CHAPTER XXIX

“This is, Señores, the true history of my tragedy: now deem and judge if the sighs you heard, the words you listened to, and the tears that flowed from my eyes had sufficient reason to appear in even greater abundance; having considered the nature of my misfortune, you will see that consolation would be useless since the remedy is impossible. All I ask of you (this is something you can and should do very easily) is that you advise me where I can spend my life without being overwhelmed by the fear and terror I have of being discovered by those who are searching for me; although I know the great love my parents have for me guarantees that I shall be welcomed by them, I am filled with so much shame when I think that I must appear before them in a state different from the one they had counted upon that it seems better to exile myself forever from their sight rather than see their faces and think that they are looking at mine when it is far removed from the chastity they had a right to expect of me.”

She fell silent after she said this, and her face flushed with a color that clearly showed the grief and shame in her soul. The souls of those who had listened to her felt as much compassion as astonishment at her misfortune, and although the priest immediately wanted to console and advise her, Cardenio stepped forward first, saying:

“So then, Señora, you are the beautiful Dorotea, the only child of the wealthy Clenardo?”

Dorotea was surprised to hear her father’s name and to see the wretched condition of the man who named him, for the rags Cardenio wore have already been mentioned, and therefore she said to him:

“And who are you, friend, that you know my father’s name? If I am not mistaken, in recounting the story of my misfortune, I have not spoken his name.”

“I am, Señora,” responded Cardenio, “that luckless man who, as you have told us, Luscinda declared to be her husband. I am the unfortunate Cardenio, and the wicked purpose of the man who has brought you to the condition in which you find yourself has driven me to the one in which you see me now: ragged, naked, bereft of all human consolation, and, what is worse, bereft of reason, except when it pleases heaven to grant it to me for some brief time. I, Dorotea, am the one who witnessed the wrongs committed by Don Fernando, the one who waited until Luscinda spoke the words that made her his wife. I am the one who did not have the courage to see the consequences of her swoon or the outcome of the letter found in her bosom, because my soul could not bear to see so many misfortunes together; and so I abandoned the house, and my forbearance, and gave a letter to the man who was my host, asking him to deliver it into Luscinda’s hands, and came to this solitary place where I intended to end my life, which from that moment on I despised as if it were my mortal enemy. But fate has not wished to take it from me, being satisfied with taking my reason, perhaps wanting to preserve me for the good fortune I have had in finding you; for if what you have recounted is true, as I believe it is, it well might be that heaven has in store a more favorable conclusion to our calamities than we can imagine. Since Luscinda cannot marry Don Fernando because she is mine, and Don Fernando cannot marry her because he is yours, and she has openly declared this, we can reasonably hope that heaven will restore to each of us what is ours, for it is still intact, not given away or destroyed. And since we have this consolation, not born of remote hopes, or founded on wild imaginings, I beg you, Señora, to come to another decision in your honorable thoughts, as I intend to do in mine, and prepare to expect better fortune; I give you my vow as a gentleman and a Christian not to abandon you until I see that you are Don Fernando’s, and if reason cannot persuade him to recognize his duty to you, then I shall use the prerogative I have as a gentleman to legitimately challenge him and right the wrong he has done you; and I shall not think of the offenses committed against me, vengeance for which I leave to heaven so that here on earth I may attend to those committed against you.”

Dorotea was overwhelmed when she heard Cardenio’s words, and because she did not know how to express her thanks for so noble an offer, she attempted to kiss his feet, but Cardenio would not permit it, and the licentiate responded for himself and the barber and approved Cardenio’s fine speech and in particular asked, advised, and urged them to accompany him to his village, where they could obtain the things they lacked, and decide how to find Don Fernando, or return Dorotea to her parents, or do whatever they thought most appropriate. Cardenio and Dorotea thanked him and accepted his offer of help. The barber, who had reacted to everything with amazement and silence, also made a courteous speech and offered, with no less enthusiasm than the priest, to serve them in any way he could.

He also recounted briefly the reason that had brought them there, the strangeness of Don Quixote’s madness, and how they were waiting for his squire, who had gone to find him. Cardenio recalled, as if it had been a dream, his altercation with Don Quixote, and he told the others about it but could not tell them the reason for the dispute.

