CHAPTER XXVI (click to read it in Spanish)

Returning to the account of what the Knight of the Sorrowful Face did after he found himself alone, the history relates that when Don Quixote, with his upper parts clothed and his bottom parts naked, finished his leaps and turns and saw that Sancho, not wishing to see more mad acts, had departed, he climbed to the top of a high crag, and there he pondered what he had so often pondered without ever reaching a decision, which was whether it would be better and more appropriate for him to imitate Roland in his excessive madness or Amadís in his melancholy, and talking to himself, he said:

“If Roland was as good and valiant a knight as everyone says, why should anyone be surprised? After all, he was enchanted, and no one could kill him except by placing a pin in the bottom of his foot, and he always wore shoes with seven metal soles, although such stratagems did him little good against Bernardo del Carpio, who understood them, and crushed him in his arms at Roncesvalles. But, his valor aside, we come to the matter of his losing his mind, and it is certain that he lost it because of the signs to which fortune led him and the news the shepherd gave him that Angelica had taken more than two siestas with Medoro, a little curly-haired Moor who was Agramante’s page; and if he understood this to be true, and his lady had committed so great a wrong against him, he did not do much by going mad; but I, how can I imitate him in his madness if I do not imitate him in its cause? Because I shall go so far as to swear that my Dulcinea of Toboso has not in all her days seen a single Moor just as he is, in his own clothing, and that she is today as she was on the day she was born; and it would be a grievous affront if I, imagining anything else about her, were to go mad with the type of madness that afflicted Roland in his fury. On the other hand, I see that Amadís of Gaul, without losing his mind and without performing mad acts, achieved as much fame as a lover as anyone else; because what he did, according to his history, was simply that finding himself scorned by his lady Oriana, who had ordered him not to appear in her presence until she so willed it, he withdrew to the Peña Pobre, in the company of a hermit, and there he had his fill of weeping and commending himself to God, until heaven hearkened to his pleas in the midst of his greatest travail and need. And if that is true, as it most certainly is, why should I now go to the trouble of tearing off all my clothes or causing grief to these trees, which have never done me any harm whatsoever? Nor do I have reason to muddy the clear waters of these streams, where I may drink whenever I wish. Long live the memory of Amadís, and let him be imitated in every way possible by Don Quixote of La Mancha, about whom it will be said, as it was said of the other, that if he did not achieve great things, he died in the effort to perform them, and if I am not scorned and disdained by Dulcinea of Toboso, it is enough, as I have said, to be absent from her. Well, then, to work: let the actions of Amadís come to mind and show me where I must begin to imitate them. I already know that for the most part he prayed and commended himself to God, but what shall I use for a rosary, since I do not have one?”

Then he thought of what he could do, and he tore a long strip from his shirttails and tied eleven knots in it, one larger than the rest, and this served as his rosary during the time he was there, when he said a million Ave Marías.¹⁸³ He was greatly troubled at not finding a hermit nearby who would hear his confession and console him, and so he spent his time walking through the meadow, writing and scratching on the tree trunks and in the fine sand many verses, all of them suited to his sorrow and some of them praising Dulcinea. But the only ones that were found complete, and that could be read after they were discovered, were these:

A cause of no small laughter in those who discovered these verses was the of Toboso appended to the name of Dulcinea, because they imagined that Don Quixote must have imagined that if, when he named Dulcinea, he did not also say of Toboso, the stanza would not be understood, and this in fact was true, as he later confessed. He wrote many other stanzas, but, as we have said, no more than these three could be read in their entirety. He spent his time writing, sighing, and calling on the fauns and satyrs of the woods, and the nymphs of the rivers, and on grieving, tearful Echo to answer and console and hear him; he also searched for plants that would sustain him until Sancho returned, and if the squire had taken three weeks instead of three days, the Knight of the Sorrowful Face would have been so altered that not even his own mother would have known him.

It would be a good idea to leave him enveloped in sighs and verses and to recount what befell Sancho Panza as he traveled on his mission. When he came out onto the king’s highway, he began to look for the road to Toboso, and the next day he reached the inn where he had suffered the misfortune of the blanket, and no sooner had he seen it than it seemed to him that once again he was flying through the air, and he did not want to go inside even though he had arrived at an hour when he could and should have done so, since it was time to eat and he longed to enjoy something hot, because for many days he had eaten nothing but cold food.

