Don Quixote [Trans. by Edith Grossman] (56 page)

The purpose and aim of letters—and I do not speak now of divine letters, whose purpose is to bring and guide souls to heaven; so eternal an end cannot be equaled by any other—I am speaking of human letters, whose purpose is to maintain distributive justice, and give each man what is his, and make certain that good laws are obeyed. A purpose, certainly, that is generous and high and worthy of great praise, but not so meritorious as arms, whose purpose and objective is peace, which is the greatest good that men can desire in this life. And so, the first good news that the world and men received was brought by angels on the night that was our day, when they sang in the air: ‘Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill toward men,’ and the greeting that the best teacher on earth and in heaven taught His disciples and followers was that when they entered a house they should say: ‘Peace be in this house,’ and often He said to them: ‘My peace I give unto you; my peace I leave with you; peace be with you,’ as if it were a precious jewel when given and offered by that hand, a jewel without which there can be no good on earth or in heaven. This peace is the true purpose of war, and saying arms is the same as saying war. Accepting it is true that the purpose of war is peace, which is greater than the purpose of letters, let us turn now to the physical hardships of the lettered man and those of the man who professes arms, and see which are greater.”

In this manner, and with these rational arguments, Don Quixote continued his discourse, and no one listening to him at that moment could think of him as a madman; rather, since most were gentlemen engaged in the practice of arms, they were very pleased to listen, and he went on, saying:

“I say, then, that the hardships of the student are these: principally poverty, not because they all are poor, but to make this case as extreme as possible, and having said that he suffers poverty, it seems to me that
there is nothing more to say about his bad luck, because the man who is poor has nothing that is good. This poverty is suffered in its various forms, in hunger, cold, and nakedness, and sometimes all of them together; even so, his poverty is not so great that he does not eat, although the meal may be a little later than usual, or may be the leftovers of the rich, and his greatest misery is what students call among themselves
going for soup;
⁶
and they do not lack someone else’s brazier or hearth, and if it does not warm them, at least it lessens the cold, and at night they sleep under a blanket. I do not wish to discuss other trivial matters, such as a lack of shirts and a shortage of shoes, and clothing that is scant and threadbare, or the relish with which they gorge themselves when fortune offers them a feast. Along this rough and difficult road that I have described, they stumble and fall, pick themselves up and fall again, until they reach the academic title they desire; once this is acquired and they have passed through these shoals, these Scyllas and Charybdises, as if carried on the wings of good fortune, we have seen many who command and govern the world from a chair, their hunger turned into a full belly, their cold into comfort, their nakedness into finery, and their straw mat into linen and damask sheets, the just reward for their virtue. But their hardships, measured against and compared to those of a soldier and warrior, fall far behind, as I shall relate to you now.”

CHAPTER XXXVIII

Don Quixote continued, saying:

“We began with the student and the forms of his poverty; now let us see if the soldier is richer. And we shall see that no one in his poverty is as poor as he, for he depends on his miserable pay, which comes late or never, or on whatever he can steal with his own hands at great risk to his life and conscience. Sometimes he is so naked that a slashed and torn
doublet is both uniform and shirt, and in the middle of winter, in an empty field, the breath from his mouth is his only protection against the inclemencies of heaven, and since that breath comes from an empty place, I consider it certain that it must come out cold, contradicting the laws of nature. But wait for night to fall, when he can make up for all these discomforts in the bed that awaits him, which will never sin by being too narrow unless he makes it so, for he can measure out as many feet of earth as he desires, and toss and turn to his heart’s content without fear of wrinkling the sheets. Then, after this, the day and hour arrive when he receives the degree his profession offers: the day of battle; there he will receive his tasseled academic cap, made of bandages to heal a bullet wound, perhaps one that has passed through his temples or will leave him with a ruined arm or leg. If this does not happen, and merciful heaven protects him and keeps him whole and alive, it may be that he will remain in the same poverty as before, and he will have to go through one engagement after another, one battle after another, and emerge victorious from all of them in order to prosper only a little; but these miracles are not seen very often.

