Chapter XXIV. In which the adventure of the Sierra Morena is continued

The history says that very great was the attention with which Don Quixote listened to the ragged Knight of the Sierra, who, going on with his talk, said:

“Truly, sir, whoever you may be, for I do not know you, I thank you for the tokens of goodwill and the courtesy you have shown me; and I would wish to find myself in such a state that I could repay with more than goodwill the goodwill you have shown me by the kind welcome you have given me, but my fortune will not give me anything with which to answer the good deeds done me except good wishes to repay them.”

“Mine,” answered Don Quixote, “are to serve you; so much so that I had resolved not to leave these mountains until I had found you and learned from you whether for the grief you show by the strangeness of your life some kind of remedy could be found; and, if it were necessary to seek it, to seek it with all possible diligence. And, if your misfortune should be one of those that have their doors shut to every kind of consolation, I meant to help you weep and lament it as best I could, for it is still a consolation in misfortunes to find someone who grieves over them. And, if my good intention deserves to be thanked with some kind of courtesy, I beg you, sir, by the great courtesy I see is lodged in you, and at the same time I adjure you by whatever thing you have most loved or love in this life, to tell me who you are and what cause has brought you to live and to die in these solitudes like a brute beast, since you dwell among the beasts so estranged from yourself as your dress and person show. And I swear,” added Don Quixote, “by the order of chivalry I received, though unworthy and a sinner, and by my profession of knight-errant, that if you will gratify me in this, sir, I will serve you with all the earnestness that being who I am obliges me to: either remedying your misfortune, if it has a remedy, or helping you to weep over it, as I have promised you.”

The Knight of the Wood, hearing the one of the Sorry Figure speak in this way, did nothing but look at him, and look him over, and look at him again from head to foot; and, after he had looked at him well, he said to him:

“If you have anything to give me to eat, for the love of God give it to me, for after I have eaten I will do everything I am asked, in gratitude for such good wishes as have been shown me here.”

Then Sancho from his sack and the goatherd from his pouch brought out food, with which the Ragged One satisfied his hunger, eating what they gave him like a dazed man, so fast that he left no space between one mouthful and the next, for he wolfed them down rather than swallowed them; and while he was eating, neither he nor those watching him spoke a word. When he had finished eating, he made signs to them to follow him, as they did, and he led them to a green little meadow that lay around the turn of a rock a short way off. On reaching it he stretched himself out on the ground, on the grass, and the others did the same; and all this without any of them speaking, until the Ragged One, after settling himself in his place, said:

“If you wish, gentlemen, for me to tell you in brief words the immensity of my misfortunes, you must promise me that with no question, nor anything else, will you break the thread of my sad story; for at the very point where you do so, there what I am telling will stop.”

These words of the Ragged One brought to Don Quixote’s memory the story his squire had told him, when he did not hit on the number of goats that had crossed the river and the tale was left hanging. But, to return to the Ragged One, he went on to say:

“I give this warning because I would like to pass quickly through the account of my misfortunes; for calling them to mind serves me for nothing but to add new ones, and the less you ask me, the sooner I shall finish telling them, though I will not leave untold anything of importance, so as to satisfy your desire entirely.”

Don Quixote promised it in the name of the rest, and he, with this assurance, began in this way:

