Part Three of the Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha

CHAPTER XV

The learned Cide Hamete Benengeli tells us that as soon as Don Quixote took his leave of his hosts and all the others who had been present at the burial of the shepherd Grisóstomo, he and his squire entered the same forest the shepherdess Marcela had entered; and having ridden more than two hours, looking for her everywhere and not finding her, they decided to stop in a meadow full of new grass where a cool, gentle stream ran, so welcoming that it invited and obliged one to spend the hottest hours of the day there, for the rigors of the afternoon were just beginning.

Don Quixote and Sancho dismounted and, leaving the donkey and Rocinante free to graze on the abundant grass that grew there, pillaged the saddlebags, and without any ceremony, in peace and harmony, master and servant companionably ate what they found in them.

Sancho had not bothered to hobble Rocinante, certain that he knew him to be so meek and so little given to lustful thoughts that all the mares of the pastures of Córdoba could not tempt him to go astray. As luck and the devil, who is not always sleeping, would have it, grazing in that valley was a herd of Galician ponies tended by some drovers from Yanguas,¹¹⁸ whose custom it is to take a siesta with their animals in grassy, well-watered places and sites, and the spot where Don Quixote happened to find himself served the Yanguesans’ purposes very well.

As it happened, Rocinante felt the desire to pleasure himself with the ladies, and as soon as he picked up their scent he abandoned his natural ways and customs, did not ask permission of his owner, broke into a brisk little trot, and went off to communicate his need to them. But the ponies, who apparently had more desire to graze than anything else, greeted him with hooves and teeth, so that in a short while his cinches broke and he was left naked, without a saddle. But what he must have regretted most was that the drovers, seeing the violence being done to their mares, hurried over with their staffs and hit him so many times that they knocked him to the ground, badly injured.

By now Don Quixote and Sancho, who had seen Rocinante’s beating, had run up, panting heavily; and Don Quixote said to Sancho:

“From what I can see, Sancho my friend, these are not knights but base people of low breeding. I say this because you can certainly assist me in taking the proper revenge for the offense that has been done to Rocinante before our very eyes.”

“What the devil kind of revenge are we supposed to take,” Sancho responded, “if there are more than twenty of them and only two of us, or maybe only one and a half?”

“I am worth a hundred,” Don Quixote replied.

And without making more speeches, he grasped his sword and rushed at the Yanguesans, and Sancho Panza, incited and moved by his master’s example, did the same. To begin with, Don Quixote landed a blow on one drover that slashed open a leather tunic he was wearing, as well as a good part of his shoulder.

The Yanguesans, who saw themselves attacked by only two men when there were so many of them, had recourse to their staffs, and surrounding the two men, they began to rain blows down on them with great zeal and eagerness. The truth is that with the second blow they knocked Sancho to the ground, and the same thing happened to Don Quixote, and all his skill and courage were of no use to him; as luck would have it, he fell at the feet of Rocinante, who had not yet stood up, which proves what furious beatings staffs can administer when wielded by angry rustic hands.

When the Yanguesans saw the damage they had done, they loaded their animals as quickly as they could and continued on their way, leaving the two adventurers looking bad and feeling worse.

The first to stir was Sancho Panza; finding himself next to his master, in a weak, plaintive voice he said:

“Señor Don Quixote! Ah, Señor Don Quixote!”

“What do you want, brother Sancho?” replied Don Quixote in a voice as feeble and pitiful as Sancho’s.

“What I want, if it’s possible,” replied Sancho Panza, “is for your grace to give me two swigs of that drink of Fearsome Blas,¹¹⁹ if your grace happens to have any on hand. Maybe it’s as good for broken bones as it is for wounds.”

“Ah, woe is me, if I had it here, what else would we need?” Don Quixote responded. “But I swear to you, Sancho Panza, by my faith as a knight errant, that in two days’ time, if fortune does not ordain otherwise, I shall have it in my possession, unless my hands fail me.”

“And how many days does your grace think we’ll need before we can move our legs?” Sancho Panza replied.

