Volume II (1615)

CHAPTER LXXI

What befell Don Quixote and his squire, Sancho, as they were traveling to their village

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The vanquished and exhausted Don Quixote was extremely melancholy on the one hand and very happy on the other. His sadness was caused by his defeat and his happiness by his consideration of Sancho’s virtue and how it had been demonstrated in the resurrection of Altisidora, even though he had felt certain reservations when he persuaded himself that the enamored maiden had in fact been dead. Sancho was not at all happy, because it made him sad to see that Altisidora had not kept her promise to give him the chemises, and going back and forth over this, he said to his master:

“The truth is, Señor, that I’m the most unfortunate doctor one could find anywhere in the world, where a physician can kill the sick person he’s treating and wants to be paid for his work, which is nothing but signing a piece of paper for some medicines that are made not by him but by the apothecary, and that’s the whole swindle; but when other people’s well-being costs me drops of blood, slaps, pinches, pinpricks, and lashes, they don’t give me an ardite. Well, I swear that if they bring me another patient, before I cure anybody they’ll have to grease my palm, because if the abbot sings he eats his supper, and I don’t want to believe that heaven gave me this virtue to use for others at no charge.”

“You are right, Sancho my friend,” responded Don Quixote, “and it was very wrong of Altisidora not to give you the chemises she promised, although your virtue is gratis data 653 and has not cost you any study at all, for suffering torments on your person is more than study. As for me, I can tell you that if you wanted payment for the lashes of Dulcinea’s disenchantment, I should have given it to you gladly, but I do not know if payment would suit the cure, and I would not want rewards to interfere with the treatment. Even so, it seems to me that nothing would be lost if we tried it: decide, Sancho, how much you want, and then flog yourself and pay yourself in cash and by your own hand, for you are carrying my money.”

At this offer Sancho opened his eyes and ears at least a span and consented in his heart to flog himself willingly, and he said to his master:

“Well now, Señor, I’m getting ready to do what your grace desires, and to make a little profit, too, because the love I have for my children and my wife makes me seem greedy. Tell me, your grace: how much will you pay me for each lash I give myself?”

“If I were to pay you, Sancho,” responded Don Quixote, “according to what the greatness and nobility of this remedy deserve, the treasure of Venice and the mines of Potosí would not be enough; estimate how much of my money you are carrying, and then set a price for each lash.”

“The lashes,” responded Sancho, “amount to three thousand, three hundred, and a few; of those I’ve given myself five: that leaves the rest; let the five count as those few, and we come to the three thousand and three hundred, which at a cuartillo each, and I won’t do it for less even if the whole world ordered me to, comes to three thousand and three hundred cuartillos, and that three thousand comes to fifteen hundred half-reales, and that’s seven hundred fifty reales; and the three hundred comes to one hundred fifty half-reales, which is seventy-five reales, and add that to the seven hundred fifty, it comes to a total of eight hundred twenty-five reales. I’ll take that out of your grace’s money, and I’ll walk into my house a rich and happy man, though badly whipped; because trout aren’t caught…,654 and that’s all I’ll say.”

“O blessed Sancho! O kind and courteous Sancho!” responded Don Quixote. “Dulcinea and I shall be obliged to serve you for all the days of life that heaven grants us! If she returns to the state that was lost, and it is impossible that she will not, her misfortune will have been fortune, and my defeat a glorious triumph. Decide, Sancho, when you want to begin the flogging; if you do it soon, I shall add another hundred reales.”

“When?” replied Sancho. “Tonight, without fail. Your grace should arrange for us to spend it in the countryside, out of doors, and I’ll lay open my flesh.”

Night fell, anticipated by Don Quixote with the deepest longing in the world, for it seemed to him that the wheels on Apollo’s carriage655 had broken and that the day lasted longer than usual, which is what lovers generally feel, for they can never account for their desire. At last they entered a pleasant wood a short distance from the road, and leaving Rocinante’s saddle and the gray’s packsaddle unoccupied, they lay on the green grass and ate their supper from Sancho’s provisions; then, making a powerful and flexible whip from the donkey’s halter and headstall, Sancho withdrew some twenty paces from his master into a stand of beeches. Don Quixote, who saw him go with boldness and spirit, said:

“Be careful, my friend, not to tear yourself to pieces; pause between lashes; do not try to race so quickly that you lose your breath in the middle of the course; I mean, you should not hit yourself so hard that you lose your life before you reach the desired number. And to keep you from losing by a card too many or too few, I shall stand to one side and count the lashes you administer on my rosary. May heaven favor you as your good intentions deserve.”

“A man who pays his debts doesn’t care about guaranties,” responded Sancho. “I plan to lash myself so that it hurts but doesn’t kill me: that must be the point of this miracle.”

Then he stripped down to his waist, and seizing the whip he had fashioned, he began to flog himself, and Don Quixote began to count the lashes.

Sancho must have given himself six or eight lashes when the joke began to seem onerous and the price very low, and he stopped for a while and said to his master that he withdrew from the contract because each of those lashes should be worth a half-real, not a cuartillo.

“Continue, Sancho my friend, and do not lose heart,” said Don Quixote, “for I shall double the stakes on the price.”