“My name is Cardenio; my homeland, one of the best cities of this Andalusia; my lineage, noble; my parents, wealthy; my misfortune, such that my parents must have mourned it and my lineage felt it, without being able to lighten it with their wealth; for the goods of fortune are seldom of much avail in remedying the misfortunes sent by heaven. In this same land there lived a heaven, where love set every glory I could ever have wished for myself: such is Luscinda’s beauty, a damsel of no less birth and wealth than mine, but of greater good fortune and of less constancy than my honorable intentions deserved. This Luscinda I loved, cherished, and adored from my tender earliest years, and she loved me with that simplicity and good heart her few years allowed. Our parents knew of our intentions, and it did not grieve them, for they saw well that, if they went further, they could have no other end than our marriage, a thing almost arranged already by the equality of our lineage and wealth. We grew older, and with our age grew the love of both of us, so that it seemed to Luscinda’s father that for good reasons he was obliged to deny me entry to his house, in this almost imitating the parents of that Thisbe so much sung by the poets. And this denial was to add flame to flame and desire to desire, because, though they put silence on our tongues, they could not put it on our pens, which, with more freedom than tongues, are wont to give whom they will to understand what is locked up in the soul; for often the presence of the beloved thing troubles and strikes dumb the most resolute intent and the boldest tongue. Ah, heavens, and how many notes I wrote her! What sweet and modest answers I had! How many songs I composed and how many love verses, in which the soul declared and set forth its feelings, painted its burning desires, fed its memories, and refreshed its will!

“In effect, finding myself hard pressed, and my soul consuming itself with the desire to see her, I resolved to put into action and finish at a stroke what seemed to me most fitting to win the prize I longed for and deserved; and it was to ask her father for her as my lawful wife, as I did; to which he answered me that he thanked me for the wish I showed to honor him and to wish to honor myself with what was his, but that, my father being alive, it fell to him by just right to make that request; for, if it were not with his full will and pleasure, Luscinda was not a woman to be taken or given by stealth.

“I thanked him for his good intention, for it seemed to me he was right in what he said, and that my father would agree to it as soon as I told him; and with this intention, then and there, I went to tell my father what I wished. And when I came into a room where he was, I found him holding a letter, opened, and before I had spoken a word he handed it to me and said: ‘By that letter you will see, Cardenio, the wish Duke Ricardo has to do you a favor.’ This Duke Ricardo, as you gentlemen must know already, is a grandee of Spain who has his estate in the best part of this Andalusia. I took the letter and read it, and it came so urgently worded that I myself thought it would be wrong if my father failed to do what was asked of him in it, which was that he should send me at once to where the duke was; that he wanted me to be the companion, not the servant, of his eldest son, and that he took it on himself to set me in a position that would answer to the esteem in which he held me. I read the letter and was struck dumb as I read it, and all the more when I heard my father say to me: ‘Two days from now you shall set out, Cardenio, to do the duke’s will; and give thanks to God, who is opening a way for you by which you may attain what I know you deserve.’ To these he added other words of a father giving counsel. The time for my departure came, I spoke one night with Luscinda, I told her all that was happening, and I did the same with her father, begging him to wait a few days and put off giving her in marriage until I saw what Ricardo wanted of me. He promised it to me, and she confirmed it with a thousand oaths and a thousand swoons. I came, in the end, to where Duke Ricardo was. I was so well received and treated by him that envy at once began to do its work, the old servants envying me, for it seemed to them that the signs the duke gave of favoring me must be to their prejudice. But the one who was most glad at my coming was a second son of the duke’s, called Fernando, a gallant young man, a gentleman, generous and amorous, who in a short time wanted me to be so much his friend that it gave everyone something to talk about; and, although the eldest liked me well and showed me favor, it did not come to the extreme with which Don Fernando liked and treated me.

“The fact is, then, that, since between friends there is no secret thing that is not shared, and the favor I enjoyed with Don Fernando had ceased to be favor by becoming friendship, he declared all his thoughts to me, especially one of love, which kept him somewhat restless. He loved a farmer’s daughter, a vassal of his father’s (and her parents were very rich), and she was so beautiful, modest, sensible, and virtuous that no one who knew her could decide in which of these things she was most excellent or most surpassed others. These fine qualities of the beautiful farmer’s daughter brought Don Fernando’s desires to such a pass that he resolved, in order to attain his end and conquer the farmer’s daughter’s virtue, to give her his word to be her husband, for otherwise it was to attempt the impossible. I, bound by his friendship, with the best reasons I knew and the liveliest examples I could, tried to hinder him and turn him from such a purpose. But, seeing that it did no good, I resolved to tell the matter to Duke Ricardo, his father. But Don Fernando, being astute and shrewd, suspected and feared this, for it seemed to him that, as a good servant, I was obliged not to keep hidden a thing so much to the prejudice of my lord the duke’s honor; and so, to divert and deceive me, he told me he found no better remedy for being able to put out of his memory the beauty that held him so subject than to go away for some months; and that he wanted the absence to be that the two of us should come to my father’s house, on the pretext, which they would give the duke, that he was coming to see and buy some very fine horses there were in my city, which is the mother of the best in the world.

