Don Quixote [Trans. by Edith Grossman] (95 page)

To which the student bachelor, or licentiate, as Don Quixote called him, responded:

“There really is no more for me to say except that ever since the moment Basilio learned that fair Quiteria was marrying rich Camacho, he
has not been known to laugh, or to speak coherently, and he always goes about pensive and sad, talking to himself, which are clear and certain signs that he has lost his mind: he eats little and sleeps little, and what he does eat is fruit, and if he does sleep it is in the fields, on the hard ground, like a dumb animal; from time to time he looks up at the sky, at other times he fixes his eyes on the ground and is so entranced that he seems to be a dressed statue whose clothes are moved by the breeze. In short, he gives so many indications of having a heart maddened by love that those of us who know him fear that when fair Quiteria takes her marriage vows tomorrow, it will be his death sentence.”

“God will find the cure,” said Sancho, “for God gives the malady and also the remedy; nobody knows the future: there’s a lot of hours until tomorrow, and in one of them, and even in a moment, the house can fall; I’ve seen it rain at the same time the sun is shining; a man goes to bed healthy and can’t move the next day. And tell me, is there anybody who can boast that he’s driven a nail into Fortune’s wheel? No, of course not, and I wouldn’t dare put the point of a pin between a woman’s yes and no, because it wouldn’t fit. Tell me that Quiteria loves Basilio with all her heart and all her soul, and I’ll give him a sack of good fortune, because I’ve heard that love looks through spectacles that make copper look like gold, poverty like riches, and dried rheum like pearls.”

“Damn you, Sancho, where will you stop?” said Don Quixote. “When you begin to string together proverbs and stories, nobody can endure it but Judas himself, and may Judas himself take you. Tell me, you brute, what do you know of nails, or wheels, or anything else?”

“Oh, well, if none of you understand me,” responded Sancho, “it’s no wonder my sayings are taken for nonsense. But it doesn’t matter: I understand what I’m saying, and I know there’s not much foolishness in what I said, but your grace is always sentencing what I say, and even what I do.”

“
Censuring
is what you should say,” said Don Quixote, “and not
sentencing,
you corrupter of good language, may God confound you!”

“Your grace shouldn’t get angry with me,” responded Sancho, “because you know I didn’t grow up at court or study at Salamanca, so how would I know if I’m adding or taking away letters from my words? God save me! You can’t force a Sayagan to talk like a Toledan,
²
and there may be some Toledans who don’t talk better than anybody else.”

“That’s true,” said the licentiate, “because those who grew up in Tenerías and in Zocodover cannot speak as well as those who spend almost the entire day strolling in the cloister of the cathedral, and all of them are Toledans. Pure language, appropriate, elegant, and clear, is used by discerning courtiers even if they were born in Majalahonda.
³
I said
discerning,
because there are many who are not, and discernment is the grammar of good language, which is acquired with use. I, Señores, for my sins, have studied canon law at Salamanca and am rather proud of speaking with words that are clear, plain, and meaningful.”

“If you hadn’t been prouder of how you move those foils you’re carrying than of how you wag your tongue,” said the other student, whose name was Corchuelo, “maybe you would have placed first for your licentiate instead of last.”

“Look, Bachelor,” responded the licentiate, “you hold the most erroneous opinion in the world about skill with the sword, since you consider it useless.”

“As far as I’m concerned, it’s not an opinion but an established truth,” replied Corchuelo, “and if you would like me to prove it to you experientially, you’re carrying the foils, there’s a convenient spot, I have a steady hand, and strength, and together with my courage, which is no small thing, they will make you confess that I am not mistaken. Dismount, and use your changes of posture, your circles, your angles, and your science; I expect to make you see stars at midday with my crude, modern skills, and after God I put my trust in them, and there’s no man born who will make me turn away, and none in the world whom I can’t force to retreat.”
⁴

“I won’t get involved in questions of turning or not turning away,” replied the master swordsman, “though it might be that on the spot where you first set your foot, your grave will open wide: I mean, that you’ll be lying dead there on account of the mastery you despise so much.”

“Now we’ll see,” responded Corchuelo.