Then they heard shouting and recognized Sancho Panza’s voice, for when he did not find them in the place where he had left them, he began to call their names. They came out to meet him, and when they asked about Don Quixote, he said he had found him naked except for his shirt, thin, yellow, famished, and sighing for his lady Dulcinea; although he had told his master that she had ordered him to leave that place and go to Toboso, where she was waiting for him, Don Quixote had responded that he was resolved not to come before her beauteousness until such time as he had performed such feats as would render him deserving of her grace. And Sancho said that if this went on much longer, Don Quixote ran the risk of not becoming an emperor, as he was obliged to do, or even an archbishop, which was the least he could be. For this reason, they should think about what had to be done to get him out of there.

The licentiate responded that he should not worry, for they would take his master away from there even if he did not wish to go. Then he told Cardenio and Dorotea what they had planned as a remedy for Don Quixote or, at least, as a way to take him home. To which Dorotea replied that she could play the afflicted damsel better than the barber, and, what is more, she had with her the clothes to play the part naturally, and they could trust her to know how to do everything necessary to carry their intention forward, as she had read many books of chivalry and knew very well the style used by damsels in distress when they begged boons of knights errant.

“Well, nothing else is necessary,” said the priest, “than to put the plan into effect immediately; Fortune no doubt favors us since she has begun so unexpectedly to open the door to your remedy, my friends, and has provided us with what we needed.”

Then Dorotea took from her pillow slip a dress made of a certain fine woolen cloth and a mantilla made of another attractive green fabric, and from a small box she took a necklace and other jewels, and with these she adorned herself and in a moment resembled a rich, great lady. All of this, and more, she said she had removed from her house in the event she needed them, and until now she had not had the opportunity to make use of them. Her extreme grace, charm, and comeliness delighted everyone and confirmed that Don Fernando was a man of limited understanding for having cast aside so much beauty.

But most astonished of all was Sancho Panza, for it seemed to him—and it was true—that never in all his days had he seen so beautiful a creature; and so he asked the priest very eagerly to tell him who the beautiful lady was and what she was doing in this remote place.

“This beautiful lady, brother Sancho,” responded the priest, “is, and it is no small thing, the heir by direct male line of the great kingdom of Micomicón, and she has come looking for your master to beg of him a boon, which is that he right a wrong or correct an injustice done to her by an evil giant; and because of the fame your master has throughout the known world as a brave and virtuous knight, this princess has come all the way from Guinea to find him.”

“A lucky search and a lucky finding,” Sancho Panza said, “especially if my master is fortunate enough to undo that injustice and right that wrong by killing that whoreson of a giant your grace has mentioned; for he surely will kill him if he finds him, unless he’s a phantom, because my master has no power at all against phantoms. But one thing I want to beg of your grace, among others, Señor Licentiate, so that my master doesn’t take it into his head to be an archbishop, which is what I’m afraid of, is that your grace advise him to marry this princess right away, and then he won’t be able to receive archbishopal orders, and he’ll come easily into his empire, and I’ll finally get the thing I desire; I’ve thought about it carefully, and as far as I can tell, it does me no good at all if my master becomes an archbishop because I’m useless for the Church since I’m married, and for me to try now to get a dispensation so that I could have an income from the Church, having, as I do, a wife and children, well, there’d be no end to it. And so, Señor, the thing now is for my master to marry this lady right away, and since I don’t know her title, I’m not calling her by name.”

“Her name,” responded the priest, “is the Princess Micomicona; since her kingdom is called Micomicón, of course that is her name.”

“No doubt about it,” responded Sancho. “I’ve seen lots of people take the name and lineage of the place where they were born, calling themselves Pedro de Alcalá, Juan de Ubeda, or Diego de Valladolid, and they must have the same custom there in Guinea, so queens take the names of their kingdoms.”

“That must be the case,” said the priest, “and as for your master marrying, I’ll do everything in my power to bring that about.”

This made Sancho happy, and the priest was astounded, both by his simplicity and by how his imagination was filled with his master’s nonsensical ideas, for Sancho believed beyond the shadow of a doubt that Don Quixote would become an emperor.