This necessity drove him to approach the inn, still doubtful as to whether he should go in or not, and while he was hesitating, two people came out of the inn and recognized him immediately. And one said to the other:

“Tell me, Señor Licentiate, that man on the horse, isn’t he Sancho Panza, the one our adventurer’s housekeeper said had left with her master to be his squire?”

“It is,” said the licentiate, “and that’s the horse of our Don Quixote.”

And they knew him so well because they were the priest and barber of his village, the ones who had held a public proceeding and scrutinized the books. As soon as they recognized Sancho Panza and Rocinante, they wished to have news of Don Quixote, and they approached, and the priest called him by name, saying:

“Friend Sancho Panza, where is your master?”

Sancho Panza knew who they were and decided to hide the place and condition in which he had left his master, and so he replied that his master was busy somewhere with something that was very important to him, but by the eyes in his head he could not reveal what it was.

“No, no, Sancho Panza,” said the barber, “if you don’t tell us where he is, we’ll think, and we already do think, that you killed and robbed him, since you’re riding his horse. As a matter of fact, you’d better tell us where the horse’s owner is or you’ll regret it.”

“There’s no reason to threaten me, I’m not the kind of man who robs or kills anybody: let each man be killed by fate or by God who made him. My master is doing penance in the middle of those mountains, as happy as can be.”

And then, in a rush and without stopping, he told them of the state in which he had left him, and the adventures that had befallen him, and how he was carrying a letter to the lady Dulcinea of Toboso, who was the daughter of Lorenzo Corchuelo and the one with whom his master was head over heels in love.

They were both astonished at what Sancho Panza told them, and although they already knew of the madness of Don Quixote, and knew what kind of madness it was, whenever they heard about it they were astonished all over again. They asked Sancho Panza to show them the letter he was carrying to the lady Dulcinea of Toboso. He said it was written in a notebook, and his master had ordered him to have it copied onto paper in the first town he came to; the priest replied that he should show it to him, and he would copy it in a very fine hand. Sancho Panza put his hand in the bosom of his shirt, looking for the notebook, but he did not find it and would not have found it if he had looked for it from then until now, because Don Quixote had kept it and had not given it to him, and he had not remembered to ask for it.

When Sancho saw that he could not find the book, his face turned deathly pale, and quickly patting down his entire body again, he saw again that he could not find it, and without further ado he put both hands to his beard and tore out half of it, and then, very quickly and without stopping, he punched himself half a dozen times on the face and nose until they were bathed in blood. Seeing which, the priest and the barber asked him what had happened to drive him to such lengths.

“What else could have happened,” responded Sancho, “except that from one moment to the next, in an instant, I’ve lost three donkeys, each one as sturdy as a castle?”

“How did that happen?” replied the barber.

“I’ve lost the notebook,” responded Sancho, “that had the letter to Dulcinea, and a document signed by her uncle that told his niece to give me three of the four or five donkeys he has at home.”

And he recounted the loss of the gray. The priest consoled him and told him that when they found his master, he would revalidate the order and write the transfer out on paper, as was the usual custom, since the ones written in notebooks were never accepted or executed.

This comforted Sancho, and he said that if this was true, he did not feel too bad about losing the letter to Dulcinea because he knew it almost by heart, and it could be copied wherever and whenever they wished.

“Then tell it to us, Sancho,” said the barber, “and we’ll copy it later.”

Sancho Panza stopped and scratched his head to bring the letter to mind, and he stood now on one foot, now on the other; sometimes he looked at the ground, sometimes at the sky, and after a very long while, when he had gnawed off half a fingertip, keeping those who were waiting for him to speak in suspense, he said:

“By God, Señor Licentiate, may the devil carry away what I remember of the letter, but at the beginning it did say: ‘High and sullied lady.’”

“It wouldn’t,” said the barber, “say sullied, but supreme or sovereign lady.”