“As for me,” said a beaten and exhausted Don Quixote, “I do not know how many days it will be. But I hold myself responsible for everything; I should not have raised my sword against men who were not dubbed knights like myself; and therefore I believe that as a punishment for having trespassed against the laws of chivalry, the god of battles has allowed me to be injured in this way. Therefore, Sancho Panza, it is fitting that you heed carefully what I shall say to you now, because it is important to the well-being of both of us, and it is that when you see rabble like this offending us in some way, do not wait for me to raise my sword against them, because I shall not do that; instead, you must seize your sword and punish them as you like, and if knights come to their aid and defense, I shall know how to defend you and offend them with all my power, for you have seen in a thousand demonstrations and experiences the extent of the valor of this my mighty arm.”

This was how arrogant the poor gentleman was after his defeat of the valiant Biscayne. But his master’s advice did not seem very good to Sancho, and he had to respond, saying:

“Señor, I’m a peaceful, mild, and quiet man, and I know how to conceal any insult because I have a wife and children to support and care for. So let your grace be advised as well, since I can’t give an order, that under no circumstances will I raise my sword against either lowborn or gentry, and from now until the day I appear before God, I forgive all offenses that have been done or will be done to me, whether they were done, are being done, or will be done by a person high or low, rich or poor, noble or common, without exception, and regardless of rank or position.”

Hearing which, his master responded:

“I wish I had enough breath to speak with less effort and that the pain I feel in this rib would ease just a little, so that I could make clear to you, Panza, how wrong you are. Come closer, you sinner: if the winds of fortune, until now so contrary, blow again in our favor, filling the sails of our desire and carrying us safely and with no sudden changes of direction to port on one of the ínsulas which I have promised you, what would happen when I, having won it, make you its ruler? Will you render that impossible because you are not a knight, and do not wish to be one, and do not have the courage or desire to avenge offenses and defend your realm? Because you must know that in newly conquered kingdoms and provinces, the spirits of the inhabitants are never so peaceful or so favorable to their new ruler that he need not fear they will do something unexpected to disturb things and, as they say, try their luck again; and so it is necessary for the new ruler to have the intelligence to know how to govern and the valor to go on the offensive and defend himself under any circumstances.”

“In this circumstance that has just happened to us,” Sancho responded, “I would have liked to have the intelligence and valor your grace has mentioned; but I swear to you, by my faith as a poor man, that I need a poultice more than I need talk. Your grace, see if you can stand, and we’ll help Rocinante, though he doesn’t deserve it, because he’s the main reason for this beating. I never would have believed it of Rocinante; I always thought he was a person as chaste and peaceable as I am. Well, like they say, you need a long time to know a person, and nothing in this life is certain. Who would have thought that hard on the heels and so soon after those mighty blows struck by your grace’s sword against that unfortunate knight errant, this great storm of a beating would rain down on our backs?”

“Yours, at least, Sancho,” replied Don Quixote, “must be accustomed to such cloudbursts; but mine, brought up on cambric and fine Dutch linen, of course will feel more deeply the pain of this misfortune. And if it were not because I imagine…did I say imagine?…because I know for a fact that all these discomforts are an integral part of the practice of arms, I would let myself die here of sheer annoyance.”

To which the squire replied:

“Señor, since these misfortunes are the harvest reaped by chivalry, tell me, your grace, if they happen very often or come only at certain times, because it seems to me that after two harvests like this one, we’ll be useless for the third if God, in His infinite mercy, doesn’t come to our aid.”

“You should know, Sancho my friend,” responded Don Quixote, “that the lives of knights errant are subject to a thousand dangers and disasters, and by the same token they are just as likely to become kings and emperors at any moment, as demonstrated by the experience of many different and diverse knights whose histories I know thoroughly and completely. And I could tell you now, if the pain I feel would allow, of some who, by the sheer valor of their mighty arm, have risen to the high estates I have mentioned to you, and yet, both before and afterward, these same knights have borne all manner of calamities and miseries. For the valorous Amadís of Gaul found himself in the power of his mortal enemy the enchanter Arcalaus, who, as has been verified, tied him to a column in a courtyard and gave him more than two hundred lashes with the reins of his horse. And there is even a little-known author, but a very creditable one, who says that in a certain castle the Knight of Phoebus was caught in a certain trapdoor that opened beneath his feet, and he fell and found himself in a deep pit under the earth, tied hand and foot, and there he was given one of those things called an enema, composed of melted snow and sand, which almost killed him, and if he had not been helped in those dire straits by a wise man who was a great friend of his, things would have gone very badly for the poor knight. And I may certainly suffer along with so many virtuous knights, for they endured greater affronts than the ones we are suffering now. For I want you to know, Sancho, that injuries inflicted by the tools one happens to be holding are not offenses; this is expressly stated in the law of dueling: if the cobbler hits another with the last he holds in his hand, although it really is made of wood, it cannot be said that the one he struck has been clubbed. I say this so that you will not think, although we have been cudgeled in this dispute, that we have been offended, because the weapons those men were carrying, the ones they used to hit us, were simply their staffs, and none of them, if I remember correctly, had a rapier, a sword, or a poniard.”