By now Dorotea had mounted the priest’s mule and the barber had attached the oxtail beard to his face, and they told Sancho to lead them to Don Quixote and warned him not to say that he had recognized the licentiate or the barber, because the whole matter of his master becoming emperor depended on their not being recognized; the priest and Cardenio, however, did not want to accompany them, Cardenio because he did not wish to remind Don Quixote of their dispute and the priest because his presence was no longer needed. And so they allowed the others go ahead while they followed slowly on foot. The priest did not fail to remind Dorotea of what she had to do, to which she replied that there was no need to worry; everything would be done to the letter, exactly as demanded and depicted by the books of chivalry.

They had ridden approximately three-quarters of a league when they caught sight of Don Quixote among some crags, dressed now, but not wearing his armor, and as soon as Dorotea saw him and was informed by Sancho that this was Don Quixote, she applied the whip to her palfrey,¹⁸⁶ followed by the well-bearded barber. And when they reached him, the squire leaped off the mule and took Dorotea in his arms, and she, dismounting very gracefully, went to kneel before Don Quixote; and al-though he struggled to lift her up, she, still kneeling, spoke to him in this manner:

“I shall not rise up from this place, O valiant and brave knight, until thy goodness and courtesy grant me a boon, which will redound to the honor and renown of thy person and to the benefit of the most disconsolate and aggrieved damsel e’er seen by the sun. And if it be true that the valor of thy mighty arm correspondeth to the accounts of thy immortal fame, thou needs must favor this unfortunate maiden who hath come from such distant lands, following thy famous name and searching for thee to remedy her afflictions.”

“I shall not utter a word, beauteous lady,” responded Don Quixote, “nor shall I hearken to thy concerns until thou hast raised thyself from the ground.”

“I shall not raise myself, my lord,” responded the damsel in distress, “if thy courtesy doth not first grant me the boon I beg of thee.”

“I grant and bestow it upon thee,” responded Don Quixote, “as long as it doth not harm nor diminish my king, my country, and she who holds the key to my heart and liberty.”

“It shall neither harm nor diminish those whom thou sayest, good my lord,” responded the mournful maiden.

As they were speaking, Sancho Panza approached and said very quietly into his master’s ear:

“Señor, your grace can easily grant the boon she asks, it’s nothing, just killing a giant, and the lady who asks it is her highness Princess Micomicona, queen of the great kingdom Micomicón in Ethiopia.”

“Whoever she may be,” responded Don Quixote, “I shall do what I am obliged to do and what my conscience dictates, in accordance with the order I have professed.”

And turning to the damsel, he said:

“Let thy great beauty arise, for I grant whatever boon thou asketh of me.”

“Then what I ask,” said the damsel, “is that thy magnanimous person cometh with me wheresoever I shall lead thee, and maketh a vow that thou wilt not engage in any other adventure or respond to any other request until thou hast taken revenge for my sake upon a traitor who, counter to all divine and human law, hath usurped my kingdom.”

“I say that I do grant it in this wise,” responded Don Quixote, “and therefore thou mayest, Señora, from this day forth, cast off the melancholy that afflicts thee and let thy faint hope take on new vigor and strength; for, with the help of God and this my arm, thou wilt soon see thyself restored to thy kingdom and seated on the throne of thy great and ancient state, in spite of and despite the base cowards who wisheth to deny it to thee. And now, to work, for they sayeth that in delay there lieth danger.”

The aggrieved maiden struggled insistently to kiss his hands, but Don Quixote, a discreet and courteous knight in all things, would not consent; instead, he helped her to her feet and embraced her with great courtesy and discretion and ordered Sancho to tighten Rocinante’s cinches and arm him immediately. Sancho took down the armor, which hung, like a trophy, from a tree, and, after tightening the cinches, he quickly armed his master, who, when he saw himself armed, said:

“Let us leave here, in the name of God, to succor this great lady.”