“That’s right,” said Sancho. “Then, as I recall, it went on to say…as I recall: ‘This ignorant and sleepless and sore wounded man kisses the hands of your grace, ungrateful and unrecognized beauty,’ and then something about health and sickness that he was sending her, and then it just went along until it ended with ‘Thine until death, the Knight of the Sorrowful Face.’”

They both derived no small pleasure from Sancho Panza’s good memory, and they praised him for it and asked him to repeat the letter two more times so that they too could commit it to memory and copy it at the proper time. Sancho repeated it three more times, and each time he said another three thousand pieces of nonsense. Following this, he recounted other things that had happened to his master but did not say a word about being tossed in the blanket in that same inn which he refused to enter. He also told them how his master, if he brought back a favorable reply promptly from the lady Dulcinea of Toboso, would set out to try to become an emperor, or at least a monarch; that’s what the two of them had agreed to, and it was an easy thing for his master to do, given the valor of his person and the strength of his arm; when he had done this, his master would arrange for him to marry, because by then he could not be anything but a widower, and Don Quixote would give him as his wife one of the ladies-in-waiting to the empress, and she would inherit a rich large estate on terra firma, without any insulars or ínsulas, because he didn’t want them anymore.

Sancho said this with so much serenity, wiping his nose from time to time, and so little rationality, that the two men were astonished again as they considered how powerful the madness of Don Quixote was, for it had pulled along after it the good sense of this poor man. They did not want to make the effort to disabuse him of the error in which he found himself, for it seemed to them that since it was not injurious to his conscience, it would be better to leave him where he was so that they would have the pleasure of hearing his foolishness. And so they told him to pray to God for the well-being of his master, for it was possible and even probable that with the passage of time he would become an emperor, as he said, or an archbishop, at the very least, or some other equivalent high office. To which Sancho responded:

“Señores, if fortune turns her wheel so that my master decides not to be an emperor but an archbishop, I’d like to know now: what do archbishops errant usually give their squires?”

“Usually,” responded the priest, “they give some benefice, a simple one or a parish, or they make him a sacristan, with a very nice fixed income, in addition to other fees that bring in more income.”

“For that it would be necessary,” replied Sancho, “for the squire not to be married, and to know at least how to assist at Mass, and if that’s true, then woe is me, for I’m married and don’t know the first letter of the alphabet! What will happen to me if my master decides to be an archbishop and not an emperor, which is the usage and custom of knights errant?”

“Don’t worry, friend Sancho,” said the barber, “for we’ll ask your master, and advise him, and even present it to him as a matter of conscience, that he should become an emperor and not an archbishop, which will be easier for him since he’s more soldier than student.”

“That’s what I think, too,” responded Sancho, “though I can say that he has a talent for everything. What I plan to do, for my part, is pray to Our Lord to put him in the place that’s best for him and where he can do the most favors for me.”

“You speak with good judgment,” said the priest, “and will act like a good Christian. But what has to be done now is to arrange to remove your master from that useless penance in which you say he is engaged; in order to think of the best way to do that, and to eat something, since it’s time for supper, it would be a good idea for us to go into this inn.”

Sancho said that they should go in and he would wait for them outside, and later he would tell them the reason he wasn’t going in and why it wouldn’t be a good idea if he did, but he asked them to bring out something hot for him to eat, as well as barley for Rocinante. They went inside and left him alone, and a short while later the barber brought him some food. Then, when they had thought carefully about how they would accomplish what they desired, the priest had an idea that would appeal to Don Quixote and achieve what they wanted; he told the barber that what he had thought was that he would dress in the clothes of a wandering maiden, and the barber would look as much like a squire as possible, and they would go to the place where Don Quixote was doing penance, the maiden pretending to be an afflicted damsel in distress who would ask a boon, which, as a valiant knight errant, he could not fail to grant. And the boon would be to follow her wherever she might lead, to undo a great wrong that an evil knight had done unto her; and she would implore him as well not to request that she remove her mask, or ask any other question regarding her estate and fortune until such time as he had righted the injustice so wrongfully done unto her by that base knight; the priest believed beyond any doubt that Don Quixote would comply with everything asked of him in those terms, and in this manner they would take him from that place and bring him home to his village, where they would try to see if there was a cure for his strange madness.