CHAPTER XIX

Don Quixote had not gone very far from Don Diego’s house when he encountered two men who seemed to be clerics or students,³⁸³ and two peasants, each riding a donkeyish mount. One of the students carried as a kind of portmanteau a piece of green buckram, and wrapped in it there were, apparently, a piece of fine scarlet cloth and two pairs of ribbed serge hose; the other carried only two new black fencing foils, with leather tips on the points. The peasants carried other things, which were a sign and indication that they were returning from some large city where they had bought them and were carrying them back to their village; both students and peasants experienced the same astonishment felt by all who saw Don Quixote for the first time, and they longed to know who this man might be who was so different from other men.

Don Quixote greeted them, and after he learned the road they were taking, which was the same one he was following, he offered them his company and asked them to slow their pace because their donkeys walked faster than his horse; and to oblige them, in a few brief words he told them who he was, and his calling and profession, which was to be a knight errant who went seeking adventures everywhere in the world. He told them that his proper name was Don Quixote of La Mancha and that his title was The Knight of the Lions. For the peasants, all of this was like speaking to them in Greek or in gibberish, but not for the students, who soon understood the weakness in Don Quixote’s mind; even so, they viewed him with admiration and respect, and one of them said:

“Señor Knight, if your grace is not following a specific route, as those searching for adventures usually do not, your grace should come with us, and you will see one of the finest and richest weddings ever celebrated in La Mancha, or for many leagues around.”

Don Quixote asked him if it was a prince’s wedding that he was praising so highly.

“No,” responded the student, “not a prince, but the richest farmer in this entire land, and the most beautiful farmgirl men have ever seen. The preparations for the wedding celebration are extraordinary and remarkable, because it will be held in a meadow near the bride’s village; she is always called fair Quiteria, and the groom is called rich Camacho; she is eighteen and he is twenty-two; they are equals, though certain inquisitive people who have the lineages of the entire world memorized claim that fair Quiteria’s is superior to Camacho’s, but nobody thinks about that nowadays: wealth has the power to mend a good many cracks. In fact, Camacho is extremely generous, and he has taken a notion to weave branches into a bower to cover the entire meadow, so that the sun will have great difficulty if it wants to come in to visit the green grass covering the ground. He also has arranged for dances, with swords and with bells, for there are in his village people who are excellent at ringing and shaking them, and I won’t say anything about the heel-tappers, for the general opinion is that he has a good number of them ready; but none of the things I’ve mentioned, or the many others that I’ve omitted, are what will make this wedding memorable, but rather the things I imagine a desperate Basilio will do. This Basilio is a shepherd from the same village as Quiteria, and his house shared a wall with the house of Quiteria’s parents, allowing love the opportunity to renew in the world the long-forgotten loves of Pyramus and Thisbe, because Basilio loved Quiteria from his earliest, tenderest youth, and she responded to his desire with a thousand honest favors, so that in the village the love of the two children, Basilio and Quiteria, was recounted with amusement. As they grew older, Quiteria’s father decided to deny Basilio the access to his house that he once had enjoyed, and to spare himself mistrust and endless suspicions, he arranged for his daughter to marry rich Camacho, for it did not seem a good idea to marry her to Basilio, who was better endowed by nature than by fortune; if the truth be told, without envy, he is the most agile youth we know, a great hurler of the bar, an excellent wrestler, a fine pelota player; he runs like a deer, leaps like a goat, and plays bowls as if he were enchanted; he sings like a lark, plays the guitar so well he makes it speak, and, most of all, he can fence with the best of them.”

“For that one accomplishment,” said Don Quixote, “the youth deserved not only to marry fair Quiteria but Queen Guinevere herself, if she were alive today, in spite of Lancelot and all the others who might wish to prevent it.”

“Try telling that to my wife!” said Sancho Panza, who so far had been listening in silence. “The only thing she wants is for everybody to marry their equal, following the proverb that says ‘Like goes to like.’ What I’d like is for this good Basilio, and I’m growing very fond of him, to marry Señora Quiteria; people who keep people who love each other from marrying should rest in peace, world without end, and I was going to say the opposite.”

“If all people who love each other were to marry,” said Don Quixote, “it would deprive parents of the right and privilege to marry their children to the person and at the time they ought to marry; if daughters were entitled to choose their own husbands, one would choose her father’s servant, and another a man she saw walking on the street, who seemed to her proud and gallant, although he might be a debauchee and a braggart; for love and affection easily blind the eyes of the understanding, which are so necessary for choosing one’s estate, and the estate of matrimony is at particular risk of error, and great caution is required, and the particular favor of heaven, in order to choose correctly. If a person wishes to make a long journey, and if he is prudent, before setting out he will find reliable and peaceful companionship for his travels; then why would he not do the same for the journey that takes a lifetime, until it reaches the resting place of death, and especially if his companion will be with him in bed, at the table, everywhere, which is how a wife accompanies her husband? The companionship of one’s own wife is not merchandise that, once purchased, can be returned, or exchanged, or altered; it is an irrevocable circumstance that lasts as long as one lives: it is a rope that, if put around one’s neck, turns into the Gordian knot, and if the scythe of Death does not cut it, there is no way to untie it. I could say much more with regard to this subject, but I am kept from doing so by my desire to know if the distinguished licentiate has more to tell us of the history of Basilio.”

To which the student bachelor, or licentiate, as Don Quixote called him, responded:

“There really is no more for me to say except that ever since the moment Basilio learned that fair Quiteria was marrying rich Camacho, he has not been known to laugh, or to speak coherently, and he always goes about pensive and sad, talking to himself, which are clear and certain signs that he has lost his mind: he eats little and sleeps little, and what he does eat is fruit, and if he does sleep it is in the fields, on the hard ground, like a dumb animal; from time to time he looks up at the sky, at other times he fixes his eyes on the ground and is so entranced that he seems to be a dressed statue whose clothes are moved by the breeze. In short, he gives so many indications of having a heart maddened by love that those of us who know him fear that when fair Quiteria takes her marriage vows tomorrow, it will be his death sentence.”

“God will find the cure,” said Sancho, “for God gives the malady and also the remedy; nobody knows the future: there’s a lot of hours until tomorrow, and in one of them, and even in a moment, the house can fall; I’ve seen it rain at the same time the sun is shining; a man goes to bed healthy and can’t move the next day. And tell me, is there anybody who can boast that he’s driven a nail into Fortune’s wheel? No, of course not, and I wouldn’t dare put the point of a pin between a woman’s yes and no, because it wouldn’t fit. Tell me that Quiteria loves Basilio with all her heart and all her soul, and I’ll give him a sack of good fortune, because I’ve heard that love looks through spectacles that make copper look like gold, poverty like riches, and dried rheum like pearls.”

“Damn you, Sancho, where will you stop?” said Don Quixote. “When you begin to string together proverbs and stories, nobody can endure it but Judas himself, and may Judas himself take you. Tell me, you brute, what do you know of nails, or wheels, or anything else?”

“Oh, well, if none of you understand me,” responded Sancho, “it’s no wonder my sayings are taken for nonsense. But it doesn’t matter: I understand what I’m saying, and I know there’s not much foolishness in what I said, but your grace is always sentencing what I say, and even what I do.”

“Censuring is what you should say,” said Don Quixote, “and not sentencing, you corrupter of good language, may God confound you!”

“Your grace shouldn’t get angry with me,” responded Sancho, “because you know I didn’t grow up at court or study at Salamanca, so how would I know if I’m adding or taking away letters from my words? God save me! You can’t force a Sayagan to talk like a Toledan,³⁸⁴ and there may be some Toledans who don’t talk better than anybody else.”

“That’s true,” said the licentiate, “because those who grew up in Tenerías and in Zocodover cannot speak as well as those who spend almost the entire day strolling in the cloister of the cathedral, and all of them are Toledans. Pure language, appropriate, elegant, and clear, is used by discerning courtiers even if they were born in Majalahonda.³⁸⁵ I said discerning, because there are many who are not, and discernment is the grammar of good language, which is acquired with use. I, Señores, for my sins, have studied canon law at Salamanca and am rather proud of speaking with words that are clear, plain, and meaningful.”

“If you hadn’t been prouder of how you move those foils you’re carrying than of how you wag your tongue,” said the other student, whose name was Corchuelo, “maybe you would have placed first for your licentiate instead of last.”

“Look, Bachelor,” responded the licentiate, “you hold the most erroneous opinion in the world about skill with the sword, since you consider it useless.”

“As far as I’m concerned, it’s not an opinion but an established truth,” replied Corchuelo, “and if you would like me to prove it to you experientially, you’re carrying the foils, there’s a convenient spot, I have a steady hand, and strength, and together with my courage, which is no small thing, they will make you confess that I am not mistaken. Dismount, and use your changes of posture, your circles, your angles, and your science; I expect to make you see stars at midday with my crude, modern skills, and after God I put my trust in them, and there’s no man born who will make me turn away, and none in the world whom I can’t force to retreat.”³⁸⁶

“I won’t get involved in questions of turning or not turning away,” replied the master swordsman, “though it might be that on the spot where you first set your foot, your grave will open wide: I mean, that you’ll be lying dead there on account of the mastery you despise so much.”

“Now we’ll see,” responded Corchuelo.

And he dismounted his donkey with great agility and furiously seized one of the foils that the licentiate was carrying on his animal.

“It should not be this way,” said Don Quixote at that moment, “for I wish to be the master of this duel and the judge of this question so frequently left unresolved.”

And after dismounting Rocinante and grasping his lance, he stood in the middle of the road, at the same time that the licentiate, with spirited grace and measured steps, was advancing on Corchuelo, who came toward him, his eyes, as the saying goes, blazing. The two peasants who had accompanied them did not dismount their donkeys, but served as spectators to the mortal tragedy. The innumerable lunges, slashes, downward thrusts, reverse strokes, and two-handed blows executed by Corchuelo were denser than liver and more minute than hail. He attacked like an angry lion but was met with a blow to the mouth by the tip of the licentiate’s foil, which stopped him in the middle of his fury, and which he had to kiss as if it were a relic, though not as devotedly as relics should be kissed, and usually are.

Finally, the licentiate’s lunges accounted for all the buttons on the short cassock the bachelor was wearing and slashed its skirts into the arms of an octopus; twice he knocked off his hat, and tired him so much that in fury, anger, and rage the bachelor seized his foil by the hilt and threw it into the air with so much force that one of the peasants, who was a notary, went to retrieve it and subsequently testified that it had flown almost three-quarters of a league, and this testimony serves and has served to demonstrate and prove the truth that force is vanquished by art.

Corchuelo sat down, exhausted, and Sancho approached him and said:

“By my faith, Señor Bachelor, if your grace will take my advice, from now on you won’t challenge anybody to a duel, but to wrestling or hurling the bar, since you’re young enough and strong enough for that, because I’ve heard that the ones they call master swordsmen can put the tip of their sword through the eye of a needle.”

“I’m happy,” responded Corchuelo, “that I fell off my high horse, and that experience has shown me a truth I refused to acknowledge.”

And, standing up, he embraced the licentiate, and they were better friends than before; and not wanting to wait for the notary who had gone after the foil because it seemed it would take too long, they resolved to continue on their way in order to reach Quiteria’s village early, for that is where all of them were from.

For the rest of their journey the licentiate told them about the excellencies of the sword, with so many demonstrations and figures and mathematical proofs that all of them were well-informed regarding the virtues of the science, and Corchuelo’s obstinacy was overcome.

It was dusk, but before they arrived it seemed to everyone that the village sky was filled with innumerable brilliant stars. They also heard the sweet, confused sounds of various instruments, such as flutes, tambors, psalteries, flageolets, tambourines, and timbrels, and when they came close they saw that a bower of trees, erected at the entrance to the village, was filled with lights, which were not disturbed by the wind that was blowing so gently it did not have the strength to move the leaves on the trees. The musicians were the entertainers at the wedding, and in various bands they wandered around that pleasant spot, some of them dancing, others singing, and still others playing the variety of aforementioned instruments. In fact, it seemed that in the meadow joy was dancing and happiness leaping.

Many other people were busy raising platforms where, on the following day, plays and dances could be comfortably viewed when they were performed in that place dedicated to solemnizing the marriage of rich Camacho and the funeral rites of Basilio. Don Quixote did not want to enter the village, though both the peasant and the bachelor asked him to, but he gave as an excuse, which seemed more than sufficient to him, that it was the custom of knights errant to sleep in fields and forests rather than in towns, even under gilded ceilings; and saying this, he went a little way off the road, much against the will of Sancho, who remembered the fine accommodations he had enjoyed in the castle or house of Don Diego.