CHAPTER X

When the author of this great history came to recount what is recounted in this chapter, he says he would have preferred to pass over it in silence, fearful it would not be given credence, for the madness of Don Quixote here reached the limits and boundaries of the greatest madnesses that can be imagined, and even passed two crossbow shots beyond them. But finally, despite this fear and trepidation, he wrote down the mad acts just as Don Quixote performed them, not adding or subtracting an atom of truth from the history and not concerning himself about the accusations that he was a liar, which might be made against him; and he was right, because truth may be stretched thin and not break, and it always floats on the surface of the lie, like oil on water.

And so, continuing his history, he says that as soon as Don Quixote had entered the wood, oak grove, or forest near the great Toboso, he ordered Sancho to return to the city and not appear again in his presence without first having spoken on his behalf to his lady, asking her to be so kind as to allow herself to be seen by her captive knight and deign to give him her blessing so that he might hope for a most happy conclusion for all his undertakings and arduous enterprises. Sancho agreed to do everything exactly as ordered and to bring back a reply as good as the one he had brought the first time.

“Go, my friend,” replied Don Quixote, “and do not become disconcerted when you find yourself looking at the light emanating from the sun of beauty which you will seek. Oh, you are more fortunate than all the squires in the world! Remember everything and do not miss a detail of how she receives you: if her color changes as you give her my message; if she becomes agitated or troubled when she hears my name; if she moves about on her pillows, if you happen to find her in the richly furnished antechamber of her rank;³⁵² if she is standing, look at her to see if she shifts from one foot to another; if she repeats her answer two or three times; if she changes from gentle to severe, from harsh to loving; if she raises her hand to her hair to smooth it, although it is not disarranged; finally, my friend, observe all her actions and movements, because if you relate them to me just as they occurred, I shall interpret what she keeps hidden in the secret places of her heart in response to the fact of my love; for you must know, Sancho, if you do not know it already, that with lovers, the external actions and movements, revealed when the topic of their love arises, are reliable messengers bringing the news of what transpires deep in their souls. Go, my friend, and may better fortune than mine guide you, and may you return with greater success than I dare hope for as I wait in this bitter solitude in which you leave me.”

“I’ll go and come back very quickly,” said Sancho, “and swell that heart of yours, which can’t be any bigger now than a hazelnut, and remember what they say: a good heart beats bad luck, and where there is no bacon, there are no stakes,³⁵³ and they also say that a hare leaps out when you least expect it. I’m saying this because if we didn’t find my lady’s palaces or castles last night, now that it’s day I think I’ll find them when I least expect to, and once I’ve found them, just leave everything to me.”

“Well, Sancho,” said Don Quixote, “you certainly bring in proverbs that suit our affairs perfectly, and I hope God gives me as much good fortune in my desires.”

This having been said, Sancho turned away and urged on his donkey, and Don Quixote remained on horseback, resting in the stirrups and leaning on his lance, full of melancholy and confused imaginings, and there we will leave him and go with Sancho Panza, who rode away no less confused and thoughtful than his master; in fact, as soon as he had emerged from the wood he turned his head, and seeing that Don Quixote was nowhere in sight, he dismounted his donkey, sat at the foot of a tree, and began to talk to himself, saying:

“Now, Sancho my brother, let’s find out where your grace is going. Are you going to look for some donkey that’s been lost?” “No, of course not.” “Well, what are you going to look for?” “I’m going to look for a princess—like that was an easy thing to do—who is the sun of beauty and the rest of heaven, too.” “And where do you think you’ll find all that, Sancho?” “Where? In the great city of Toboso.” “All right, for whose sake are you going to look for her?” “For the sake of the famous knight Don Quixote of La Mancha, who rights wrongs, and gives food to the thirsty, and drink to the hungry.” “All that’s very fine. Do you know where her house is, Sancho?” “My master says it has to be royal palaces or noble castles.” “Have you, by chance, ever seen her?” “I’ve never seen her, and neither has my master.” “And do you think it would be the right and proper thing to do, if the people of Toboso found out that you’re here intending to coax away their princesses and disturb their ladies, for them to batter your ribs with sticks and break every bone in your body?” “The truth is they’d be right, unless they remembered that I’m following orders, and that