“They didn’t give me a chance,” Sancho responded, “to look at them so carefully, because as soon I put my hand on my sword they made the sign of the cross on my shoulders with their pinewood, so that they took the sight from my eyes and the strength from my feet, knocking me down where I’m lying now, where it doesn’t hurt at all to think about whether the beating they gave me with their staffs was an offense or not, unlike the pain of the beating, which will make as much of an impression on my memory as it has on my back.”

“Even so, I want you to know, brother Sancho,” replied Don Quixote, “that there is no memory that time does not erase, no pain not ended by death.”

“Well, what misfortune can be greater,” replied Panza, “than waiting for time to end it and death to erase it? If this misfortune of ours was the kind that could be cured with a couple of poultices, it wouldn’t be so bad, but I can see that all the poultices in a hospital won’t be enough to set us straight again.”

“Stop that now and find strength in weakness, Sancho,” Don Quixote responded, “and I shall do the same, and let us see how Rocinante is, because it seems to me the poor animal may have gotten the worst of this misfortune.”

“There’s no reason to be surprised at that,” Sancho responded, “since he’s such a good knight errant; what does surprise me is that my donkey walked away without any costs while we were left without any ribs.”¹²⁰

“Fortune always leaves a door open in adversity so that it can be remedied,” said Don Quixote. “I say this because the beast can make up for the lack of Rocinante and carry me from here to some castle where my wounds may be cured. Further, I shall not consider such a mount a dishonor, because I remember reading that when Silenus, the good old tutor and teacher of the merry god of laughter,¹²¹ entered the city of one hundred gates,¹²² he rode very happily mounted on a beautiful jackass.”

“It may be true that he rode mounted, as your grace says,” Sancho responded, “but there’s a big difference between riding mounted and riding slung across the animal’s back like a sack of trash.”

To which Don Quixote replied:

“The wounds received in battles bestow honor, they do not take it away; and so, Panza my friend, do not answer me any further, but as I have already told you, stand the best you can and put me any way you choose on the back of your donkey, and let us leave before night falls upon us in this deserted place.”

“I’ve heard your grace say,” said Panza, “that it’s very common for knights errant to sleep in deserted places and wastelands most of the year, and that they consider it good fortune.”

“That is so,” said Don Quixote, “when it cannot be helped or when they are in love; and this is so true that there have been knights who stayed on a rocky crag, in sun and in shadow and in all kinds of weather, for two years, and their ladies never learned of it. One of these was Amadís when, calling himself Beltenebros, he lived on Peña Pobre, I do not know if it was for eight years or eight months: I am not absolutely certain regarding the length of time; it is enough to know that he was there doing penance for some sorrow or other that his lady Oriana had caused him. But let us talk no more of this, Sancho, and hurry, before the donkey suffers a misfortune like the one that befell Rocinante.”

“That would be the devil’s work, too,” said Sancho.

And emitting thirty groans and sixty sighs, and hurling a hundred twenty curses and blasphemies at the one who had brought him there, Sancho struggled to his feet, remaining bent double like a Turkish arch when he was halfway up, unable to stand straight; with great difficulty he saddled his donkey, who with that day’s excessive liberty had also become somewhat inattentive. Then he helped Rocinante to his feet, and if the horse had had a tongue with which to complain, he certainly would not have been outdone by Sancho and his master.

In short, Sancho settled Don Quixote on the back of the donkey and tied Rocinante behind, in single file, and leading the jackass by the halter, he walked more or less in the direction of where he thought the king’s highway might be. And luck, going from good to better, guided his steps, and in less than a league it led him to the highway, where he discovered an inn that, to his sorrow and Don Quixote’s joy, had to be a castle. Sancho insisted it was an inn, and his master said no, it was a castle, and the dispute lasted so long that before it was settled they had come to the inn, which Sancho and his retinue entered without further inquiry.