cares. Those of Don Quixote kept him awake until he woke Sancho and said:

“I am astounded, Sancho, at your carefree disposition: I imagine that you are made of marble or hard bronze, and that feeling or sentiment has no place in you. I keep vigil while you sleep, I weep while you sing, I swoon from fasting while you are lazy and sluggish from sheer satiety. It is in the nature of good servants to share the griefs of their masters and to feel what they are feeling, if only for appearance’s sake. Look at the serenity of this night and the solitude of this place, inviting us to mingle some wakefulness with our sleep. Get up, for the love of God, and go a little distance from here, and with good courage and the boldness of gratitude give yourself three or four hundred of the lashes you owe for the disenchantment of Dulcinea; I plead with you to do this; I do not wish to come to blows with you, as we did last time, because I know you have a heavy hand. After you have flogged yourself, we shall spend what remains of the night singing, I of my absent love, and you of your valor, thereby beginning the pastoral life we shall practice in our village.”

“Señor,” responded Sancho, “I’m not a monk who wakes up in the middle of the night to discipline myself, and I also don’t think anybody can feel the extreme pain of a whipping and then start singing music. Your grace should let me sleep and stop pressing me about the lashes, or you’ll force me to swear that I’ll never even touch a thread of my tunic, let alone my flesh.”

“O unfeeling soul! O pitiless squire! O undeserved bread and unthinking favors that I have given to you and intend to give to you in the future! Because of me you found yourself a governor, and because of me you have hopes of becoming a count or receiving another equivalent title, and the fulfillment of those hopes will take no longer than the time it takes for this year to pass, for
Post tenebras spero lucem.
²

“I don’t understand that,” replied Sancho. “I only understand that while I’m sleeping I have no fear, or hope, or trouble, or glory; blessed be whoever invented sleep, the mantle that covers all human thought, the food that satisfies hunger, the water that quenches thirst, the fire that warms the cold, the cold that cools down ardor, and, finally, the general coin with which all things are bought, the scale and balance that make
the shepherd equal to the king, and the simple man equal to the wise. There is only one defect in sleep, or so I’ve heard, and it is that it resembles death, for there is very little difference between a man who is sleeping and a man who is dead.”

“I have never heard you speak, Sancho,” said Don Quixote, “as elegantly as now, which leads me to recognize the truth of the proverb that you like to quote: ‘It is not where you were born but who your friends are now that counts.’”

“Ah, confound it, Señor!” replied Sancho. “Now I’m not the one stringing proverbs together; they also drop two by two from your grace’s mouth better than they do from mine, but between my proverbs and yours there must be this difference: your grace’s come at the right time, while mine are out of place, but in fact they’re all proverbs.”

They were engaged in this conversation when they heard a deafening sound and a harsh noise that extended through all the valleys. Don Quixote rose to his feet and put his hand to his sword, and Sancho crouched under the gray, pulling the armor down on one side and his donkey’s packsaddle down on the other, trembling from fear as much as Don Quixote trembled from excitement. Gradually the noise grew louder as it came closer to the two fearful men: to one of them, at least; as for the other, his courage is already well-known.

The fact is, at that early hour, some swineherds were taking more than six hundred pigs to a fair to sell them, and the animals made so much noise grunting and snorting that it deafened Don Quixote and Sancho, who could not imagine what the sound could be. The large grunting herd came running in great haste and confusion, and without showing respect for the authority of either Don Quixote or Sancho, they ran over them both, destroying Sancho’s stockade and knocking down not only Don Quixote but Rocinante for good measure. The herd, the grunting, the speed with which the unclean animals ran past, threw into confusion and to the ground the packsaddle, the armor, the gray, Rocinante, Sancho, and Don Quixote.

Sancho struggled to his feet and asked his master for his sword, saying that he wanted to kill half a dozen of those stout and discourteous pigs, for he had realized what they were. Don Quixote said:

“Let them be, my friend, for this affront is chastisement for my sin, and heaven’s just punishment is that a defeated knight errant will be devoured by jackals, and stung by wasps, and trampled by pigs.”

“It must also be heaven’s punishment,” responded Sancho, “that the
squires of defeated knights will be bitten by flies, eaten by lice, and attacked by hunger. If we squires were the children of the knights we serve, or close relatives of theirs, it wouldn’t be surprising if the punishment for their faults reached us all the way to the fourth generation, but what do the Panzas have to do with the Quixotes? Well then, let’s get comfortable again and sleep for the rest of the night, and God will send the dawn, and we’ll be fine.”

“You sleep, Sancho,” responded Don Quixote, “for you were born to sleep, but I, born to stand watch, shall give free rein to my thoughts in the time that remains until daylight, and proclaim them in a madrigal I composed in my mind last night without your knowledge.”

“It seems to me,” responded Sancho, “that thoughts that move you to write verses can’t be very troublesome. Your grace should versify all you want, and I’ll sleep all I can.”

And then, taking all the ground he wished, he curled up and fell fast asleep, undisturbed by guaranties or debts or any sorrow. Don Quixote, leaning against the trunk of a beech or a cork tree—for Cide Hamete Benengeli does not specify what kind of tree it was—sang to the sound of his own sighs:

Each of these verses was accompanied by many sighs and no few tears, befitting one whose heart was pierced by the pain of defeat and the absence of Dulcinea.