“Scarcely did I hear him say this when, moved by my own love, even if his decision had not been so good, I would have approved it as one of the wisest that could be imagined, seeing what a good occasion and opportunity offered itself to me of seeing my Luscinda again. With this thought and desire, I approved his opinion and strengthened his purpose, telling him to put it into action as soon as possible, because, in effect, absence did its work in spite of the firmest thoughts. By the time he came to tell me this, as was learned afterward, he had already enjoyed the farmer’s daughter under the title of husband, and was waiting for a chance to reveal himself in safety, afraid of what the duke his father would do when he learned of his folly.

“It happened, then, that, since love in young men is for the most part not love but appetite, which, as it has pleasure for its final end, comes to an end on attaining it, and what seemed to be love must turn back, because it cannot go beyond the limit that nature set it, which limit nature did not set to what is true love… I mean that, as soon as Don Fernando had enjoyed the farmer’s daughter, his desires were appeased and his ardor cooled; and if at first he pretended to want to go away to cure them, now he truly tried to go so as not to carry them out. The duke gave him leave, and ordered me to go with him. We came to my city, my father received him as befitted who he was; I saw Luscinda at once, and my desires came back to life, though they had not been dead or deadened, and of them I gave an account, to my misfortune, to Don Fernando, for it seemed to me that, by the law of the great friendship he showed, I ought to hide nothing from him. I praised Luscinda’s beauty, grace, and wit to him in such a way that my praises stirred in him the desire to see a damsel adorned with so many fine qualities. I satisfied it, to my ill luck, by showing her to him one night, by the light of a candle, at a window where the two of us used to talk. He saw her in a plain house dress, and such that she made him forget all the beauties he had seen until then. He was struck dumb, lost his senses, was rapt, and, in short, became as much in love as you will see as the tale of my misfortune goes on. And to fan his desire further, which he hid from me and revealed to heaven alone, fortune willed that he should find one day a note of hers begging me to ask her father for her as my wife, so sensible, so modest, and so loving that, on reading it, he told me that in Luscinda alone were contained all the graces of beauty and understanding that were divided among all the other women in the world.

“True it is that I wish to confess now that, though I saw with what just cause Don Fernando praised Luscinda, it grieved me to hear those praises from his mouth, and I began to fear and mistrust him, because not a moment went by in which he did not want us to talk of Luscinda, and he would bring up the subject even if he had to drag it in by the hair; a thing that woke in me I do not know what of jealousy, not because I feared any turn for the worse in Luscinda’s goodness and faith, but, for all that, my fate made me fear the very thing she assured me of. Don Fernando always tried to read the papers I sent Luscinda and those she sent me in answer, on the ground that he took great pleasure in the wit of us both. It happened, then, that, Luscinda having asked me for a book of chivalry to read, of which she was very fond, which was the one of Amadís of Gaul…”