But tell me, Señores, if you have considered it: how many more perish in war than profit from it? No doubt you will respond that there is no comparison, that the number of dead cannot be counted, and those who have been rewarded, and survived, can be counted in three digits and never reach a thousand. All of this is the opposite of what happens to lettered men, for with their fees, not to mention the bribes they receive, they have enough to get by, so that even though the hardship of a soldier is greater, his reward is much smaller. But one can respond to this by saying that it is easier to reward two thousand lettered men than thirty thousand soldiers, because the first are rewarded by positions that of necessity must be given to those in their profession, and the latter cannot be rewarded except by the very wealth that belongs to the lord they serve; and this, being impossible, strengthens my argument.

But let us leave this aside, for it is a labyrinth difficult to leave, and return to the preeminence of arms over letters, a question that has not yet been resolved since each side presents its own arguments; among them is the claim that without letters arms could not be sustained, because war also has laws to which it is subject, and laws are subsumed under what are called letters and lettered men. The reply of arms to this is that laws cannot be sustained without arms, because with arms nations are defended, kingdoms maintained, cities defended, roads made secure,
seas cleared of pirates; in short, if not for arms, nations, kingdoms, monarchies, cities, roads, and sea lanes would be subject to the hardship and confusion that war brings for as long as it lasts and has the freedom to exercise its privileges and impose its violence. It is a demonstrable truth that whatever costs more is valued, and should be valued, more highly. To become distinguished in letters costs time, sleepless nights, hunger, nakedness, headaches, bouts of indigestion, and other things of this sort, some of which I have already mentioned, but to become a good soldier requires everything required of a student, but to so much higher a degree that there can be no comparison, because at every step the soldier risks losing his life. How can the fear of want and poverty that troubles a student ever equal the fear of the soldier who, finding himself besieged in a fortress, or keeping watch or standing guard at a drawbridge or watch-tower, hears his enemies mining their way toward him, and he cannot leave for any reason or flee the danger that threatens him? All he can do is inform his captain of the situation so that he can remedy it with countermines, and he must be quiet, fearing and waiting for the moment when he will suddenly fly up to the clouds without wings or plunge down to the abyss against his will.

And if this seems an insignificant danger, let us see if it is equaled or surpassed when the prows of two galleys collide in the middle of the wide sea, for when they lock and grapple, the soldier is left with no more than two feet of plank on the ram of the ship; despite this, seeing that he has in front of him as many ministers of death threatening him as there are artillery cannons aimed at him from the other side, only a lance’s throw away, and seeing that at the first misstep he will visit the deep bosom of Neptune, despite this, with an intrepid heart, carried by the honor that urges him on, he makes himself the target of all their volleys and attempts to cross that narrow passage to the enemy vessel. And the most astounding thing is that no sooner does one man fall, not to rise again until the world comes to an end, than another takes his place, and if he too falls into the sea that waits like an enemy, there is another, and another who follows him, and their deaths come one after the other, without pause: no greater valor and daring can be found in all the perils of war.

Happy were those blessed times that lacked the horrifying fury of the diabolical instruments of artillery, whose inventor, in my opinion, is in hell, receiving the reward for his accursed invention, which allows an ignoble and cowardly hand to take the life of a valiant knight, so that not
knowing how it comes, or from where, a stray shot is fired into the courage and spirit that inflame and animate a brave heart, sent by one who perhaps fled in fear at the bright flare when the damned machine discharged it, and it cuts off and ends in an instant the thoughts and life of one who deserved to enjoy many more long years. When I consider this, I am prepared to say that it grieves my very soul that I have taken up the profession of knight errant in an age as despicable as the one we live in now, for although no danger can cause me to fear, it still fills me with misgivings to think that powder and tin may deprive me of the opportunity to become famous and renowned throughout the known world for the valor of my arm and the sharp edge of my sword. But God’s will be done, for I shall be more highly esteemed, if I succeed in my purpose, for having confronted greater dangers than any faced by the knights errant of old.”

