Chapter VIII. Of the good fortune the valiant Don Quixote had in the fearful and never-imagined adventure of the windmills, with other events worthy of happy remembrance

Just then they came in sight of thirty or forty windmills that stand on that plain; and as soon as Don Quixote saw them, he said to his squire:

“Luck is steering our affairs better than we could have managed to wish; for look over there, Sancho Panza, my friend, where thirty or a few more monstrous giants come into view, with whom I mean to do battle and take all their lives, and with their spoils we shall begin to grow rich; for this is righteous warfare, and it is a great service to God to wipe so evil a breed from the face of the earth.”

“What giants?” said Sancho Panza.

“Those you see there,” answered his master, “with the long arms; some of them have arms nearly two leagues long.”

“Look, your grace,” answered Sancho, “those things showing over there are not giants but windmills, and what look like arms on them are the sails, which, when the wind turns them, make the millstone go.”

“It is plain to see,” answered Don Quixote, “that you are not schooled in this business of adventures: they are giants; and if you are afraid, get out of the way and go and pray while I enter into fierce and unequal battle with them.”

And, saying this, he set spurs to his horse Rocinante, paying no heed to the shouts of his squire Sancho, who was warning him that what he was going to attack were beyond any doubt windmills and not giants. But he was so set on their being giants that he neither heard the shouts of his squire Sancho nor saw, though he was by now very close, what they were; instead, he went along crying out at the top of his voice:

“Flee not, ye cowards and vile creatures, for it is but a single knight who assails you.”

At this a little wind rose, and the great sails began to move, and when Don Quixote saw this, he said:

“Well, though you wave more arms than the giant Briareus, you shall pay me for it.”

And, saying this, and commending himself with all his heart to his lady Dulcinea, begging her to succor him in such a pass, well covered by his buckler, with his lance in its rest, he charged at Rocinante’s full gallop and fell upon the first mill that stood before him; and as he drove his lance into the sail, the wind whirled it around with such fury that it smashed the lance to pieces, dragging horse and rider after it, and the knight went rolling over the field in a very sorry state. Sancho Panza hurried to help him, as fast as his donkey could run, and when he got there he found that he could not stir, such was the fall Rocinante had taken with him.

“God help me!” said Sancho. “Didn’t I tell your grace to watch what you were doing, that they were only windmills, and nobody could mistake them except someone who had the same sort of thing going around in his head?”

“Peace, Sancho, my friend,” answered Don Quixote, “for the fortunes of war, more than any others, are subject to constant change; all the more so since I believe, and it is the very truth, that the sage Frestón who robbed me of my room and my books has turned these giants into mills to rob me of the glory of defeating them, so great is the enmity he bears me; but in the end, in the very end, his wicked arts will avail him little against the goodness of my sword.”

“God grant it, for He can,” answered Sancho Panza.

And, with Sancho helping him to his feet, he climbed back onto Rocinante, whose shoulder was half out of joint. And, talking over the adventure just past, they followed the road to Puerto Lápice, because there, Don Quixote said, they could not fail to find many and various adventures, since it was a much-traveled place; only he went along much grieved at the loss of his lance; and, speaking of it to his squire, he said:

“I remember having read that a Spanish knight called Diego Pérez de Vargas, having broken his sword in a battle, tore a heavy bough or trunk from an oak, and wrought such havoc with it that day, pounding so many Moors, that he was left with the surname Machuca, the Pounder, and so both he and his descendants were called from that day on Vargas y Machuca. I have told you this because from the first holm oak or oak that comes my way I mean to tear another trunk as stout and good as that one, and I imagine and intend to do such deeds with it that you will count yourself fortunate to have been found worthy to come and see them and to witness things that will scarcely be believed.”

“As God wills,” said Sancho. “I believe it all just as your grace says it; but straighten up a little, for you seem to be riding lopsided, and it must be from the bruising of the fall.”

“That is the truth,” answered Don Quixote, “and if I do not complain of the pain, it is because no knight-errant is allowed to complain of a wound, not even if their guts are spilling out through it.”

“If that’s how it is, I have nothing to say,” answered Sancho, “but God knows I’d be glad to have your grace complain when something hurts you. For my part, I can tell you I’m going to complain of the smallest pain I have, unless this business of not complaining applies to the squires of knights-errant too.”

Don Quixote could not help laughing at his squire’s simplicity; and so he declared to him that he might very well complain however and whenever he liked, with cause or without it, for so far he had read nothing to the contrary in the order of chivalry. Sancho told him to bear in mind that it was time to eat. His master answered that he did not need to for the present; that Sancho might eat whenever he felt like it. With this leave, Sancho settled himself as comfortably as he could on his donkey, and, taking out of the saddlebags what he had put in them, he jogged along behind his master eating at his leisure, and every now and then he tilted up the wineskin with such relish that the most pampered tavern keeper in Málaga might have envied him. And while he went along in this way, taking swig after swig, he did not remember any promise his master had made him, nor did he think it any hardship, but rather a great rest, to go about looking for adventures, however dangerous they might be.

