Don Quixote [Trans. by Edith Grossman] (84 page)

“Sancho, my friend, lead the way to the palace of Dulcinea; perhaps we may find her awake.”

“Good God, what palace am I supposed to lead to,” responded Sancho, “when the place where I saw her highness was only a very small house?”

“She must have withdrawn, at that time,” responded Don Quixote, “to a small apartment in her castle, finding solace alone with her damsels, as is the practice and custom of noble ladies and princesses.”

“Señor,” said Sancho, “since your grace insists, in spite of what I say, that the house of my lady Dulcinea is a castle, do you think we’ll find the door open at this hour? And would it be a good idea for us to knock loud
enough for them to hear us and open the door, disturbing everybody with the noise we make? Are we by chance calling at the houses of our kept women, where we can visit and knock at the door and go in any time we want no matter how late it is?”

“Before we do anything else, let us first find the castle,” replied Don Quixote, “and then I shall tell you, Sancho, what it would be good for us to do. And listen, Sancho, either I cannot see very well or that large shape and its shadow over there must be the palace of Dulcinea.”

“Well, your grace, lead the way,” responded Sancho, “and maybe it will be, though even if I saw it with my eyes and touched it with my hands, I’d believe it the way I believe it’s daytime now.”

Don Quixote led the way, and after some two hundred paces he came to the shape that was casting the shadow, and he saw a high tower, and then he realized that the building was not a castle but the principal church of the town. And he said:

“We have come to the church, Sancho.”
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“I can see that,” responded Sancho. “And may it please God that we don’t come to our graves; it’s not a good idea to walk through cemeteries at this hour of the night, especially since I told your grace, if I remember correctly, that the lady’s house is in a little dead-end lane.”

“May God damn you for a fool!” said Don Quixote. “Where have you ever found castles and royal palaces built in little dead-end lanes?”

“Señor,” responded Sancho, “each place has its ways: maybe here in Toboso the custom is to build palaces and large buildings in lanes, and so I beg your grace to let me look along these streets and lanes that I see here; maybe at some corner I’ll run into that castle, and I hope I see it devoured by dogs for bringing us such a weary long way.”

“Speak with respect, Sancho, of the things that pertain to my lady,” said Don Quixote, “and let us be patient: we shall not give up.”

“I’ll control myself,” responded Sancho, “but how can I be patient if I saw our lady’s house only one time but your grace wants me to know it forever and find it in the middle of the night, when your grace can’t find it and you must have seen it thousands of times?”

“You make me despair, Sancho,” said Don Quixote. “Come here, you scoundrel: have I not told you a thousand times that in all the days of my
life I have not seen the peerless Dulcinea, and I have never crossed the threshold of her palace, and I am in love only because I have heard of the great fame she has for beauty and discernment?”

“Now I hear it,” responded Sancho, “and I say that just as your grace has not seen her, neither have I.”

“That cannot be,” replied Don Quixote. “At least you told me that you saw her sifting wheat, when you brought me her answer to the letter I sent with you.”

“Don’t depend on that, Señor,” responded Sancho, “because I want you to know that I only heard about seeing her and bringing you her answer, and I have as much idea who the lady Dulcinea is as I have chances to punch the sky.”

“Sancho, Sancho,” responded Don Quixote, “there is a time for jokes and a time when jokes are inappropriate and out of place. Simply because I say I have not seen or spoken to the lady of my soul, it does not mean that you must also say you have not spoken to her or seen her, when just the opposite is true, as you well know.”

They were engaged in this conversation when they saw a man with two mules coming toward them, and by the noise he made with the plow that was dragging along the ground, they judged him to be a peasant who had gotten up before dawn to begin his labors, which was the truth. As he walked along, the peasant sang the ballad that says:

“By heaven, Sancho,” said Don Quixote when he heard him, “I doubt anything good will happen to us this night. Do you hear what that laborer is singing?”

“I do,” responded Sancho, “but what does the rout at Roncesvalles
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have to do with us? He could just as easily be singing the ballad of Calaínos, and it wouldn’t change whether we have good or bad luck in this business.”

