CHAPTER XII

Don Quixote and his squire spent the night that followed the day of their encounter with Death beneath some tall shade trees, and Don Quixote, having been persuaded by Sancho, ate some of the provisions carried by the donkey, and during their supper Sancho said to his master: “Señor, what a fool I would’ve been if I’d chosen the spoils of the first adventure your grace completed as my reward instead of your three mares’ foals! It’s true, it’s true: a bird in hand is worth a vulture flying.^[1]”

“However^[2],” responded Don Quixote, “if you, Sancho, had allowed me to attack as I wished to, at the very least you would have had as spoils the gold crown of the Empress and the painted wings of Cupid, for I would have taken them by force and placed them in your hands.”

“The scepters and crowns of actor-emperors,” responded Sancho Panza, “are never pure gold but only tinsel or tinplate.”

“That is true,” replied Don Quixote, “because it would not be proper if the finery in plays were really valuable instead of merely illusory and apparent, as the plays themselves are; I want you, Sancho, to think well and to have a good opinion of plays, and to be equally well-disposed toward those who perform them and those who write them, because they are all the instruments whereby a great service is performed for the nation, holding up a mirror to every step we take and allowing us to see a vivid image of the actions of human life; there is no comparison that indicates what we are and what we should be more clearly than plays and players. If you do not agree, then tell me: have you ever seen a play that presents kings, emperors, and pontiffs, knights, ladies, and many other characters? One plays the scoundrel, another the liar, this one the merchant, that one the soldier, another the wise fool, yet another the foolish lover, but when the play is over and they have taken off their costumes, all the actors are equal.”

“Yes, I have seen that,” responded Sancho.

“Well, the same thing happens in the drama and business of this world, where some play emperors, others pontiffs, in short, all the figures that can be presented in a play, but at the end, which is when life is over, death removes all the clothing that differentiated them, and all are equal in the grave.”

“That’s a fine comparison,” said Sancho, “though not so new that I haven’t heard it many times before, like the one about chess: as long as the game lasts, each piece has its particular rank and position, but when the game’s over they’re mixed and jumbled and thrown together in a bag, just the way life is tossed into the grave.”³⁶⁰

“Every day, Sancho,” said Don Quixote, “you are becoming less simple and more intelligent.”

“Yes, some of your grace’s intelligence has to stick to me,” responded Sancho, “for lands that are barren and dry on their own can produce good fruits if you spread manure on them and till them; I mean to say that your grace’s conversation has been the manure that has fallen on the barren soil of my dry wits; the time I have served you and talked to you has been the tilling; and so I hope to produce fruits that are a blessing and do not go to seed or stray from the paths of good cultivation that your grace has made in my parched understanding.”

Don Quixote laughed at Sancho’s pretentious words but thought that what he said about the change in him was true, because from time to time he spoke in a manner that amazed Don Quixote, although almost always, when Sancho wanted to speak in an erudite and courtly way, his words would plummet from the peaks of his simplicity into the depths of his ignorance; the area in which he displayed the most elegance and the best memory was in his use of proverbs, regardless of whether or not they had anything to do with the subject, as has been seen and noted in the course of this history.

They spent a good part of the night in this and other exchanges like it, until Sancho felt the desire to drop the gates of his eyes, as he said when he wanted to sleep, and, after unharnessing the donkey, he allowed him to graze freely on the abundant grass. He did not remove Rocinante’s saddle, for his master had expressly ordered that for the time they were out in the countryside or did not sleep under a roof, he should not unharness Rocinante: an ancient custom established and maintained by knights errant was to remove the bit and hang it from the saddlebow, but taking the saddle off the horse? Never! And so this is what Sancho did, and he gave Rocinante the same freedom he had given the donkey, for their friendship was so unusual and so firm that it has been claimed, in a tradition handed down from fathers to sons, that the author of this true history devoted particular chapters to it, but for the sake of maintaining the decency and decorum so heroic a history deserves, he did not include them, although at times he is remiss in his purpose and writes that as soon as the two animals were together they would begin to scratch each other, and then, when they were tired and satisfied, Rocinante would lay his neck across the donkey’s—it would extend almost half a meter on the other side—and, staring intently at the ground, the two of them could stand this way for three days or, at least, for as long as they were permitted to do so or were not compelled by hunger to look for food.

I say, then, that it is said that the author wrote that he compared their friendship to that of Nisus and Euryalus, and Pylades and Orestes,³⁶¹ and if this is true, we can infer, to widespread admiration, how deep the friendship of these two peaceable animals must have been, to the shame of human beings who do not know how to maintain their friendships. For this reason, it has been said:

No man is friend to his friend: their canes are turned into lances;

and this, that was sung^[3]:

Bedbugs are passed from friend to friend.³⁶²

No one should think that the author digressed by comparing the friendship of these animals to that of men, for men have learned a good deal from animals and have been taught many important things by them, for example: from storks, the enema,³⁶³ from dogs, vomiting³⁶⁴ and gratitude; from cranes, vigilance;³⁶⁵ from ants, foresight; from elephants, chastity; and loyalty from the horse.

Finally Sancho fell asleep at the foot of a cork tree, and Don Quixote dozed under a hardy oak; not too much time had gone by when he was awakened by a noise at his back, and starting to his feet, he began to listen and to look in the direction of the sound, and he saw that there were two men on horseback and that one, dropping to the ground, said to the other:

“Get down, my friend, and unbridle the horses, for it seems to me that this spot has an abundance of grass for them, and the silence and solitude that I require for my amorous thoughts.”

