CHAPTER LXXIII

And at the entrance, according to Cide Hamete, Don Quixote saw two boys arguing on the threshing floor of the town, and one said to the other:

“Don’t worry, Periquillo, you won’t see it⁶⁶³ in all the days of your life.”

Don Quixote heard this and said to Sancho:

“Friend, did you notice that the boy said: ‘You won’t see her in all the days of your life’?”

“Well, why does it matter,” responded Sancho, “what the boy said?”

“Why?” replied Don Quixote. “Do you not see that if you apply those words to my intention, it signifies that I am not to see Dulcinea again?”

Sancho was about to respond but was prevented from doing so when he saw a hare racing across the field, followed by a good number of greyhounds and hunters, and the terrified animal took refuge and shelter between the feet of the gray. Sancho picked it up, keeping it from harm, and handed it to Don Quixote, who was saying:

“Malum signum! Malum signum! ⁶⁶⁴ A hare flees, with greyhounds in pursuit: Dulcinea will not appear!”

“Your grace is a puzzle,” said Sancho. “Let’s suppose that this hare is Dulcinea of Toboso and these greyhounds chasing her are the wicked enchanters who changed her into a peasant; she flees, I catch her and turn her over to your grace, who holds her and cares for her: what kind of bad sign is that? What kind of evil omen can you find here?”

The two boys who had been quarreling came over to see the hare, and Sancho asked one of them why they were arguing. And the one who had said ‘You won’t see it again in your whole life’ responded that he had taken a cricket cage from the other boy and never intended to give it back to him. Sancho took four cuartos from his pocket and gave them to the boy in exchange for the cage, and he placed it in Don Quixote’s hands, saying:

“Here, Señor, are your omens, broken and wrecked, and as far as I’m concerned, though I may be a fool, they have no more to do with our affairs than the clouds of yesteryear. And if I remember correctly, I’ve heard the priest in our village say that it isn’t right for sensible Christians to heed this kind of nonsense, and even your grace has told me the same thing, letting me know that Christians who paid attention to omens were fools. But there’s no need to spend any more time on this; let’s go on into our village.”

The hunters rode up, asked for their hare, and Don Quixote gave it to them; he and Sancho went on, and at the entrance to the village they encountered the priest and Bachelor Carrasco praying in a small meadow. And it should be noted here that Sancho Panza had draped the buckram tunic painted with flames, which they had placed on him in the duke’s castle on the night Altisidora was resuscitated, over the bundle of armor on the gray to serve as his repostero.⁶⁶⁵ He had also set the cone-shaped hat on the gray’s head, which was the oddest transformation and adornment ever seen on any donkey in the world.

The priest and the bachelor recognized them immediately and came toward them with open arms. Don Quixote dismounted and embraced them warmly, and some boys, who are as sharp-eyed as lynxes, caught sight of the donkey’s hat and hurried over to see it, saying to one another:

“Come on, boys, and you’ll see Sancho Panza’s donkey all dressed up and Don Quixote’s animal skinnier today than he ever was.”

In short, surrounded by boys and accompanied by the priest and the bachelor, they entered the village and went to Don Quixote’s house, and at the door they saw his housekeeper and his niece, who had already heard the news of their return. Teresa Panza, Sancho’s wife, had heard exactly the same news, and disheveled and half-dressed and pulling her daughter, Sanchica, along by the hand, she hurried to see her husband, and when she saw him not as elegantly dressed as she thought a governor should be, she said:

“Husband, why are you traveling like this, on foot and footsore and, it seems to me, looking more like a misgoverned fool than like a governor?”

“Be quiet, Teresa,” responded Sancho, “because often you can have hooks and no bacon;⁶⁶⁶ let’s go home, and there you will hear wonderful things. I have money, which is what matters, that I earned by my own labor, and with no harm to anybody.”

“Bring the money, my good husband,” said Teresa, “no matter if you earned it here or there; no matter how you did it, you won’t have thought up any new ways of earning it.”

Sanchica embraced her father and asked if he had brought her anything, for she had been waiting for him like the showers of May, and she held him on one side by his belt; and with his wife holding his hand and his daughter leading the gray, they went to their house, leaving Don Quixote in his, in the hands of his niece and his housekeeper, and in the company of the priest and the bachelor.