By now the laborer had reached them, and Don Quixote asked:

“Can you tell me, my friend, and may God send you good fortune, the location of the palaces of the peerless princess Doña Dulcinea of Toboso?”

“Señor,” the young man responded, “I’m a stranger, and I’ve only
been in town a few days, working for a rich farmer in his fields; the priest and the sacristan live in that house in front of us, and either one or both of them will be able to tell your grace about that lady the princess, because they have the list of everybody who lives in Toboso, though it seems to me that no princess lives anywhere around here; but there are lots of ladies, and they’re so distinguished that each one could be a princess in her own house.”

“Well, friend, the lady I am asking about,” said Don Quixote, “must be one of them.”

“That might be,” responded the young man, “and now goodbye: dawn is breaking.”

And prodding his mules, he waited for no more questions. Sancho, seeing his master somewhat baffled and in a bad humor, said:

“Señor, it’s almost day and it wouldn’t be a good idea to let the sun find us out on the street; it would be better for us to leave the city, and then your grace can wait in some nearby woods, and I’ll come back in broad daylight and search every corner of this town for the house, castle, or palace of my lady, and I’ll have to be pretty unlucky not to find it; and when I do, I’ll talk to her grace and tell her where your grace is waiting for her to give you leave to see her and tell you how you can without doing damage to her honor and good name.”

“You have, Sancho,” said Don Quixote, “enclosed a thousand wise statements within the circle of a few brief words: the advice you have just given pleases me, and I accept it very willingly. Come, my friend, and let us look for the place where I shall wait while you, as you have said, will come back to find, see, and speak to my lady, from whose intelligence and courtesy I hope for more than wondrous favors.”

Sancho was desperate to get his master outside the town so that he would not discover the lie of the response from Dulcinea that he had brought to him in the Sierra Morena, and so he hurried their departure, which took place without delay, and two miles from the town they found a stand of trees or a wood where Don Quixote waited while Sancho returned to the city to speak with Dulcinea; and on this mission things occurred that demand a renewal of both attention and belief.

CHAPTER X

When the author of this great history came to recount what is recounted in this chapter, he says he would have preferred to pass over it in silence, fearful it would not be given credence, for the madness of Don Quixote here reached the limits and boundaries of the greatest madnesses that can be imagined, and even passed two crossbow shots beyond them. But finally, despite this fear and trepidation, he wrote down the mad acts just as Don Quixote performed them, not adding or subtracting an atom of truth from the history and not concerning himself about the accusations that he was a liar, which might be made against him; and he was right, because truth may be stretched thin and not break, and it always floats on the surface of the lie, like oil on water.

And so, continuing his history, he says that as soon as Don Quixote had entered the wood, oak grove, or forest near the great Toboso, he ordered Sancho to return to the city and not appear again in his presence without first having spoken on his behalf to his lady, asking her to be so kind as to allow herself to be seen by her captive knight and deign to give him her blessing so that he might hope for a most happy conclusion for all his undertakings and arduous enterprises. Sancho agreed to do everything exactly as ordered and to bring back a reply as good as the one he had brought the first time.

“Go, my friend,” replied Don Quixote, “and do not become disconcerted when you find yourself looking at the light emanating from the sun of beauty which you will seek. Oh, you are more fortunate than all the squires in the world! Remember everything and do not miss a detail of how she receives you: if her color changes as you give her my message;
if she becomes agitated or troubled when she hears my name; if she moves about on her pillows, if you happen to find her in the richly furnished antechamber of her rank;
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if she is standing, look at her to see if she shifts from one foot to another; if she repeats her answer two or three times; if she changes from gentle to severe, from harsh to loving; if she raises her hand to her hair to smooth it, although it is not disarranged; finally, my friend, observe all her actions and movements, because if you relate them to me just as they occurred, I shall interpret what she keeps hidden in the secret places of her heart in response to the fact of my love; for you must know, Sancho, if you do not know it already, that with lovers, the external actions and movements, revealed when the topic of their love arises, are reliable messengers bringing the news of what transpires deep in their souls. Go, my friend, and may better fortune than mine guide you, and may you return with greater success than I dare hope for as I wait in this bitter solitude in which you leave me.”

