Chapter XXII. Of the freedom Don Quixote gave to a number of unfortunates who, much against their will, were being taken where they would rather not go
Cide Hamete Benengeli, Arab and Manchegan author, tells in this most grave, high-sounding, minute, sweet, and imaginative history that, after the famous Don Quixote of La Mancha and Sancho Panza, his squire, had exchanged the words recorded at the close of chapter twenty-one, Don Quixote lifted his eyes and saw, coming toward him on his road, as many as twelve men on foot, threaded by their necks on a great iron chain like beads on a string, every one of them with manacles on his wrists. Along with them rode two men on horseback, and two more walked, the riders carrying wheel-lock muskets and the walkers javelins and swords; and the moment Sancho Panza saw them, he said:
“This is a chain of galley slaves, people forced by the king, going to the galleys.” “How, people forced?” asked Don Quixote. “Is it possible that the king uses force on anyone?”
“I don’t say that,” answered Sancho, “but that they’re people who, for their crimes, are condemned to serve the king in the galleys by force.”
“In short,” replied Don Quixote, “however it may be, these people, though they are being taken, go by force and not of their own will.”
“That’s so,” said Sancho.
“Then in that case,” said his master, “here the exercise of my office fits in: to undo acts of force and to succor and come to the aid of the wretched.”
“Mind, your grace,” said Sancho, “that justice, which is the king himself, does no force or wrong to people like these, but punishes them for their crimes.”
At this point the chain of galley slaves came up, and Don Quixote, in very courteous terms, asked those who were guarding them to be so good as to inform him and tell him the cause, or causes, for which they were taking those people in that manner. One of the mounted guards replied that they were galley slaves, His Majesty’s people, going to the galleys, and that there was no more to be said, nor was there any more for him to know.
“For all that,” replied Don Quixote, “I should like to learn from each one of them in particular the cause of his misfortune.”
To these he added other words of the same kind, and so civil, to move them to tell him what he wanted, that the other guard on horseback said to him: “Although we have here the record and the certified sentences of every one of these wretches, this is no time to stop and take them out or read them; let your grace go up and ask the men themselves, for they will tell you if they choose, and they will choose, because they’re people who take pleasure in doing and telling roguery.”
With this leave, which Don Quixote would have taken even if they had not given it, he went up to the chain, and asked the first man for what sins he was going in such a sorry plight. He answered that he was going that way for being in love. “For that and no more?” replied Don Quixote. “Why, if they send men to the galleys for being in love, I might long since have been rowing in them.”
“It isn’t the kind of love your grace thinks,” said the galley slave, “for mine was that I loved a basket of washing, crammed full of white linen, so dearly that I hugged it to me so tight that, if the law hadn’t taken it from me by force, I wouldn’t have let go of it of my own will even yet. I was caught in the act, there was no call for torture; the case was closed, they fitted my back out with a hundred, and three solid years of gurapas on top of that, and the job was done.”
“What are gurapas?” asked Don Quixote.
“Gurapas are galleys,” answered the galley slave.
He was a young fellow of about twenty-four years, and he said he was a native of Piedrahíta. Don Quixote asked the same of the second, who did not answer a word, so sad and melancholy was he; but the first answered for him and said:
“This one, sir, is going as a canary; I mean, as a musician and singer.”
“Why,” Don Quixote asked again, “do musicians and singers go to the galleys too?”
“Yes, sir,” answered the galley slave, “for there’s nothing worse than singing in your anguish.”
“On the contrary, I have heard it said,” said Don Quixote, “that he who sings scares away his woes.”
“Here it’s the other way round,” said the galley slave: “he who sings once weeps all his life.”
“I do not understand it,” said Don Quixote.
But one of the guards said to him:
“Sir knight, among these unholy folk, to sing in your anguish means to confess on the rack. This sinner was put to the question and owned up to his crime, which was being a rustler, that is, a thief of livestock, and, because he confessed, he got six years in the galleys, on top of two hundred lashes he already carries on his back. And he goes along always brooding and sad, because the other thieves, those left back there and those who go along here, abuse him and crush him, and mock him and think little of him, because he confessed and hadn’t the courage to say no and keep saying it. For they say that a no has no more letters than a yes, and that a criminal is lucky enough when his life or his death lies on his own tongue and not on the witnesses’ or the proofs; and for my part I don’t think they’re very far off the road.”
“And so I understand it,” answered Don Quixote.
And, moving on to the third, he put to him the same question as to the rest; and he answered quickly and with a great deal of ease, and said:
“I’m going to the lady gurapas for five years for want of ten ducats.” “I will give twenty, and very gladly,” said Don Quixote, “to free you from that grief.”