Don Quixote gave this long discourse while the others were eating, and he forgot to bring a single mouthful of food to his lips, although Sancho Panza told him several times that he should eat and that later there would be time to say all he wanted to say. Those who listened to him were overwhelmed again with pity at seeing that a man who apparently was intelligent and rational in all other matters could lose those faculties completely when it was a question of his accursed and bedeviled chivalry. The priest said that he was correct in everything he had said in favor of arms, and that he, though lettered and a graduate of the university, was of the same opinion.

They finished supper, the table was cleared, and while the innkeeper’s wife, her daughter, and Maritornes prepared Don Quixote of La Mancha’s garret, for it had been decided that only the women would spend the night there, Don Fernando asked the captive to tell them the story of his life, which was bound to be unusual and interesting, as he had shown by arriving in the company of Zoraida. To which the captive responded that he would gladly do as he asked, though he feared the story would not give them the pleasure he would like; even so, in order to oblige them, he would tell it. The priest and the others thanked him, and again they asked him to begin, and he, seeing himself asked by so many, said that entreaties were not necessary when one request was more than enough.

“And so, let your graces be attentive, and you will hear a true account that could not be equaled by fictions written with so much care and artfulness.”

When he said this, they all sat down and became absolutely silent, and seeing that they had stopped talking and were waiting for him to speak, in a calm and pleasant voice he began his story, saying:

CHAPTER XXXIX

“My family had its origins in the mountains of León, where nature was kinder and more generous than fortune, though in the extreme poverty of those villages my father was known as a rich man, and he truly would have been one if he had been as skilled in preserving his wealth as he was in spending it. This propensity for being generous and openhanded came from his having been a soldier in his youth, for soldiering is a school where the stingy man becomes liberal, and the liberal man becomes prodigal, and if there are any soldiers who are miserly, they are, like monsters, very rarely seen. My father exceeded the limits of generosity and bordered on being prodigal, something of little benefit to a man who is married and has children who will succeed to his name and position. My father had three sons, all of an age to choose a profession. Seeing, as he said, that he could not control his own nature, he decided to deprive himself of the means and cause of his being prodigal and a spendthrift by giving up his estate, without which Alexander himself would have seemed a miser. And so one day he called the three of us into a room where we could be alone, and he said something similar to what I will say now:

‘My sons, to say that I love you, it is enough to know and say that you are my children, and to understand that I do not love you, it is enough to know that I do not exercise control with regard to preserving your inheritance. So that you may know from now on that I love you as a father, and do not wish to destroy you as if I were your stepfather, I want to do something that I have been thinking about for a long time and, after ma
ture consideration, have resolved to do. You are all of an age to choose a profession or, at least, to select an occupation that will bring you honor and profit when you are older. What I have decided is to divide my fortune into four parts: three I will give to you, each one receiving exactly the same share, and the fourth I will retain to keep me for the time it pleases heaven to grant me life. But after each of you has his share of the estate, I would like you to follow the path I indicate. There is a proverb in our Spain, one that I think is very true, as they all are, for they are brief maxims taken from long, judicious experience; the one I have in mind says: “The Church, the sea, or the royal house”; in other words, whoever wishes to be successful and wealthy should enter the Church, or go to sea as a merchant, or enter the service of kings in their courts, for, as they say: “Better the king’s crumbs than the noble lord’s favors.” I say this because I would like, and it is my desire, that one of you should pursue letters, another commerce, and the third should serve the king in war, for it is very difficult to enter his service at court, and although war does not provide many riches, it tends to bring great merit and fame. In a week’s time I shall give each of you his entire share in cash, down to the last
ardite,
as you will see. Tell me now if you wish to follow my opinion and advice in what I have proposed to you.’