The barber was still on his knees, being very careful to conceal his laughter and to keep his beard from falling off, for if it fell, perhaps they would all fail to achieve their good intentions; and seeing that the boon had been granted, and that Don Quixote was preparing diligently to fulfill it, he rose and took his lady by the other hand, and the two of them lifted her onto the mule. Then Don Quixote mounted Rocinante, and the barber settled onto his animal, and Sancho was left to go on foot, feeling again the loss of his gray, which he needed so much now; but he bore everything with good humor, because it seemed to him that now his master was well on his way and very close to being an emperor, for without a doubt he thought he would marry the princess and become, at the very least, king of Micomicón. The only thing he regretted was the thought that the kingdom was in a country of blacks, and the people who would be given to him as vassals would all be blacks; then, in his imagination, he found a good remedy for this, saying to himself:

“What difference does it make to me if my vassals are blacks? All I have to do is put them on a ship and bring them to Spain, where I can sell them, and I’ll be paid for them in cash, and with that money I’ll be able to buy some title or office and live on that for the rest of my life. No flies on me! Who says I don’t have the wit or ability to arrange things and sell thirty or ten thousand vassals in the wink of an eye? By God, I’ll sell them all, large or small, it’s all the same to me, and no matter how black they are, I’ll turn them white and yellow.¹⁸⁷ Bring them on, then, I’m no fool!”

This made him so eager and happy that he forgot about his sorrow at having to walk.

Cardenio and the priest watched all of this through some brambles, and they did not know what pretext they could use to join the others, but the priest, who was a great plotter, thought immediately of what they could do to achieve their desire, and with a pair of scissors he carried with him in a case, he quickly cut off Cardenio’s beard, and dressed him in his gray jacket, and gave him his short black cape, while he was left wearing doublet and breeches, and Cardenio’s appearance was so changed from what it had been before that he would not have recognized himself if he had looked in a mirror. When this had been done, although the others had already moved on while they were disguising themselves, they easily reached the king’s highway before them, because the thickets and rough terrain in those places makes travel more difficult for those on horseback than for those on foot. In fact, they positioned themselves on the plain at the entrance to the sierra, and as soon as Don Quixote and his companions emerged, the priest began to stare at him, showing signs that he recognized him, and after looking at him for a long time, he went toward him, his arms opened wide, and called out:

“Well met, O paragon of chivalry, my good compatriot Don Quixote of La Mancha, flower of gallantry, protector and defender of the weak, quintessence of knight errantry.”

And saying this, he threw his arms around the left knee of Don Quixote, who was stunned at what he saw and heard the man saying and doing and began to look at him carefully; at last he recognized him, and was astonished to see him, and made a great effort to dismount, but the priest would not allow it, for which reason Don Quixote said:

“Your grace, Señor Licentiate, permit me to dismount, for it is not right that I remain on horseback while a reverend person like your grace goes on foot.”

“Under no circumstances shall I agree to that,” said the priest. “Let your magnificence stay on your horse, for on horseback you perform the greatest deeds and have the greatest adventures that our age has witnessed; as for me, I am only an unworthy priest, and it will be enough for me to climb on the haunches of one of these mules and ride behind one of these gentlefolk traveling with your grace, if they do not consider that an inconvenience. And I shall imagine that I am mounted on Pegasus, or on the zebra or immense horse ridden by that famous Moor Muzaraque, who even now lies enchanted on the slopes of the great Zulema, not far from great Complutum.”¹⁸⁸

“That did not occur to me, Señor Licentiate,” responded Don Quixote, “but I know that my lady the princess is willing, for my sake, to order her squire to give up the saddle on his mule to your grace; he can ride on the haunches, if the animal can carry you both.”

“It can, as far as I know,” responded the princess, “and I also know it will not be necessary to give any orders to my gentle squire, for he is so courteous and courtly that he will not agree to an ecclesiastical person traveling on foot when he can ride.”

“That is true,” responded the barber.

And dismounting immediately, he invited the priest to sit on the saddle, and he did so without having to be begged. Unfortunately, when the barber climbed onto its haunches, the mule, which in fact had been hired, which is enough to indicate how bad it was, raised its hindquarters a little and gave two kicks into the air, and if they had landed on Master Nicolás’s chest or his head, he would have cursed the day he came after Don Quixote. As it was, they startled him so much that he fell to the ground, paying so little attention to his beard that it fell to the ground as well, and when he found himself without it, all he could do was cover his face with both hands and complain that his teeth had been broken. Don Quixote, when he saw that great clump of beard with no jaw, and no blood, lying far from the face of the fallen squire, said:

“As God lives, what a great miracle this is! His beard has been ripped and torn from his face as if it had been done intentionally!”