Saying this and lying down on the ground were all one, and as he lay down, the armor he was wearing made a noise, a clear sign by which Don Quixote recognized that he must be a knight errant; and going up to

Sancho, who was asleep, he grasped his arm and with no small effort brought him back to consciousness, and in a quiet voice he said:

“Brother Sancho, we have an adventure.”

“May God make it a good one,” responded Sancho. “And where, Señor, is her grace this lady adventure?”

“Where, Sancho?” replied Don Quixote. “Turn around and look, and there you will see a knight errant lying on the ground, and from what I can deduce he is not very happy, because I saw him get down from his horse and stretch out on the ground showing certain signs of discouragement, and when he lay down I could hear his armor clattering.”

“Well, what makes your grace think,” said Sancho, “that this is an adventure?”

“I do not mean to say,” responded Don Quixote, “that this is a complete adventure, but rather the start of one; this is the way adventures begin. But listen: it seems as if he is tuning a lute or vihuela,³⁶⁶ and considering how he is spitting and clearing his throat, he must be preparing to sing something.”

“By my faith, that’s true,” responded Sancho, “and so he must be a knight in love.”

“There is no knight errant who is not,” said Don Quixote. “Let us listen to him, and if he does sing, by following the thread we shall discover the skein of his thoughts, for the tongue speaks from the overflowing abundance of the heart.”

Sancho wanted to reply, but the voice of the Knight of the Wood, which was neither very bad nor very good, prevented him from doing so, and the two men listened in amazement as he sang this sonnet:

Set for me, lady, the line I must pursue, created by and matching your sweet will; and it shall be so rev’renced by my own, that I’ll ne’er contravene its slightest whim.

If you wish my voice mute about my ills until I die, then here I’ve reached my end: if you desire my woes sung in a fashion rare and strange, then love himself will chant them.

A perfect proof of contraries I’ve become, hard as diamond, soft as wax, and yet my soul reconciles them, obeying the laws of love.

I bare my breast to you, whether soft or hard: incise there and impress there all you will; your will, I swear, shall be my eternal rule.

With an Oh! torn, apparently, from the very depths of his heart, the Knight of the Wood ended his song, and then, a short while later, in a sad and sorrowful voice, he said:

“O most beautiful and ungrateful woman in the world! How can you, most serene Casildea of Vandalia, allow this your captive knight to be consumed and to perish in continual wanderings and harsh and rigorous labors? Is it not enough that I have obliged all the knights of Navarra, Leon, Andalucia, Castilla, and La Mancha to confess that you are the most beautiful woman in the world?”

“Oh no,” said Don Quixote, “for I am from La Mancha, and I have confessed no such thing, and I could not and ought not confess anything so prejudicial to the beauty of my lady; now you can see, Sancho, that this knight is talking nonsense. But let us listen: perhaps he will say more about himself.”

“He’s bound to,” replied Sancho, “because he seems ready to complain for a month without stopping.”

But that did not happen, because the Knight of the Wood, hearing voices speaking nearby, lamented no further but rose to his feet and said in a loud but courteous voice:

“Who is it? Who are you? Do you count yourself among the contented or the afflicted?”

“The afflicted,” responded Don Quixote.

“Then approach,” responded the Knight of the Wood, “and you shall realize that you are approaching sorrow and affliction personified.”

Don Quixote, seeing that his reply was gentle and courteous, approached him, and Sancho did the same.

The lamenting knight grasped Don Quixote’s arm, saying:

“Sit here, Señor Knight; for me to understand that you are a knight, and one who professes knight errantry, it is enough to find you in this place, where solitude and the night dews are your companions, the natural couches and proper lodgings of knights errant.”

To which Don Quixote responded:

“I am a knight, of the profession you say, and though sorrow, sadness, and misfortune have their own places in my soul, this does not mean that the compassion I feel for other people’s afflictions has fled. I gathered from what you sang a little while ago that your woes are amorous, I mean, the result of the love you have for that beautiful ingrate you named in your lamentations.”

During this conversation they sat together on the hard ground, in peace and good fellowship, as if at break of day they would not need to break each other’s heads.

“By any chance, Señor Knight,” the Knight of the Wood asked Don Quixote, “are you in love?”

“Unfortunately I am,” responded Don Quixote, “although the adversities born of well-placed thoughts should be considered mercies rather than misfortunes.”

“That is true,” said the Knight of the Wood, “if too much disdain does not confound our reason and understanding and begin to resemble revenge.”

“I never was disdained by my lady,” responded Don Quixote.

“No, of course not,” said Sancho, who was close to them, “because my lady is as meek as a lamb: she’s as soft as butter.”

“Is this your squire?” asked the Knight of the Wood.

“Yes, it is,” responded Don Quixote.

“I have never seen a squire,” replied the Knight of the Wood, “who would dare speak when his master was speaking: at least, there stands mine, as big as his father, and no one can prove he has even moved his lips while I am speaking.”

“Well, by my faith,” said Sancho, “I have spoken, and can speak, in front of any … enough said, we’ll let sleeping dogs lie.”

The squire of the Knight of the Wood took Sancho by the arm and said:

“Let’s go where we can talk in a squirely way about anything we like, and leave these master gentlemen of ours to argue and tell each other stories about their loves; I’ll bet they’re still at it at dawn, and no closer to finishing.”

“All right, then,” said Sancho, “and I’ll tell your grace who I am, and then you can tell me whether or not I’m a match for any talkative squire.”

Saying this, the two squires moved away, and their conversation was as amusing as the one between their masters was solemn.