“I’ll go and come back very quickly,” said Sancho, “and swell that heart of yours, which can’t be any bigger now than a hazelnut, and remember what they say: a good heart beats bad luck, and where there is no bacon, there are no stakes,
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and they also say that a hare leaps out when you least expect it. I’m saying this because if we didn’t find my lady’s palaces or castles last night, now that it’s day I think I’ll find them when I least expect to, and once I’ve found them, just leave everything to me.”

“Well, Sancho,” said Don Quixote, “you certainly bring in proverbs that suit our affairs perfectly, and I hope God gives me as much good fortune in my desires.”

This having been said, Sancho turned away and urged on his donkey, and Don Quixote remained on horseback, resting in the stirrups and leaning on his lance, full of melancholy and confused imaginings, and there we will leave him and go with Sancho Panza, who rode away no less confused and thoughtful than his master; in fact, as soon as he had emerged from the wood he turned his head, and seeing that Don Quixote was nowhere in sight, he dismounted his donkey, sat at the foot of a tree, and began to talk to himself, saying:

“Now, Sancho my brother, let’s find out where your grace is going. Are you going to look for some donkey that’s been lost?” “No, of course
not.” “Well, what are you going to look for?” “I’m going to look for a princess—like that was an easy thing to do—who is the sun of beauty and the rest of heaven, too.” “And where do you think you’ll find all that, Sancho?” “Where? In the great city of Toboso.” “All right, for whose sake are you going to look for her?” “For the sake of the famous knight Don Quixote of La Mancha, who rights wrongs, and gives food to the thirsty, and drink to the hungry.” “All that’s very fine. Do you know where her house is, Sancho?” “My master says it has to be royal palaces or noble castles.” “Have you, by chance, ever seen her?” “I’ve never seen her, and neither has my master.” “And do you think it would be the right and proper thing to do, if the people of Toboso found out that you’re here intending to coax away their princesses and disturb their ladies, for them to batter your ribs with sticks and break every bone in your body?” “The truth is they’d be right, unless they remembered that I’m following orders, and that

“Don’t rely on that, Sancho, because Manchegans are as quick-tempered as they are honorable, and they don’t put up with anything from anybody. By God, if they suspect what you’re up to, then I predict bad luck for you.” “Get out, you dumb bastard! Let the lighting strike somebody else! Not me, I’m not going to look for trouble to please somebody else! Besides, looking for Dulcinea in Toboso will be like looking for a María in Ravenna or a bachelor in Salamanca. The devil, the devil and nobody else has gotten me into this!”

Sancho held this soliloquy with himself, and the conclusion he drew was that he talked to himself again, saying:

“Well now: everything has a remedy except death, under whose yoke we all have to pass, even if we don’t want to, when our life ends. I’ve seen a thousand signs in this master of mine that he’s crazy enough to be tied up, and I’m not far behind, I’m as much a fool as he is because I follow and serve him, if that old saying is true: ‘Tell me who your friends are and I’ll tell you who you are,’ and that other one that says, ‘Birds of a feather flock together.’ Then, being crazy, which is what he is, with the kind of craziness that most of the time takes one thing for another, and
thinks white is black and black is white, like the time he said that the windmills were giants, and the friars’ mules dromedaries, and the flocks of sheep enemy armies, and many other things of that nature, it won’t be very hard to make him believe that a peasant girl, the first one I run into here, is the lady Dulcinea; and if he doesn’t believe it, I’ll swear it’s true; and if he swears it isn’t, I’ll swear again that it is; and if he insists, I’ll insist more; and so I’ll always have the last word, no matter what. Maybe I’ll be so stubborn he won’t send me out again carrying his messages, seeing the bad answers I bring back, or maybe he’ll believe, which is what I think will happen, that one of those evil enchanters he says are his enemies changed her appearance to hurt him and do him harm.”