In short, they spent that night among some trees, and from one of them Don Quixote tore a dry branch that could almost serve him as a lance, and he fitted to it the iron head he had taken from the one that had broken. All that night Don Quixote did not sleep, thinking of his lady Dulcinea, to conform to what he had read in his books, where knights spent many sleepless nights in forests and wildernesses, entertained by the memories of their ladies. Sancho Panza did not spend it so, for, as his stomach was full, and not of chicory water, he slept the whole night through in a single sleep; and neither the rays of the sun, which struck him full in the face, nor the song of the birds, which in great numbers and most joyfully greeted the coming of the new day, would have been enough to wake him had his master not called him. On getting up he gave the wineskin a squeeze and found it somewhat leaner than the night before; and his heart was grieved, for it did not seem to him that they were on the way to making good its lack very soon. Don Quixote would not break his fast, because, as has been said, he had taken to sustaining himself on savory memories. They went back to the road to Puerto Lápice that they had begun on, and at about three in the afternoon they came in sight of it.

“Here,” said Don Quixote on seeing it, “we can plunge our hands up to the elbows, brother Sancho Panza, in what they call adventures. But mind that, though you see me in the greatest dangers in the world, you are not to lay hand on your sword to defend me, unless you see that those who attack me are rabble and low people, for in that case you may well help me; but if they should be knights, it is in no way lawful or permitted to you by the laws of chivalry to help me until you are dubbed a knight.”

“Certainly, sir,” answered Sancho, “your grace shall be very well obeyed in this; all the more since I’m a peaceable man by nature and no friend of getting mixed up in brawls and quarrels. It’s true enough that, when it comes to defending my own person, I won’t pay much attention to those laws, since laws divine and human allow everyone to defend himself against anyone who tries to do him harm.”

“I say no less,” answered Don Quixote, “but in this business of helping me against knights, you must keep your natural impulses on a tight rein.”

“I say I’ll do it,” answered Sancho, “and that I’ll keep that commandment as well as I keep Sunday holy.”

While they were talking thus, there appeared on the road two friars of the order of Saint Benedict, mounted on two dromedaries, for the two mules they rode were no smaller. They wore their traveling masks and carried their sunshades. Behind them came a coach, with four or five men on horseback escorting it and two mule boys on foot. In the coach, as was learned afterward, was a Biscayan lady on her way to Seville, where her husband was, who was going over to the Indies with a very honorable post. The friars were not traveling with her, though they were going the same way; but no sooner did Don Quixote catch sight of them than he said to his squire:

“Either I am mistaken, or this is to be the most famous adventure ever seen; for those black shapes that appear there must be, and no doubt are, enchanters who are carrying off some princess they have stolen in that coach, and I must undo this wrong with all my might.”

“This will be worse than the windmills,” said Sancho. “Look, sir, those are friars of Saint Benedict, and the coach must belong to some travelers. Look, I tell you, look well at what you’re doing, in case it’s the devil leading you astray.”

“I have told you already, Sancho,” answered Don Quixote, “that you know little of matters of adventure; what I say is true, and now you shall see it.”

And, saying this, he rode forward and planted himself squarely in the friars’ path, in the middle of the road, and when they were so close that it seemed to him they could hear what he said, he cried out in a loud voice:

“Devilish and monstrous crew, release at once, this very instant, the high princesses you are carrying off by force in that coach; if not, prepare to receive swift death as the just punishment of your evil deeds.”

The friars drew rein and stood amazed, as much at Don Quixote’s figure as at his words, to which they answered:

“Sir knight, we are neither devilish nor monstrous, but two monks of Saint Benedict going our own way, and we do not know whether or not there are any princesses carried off by force in this coach.”

“No soft words for me, for I know you already, perfidious rabble,” said Don Quixote.

And, without waiting for any further answer, he spurred Rocinante and, with his lance lowered, charged at the first friar with such fury and daring that, had the friar not let himself fall off his mule, the knight would have brought him to the ground against his will, and badly wounded too, if not dead. The second monk, seeing how they were treating his companion, set his heels to the flanks of his good mule, a very castle of a beast, and began to race across the countryside, faster than the wind itself.