Then day arrived, the sun shone its rays into Sancho’s eyes, he awoke and stretched, shaking and extending his sluggish limbs; he looked at
the destruction wreaked on his provisions by the pigs, and cursed the herd, and even more than that. Finally the pair resumed their journey, and as the afternoon drew to a close, they saw some ten men on horseback and four or five men on foot coming toward them. Don Quixote’s heart beat faster, and Sancho’s was alarmed, because the men approaching carried lances and shields and seemed very warlike. Don Quixote turned to Sancho and said:

“If I could wield my weapons, Sancho, and the promise I gave had not tied my arms, I would deem this group coming toward us as nothing more than mere child’s play, but perhaps it is not what we fear.”

By then the men on horseback had reached them, and raising their lances, and not saying a word, they surrounded Don Quixote and held their weapons to his back and chest, threatening him with death. One of those on foot brought his finger to his mouth to indicate silence, seized Rocinante’s bridle, and led him off the road; the rest of the men on foot, driving Sancho and the gray before them, and maintaining the most astonishing silence, followed in the footsteps of those who had taken Don Quixote, who tried to ask two or three times where they were taking him or what they wanted, but as soon as he began to move his lips they were closed by the points of the lances; the same thing happened to Sancho, because as soon as he gave signs of wanting to speak, one of the men on foot goaded him with a barb, and the donkey, too, as if he wanted to speak as well. Night fell, they hurried their pace, and the two prisoners felt a growing fear, especially when they heard their captors say from time to time:

“Move, troglodytes!”

“Silence, barbarians!”

“Atone, anthropophagi!”

“No complaints, Scythians,
⁴
don’t even open your eyes, murdering Polyphemuses,
⁵
bloodthirsty lions!”

And many other similar names with which they tormented the ears of the wretched master and servant. As Sancho walked, he said to himself:

“They call us tortoise-tykes? Barbers and ant puffs? Pollies that can be called like pissants? I don’t like these names at all; it’s an ill wind blowing on this pile of grain; all this wickedness comes down on us at once,
like blows on a dog, and may it please God that what this misadventurous adventure threatens goes no further than blows!”

Don Quixote was dazed, unable to guess, no matter how he tried, the purpose of the insulting names, but certain, at least, that from those words nothing good could be hoped for and a good deal of harm could be feared. And then, almost an hour after nightfall, they arrived at what Don Quixote recognized as the castle of the duke, where they had been only a short while before.

“God save me!” he said as soon as he recognized the estate. “What can this mean? In this house all is courtesy and good manners, but for those who have been defeated, good becomes bad, and bad becomes even worse.”

They entered the principal courtyard of the castle, and they saw that it was adorned and decorated in a manner that increased their bewilderment and doubled their fear, as will be seen in the next chapter.

CHAPTER LXIX

The horsemen dismounted, and together with those on foot, they seized Sancho and Don Quixote, lifted them up, and carried them into the courtyard, around which almost a hundred torches set in sconces were burning; more than five hundred lamps had been placed along the passages in the courtyard, so that despite the night, which proved to be somewhat dark, the lack of daylight went unnoticed. In the middle of the courtyard a catafalque rose some two
varas
off the ground, entirely covered by a very large canopy of black velvet; around it, on its steps, candles of white wax burned in more than a hundred silver candelabras; displayed on the catafalque was the dead body of a damsel so beautiful that her beauty made death itself beautiful. Her head, crowned with a garland of fragrant flowers, lay on a brocade pillow, and her hands, crossed on her bosom, held a branch of yellow triumphant palm.

To one side of the courtyard a stage had been erected, and on it were two seats, upon which two persons were sitting, and the crowns on their heads and the scepters in their hands indicated that they were kings, either real or feigned. To the side of the stage, on the steps leading up to it, two other seats were placed, and on these the men carrying the prisoners seated Don Quixote and Sancho; they did all this in silence, and signaled to the pair that they should be silent as well, but even without the signals they would have been silent because the astonishment they felt at what they were seeing had tied their tongues.

At that moment, two distinguished personages mounted the stage, followed by a large retinue; they were recognized immediately by Don Quixote as the duke and duchess, his hosts, and they sat in two richly decorated chairs beside the two men who seemed to be kings. Who would not have been astounded at this, especially when Don Quixote realized that the dead body on the catalfaque was the beauteous Altisidora?

When the duke and duchess mounted the stage, Don Quixote and Sancho rose and made deep obeisances, and the duke and duchess responded with a slight bow of their heads.

Then one of their officials crossed the courtyard, came up to Sancho, and placed on him a garment of black buckram decorated with flames of fire; he removed his cap and put on his head a cone-shaped hat, of the sort given to penitents to wear by the Holy Office, and he said into his ear that if he opened his mouth, they would gag him or take his life. Sancho looked at himself and saw himself in flames, but since they did not burn he did not care at all about them. He removed the hat, saw that it was decorated with devils, and put it back on, saying to himself: