Chapter IV. Of what befell our knight when he left the inn

It must have been about daybreak when Don Quixote left the inn, so pleased, so gallant, so elated at seeing himself dubbed a knight at last that his joy was bursting through his horse’s girths. But, remembering his host’s advice about the necessary provisions he ought to carry with him, especially money and shirts, he decided to return home and furnish himself with everything, and with a squire as well, counting on taking on a farmer who was a neighbor of his, a poor man with children, but very well suited to the squirely office of chivalry. With this thought he turned Rocinante toward his village, and the horse, as if he knew the way to his own stall, set off so eagerly that he hardly seemed to set his hooves on the ground.

He had not gone far when it seemed to him that from the thick of a wood that stood there on his right hand came some faint cries, as of someone in distress; and scarcely had he heard them when he said:

“I give thanks to heaven for the favor it does me, since it so soon sets before me occasions where I may fulfill what I owe to my profession and gather the fruit of my good desires. These cries, beyond a doubt, come from some man or woman in need, who stands in need of my favor and aid.”

And, turning his reins, he steered Rocinante toward where the cries seemed to come from. And a few paces into the wood he saw a mare tethered to one oak and, bound to another, a boy of about fifteen, naked from the waist up, who was the one crying out; and not without cause, for a farmer of sturdy build was giving him a great many lashes with a belt, and every lash he accompanied with a rebuke and a piece of advice. For he was saying:

“Tongue still and eyes sharp.”

And the boy answered:

“I won’t do it again, master; by the Passion of God, I won’t do it again; and I promise to take more care of the flock from now on.”

And Don Quixote, seeing what was going on, said in an angry voice:

“Discourteous knight, it ill becomes you to take on one who cannot defend himself; mount your horse and take up your lance”—for the farmer too had a lance leaning against the oak where the mare was tethered—“for I will make you see that what you are doing is the deed of a coward.”

The farmer, seeing that figure loaded with armor looming over him and brandishing the lance in his face, gave himself up for dead, and answered with fair words:

“Sir knight, this boy I am punishing is a servant of mine, who works for me watching a flock of sheep I keep in these parts, and he is so careless that every day I am missing one; and because I punish his carelessness, or his roguery, he says I do it out of stinginess, so as not to pay him the wages I owe him, and by God and my soul, he lies.”

“‘Lies,’ in my presence, you base peasant?” said Don Quixote. “By the sun that gives us light, I have half a mind to run you through and through with this lance. Pay him at once and without another word; if not, by the God who governs us, I will put an end to you and annihilate you this very moment. Untie him at once.”

The farmer hung his head and, without answering a word, untied his servant, whom Don Quixote asked how much his master owed him. He said nine months, at seven reales a month. Don Quixote did the sum and found that it came to seventy-three reales, and he told the farmer to pay them out on the spot, unless he wanted to die for it. The frightened peasant answered that, by the plight he was in and the oath he had sworn—and he had not yet sworn anything—it was not so much, because he had to deduct and take into account three pairs of shoes he had given the boy and a real for two bleedings he had been given when he was sick.

“That is all very well,” replied Don Quixote, “but let the shoes and the bleedings stand against the lashes you have given him for no fault of his; for if he wore through the hide of the shoes you paid for, you have torn the hide of his body; and if the barber drew blood from him when he was sick, you have drawn it from him in health; so that on this account he owes you nothing.”

“The trouble is, sir knight, that I have no money here: let Andrés come home with me, and I will pay him every real, one on top of the other.”

“Me go with him?” said the boy. “Not on your life! No, sir, not for a moment; for once he has me alone he’ll flay me like a Saint Bartholomew.”

“He will do no such thing,” replied Don Quixote. “My command is enough to make him respect me; and provided he swears it to me by the law of chivalry he has received, I will let him go free and will answer for the payment.”

“Mind what your grace is saying, sir,” said the boy, “for this master of mine is no knight, nor has he received any order of chivalry; he is Juan Haldudo the Rich, who lives in Quintanar.”