“In that case,” said Sancho, “let it be in God’s hands, and rain down the lashes!”

But the crafty scoundrel stopped lashing his back and began to whip the trees, from time to time heaving sighs that seemed to be torn from his heart. Don Quixote’s was tender, and fearing that Sancho might end his life and because of that imprudence not achieve the knight’s desire, he said:

“On your life, friend, let the matter stop here, for this remedy seems very harsh to me, and it would be a good idea to take more time: Zamora was not won in an hour. You have given yourself more than a thousand lashes, if I have counted correctly: that is enough for now, for the donkey, speaking coarsely, will endure the load, but not an extra load.”

“No, no, Señor,” responded Sancho, “let no one say of me: ‘Money was paid and his arms grew weak.’ Your grace should move a little farther away, and let me give myself another thousand lashes at least: two more rounds of these and we’ll finish the game and even have something left over.”

“Since you are so well-disposed,” said Don Quixote, “then may heaven help you; go on with your whipping, and I shall move away.”

Sancho returned to his task with so much enthusiasm that he had soon stripped the bark from a number of trees, such was the rigor with which he flogged himself; and once, raising his voice as he administered a furious blow to a beech, he said:

“Here you will die, Samson, and all those with you!”

Don Quixote immediately hurried to the sound of the doleful voice and the pitiless flogging, and seizing the twisted halter that served as a whip, he said to Sancho:

“Fate must not allow, Sancho my friend, that in order to please me you lose your life, which must serve to support your wife and children: let Dulcinea wait for another occasion, and I shall keep myself within the bounds of proximate hope, waiting for you to gain new strength so that this matter may be concluded to everyone’s satisfaction.”

“Señor, since that is your grace’s wish, may it be for the best, and toss your cape over my shoulders because I’m sweating and don’t want to catch a chill: new penitents run that risk.”

Don Quixote did so, and in his shirtsleeves he covered Sancho, who slept until he was awakened by the sun, and then they continued their journey, which they brought to a halt, for the time being, in a village three leagues away. They dismounted at an inn, which Don Quixote took to be an inn and not a castle with a deep moat, towers, portcullises, and drawbridges, for after he was defeated he thought with sounder judgment about everything, as will be recounted now. He was lodged in a room on the ground floor, and hanging on its walls were the kind of old painted tapestries still used in villages. On one of them was painted, very badly, the abduction of Helen, at the moment the audacious guest stole her away from Menelaus,656 and the other showed the history of Dido and Aeneas: she stood on a high tower and signaled with a large cloth to her fugitive guest, who fled by sea on a frigate or brigantine.

He noted in the two histories that Helen did not go very unwillingly, for she was laughing, slyly and cunningly, but the beautiful Dido seemed to shed tears the size of walnuts, and seeing this, Don Quixote said:

“These two ladies were extremely unfortunate because they were not born in this age, and I am the most unfortunate of men because I was not born in theirs: if I had encountered these gentlemen, Troy would not have been burned, nor Carthage destroyed, for simply by my killing Paris, so many misfortunes would have been avoided.”657

“I’ll wager,” said Sancho, “that before long there won’t be a tavern, an inn, a hostelry, or a barbershop where the history of our deeds isn’t painted. But I’d like it done by the hands of a painter better than the one who did these.”

“You are right, Sancho,” said Don Quixote, “because this painter is like Orbaneja, a painter in Úbeda, who, when asked what he was painting, would respond: ‘Whatever comes out.’ And if he happened to be painting a rooster, he would write beneath it: ‘This is a rooster,’ so that no one would think it was a fox. And that, it seems to me, Sancho, is how the painter or writer—for it amounts to the same thing—must be who brought out the history of this new Don Quixote: he painted or wrote whatever came out; or he may have been like a poet who was at court some years ago, whose name was Mauleón; when asked a question, he would say the first thing that came into his head, and once when asked the meaning of Deum de Deo, he responded: ‘Dim down the drummer.’658 But leaving that aside, tell me, Sancho, if you intend to administer another set of lashes tonight, and if you wish it to take place under a roof or out of doors.”

“By God, Señor,” responded Sancho, “considering how I plan to whip myself, a house would be as good as a field, but even so, I’d like it to be under the trees, because they seem like companions and help me to bear this burden wonderfully well.”

“It should not be like this, Sancho my friend,” responded Don Quixote. “Instead, so that you can regain your strength, we should save this for our village, where we shall arrive the day after tomorrow at the latest.”

Sancho responded that he would do as his master wished but would like to conclude this matter quickly, while his blood was hot and the grindstone rough, because in delay there is often danger, and pray to God and use the hammer, and one “here you are” was worth more than two “I’ll give it to you,” and a bird in hand was worth two in the bush.

“By the one God, Sancho, no more proverbs,” said Don Quixote. “It seems you are going back to sicut erat; 659 speak plainly, and simply, and without complications, as I have often told you, and you will see how one loaf will be the same as a hundred for you.”

“I don’t know why I’m so unlucky,” responded Sancho, “that I can’t say a word without a proverb, and every proverb seems exactly right to me, but I’ll change, if I can.”

And with this their conversation came to an end.

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