“Don’t rely on that, Sancho, because Manchegans are as quick-tempered as they are honorable, and they don’t put up with anything from anybody. By God, if they suspect what you’re up to, then I predict bad luck for you.” “Get out, you dumb bastard! Let the lighting strike somebody else! Not me, I’m not going to look for trouble to please somebody else! Besides, looking for Dulcinea in Toboso will be like looking for a María in Ravenna or a bachelor in Salamanca. The devil, the devil and nobody else has gotten me into this!”

Sancho held this soliloquy with himself, and the conclusion he drew was that he talked to himself again, saying:

“Well now: everything has a remedy except death, under whose yoke we all have to pass, even if we don’t want to, when our life ends. I’ve seen a thousand signs in this master of mine that he’s crazy enough to be tied up, and I’m not far behind, I’m as much a fool as he is because I follow and serve him, if that old saying is true: ‘Tell me who your friends are and I’ll tell you who you are,’ and that other one that says, ‘Birds of a feather flock together.’ Then, being crazy, which is what he is, with the kind of craziness that most of the time takes one thing for another, and thinks white is black and black is white, like the time he said that the windmills were giants, and the friars’ mules dromedaries, and the flocks of sheep enemy armies, and many other things of that nature, it won’t be very hard to make him believe that a peasant girl, the first one I run into here, is the lady Dulcinea; and if he doesn’t believe it, I’ll swear it’s true; and if he swears it isn’t, I’ll swear again that it is; and if he insists, I’ll insist more; and so I’ll always have the last word, no matter what. Maybe I’ll be so stubborn he won’t send me out again carrying his messages, seeing the bad answers I bring back, or maybe he’ll believe, which is what I think will happen, that one of those evil enchanters he says are his enemies changed her appearance to hurt him and do him harm.”

When Sancho Panza had this idea his spirit grew calm, and he considered his business successfully concluded, and he stayed there until the afternoon so that Don Quixote would think that he’d had time to go to Toboso and come back; and everything went so well for him that when he stood up to mount the donkey, he saw that coming toward him from the direction of Toboso were three peasant girls on three jackasses, or jennies, since the author does not specify which they were, though it is more likely that they were she-donkeys, for they are the ordinary mounts of village girls, but since not much depends on this, there is no reason to spend more time verifying it. In short: as soon as Sancho saw the peasant girls, he rode back as fast as he could to look for his master, Don Quixote, and found him heaving sighs and saying a thousand amorous lamentations. As soon as Don Quixote saw him, he said:

“What news, Sancho my friend? Shall I mark this day with a white stone or a black?”

“It would be better,” responded Sancho, “for your grace to mark it in red paint, like the names of the professors,³⁵⁵ so that everybody who looks can see it clearly.”

“That means,” replied Don Quixote, “that you bring good news.”

“So good,” responded Sancho, “that all your grace has to do is spur Rocinante and ride into the open and you’ll see the lady Dulcinea of Toboso, who is coming to see your grace with two of her damsels.”

“Holy God! What are you saying, Sancho my friend?” said Don Quixote. “Do not deceive me, or try to lighten my true sorrows with false joys.”

“What good would it do me to deceive your grace,” responded Sancho, “especially since you’re so close to discovering that what I say is true? Use your spurs, Señor, and come with me, and you’ll see the princess riding toward us, our mistress, all dressed and adorned, like the person she is. She and her damsels are all shining gold, all strands of pearls, all diamonds, all rubies, all brocade cloth ten levels high,³⁵⁶ their hair, hanging loose down their backs, is like rays of the sun dancing in the wind; best of all, they’re riding three piebald pilfers, the prettiest sight you’ll ever see.”

“You must mean palfreys, Sancho.”