“That strikes me,” answered the galley slave, “like a man who has money in the middle of the open sea and is dying of hunger with nowhere to buy what he needs. I say this because if I had had those twenty ducats your grace offers me now at the right time, I’d have greased the notary’s quill with them and sharpened the attorney’s wits, so that today I’d see myself in the middle of the Zocodover square in Toledo, and not on this road, leashed like a greyhound; but God is great: patience, and that’s enough.”
Don Quixote passed on to the fourth, who was a man of venerable face with a white beard that came down past his chest; who, on hearing himself asked the cause for which he was there, began to weep and did not answer a word; but the fifth convict served as his tongue, and said:
“This honorable man is going to the galleys for four years, having paraded through the usual streets, dressed in state and on horseback.”
“That is,” said Sancho Panza, “as far as I can see, being put to public shame.”
“So it is,” replied the galley slave, “and the offense for which they gave him this sentence is having been a broker of the ear, and even of the whole body. In effect, I mean that this gentleman is going as a procurer, and for having besides his touch and tinge of the sorcerer.”
“If it were not for that touch and tinge being added,” said Don Quixote, “for being simply a procurer and nothing else, he did not deserve to go and row in the galleys, but rather to command them and be their general; for the office of procurer is no ordinary thing, since it is an office for sensible people and most necessary in a well-ordered commonwealth, and one that should not be practiced except by very wellborn people; and there ought even to be an inspector and examiner of such persons, as there is of other trades, with a fixed and known number of them, like brokers on the exchange; and in this way many evils would be avoided which are caused by this office and occupation going about among idiots and people of little understanding, such as women of no account, little pages, and young buffoons of few years and little experience, who, at the moment of greatest need and when it is necessary to come up with a plan that matters, have the crumbs freeze between mouth and hand, and do not know which is their right hand. I would like to go further and give the reasons why it would be well to make a choice of the persons who are to hold so necessary an office in the commonwealth, but this is not the proper place for it: some day I will tell it to someone who can provide for it and remedy it. I will only say now that the grief it has caused me to see these white hairs and this venerable face in such distress for being a procurer has been taken away by the addition of his being a sorcerer; although I know well that there are no spells in the world that can move and force the will, as some simple folk think; for our free will is free, and there is no herb or charm that can force it. What some silly women and some lying rogues are in the habit of doing is making certain mixtures and poisons with which they drive men mad, making out that they have the power to make people love, it being, as I say, an impossible thing to force the will.” “That’s so,” said the good old man, “and in truth, sir, as for the sorcery, I was not to blame; as for being a procurer, I couldn’t deny it. But I never thought I was doing wrong in it, for my whole intention was that everybody should enjoy themselves and live in peace and quiet, without quarrels or griefs; but this good wish did me no good at all to keep me from going where I don’t expect to come back from, with the years weighing on me and a trouble of the urine I have that won’t let me rest a moment.”
And here he went back to his weeping, as at first; and Sancho felt such pity for him that he took a four-real piece from his bosom and gave it to him as alms.
Don Quixote went on, and asked another man his crime, who answered with no less, but rather with much more swagger than the last:
“I’m here because I had a bit too much fun with two first cousins of mine, and with two other sisters who weren’t mine; in the end I had so much fun with them all that the result of the fun was an increase in the family, so tangled that there’s no devil who could sort it out. It was all proved against me, I had no friends in high places, I had no money, I saw myself on the point of losing my gullet, they sentenced me to the galleys for six years, I accepted: it’s the punishment for my fault; I’m young: let life only last, for with life everything comes within reach. If your grace, sir knight, has anything with you to help these poor fellows, God will repay you in heaven, and we on earth will take care to pray to God for your grace’s life and health, that they may be as long and as good as your fine presence deserves.”
This one was dressed as a student, and one of the guards said he was a very great talker and a very fine Latinist.
Behind all of these came a man of very good looks, thirty years of age, except that when he looked one eye squinted a little toward the other. He was bound differently from the rest, because he had a chain on his foot so long that it was wound around his whole body, and two iron rings at his throat, one on the chain, and the other of the kind they call a keep-friend or friend’s-foot, from which two irons came down to his waist, to which were fastened two manacles, holding his hands, locked with a heavy padlock, so that his hands could not reach his mouth, nor could he bend his head down to reach his hands. Don Quixote asked why that man went with so many more fetters than the others. The guard answered that it was because he alone had more crimes than all the others put together, and that he was so bold and so great a rogue that, although they had him bound in that way, they were not sure of him, but were afraid he would get away from them.
“What crimes can he have,” said Don Quixote, “if they have not deserved more punishment than sending him to the galleys?”
“He’s going for ten years,” replied the guard, “which is like civil death. Ask to know no more than that this good man is the famous Ginés de Pasamonte, who by another name is called Ginesillo de Parapilla.”