“That matters little,” answered Don Quixote, “for there may be Haldudos who are knights; all the more so since every man is the son of his own deeds.”

“That’s true,” said Andrés, “but this master of mine, what deeds is he the son of, when he refuses me my wages and my sweat and toil?”

“I do not refuse, brother Andrés,” answered the farmer, “and be so good as to come with me, for I swear by all the orders of chivalry there are in the world to pay you, as I have said, every real, one on top of the other, and perfumed into the bargain.”

“I excuse you the perfuming,” said Don Quixote. “Give them to him in reales, and with that I am content; and see that you fulfill it as you have sworn; if not, by that same oath I swear to come back and seek you out and punish you, and I shall find you, even if you hide better than a lizard. And if you would know who commands you this, so as to be more truly bound to fulfill it, know that I am the valiant Don Quixote of La Mancha, the undoer of grievances and injustices; God keep you, and let not what was promised and sworn depart from your mind, on pain of the penalty pronounced.”

And, saying this, he spurred his Rocinante, and in a short while he had left them behind. The farmer followed him with his eyes, and when he saw that he had passed out of the wood and was no longer to be seen, he turned to his servant Andrés and said to him:

“Come here, my son, I mean to pay you what I owe, just as that undoer of grievances left me ordered.”

“I swear you will,” said Andrés, “and how right your grace will be to obey that good knight’s command, and may he live a thousand years; for, valiant as he is and as good a judge, by Saint Roque, if you don’t pay me, he’ll come back and do what he said!”

“I swear it too,” said the farmer, “but because I’m so very fond of you, I want to increase the debt so as to increase the payment.”

And, seizing him by the arm, he tied him to the oak again, where he gave him so many lashes that he left him for dead.

“Now, Señor Andrés,” the farmer was saying, “call on the undoer of grievances, and you’ll see how he doesn’t undo this one; though I don’t think it’s quite done yet, for I have half a mind to flay you alive, just as you feared.”

But in the end he did untie him, and let him go off in search of his judge, so that he might carry out the sentence pronounced. Andrés went off rather sullen, swearing he would go and seek out the valiant Don Quixote of La Mancha and tell him point by point what had happened, and that his master would have to pay for it sevenfold. But, for all that, he went off weeping, and his master stayed behind laughing.

And in this manner the valiant Don Quixote undid the wrong; and he, delighted with what had happened, thinking he had made a most happy and lofty beginning to his deeds of chivalry, rode on toward his village with great satisfaction in himself, saying under his breath:

“Well may you call yourself fortunate above all women who live on the earth today, O fairest of the fair, Dulcinea del Toboso! since it fell to your lot to hold subject and surrendered to your every will and pleasure so valiant and so renowned a knight as is and shall be Don Quixote of La Mancha, who, as the whole world knows, received the order of knighthood yesterday and today hath undone the greatest wrong and injury that unreason ever devised or cruelty committed: today he struck the whip from the hand of that pitiless foe who so causelessly was flogging that tender child.”

At this point he came to a road that divided four ways, and at once there came to his imagination the crossroads where knights-errant would stop to consider which of those roads they should take; and, to imitate them, he stood still for a while; and after thinking it over very carefully, he slackened Rocinante’s rein, leaving his own will to the will of the nag, who followed his first intention, which was to head for his own stable.

And when he had gone about two miles, Don Quixote caught sight of a large company of people, who, as was learned afterward, were some merchants of Toledo on their way to buy silk in Murcia. There were six of them, and they came with their sunshades, along with four servants on horseback and three mule boys on foot. Scarcely had Don Quixote made them out when he imagined this to be the stuff of a new adventure; and, so as to imitate in everything he thought possible the episodes he had read in his books, it seemed to him that one he had in mind to perform fit the case exactly. And so, with a gallant bearing and resolve, he planted himself firmly in the stirrups, gripped his lance, brought his leather shield up to his breast, and, posted in the middle of the road, stood waiting for those knights-errant to come up, for such he already took and judged them to be; and when they had come within seeing and hearing distance, Don Quixote raised his voice and with an arrogant air said:

“Let all the world stand fast, unless all the world confess that in all the world there is no damsel more beautiful than the Empress of La Mancha, the peerless Dulcinea del Toboso.”