The priest, who saw the risk of his deception being discovered, ran to the beard and carried it to where Master Nicolás was still lying on the ground and crying out, and at one stroke he pulled the barber’s head down to his chest and put the beard back on, murmuring some words over him, which he said was a special incantation for reattaching beards, as they would soon see; when he had replaced the beard he moved away, and the squire was as well-bearded and undamaged as before; this left Don Quixote dumbfounded, and he asked the priest to teach him the incantation when he had time, because he believed its virtue had to go beyond simply reattaching beards, for it was clear that when the beard was torn off, the skin where it had been attached had to be badly wounded, and since the incantation had cured everything, it was of benefit to more than just beards.

“That is true,” said the priest, and he promised to teach it to him at the first opportunity.

They agreed that the priest would mount the mule for the moment, and the three of them would take turns riding until they reached the inn, which was some two leagues away. With three of them riding—that is Don Quixote, the princess, and the priest—and three of them walking—to wit, Cardenio, the barber, and Sancho Panza—Don Quixote said to the damsel:

“Your highness, Señora, lead us wherever you please.”

And before she could respond, the licentiate said:

“Toward which kingdom does Your Majesty wish to go? Is it by chance Micomicón? It must be, or I know little of kingdoms.”

She was very sharp-witted and understood what her answer had to be, and so she said:

“Yes, Señor: I am going to that kingdom.”

“If that is true,” said the priest, “we have to pass through the center of my village, and from there your grace will take the road to Cartagena, where, with good fortune, you can embark, and if there is a favorable wind, a calm sea, and no storms, in a little less than nine years you can be in sight of the great Meona,¹⁸⁹ I mean, Meótides Lagoon, which is a little more than one hundred days’ travel from Your Majesty’s kingdom.”

“Your grace is mistaken, Señor,” she said, “because I left there less than two years ago, and the truth is I never had good weather, and despite all this I have succeeded in seeing the one I longed to see, which is to say, Señor Don Quixote of La Mancha, news of whom reached my ears as soon as I set foot in Spain, moving me to seek him in order to commend myself to his courtesy, and entrust my just cause to the valor of his invincible arm.”

“No more: let my praises cease,” Don Quixote said then, “because I am the enemy of any kind of flattery, and even if this is not flattery, such talk offends my chaste ears. What I can say, my lady, is that whether or not I possess valor, whatever valor I do or do not possess will be used in your service until the end of my life; leaving this aside for the moment, I beg your grace, Señor Licentiate, to tell me the reason that has brought you to this place, alone, and so lacking in servants, and so lightly clad that it astounds me.”

“I shall reply to that briefly,” responded the priest, “because your grace must know, Señor Don Quixote, that I and Master Nicolás, our friend and barber, were going to Sevilla to collect a certain sum of money that a kinsman of mine who went to the Indies many years ago had sent to me, no small sum since it amounts to more than sixty thousand assayed pesos, which are worth twice as much as ordinary ones; yesterday, as we were traveling through this area, four highwaymen assaulted us and took everything, even our beards; because of that, it suited the barber to put on a false one, and even this young man here”—and he pointed at Cardenio—“they transformed completely. Strangely enough, it is common knowledge all around this area that the men who assaulted us were galley slaves freed, they say, in this very spot, by a man so brave that despite the commissary and the guards, he released them all; there can be no doubt that he was out of his mind, or as great a villain as they, or a man without soul or conscience, for he wanted to set the wolf loose in the midst of the sheep, the fox in the midst of the chickens, the fly in the midst of the honey: he wanted to defraud justice and oppose his king and natural lord, for he opposed his just commands. As I say, he wanted to deprive the galleys of their oars and throw the Holy Brotherhood, which had been at peace for many years, into an uproar; in short, he has committed an act by means of which one loses one’s soul and does little good for one’s body.”

Sancho had told the priest and the barber about the adventure of the galley slaves, which his master had concluded so gloriously, and for this reason the priest was very harsh when he referred to it in order to see what Don Quixote would do or say; he changed color at each word and did not dare say that he had been the liberator of those good people.

“These men, then,” said the priest, “were the ones who robbed us. May God in His mercy pardon the man who did not allow them to be taken to the punishment they deserved.”