“Señor Commissary,” said the galley slave then, “go easy, and let’s not start sorting out names and nicknames now. Ginés is my name and not Ginesillo, and Pasamonte is my family, and not Parapilla, as your worship says; and let each man take a turn around himself, and he’ll have done no small thing.”
“Speak in a lower tone,” replied the commissary, “Señor Thief Beyond Measure, unless you want me to make you hold your tongue, however much it galls you.”
“It’s plain to see,” answered the galley slave, “that a man goes as God pleases, but some day somebody will find out whether I’m called Ginesillo de Parapilla or not.” “Well, don’t they call you that, you liar?” said the guard.
“They do,” answered Ginés, “but I’ll see to it that they don’t call me it, or else I’d pluck myself bald where I say between my teeth. Sir knight, if you have anything to give us, give it to us now, and go with God, for you’re getting tiresome with all this wanting to know other people’s lives; and if you want to know mine, know that I am Ginés de Pasamonte, whose life is written by these thumbs.”
“He tells the truth,” said the commissary, “for he has written his story himself, and no mistake, and he has left the book in pawn in the prison for two hundred reales.” “And I mean to redeem it,” said Ginés, “even if it were in for two hundred ducats.” “Is it so good?” said Don Quixote.
“It’s so good,” answered Ginés, “that it’s a bad year for Lazarillo de Tormes and for all the books of that kind that have been written or ever will be. What I can tell your worship is that it deals with truths, and they’re such fine and such amusing truths that there can be no lies to equal them.”
“And what is the title of the book?” asked Don Quixote.
“The Life of Ginés de Pasamonte,” answered the man himself.
“And is it finished?” asked Don Quixote.
“How can it be finished,” he answered, “if my life isn’t finished yet? What’s written goes from my birth to the point when they sent me to the galleys this last time.”
“Then you have been in them before?” said Don Quixote.
“In the service of God and the king, I’ve been there four years before, and I already know the taste of the biscuit and the bullwhip,” answered Ginés, “and it doesn’t grieve me much to go to them, because there I’ll have time to finish my book, for I still have a great many things to tell, and in the galleys of Spain there’s more leisure than a man would need, though I don’t need much more for what I have to write, because I know it by heart.”
“You seem a clever fellow,” said Don Quixote.
“And an unlucky one,” answered Ginés, “for misfortunes always hound good wits.”
“They hound rogues,” said the commissary.
“I’ve told you already, Señor Commissary,” answered Pasamonte, “to go easy, for those gentlemen didn’t give you that staff for you to ill-treat us poor fellows who go along here, but for you to guide us and take us where His Majesty commands. If not, by the life of… Enough! For it might be that one day the stains that were made at the inn will come out in the wash; and let everybody keep quiet, and live well, and speak better, and let’s get moving, for this has been fun enough.”
The commissary raised his staff high to strike Pasamonte in answer to his threats, but Don Quixote stepped between them and begged him not to mistreat him, since it was no great matter that one who had his hands so tightly bound should have his tongue a little loose. And, turning to all those in the chain, he said: “From all you have told me, dearest brothers, I have made out clearly that, although they have punished you for your faults, the penalties you are going to suffer give you little pleasure, and that you go to them very unwillingly and very much against your will; and that it might be that the little courage that one had under torture, this one’s lack of money, the other’s lack of friends, and, in short, the twisted judgment of the judge, has been the cause of your ruin and of your not coming off with the justice that was on your side. All of which now presents itself to my memory in such a way that it is telling me, persuading me, and even forcing me to show in you the purpose for which heaven flung me into the world and made me profess in it the order of chivalry that I profess, and the vow I made in it to favor the needy and those oppressed by the mighty. But, because I know that one of the parts of prudence is that what can be done by fair means should not be done by foul, I wish to beg these gentlemen, the guards and the commissary, to be so good as to unchain you and let you go in peace, for there will be no lack of others to serve the king on better occasions; for it seems to me a hard thing to make slaves of those whom God and nature made free. All the more, gentlemen guards,” added Don Quixote, “since these poor men have committed no offense against you. Let each one answer for his own sin; there is a God in heaven who does not neglect to punish the wicked or to reward the good, and it is not right that honorable men should be the executioners of other men when they have nothing at stake in it. I ask this with this gentleness and calm so that, if you grant it, I may have something to thank you for; and, if you will not do it willingly, this lance and this sword, with the valor of my arm, will make you do it by force.”