Sancho Panza, seeing the friar on the ground, slid nimbly off his donkey, rushed at him, and began to strip him of his habit. At this two of the friars’ servants came up and asked him why he was undressing him. Sancho answered that this belonged to him by right, as the spoils of the battle his master Don Quixote had won. The servants, who knew nothing of jokes and did not understand this talk of spoils and battles, seeing that Don Quixote had by now moved off and was talking to the people in the coach, fell upon Sancho and knocked him down; and, leaving not a hair in his beard, they kicked him black and blue and left him stretched on the ground without breath or senses. And without a moment’s delay the friar mounted again, all frightened and cowed and with no color in his face; and when he found himself in the saddle, he spurred after his companion, who was waiting for him a good distance off to see how this alarm would end; and, not caring to wait for the end of this whole affair now begun, they went on their way, crossing themselves more than if they had the devil at their backs.

Don Quixote, as has been said, was talking to the lady in the coach, saying to her:

“Your beauteousness, my lady, may do with her person as best suits her pleasure, for the pride of your ravishers now lies upon the ground, overthrown by this my mighty arm; and that you may not be troubled to learn who has delivered you, know that my name is Don Quixote of La Mancha, knight-errant and adventurer, captive of the peerless and beautiful Doña Dulcinea del Toboso; and in payment for the benefit ye have received from me, I ask nothing else than that you return to El Toboso and present yourself on my behalf before this lady and tell her what I have wrought for your freedom.”

All that Don Quixote was saying was overheard by one of the squires escorting the coach, who was a Biscayan; and he, seeing that the knight would not let the coach go forward but was saying that it must turn back at once to El Toboso, went up to Don Quixote and, seizing his lance, spoke to him in bad Castilian and worse Biscayan, in this fashion:

“Go, knight, and bad go you; by the God that made me, if coach not you leave, so you kill yourself as here you Biscayan are.”

Don Quixote understood him very well, and answered him very calmly:

“If you were a knight, as you are not, I would already have punished your folly and insolence, you wretched creature.”

To which the Biscayan replied:

“I no knight? I swear to God, so much you lie as Christian. If lance you throw and sword you draw, the water how quick you see that to the cat you carry! Biscayan by land, hidalgo by sea, hidalgo by the devil; and you lie, look, if other thing you say.”

“‘Now shall ye see,’ said Agrajes!” answered Don Quixote.

And, flinging his lance to the ground, he drew his sword, slipped the buckler onto his arm, and went for the Biscayan, determined to take his life. The Biscayan, seeing him come on in this way, though he would have liked to get down from his mule, which, being one of those wretched hired ones, was not to be trusted, could do nothing but draw his sword; but it served him well that he was right beside the coach, and could pull a cushion out of it to use as a shield, and then they went at each other as if they had been two mortal enemies. The rest of the people would have liked to make peace between them, but they could not, because the Biscayan said in his ill-strung words that if they did not let him finish his battle, he himself would kill his mistress and anyone who got in his way. The lady in the coach, amazed and frightened by what she saw, had the coachman draw off a little way, and from a distance she began to watch the fierce contest, in the course of which the Biscayan dealt Don Quixote a great slash on one shoulder, above the buckler, which, had it landed on him unguarded, would have split him to the waist. Don Quixote, feeling the heaviness of that monstrous blow, gave a great cry, saying:

“O lady of my soul, Dulcinea, flower of beauteousness, succor this your knight, who, to satisfy your great goodness, finds himself in this harsh ordeal!”

To say this, and to grip his sword, and to cover himself well with his buckler, and to charge the Biscayan, were all one; and he went resolved to stake everything on the fortune of a single blow.

The Biscayan, seeing him coming at him in this way, understood well enough from his boldness how furious he was, and resolved to do the same as Don Quixote; and so he awaited him, well covered by his cushion, unable to turn his mule to one side or the other, for by now, from sheer weariness and not being used to such childish games, it could not take another step.

On came Don Quixote, then, as has been said, against the wary Biscayan, with his sword raised high, determined to split him in two, and the Biscayan awaited him, his sword likewise raised and padded behind his cushion, and all the bystanders were fearful and hanging on what was to come of the mighty blows with which the two were threatening each other; and the lady in the coach and her other maids were vowing a thousand vows and promising offerings to every image and house of devotion in Spain, so that God might deliver their squire and themselves from the great danger in which they found themselves.

But the trouble with all this is that at this very point and juncture the author of this history leaves the battle hanging, excusing himself on the ground that he found nothing more written of these exploits of Don Quixote than those he has related. It is true that the second author of this work would not believe that so curious a history had been handed over to the laws of oblivion, or that the wits of La Mancha had been so incurious as not to keep in their archives or their desks some papers that dealt with this famous knight; and so, with this thought in mind, he did not despair of finding the end of this pleasant history, which, heaven favoring him, he found in the way that will be told in the second part.