“There’s not much difference,” responded Sancho, “between pilfers and palfreys, but no matter what they’re riding, they’re the best-looking ladies anybody could want to see, especially my lady the Princess Dulcinea, who dazzles the senses.”

“Let us go, Sancho my friend,” responded Don Quixote, “and to celebrate this news, as unexpected as it is good, I promise you the best spoils that I shall win in the first adventure I have, and if this does not satisfy you, I promise you the foals that my three mares drop this year, for as you know, they are in the village pasture,³⁵⁷ ready to give birth.”

“I’ll take the foals,” responded Sancho, “because it’s not very certain that the spoils of your first adventure will be any good.”

At this point they left the wood and saw the three village girls close by. Don Quixote looked carefully up and down the road to Toboso, and since he saw no one but the three peasants, he was bewildered and asked Sancho if he had left them outside the city.

“What do you mean, outside the city?” he responded. “By any chance are your grace’s eyes in the back of your head? Is that why you don’t see them riding toward us, shining like the sun at midday?”

“Sancho, I do not see anything,” said Don Quixote, “except three peasant girls on three donkeys.”

“God save me now from the devil!” responded Sancho. “Is it possible that three snow white palfreys, or whatever they’re called, look like donkeys to your grace? God help us, may this beard of mine be plucked out if that’s true!”

“Well, I can tell you, friend Sancho,” said Don Quixote, “that it is as true that they are jackasses, or jennies, as it is that I am Don Quixote and you Sancho Panza; at least, that is what they seem to be.”

“Don’t speak, Señor,” said Sancho, “don’t say those things, but clear the mist from your eyes and come and do reverence to the lady of your thoughts, who is almost here.”

And having said this, he went forward to receive the three village girls, and after dismounting from his donkey, he grasped the halter of one of the three peasant girls’ mounts, fell to his knees, and said:

“Queen and princess and duchess of beauty, may your high mightiness be pleased to receive into your good graces and disposition your captive knight, who is there, turned into marble, confused and struck dumb at finding himself in your magnificent presence. I am Sancho Panza, his squire, and he is the much traveled Don Quixote of La Mancha, also called The Knight of the Sorrowful Face.”

By this time Don Quixote had kneeled down next to Sancho and looked, with startled eyes and confused vision, at the person Sancho was calling queen and lady, and since he could see nothing except a peasant girl, and one not especially attractive, since she was round-faced and snub-nosed, he was so astounded and amazed that he did not dare open his mouth. The peasant girls were equally astonished at seeing those two men, so different from each other, kneeling and not allowing their companion to continue on her way; but the one who had been stopped was annoyed and angry, and breaking the silence, she said:

“Out of the way, damn it, and let us pass; we’re in a hurry!”

To which Sancho responded:

“O princess and universal lady of Toboso! How can your magnanimous heart not soften at seeing the pillar and support of knight errantry on his knees in your sublimal presence?”

Hearing which, another of the girls said:

“Hey, whoa, I’ll tan your hide, you miserable donkey! Look at how the gentry are making fun of us country girls now, like we didn’t know how to give as good as we get! You go on your way, and let us go on ours, if you want to stay healthy.”

“Stand up, Sancho,” said Don Quixote, “for I see that Fortune, not satisfied with my sorrows, has captured all the roads by which some joy might come to the wretched spirit that inhabits this flesh. And thou, O highest virtue that can be desired, summit of human courtesy, sole remedy for this afflicted heart that adoreth thee! The wicked enchanter who pursueth me hath placed clouds and cataracts over my eyes, so that for them alone but not for others he hath changed and transformed thy peerless beauty and countenance into the figure of a poor peasant, and if he hath not also turned mine into that of a monster abominable in thy sight, ceaseth not to regard me kindly and lovingly and see in this submission of mine as I kneel before thy deformed beauty, the humility with which my soul adoreth thee.”

“You can tell that to my grandpa!” responded the village girl. “I just love listening to crackpated things! Step aside and let us pass, and we’ll thank you for it.”

Sancho stepped aside and let her pass, delighted to have gotten out of his difficulty so easily.