And he dismounted his donkey with great agility and furiously seized one of the foils that the licentiate was carrying on his animal.

“It should not be this way,” said Don Quixote at that moment, “for I
wish to be the master of this duel and the judge of this question so frequently left unresolved.”

And after dismounting Rocinante and grasping his lance, he stood in the middle of the road, at the same time that the licentiate, with spirited grace and measured steps, was advancing on Corchuelo, who came toward him, his eyes, as the saying goes, blazing. The two peasants who had accompanied them did not dismount their donkeys, but served as spectators to the mortal tragedy. The innumerable lunges, slashes, downward thrusts, reverse strokes, and two-handed blows executed by Corchuelo were denser than liver and more minute than hail. He attacked like an angry lion but was met with a blow to the mouth by the tip of the licentiate’s foil, which stopped him in the middle of his fury, and which he had to kiss as if it were a relic, though not as devotedly as relics should be kissed, and usually are.

Finally, the licentiate’s lunges accounted for all the buttons on the short cassock the bachelor was wearing and slashed its skirts into the arms of an octopus; twice he knocked off his hat, and tired him so much that in fury, anger, and rage the bachelor seized his foil by the hilt and threw it into the air with so much force that one of the peasants, who was a notary, went to retrieve it and subsequently testified that it had flown almost three-quarters of a league, and this testimony serves and has served to demonstrate and prove the truth that force is vanquished by art.

Corchuelo sat down, exhausted, and Sancho approached him and said:

“By my faith, Señor Bachelor, if your grace will take my advice, from now on you won’t challenge anybody to a duel, but to wrestling or hurling the bar, since you’re young enough and strong enough for that, because I’ve heard that the ones they call
master swordsmen
can put the tip of their sword through the eye of a needle.”

“I’m happy,” responded Corchuelo, “that I fell off my high horse, and that experience has shown me a truth I refused to acknowledge.”

And, standing up, he embraced the licentiate, and they were better friends than before; and not wanting to wait for the notary who had gone after the foil because it seemed it would take too long, they resolved to continue on their way in order to reach Quiteria’s village early, for that is where all of them were from.

For the rest of their journey the licentiate told them about the excellencies of the sword, with so many demonstrations and figures and mathematical proofs that all of them were well-informed regarding the virtues of the science, and Corchuelo’s obstinacy was overcome.

It was dusk, but before they arrived it seemed to everyone that the village sky was filled with innumerable brilliant stars. They also heard the sweet, confused sounds of various instruments, such as flutes, tambors, psalteries, flageolets, tambourines, and timbrels, and when they came close they saw that a bower of trees, erected at the entrance to the village, was filled with lights, which were not disturbed by the wind that was blowing so gently it did not have the strength to move the leaves on the trees. The musicians were the entertainers at the wedding, and in various bands they wandered around that pleasant spot, some of them dancing, others singing, and still others playing the variety of aforementioned instruments. In fact, it seemed that in the meadow joy was dancing and happiness leaping.

Many other people were busy raising platforms where, on the following day, plays and dances could be comfortably viewed when they were performed in that place dedicated to solemnizing the marriage of rich Camacho and the funeral rites of Basilio. Don Quixote did not want to enter the village, though both the peasant and the bachelor asked him to, but he gave as an excuse, which seemed more than sufficient to him, that it was the custom of knights errant to sleep in fields and forests rather than in towns, even under gilded ceilings; and saying this, he went a little way off the road, much against the will of Sancho, who remembered the fine accommodations he had enjoyed in the castle or house of Don Diego.

