Chapter XII. Of what a goatherd told those who were with Don Quixote

While they were at this, another of the lads who brought them their provisions from the village came up and said:

“Do you know what’s happening in the village, friends?”

“How could we know?” answered one of them.

“Well, then, know,” the lad went on, “that this morning that famous student shepherd called Grisóstomo died, and people are whispering that he died of love for that devil of a girl Marcela, the daughter of Guillermo the rich, the one who goes about these wilds dressed as a shepherdess.”

“For Marcela, you mean,” said one.

“For her, I mean,” answered the goatherd. “And the best of it is that he ordered in his will that they should bury him out in the fields, as if he were a Moor, and at the foot of the rock where the spring of the cork oak is; for, as the story goes, and they say he said it himself, that place is where he saw her for the first time. And he ordered other things too, such that the clergy of the village say they mustn’t be carried out, and it isn’t right that they should be, because they sound heathen. To all of which that great friend of his, Ambrosio the student, who dressed up as a shepherd along with him, answers that everything must be carried out, with nothing left out, just as Grisóstomo ordered, and over this the village is in an uproar; but, from what they say, in the end it will be done the way Ambrosio and all the shepherds who are his friends want; and tomorrow they are coming to bury him with great pomp at the place I told you. And I reckon it will be something well worth seeing; at least I won’t fail to go and see it, even if I knew I wouldn’t get back to the village tomorrow.”

“We’ll all do the same,” answered the goatherds, “and we’ll draw lots for who has to stay behind and mind everybody’s goats.”

“You’re right, Pedro,” said one, “though there won’t be any need for that trouble, because I’ll stay for all of you. And don’t put it down to virtue or to any lack of curiosity in me, but to the thorn that went into this foot of mine the other day and won’t let me walk.”

“We thank you all the same,” answered Pedro.

And Don Quixote asked Pedro to tell him what dead man this was and what shepherdess that was; to which Pedro answered that what he knew was that the dead man was a rich hidalgo who lived in a village up in those mountains, who had been a student for many years at Salamanca, at the end of which he had come back to his village with the name of being very wise and very well read.

“Most of all, they said he knew the science of the stars, and of what the sun and the moon get up to, up there in the sky; because he would tell us to the very minute when there would be a clipse of the sun and the moon.”

“Eclipse, my friend, not clipse, is the name for the darkening of those two greater luminaries,” said Don Quixote.

But Pedro, paying no attention to trifles, went on with his tale, saying:

“He could also foretell when the year would be plentiful or stale.”

“Sterile, you mean, my friend,” said Don Quixote.

“Sterile or stale,” answered Pedro, “it all comes to the same in the end. And I say that, from what he told them, his father and his friends, who believed him, got very rich, because they did what he advised them, when he said to them: ‘Sow barley this year, not wheat; this one you can sow chickpeas and not barley; the next will be a bumper year for oil; the three after that you won’t get a drop.’”

“That science is called astrology,” said Don Quixote.

“I don’t know what it’s called,” replied Pedro, “but I know he knew all this, and more besides. In the end, not many months had gone by after he came back from Salamanca when one day he turned up dressed as a shepherd, with his crook and sheepskin jacket, having taken off the long gown he used to wear as a scholar; and along with him another great friend of his, called Ambrosio, who had been his companion in his studies, dressed himself as a shepherd too. I forgot to tell you how Grisóstomo, the dead man, was a great one for making up verses; so much so that he wrote the carols for the night of our Lord’s Nativity and the plays for Corpus Christi, which the lads of our village acted, and everybody said they were first-rate. When the people of the village saw the two scholars so suddenly dressed as shepherds, they were amazed, and couldn’t guess what had moved them to make such a strange change. By this time our Grisóstomo’s father was dead, and he was left heir to a great deal of property, in goods as well as in land, and to no small number of cattle and sheep, and to a great deal of money; of all of which the young man was left dissolute master, and truly he deserved it all, for he was a very good fellow, and charitable, and a friend of good people, and he had a face like a blessing. Later on it came to be understood that his changing his dress had been for no other reason than to go roaming these wilds after that shepherdess Marcela our lad named a while ago, with whom poor Grisóstomo, God rest him, had fallen in love. And now I want to tell you, because it’s right you should know it, who this lass is; maybe, and no maybe about it, you won’t have heard the like in all the days of your life, even if you live more years than sarna, the mange.”

“Say Sarra, Sarah,” replied Don Quixote, unable to bear the goatherd’s swapping of words.

“The mange lives plenty long,” answered Pedro, “and if, sir, you’re going to keep picking at my words at every step, we won’t be done in a year.”

“Forgive me, friend,” said Don Quixote, “for I said it because there is such a difference between sarna and Sarra; but you answered very well, for the mange does live longer than Sarah; so go on with your story, and I will not contradict you again in anything.”