“A fine piece of foolery!” answered the commissary. “A fine joke he’s come out with after all this while! He wants us to let the king’s forced men go, as if we had authority to set them loose or he had it to order us to! Your grace go your way, sir, and good luck to you, and straighten that pot you have on your head, and don’t go looking for three feet on the cat.” “You are the cat, and the rat, and the rogue!” answered Don Quixote. And, no sooner said than done, he attacked him so quickly that, without his having a chance to put himself on guard, he brought him to the ground, badly wounded by a thrust of the lance; and it turned out well for him, for this was the one with the musket. The other guards were astounded and stunned by the unexpected event; but, coming to themselves, those on horseback laid hand to their swords, and those on foot to their javelins, and they charged at Don Quixote, who awaited them with great calm; and he would no doubt have fared badly if the galley slaves, seeing the chance that offered itself to them of gaining their freedom, had not tried for it, trying to break the chain on which they were strung. The confusion was such that the guards, now rushing to the galley slaves, who were getting loose, now attacking Don Quixote, who was attacking them, did nothing that was of any use. Sancho, for his part, helped to free Ginés de Pasamonte, who was the first to spring out into the field free and unencumbered, and, falling on the fallen commissary, he took his sword and musket from him, and with the musket, aiming at one and pointing at another, without ever firing it, he did not leave a guard in the whole field, for they all fled, both from Pasamonte’s musket and from the many stones the galley slaves, now loose, were throwing at them. Sancho was much saddened by this event, because it came to his mind that those who were fleeing would give notice of the affair to the Holy Brotherhood, which would come out with the alarm bells ringing to search for the criminals, and so he told his master, and begged him to leave there at once and hide themselves in the sierra, which was close by.
“That is all very well,” said Don Quixote, “but I know what must be done now.”
And, calling all the galley slaves, who were running about in an uproar and had stripped the commissary to the skin, they all gathered around him to see what he would command them, and he said to them:
“It is the part of wellborn people to be grateful for the benefits they receive, and one of the sins that most offends God is ingratitude. I say this because you have seen already, gentlemen, by plain experience, the one you have received from me; in payment for which I would wish, and it is my will, that, loaded with that chain I took from your necks, you set out at once and go to the city of El Toboso, and there appear before the lady Dulcinea del Toboso and tell her that her knight, he of the Sorry Figure, sends to commend himself to her, and that you relate to her, point by point, every step of this famous adventure until it set you at the freedom you longed for; and, this done, you may go wherever you please, and good fortune go with you.”
Ginés de Pasamonte answered for them all, and said:
“What your grace commands us, sir and liberator of ours, is impossible with every impossibility to carry out, because we can’t go along the roads together, but alone and separate, each one his own way, trying to get into the bowels of the earth so as not to be found by the Holy Brotherhood, which will certainly come out looking for us. What your grace can do, and it’s right that you should do, is change that service and toll to the lady Dulcinea del Toboso into some quantity of Hail Marys and Creeds, which we’ll say for your grace’s intention; and this is something that can be done by night and by day, fleeing or resting, in peace or in war; but to think that we’re to go back now to the fleshpots of Egypt, I mean, to shoulder our chain again and take the road to El Toboso, is to think it’s night now, when it isn’t yet ten in the morning, and to ask that of us is like asking the elm for pears.”
“Then, by heaven, I swear,” said Don Quixote, now roused to anger, “Don Son of a Whore, Don Ginesillo de Paropillo, or whatever you are called, you shall go by yourself, with your tail between your legs and the whole chain loaded on your back.”
Pasamonte, who was not at all long-suffering, being by now well aware that Don Quixote was not very sane, since he had committed such a piece of folly as wanting to give them their freedom, and seeing himself treated in that way, winked at his companions, and, drawing off to one side, they began to rain so many stones on Don Quixote that he could not get his buckler up fast enough to cover himself; and poor Rocinante paid no more heed to the spur than if he had been made of bronze. Sancho got behind his ass, and with him defended himself from the cloud and hailstorm that was raining down on them both. Don Quixote could not shield himself so well but that I do not know how many pebbles struck his body, and so hard that they knocked him to the ground; and he had scarcely fallen when the student was on top of him and took the basin from his head, and gave him three or four blows with it on the back and as many more on the ground, with which he smashed it to pieces. They took from him a short jacket he wore over his armor, and they would have taken his stockings if the greaves had not prevented it. They took Sancho’s coat from him, and, leaving him stripped to his shirt, and sharing out among themselves the rest of the spoils of the battle, they went off each his own way, more concerned with escaping the Brotherhood, whom they feared, than with loading themselves with the chain and going to present themselves before the lady Dulcinea del Toboso.
Alone remained the donkey and Rocinante, Sancho and Don Quixote: the donkey, head down and pensive, shaking his ears from time to time, thinking the storm of stones that was still pursuing his ears had not yet ceased; Rocinante, stretched out beside his master, for he too had come to the ground from another stone; Sancho, stripped to his shirt and fearful of the Holy Brotherhood; Don Quixote, most downcast at seeing himself so mauled by the very men to whom he had done so much good.