No sooner had Don Quixote heard a book of chivalry named than he said: “Had your grace only told me, at the beginning of your story, that her grace the lady Luscinda was fond of books of chivalry, no other praise would have been needed to make me understand the loftiness of her understanding, for she could not have so good a one as you, sir, have painted for us, if she lacked a taste for such delightful reading: so, as far as I am concerned, there is no need to spend more words in setting forth to me her beauty, worth, and understanding; for, by merely having learned of her fondness, I confirm her as the most beautiful and most sensible woman in the world. And I could wish, sir, that your grace had sent her, together with Amadís of Gaul, the good Don Rugel of Greece, for I know the lady Luscinda would have greatly enjoyed Daraida and Geraya, and the witty sayings of the shepherd Darinel and those admirable verses of his eclogues, sung and performed by him with all grace, wit, and ease. But a time may come when that fault is amended, and the amending need take no longer than it takes your grace to be pleased to come with me to my village, for there I shall be able to give you upward of three hundred books, the joy of my soul and the pastime of my life; though it is my belief that I have none left now, thanks to the malice of wicked and envious enchanters. And forgive me, your grace, for having gone against what we promised, not to interrupt your talk, for, on hearing of matters of chivalry and of knights-errant, it is as much in my power to stop talking of them as it is in the power of the sun’s rays to stop giving heat, or of the moon’s to stop giving moisture. So, pardon me, and go on, for that is what matters most now.”

While Don Quixote was saying what has been set down, Cardenio’s head had dropped onto his chest, and he gave signs of being deep in thought. And, though Don Quixote twice told him to go on with his story, he neither raised his head nor answered a word; but at the end of a good while he raised it and said:

“It cannot be taken out of my head, nor will there be anyone in the world to take it out, nor anyone to make me understand otherwise (and a blockhead he would be who understood or believed the contrary), but that that great rogue Master Elisabat was living in sin with Queen Madésima.”

“That, no, I swear!” answered Don Quixote in great anger (and he flung it at him, as was his custom). “And that is a very great slander, or a piece of villainy, to put it better: Queen Madásima was a very great lady, and it is not to be presumed that so high a princess would live in sin with a quack who cured ruptures; and whoever understands the contrary lies like a very great villain. And I will make him understand it, on foot or mounted, in armor or without it, by night or by day, or in whatever way he likes best.”

Cardenio was looking at him very intently, for the fit of his madness had now come over him and he was in no state to continue his tale; nor, for that matter, would Don Quixote have heard it out, so much had what he had heard of Madásima displeased him. A strange thing, that he should take her part as if she were truly his true and natural lady: such a hold had his excommunicated books on him! I say, then, that, since Cardenio was now mad and heard himself called a liar and a villain, with other such insults, he did not like the jest, and he picked up a stone that he found beside him and struck Don Quixote such a blow on the chest with it that it knocked him over on his back. Sancho Panza, seeing his master treated in such a way, went at the madman with his fist clenched; and the Ragged One received him in such a way that with one punch he laid him at his feet, and then got on top of him and pounded his ribs very much to his own satisfaction. The goatherd, who tried to defend him, ran the same risk. And, after he had them all beaten and battered, he left them and went off, very calmly, to hide in the mountains.

Sancho got up, and, in the rage he was in at seeing himself pummeled so undeservedly, went to take his revenge on the goatherd, telling him it was his fault for not having warned them that this man was seized by madness at times; for, if they had known it, they would have been on their guard so as to protect themselves. The goatherd answered that he had told them already, and that if Sancho had not heard it, the fault was not his. Sancho Panza replied, and the goatherd replied again, and the end of the replies was that they seized each other by the beard and traded such punches that, had Don Quixote not stepped in to make peace, they would have torn each other to pieces. Sancho said, as he grappled with the goatherd:

“Let me go, your grace, Sir Knight of the Sorry Figure, for with this fellow, who’s a peasant like me and not dubbed a knight, I can very well and safely take satisfaction for the wrong he’s done me, fighting him hand to hand, like an honest man.”

“That is so,” said Don Quixote, “but I know he is not at all to blame for what has happened.”

With this he pacified them, and Don Quixote asked the goatherd again whether it would be possible to find Cardenio, for he was left with a very great desire to know the end of his story. The goatherd told him what he had told him at first, that he did not know for certain where his lair was; but that, if he went about those parts a good deal, he would not fail to find him, either sane or mad.