As soon as the peasant girl who had played the part of Dulcinea was released, she spurred her pilfer with a goad that she had on the end of a stick and began to gallop across the meadow. And since the goad irritated the jenny more than usual, she began to buck and threw the lady Dulcinea to the ground; when Don Quixote saw this, he hurried to help her up, and Sancho began to adjust and tighten her packsaddle, which had slipped under the donkey’s belly. When the saddle had been put in place, and Don Quixote tried to lift his enchanted lady in his arms and put her back on the donkey, the lady got up from the ground and saved him the trouble, because she moved back, ran a short distance, and, placing both hands on the donkey’s rump, jumped right into the saddle, as agile as a hawk and sitting astride as if she were a man; and then Sancho said:

“By St. Roque, our mistress is faster than a falcon, and she could teach the most skilled Cordoban or Mexican how to ride! She was over the hind bow of the saddle in one jump, and without any spurs she makes that palfrey run like a zebra. And her damsels are not far behind; they’re all running like the wind.”

And it was true, because when Dulcinea was mounted, they all spurred their mounts and fell in behind her and broke into a gallop and did not look back for more than half a league. Don Quixote followed them with his eyes, and when he could no longer see them, he turned to Sancho and said:

“Sancho, what do you think of how the enchanters despise me? Look at the extent of their malice and ill will, for they have chosen to deprive me of the happiness I might have had at seeing my lady in her rightful person. In truth, I was born to be a model of misfortune, the target and mark for the arrows of affliction. And you must also know, Sancho, that it was not enough for these traitors to have changed and transformed my Dulcinea, but they had to transform and change her into a figure as low-born and ugly as that peasant, and take away something that so rightfully belongs to noble ladies, which is a sweet smell, since they are always surrounded by perfumes and flowers. For I shall tell you, Sancho, that when I came to help Dulcinea onto her palfrey, as you call it, though it looked like a donkey to me, I smelled an odor of raw garlic that almost made me faint and poisoned my soul.”

“Oh, you dogs!” shouted Sancho. “Oh, you miserable, evil enchanters, if only I could see you all strung by the gills like sardines on a fisherman’s reed! You know so much, and can do so much, and do even more evil. It should have been enough, you villains, to turn the pearls of my lady’s eyes into cork-tree galls, and her hair of purest gold into the bristles of a red ox tail, and all her good features into bad, without doing anything to her smell, because from that we could have imagined what was hidden beneath her ugly shell; though to tell you the truth, I never saw her ugliness, only her beauty, which was made even greater by a mole she had on the right side of her lip, like a mustache, with six or seven blond hairs like threads of gold and longer than a span.”

“That mole,” said Don Quixote, “according to the correspondence that exists between those on the face and those on the body, must be matched by another that Dulcinea has on the broad part of her thigh, on the same side as the one on her face, but the hairs you have mentioned are very long for a mole.”

“Well, I can tell your grace,” responded Sancho, “that they looked like they’d been born there.”

“I can believe it, my friend,” replied Don Quixote, “because nature put nothing on Dulcinea that was not perfect and complete, and so, if she had a hundred moles like the one you describe, on her they would not be moles but shining moons and stars. But tell me, Sancho: the saddle that seemed like a packsaddle to me, the one that you adjusted, was it a simple saddle or a sidesaddle?”

“It was,” responded Sancho, “just a high-bowed saddle, with a covering so rich it must have been worth half a kingdom.”

“And to think I did not see all of that, Sancho!” said Don Quixote. “Now I say it again, and shall say it a thousand more times: I am the most unfortunate of men.”

When he heard the foolish things said by his master, who had been so exquisitely deceived, it was all the scoundrel Sancho could do to hide his laughter. Finally, after much more conversation between them, they re-mounted their animals and followed the road to Zaragoza, where they hoped to arrive in time to take part in the solemn festival held in that celebrated city every year. But before they arrived, certain things happened to them, so numerous, great, and unusual that they deserve to be described and read, as will soon be seen.