The merchants halted at the sound of these words, and to look at the strange figure of the man who spoke them; and from the figure and from the words they saw at once that their owner was mad; but they wanted to see at leisure where this confession they were asked for would lead, and one of them, who was something of a joker and exceedingly sharp-witted, said to him:

“Sir knight, we do not know who this good lady you speak of may be; show her to us, for if she is as beautiful as you make out, we will gladly and without any pressure confess the truth that you ask of us.”

“If I were to show her to you,” replied Don Quixote, “what merit would there be in your confessing a truth so manifest? What matters is that you must believe it without seeing her, and confess, affirm, swear, and defend it; and if not, you shall do battle with me, monstrous and arrogant crew that you are. For whether you come one at a time, as the order of chivalry requires, or all together, as is the custom and evil practice of those of your breed, here I await and abide you, trusting in the right I have on my side.”

“Sir knight,” replied the merchant, “I beseech your grace, in the name of all these princes here present, that, so that we may not load our consciences by confessing something none of us has ever seen or heard of, and something, what is more, so prejudicial to the empresses and queens of the Alcarria and of Extremadura, your grace be pleased to show us some portrait of this lady, even if it is no bigger than a grain of wheat; for by the thread we will come to the ball, and with that we will be satisfied and assured, and your grace will be content and paid in full; and indeed I believe we are already so much on her side that, even if her portrait shows us that she is blind in one eye and that the other oozes vermilion and brimstone, for all that, to please your grace, we will say in her favor all that your grace may wish.”

“It does not ooze, you infamous rabble,” answered Don Quixote, blazing with anger, “it does not ooze, I say, what you speak of, but ambergris and civet in cotton wool; and she is not cockeyed or humpbacked, but straighter than a spindle of Guadarrama. But you shall pay for the great blasphemy you have spoken against a beauty as great as my lady’s.”

And, saying this, he charged with lowered lance at the one who had said it, with such fury and rage that, had good luck not caused Rocinante to stumble and fall in the middle of the road, the rash merchant would have fared badly. Down went Rocinante, and his master went rolling a good distance over the ground; and when he tried to get up, he could not manage it, such a hindrance were his lance, leather shield, spurs, and helmet, and the heavy ancient armor besides. And while he struggled to get up and could not, he kept saying:

“Flee not, cowardly folk; wretched folk, abide! for it is not through my fault, but my horse’s, that I lie stretched out here.”

One of the mule boys who came with them, who must not have been very well-meaning, hearing the poor fallen man say so many arrogant things, could not bear it without giving him his answer on the ribs. And, going up to him, he took the lance, and, after breaking it to pieces, began with one of them to give our Don Quixote such a drubbing that, armor or no armor, he ground him like grist. His masters were shouting at him not to beat him so hard and to leave him alone, but the lad’s blood was up by now, and he would not quit the game until he had staked the last of his anger; and, going for the other pieces of the lance, he finished breaking them up on the wretched fallen man, who, for all that storm of blows he saw raining down on him, never shut his mouth, threatening heaven and earth and the miscreants, for such they seemed to him.

The lad tired at last, and the merchants went on their way, carrying with them a tale to tell all along the road about the poor cudgeled man. He, once he saw himself alone, tried again to see whether he could get up; but if he had not been able to do it when sound and well, how was he to do it ground down and all but undone? And still he counted himself lucky, for it seemed to him that this was a misfortune proper to knights-errant, and he blamed it all on his horse; and he could not possibly get up, so bruised was his whole body.