“I say, then, my dear good sir,” said the goatherd, “that in our village there was a farmer even richer than Grisóstomo’s father, who was called Guillermo, and to whom God gave, besides his many great riches, a daughter, in giving birth to whom her mother died, and she was the most respected woman in all these parts. I can almost see her now, with that face of hers that had the sun on one side and the moon on the other; and above all she was hardworking and a friend to the poor, for which I believe her soul must be enjoying God in the other world at this very hour. Out of grief at the death of so good a wife, her husband Guillermo died, leaving his daughter Marcela, young and rich, in the care of an uncle of hers who was a priest and held a benefice in our village. The girl grew up so beautiful that she put us in mind of her mother’s beauty, which was very great; and for all that, people reckoned the daughter’s was going to outdo it. And so it was, for when she came to be fourteen or fifteen, nobody looked at her without blessing God for having made her so lovely, and most of them were left in love with her and lost to her. Her uncle kept her very carefully and very closely shut away; but for all that, the fame of her great beauty spread in such a way that, both for that and for her great wealth, not only the men of our village but those from many leagues around, and the best of them, begged and pleaded with her uncle and pestered him to give her to them for a wife. But he, who is a good Christian through and through, though he would have liked to marry her off right away, as soon as he saw she was of age, did not want to do it without her consent, and he paid no heed to the gain and profit that having the girl’s property in his hands offered him by putting off her marriage. And on my faith, this was said in more than one little circle in the village, in praise of the good priest. For I want you to know, sir errant, that in these small places everything gets talked over and everything gets gossiped about; and you may take it from me, as I take it myself, that the priest must have been far too good who makes his parishioners speak well of him, especially in villages.”

“That is the truth,” said Don Quixote, “and go on, for it is a fine tale, and you, good Pedro, tell it with very good grace.”

“May the Lord’s grace not fail me, for that’s the one that matters. And as for the rest, you must know that, though the uncle laid them before his niece and told her, one by one, what sort of man each was of the many who were asking for her hand, begging her to marry and choose to her liking, she never gave any other answer but that for the time being she did not want to marry, and that, being so young, she did not feel fit to bear the burden of matrimony. With these excuses she gave, which seemed fair enough, her uncle stopped pestering her and waited until she was somewhat older and could choose a companion to her taste. For he said, and said very well, that parents should not set their children in life against their will. But there you have it: when I least expect it, one fine day the dainty Marcela turns up a shepherdess; and though her uncle and everyone in the village tried to talk her out of it, it was no use: she took it into her head to go out to the fields with the other village girls and to tend her own flock. And as soon as she came out in public and her beauty was seen in the open, I couldn’t rightly tell you how many rich young men, hidalgos and farmers, have taken Grisóstomo’s dress and go courting her through these fields. One of them, as has been said already, was our dead man, of whom they said he gave up loving her, and adored her. And don’t let anyone think that because Marcela took up that free and easy life, with so little seclusion, or none, she has given any sign, or the shadow of one, that might count against her modesty and good name; on the contrary, so great and such is the watchfulness with which she guards her honor that of all those who serve and woo her, not one has boasted, or could truthfully boast, that she has given him the smallest hope of getting his desire. For though she doesn’t run from or shun the company and conversation of the shepherds, and treats them courteously and in a friendly way, as soon as any one of them comes to reveal his intentions to her, even if they are as just and holy as those of marriage, she throws him off as if from a catapult. And with this sort of nature she does more harm in this land than if the plague had got into it; because her friendliness and beauty draw the hearts of those who have dealings with her to serve her and love her, but her disdain and her plain dealing bring them to the point of despair; and so they don’t know what to say to her except to call her, out loud, cruel and ungrateful, and other names like that, which show very well what sort of nature she has. And if you were here, sir, some day, you would hear these mountains and these valleys ringing with the laments of the disillusioned men who follow her. Not very far from here there is a spot where there are nearly two dozen tall beeches, and there isn’t one that doesn’t have the name of Marcela carved and written on its smooth bark; and above some of them a crown carved on the same tree, as if her lover were saying more plainly that Marcela wears it and deserves it above all human beauty. Here one shepherd sighs, there another moans; over yonder you hear love songs, over here despairing dirges. There’s one who spends all the hours of the night sitting at the foot of some oak or crag, and there, without closing his weeping eyes, lost and carried away in his thoughts, the sun finds him in the morning; and there’s another who, giving no let or truce to his sighs, in the middle of the heat of the most wearisome summer noon, stretched out on the burning sand, sends his complaints up to merciful heaven. And over this one and that one, and over those and these, the beautiful Marcela triumphs, free and untroubled; and all of us who know her are waiting to see where her haughtiness will end and who is to be the lucky man who will come to tame so terrible a nature and enjoy so extreme a beauty. Since everything I have told is such proven truth, I take it that what our lad said was being said about the cause of Grisóstomo’s death is true as well. And so I advise you, sir, not to fail to be at his burial tomorrow, for it will be well worth seeing, because Grisóstomo has many friends, and it isn’t half a league from this place to the one where he ordered himself buried.”

“I will see to it,” said Don Quixote, “and I thank you for the pleasure you have given me with the telling of so delightful a tale.”

“Oh!” replied the goatherd. “I don’t know the half yet of what has happened to Marcela’s lovers, but it might be that tomorrow we’ll meet some shepherd on the road who’ll tell us. And for now it would be well for you to go and sleep under a roof, for the night dew could do your wound harm, though the medicine they’ve put on you is such that there’s no need to fear any setback.”

Sancho Panza, who by now was sending the goatherd’s endless talk to the devil, pressed his master, for his part, to go in and sleep in Pedro’s hut. He did so, and most of the night he spent in remembrances of his lady Dulcinea, in imitation of Marcela’s lovers. Sancho Panza settled himself between Rocinante and his donkey, and slept, not like a lover out of favor, but like a man kicked to a pulp.