Don Quixote, at that very moment, without regard for the time or the hour, withdrew with the bachelor and the priest, and when they were alone he told them briefly about his defeat and the obligation he was under not to leave his village for a year, which he intended to obey to the letter and not violate in the slightest, as befitted a knight errant bound by the order and demands of knight errantry, and that he had thought of becoming a shepherd for the year and spending his time in the solitude of the countryside, where he could freely express his amorous thoughts and devote himself to the virtuous pastoral occupation; and he implored them, if they did not have too much to do and were not prevented by more important matters, to be his companions, and he would buy enough sheep and livestock to give them the name of shepherds; and he told them that the most important part of the business had already been taken care of, because he had given them names that would fit them like a glove. The priest asked him to say what they were. Don Quixote responded that he would be called Shepherd Quixotiz, and the bachelor would be Shepherd Carrascón, and the priest, Shepherd Curambro, and Sancho Panza, Shepherd Pancino.

They were stunned by Don Quixote’s new madness, but in order to keep him from leaving the village again on chivalric exploits, and hoping he might be cured during that year, they acquiesced to his new intentions, and approved his madness as sensible, and offered to be his companions in his occupations.

“Moreover,” said Sansón Carrasco, “as everyone already knows, I am a celebrated poet and shall constantly compose pastoral verses, or courtly ones, or whatever seems most appropriate, to entertain us as we wander those out-of-the-way places; and what is most necessary, Señores, is for each to choose the name of the shepherdess to be celebrated in his verses, the name he will carve and inscribe on every tree, no matter how hard, as is the usage and custom of enamored shepherds.”

“That is quite fitting,” responded Don Quixote, “although I do not need to find the name of a feigned shepherdess, for there is the peerless Dulcinea of Toboso, glory of these fields, ornament of these meadows, mainstay of beauty, flower of all graces, and, in short, a subject on whom all praise sits well, no matter how hyperbolic.”

“That is true,” said the priest, “but we shall have to find some well-mannered shepherdesses, and if their names don’t suit us, we can trim them to fit.”

To which Sansón Carrasco added:

“And if our invention fails, we can give them the names that have been published and printed and that fill the world: Phyllida, Amaryllis, Diana, Flerida, Galatea, and Belisarda; since they’re sold on every square, we can certainly buy them and keep them for our own. If my lady, or I should say my shepherdess, happens to be named Ana, I shall celebrate her under the name Anarda, and if her name is Francisca, I shall call her Francenia, and if Lucia, Lucinda, for that’s all it amounts to; and Sancho Panza, if he joins our fraternity, can celebrate his wife, Teresa Panza, with the name Teresaina.”

Don Quixote laughed at the aptness of the name, and the priest praised to the skies his honest and honorable resolution and once again offered to accompany him in the time he was not occupied in attending to his obligations. And with this they took their leave of Don Quixote and implored him and advised him to take care of his health and to eat well.

It so happened that the niece and the housekeeper heard the conversation of the three men, and as soon as the visitors left, the two women entered the room to see Don Quixote, and his niece said:

“What is this, Uncle? We thought your grace would stay at home again and lead a quiet and honorable life, and now you want to go into new labyrinths and become

Well, the truth is that the stem’s too hard for making flutes.⁶⁶⁸

To which the housekeeper added:

“And there in the countryside will your grace be able to endure the heat of summer, the night air of winter, the howling of the wolves? No, certainly not; this is work for strong, hard men who’ve been brought up to the life almost from the time they’re in swaddling clothes. No matter how bad it is, it’s better to be a knight errant than a shepherd. Look, Señor, take my advice; I’m giving it to you not when I’m full of bread and wine, but when I’m fasting, and based on what I’ve learned in my fifty years: stay in your house, tend to your estate, go to confession often, favor the poor, and let it be on my soul if that does you any harm.”

“Be quiet, my dears,” responded Don Quixote, “for I know what I must do. Take me to my bed, because I think I am not well, and you can be certain that regardless of whether I am a knight errant or a shepherd on the verge of wandering, I shall always provide for you, as my actions will prove.”

And the two good women, which the housekeeper and niece undoubtedly were, took him to his bed, where they fed him and pampered him as much as possible.