Volume II (1615)

CHAPTER IX

Which recounts what will soon be seen

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It was on the stroke of midnight,349 more or less, when Don Quixote and Sancho left the countryside and entered Toboso. The town lay in peaceful silence, because all the residents were in their beds and sleeping like logs, as the saying goes. The night was fairly clear, although Sancho would have preferred it totally dark so that he could find an excuse for his ignorance in the darkness. All that could be heard in the town was the sound of dogs barking, which thundered in Don Quixote’s ears and troubled the heart of Sancho. From time to time a donkey brayed, pigs grunted, cats meowed, and the different sounds of their voices seemed louder in the silence of the night, which the enamored knight took as an evil omen; despite this, however, he said to Sancho:

“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“She must have withdrawn, at that time,” responded Don Quixote, “to a small apartment in her castle, finding solace alone with her damsels, as is the practice and custom of noble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.”350

“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:

A bad day for you, O Frenchmen,

that defeat at Roncesvalles.

“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 Roncesvalles351 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.

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