CHAPTER XX

No sooner had fair-complexioned dawn allowed bright Phoebus, with the ardor of his burning rays, to dry the liquid pearls of her golden tresses, than Don Quixote, shaking idleness from his limbs, rose to his feet and called to his squire, Sancho, who was still snoring; and Don Quixote saw this, and before he woke him he said:

“O thou, more fortunate than all those who live on the face of the
earth, for thou dost not envy nor art thou envied, and thou sleepest with a tranquil spirit, and thou art not pursued by enchanters, nor art thou alarmed by enchantments! Thou sleepest, I say it again and shall say it a hundred times more, without jealousy of thy lady keeping thee continually awake, nor thoughts of how to pay the debts thou owest, nor what thou must do to feed thyself and thy small, anguished family for another day. Ambition doth not disturb thee, nor doth the vain pomp of the world trouble thee, for the limits of thy desires extendeth not beyond caring for thy donkey; thou hast placed care for thine own person on my shoulders, a weight and a burden that nature and custom hath given to masters. The servant sleepeth, and the master standeth watch, thinking of how he may sustain him, and improve him, and grant him favors. The anguish of seeing the sky turning to bronze and not giving succor to the earth with needed dew doth not afflict the servant but the master, who must sustain in barrenness and hunger the one who served in fertility and plenty.”

Sancho did not respond to any of this because he was asleep, and he would not have awakened very quickly if Don Quixote, with the blunt end of his lance, had not brought him back to consciousness. He awoke, finally, sleepy and lazy, and turning his head in every direction, he said:

“Coming from the direction of that bower, if I’m not mistaken, there’s an aroma that smells much more like a roasted side of bacon than reeds and thyme: by my faith, weddings that begin with smells like this must be plentiful and generous.”

“Enough, you glutton,” said Don Quixote. “Come, we shall go to this ceremony to see what the scorned Basilio will do.”

“No matter what he does, what he’d like,” responded Sancho, “is not to be poor and to marry Quiteria. He doesn’t have a
cuarto
and he wants to rise up above the clouds? By my faith, Señor, I think a poor man should be content with whatever he finds and not go asking for the moon. I bet an arm that Camacho can bury Basilio in
reales,
and if that’s true, as it must be, Quiteria would be a fool to give up the fine gifts and jewels that Camacho must have given her already, and still can give her, for the way Basilio hurls the bar and fences. A good throw and some nice swordplay won’t get you a half-liter of wine at the tavern. Talents and skills that can’t be sold are fine for Count Dirlos,
¹
but
when those talents fall to somebody who has good money, then that’s the life I’d like to have. With a good foundation you can build a good building, and the best foundation and groundwork in the world is money.”

“For the love of God, Sancho,” said Don Quixote, “that’s enough of your harangue. I really believe that if you were allowed to go on with the ones you are constantly beginning, you would not have time to eat or sleep: you would spend all of it talking.”

“If your grace had a good memory,” replied Sancho, “you’d remember the provisions of our agreement before we left home this last time: one of them was that you’d have to let me talk all I wanted as long as I didn’t say anything against my neighbor or your grace’s authority, and so far it seems to me I haven’t disobeyed that provision.”

“I do not remember, Sancho,” responded Don Quixote, “any such provision, and since that is so, I want you to be quiet and come along now; the instruments we heard last night again gladden the valleys, and no doubt the wedding will be celebrated in the coolness of the morning, not in the heat of the afternoon.”

Sancho did as his master commanded and placed the saddle on Rocinante and the packsaddle on the donkey; the two men mounted, and at an unhurried pace, they rode under the bower.

The first thing that appeared before Sancho’s eyes was an entire steer on a roasting spit made of an entire elm; and in the fire where it was to roast, a fair-size mountain of wood was burning, and six pots that were placed around the fire were not made in the common mold of other pots, because these were six huge cauldrons, each one large enough to hold the contents of an entire slaughterhouse: they contained and enclosed entire sheep, which sank out of view as if they were doves; the hares without their skins and the chickens without their feathers that were hanging from the trees, waiting to be buried in the cauldrons, were without number; the various kinds of fowl and game hanging from the trees to cool in the breeze were infinite.

Sancho counted more than sixty wineskins, each one holding more than two
arrobas,
²
and all of them filled, as was subsequently proven, with excellent wines; there were also mounds of snowy white loaves of bread, heaped up like piles of wheat on the threshing floor; cheeses,
crisscrossed like bricks, formed a wall; and two kettles of oil larger than a dyer’s vats were used to fry rounds of dough, which were then removed with two strong paddles and plunged into another kettle filled with honey that stood nearby.