Chapter XXV. Which deals with the strange things that befell the valiant knight of La Mancha in the Sierra Morena, and with his imitation of the penance of Beltenebros

Don Quixote took leave of the goatherd and, mounting Rocinante once more, ordered Sancho to follow him, which Sancho did, with his donkey, very much against his will. Little by little they were making their way into the roughest part of the mountains, and Sancho was dying to talk with his master and wished his master would begin the conversation, so as not to go against what he had been ordered; but, unable to bear so much silence, he said to him:

“Señor Don Quixote, may your grace give me your blessing and your leave, for I want to go home from here, to my wife and my children, and with them at least I’ll talk and chatter all I please; because for your grace to want me to go with you through these wildernesses, day and night, and not talk to you when I feel like it, is burying me alive. If only luck would have the animals talk, the way they talked in the days of Guisopete and his fables, it wouldn’t be so bad, because I could chatter to my donkey about whatever came into my head, and that way I’d get through my bad luck; for it’s a hard thing, and not one a man can bear with patience, to go looking for adventures all your life and find nothing but kicks and blanket-tossings, brickbats and punches, and on top of all that we have to sew our mouths shut, not daring to say what a man has in his heart, as if he were dumb.”

“I understand you now, Sancho,” answered Don Quixote. “You are dying for me to lift the ban I have laid on your tongue. Consider it lifted and say what you like, on condition that this lifting is to last no longer than while we are going through these mountains.”

“So be it,” said Sancho. “Let me talk now, for God knows what will come after; and, beginning to enjoy this safe-conduct, I say: what did it matter to your grace to stand up so hard for that Queen Magimasa, or whatever her name is? Or what did it matter whether that abbot was her lover or not? For if your grace had let it pass, since you weren’t her judge, I truly believe the madman would have gone on with his story, and we’d have been spared the blow from the stone, and the kicks, and even more than half a dozen cuffs.”

“Upon my faith, Sancho,” answered Don Quixote, “if you knew, as I know, how honorable and how great a lady Queen Madásima was, I know you would say I had a great deal of patience, since I did not smash the mouth from which such blasphemies came; for it is a very great blasphemy to say or even think that a queen would be living in sin with a surgeon. The truth of the tale is that this Master Elisabat the madman spoke of was a very prudent man and one of very sound counsel, and he served the queen as tutor and physician; but to think that she was his mistress is nonsense deserving very great punishment. And so that you may see Cardenio did not know what he was saying, you must bear in mind that when he said it he had already lost his wits.”

“That’s what I say,” said Sancho: “there was no reason to take account of a madman’s words, because if good luck hadn’t helped your grace and sent the stone at your head the way it sent it at your chest, we’d have been in a fine state for standing up for that lady of mine, God confound her. And a fine thing it would be: Cardenio would have got off for being mad!”

“Against the sane and against the mad, any knight-errant is bound to stand up for the honor of women, whoever they may be, and how much more for queens of such high degree and worth as Queen Madásima, for whom I have a particular regard because of her good parts; for, besides having been fair, she was also very prudent and very patient in her calamities, of which she had many; and the counsel and company of Master Elisabat were of great profit and relief to her in bearing her trials with prudence and patience. And from this the ignorant and ill-meaning rabble took occasion to say and think that she was his paramour; and they lie, I say again, and will lie two hundred times more, all who think or say such a thing.” “I don’t say it and I don’t think it,” answered Sancho. “That’s their business; let them eat it with their own bread. Whether they were lovers or not, they’ll have given their account to God by now. I come from my vineyard, I know nothing; I’m no friend of prying into other people’s lives; for he who buys and lies feels it in his purse. Besides, naked I was born, naked I am now: I neither lose nor gain; and suppose they were, what’s it to me? And many think there’s bacon where there isn’t even a peg to hang it on. But who can put gates on the open country? And what’s more, they even talked about God.”

“God save us,” said Don Quixote, “what a string of foolishness you are threading, Sancho! What has the matter in hand to do with the proverbs you are stringing together? On your life, Sancho, be quiet; and from now on busy yourself with spurring your ass, and leave off meddling in what does not concern you. And understand with all your five senses that everything I have done, do, and shall do is well grounded in reason and wholly in keeping with the rules of chivalry, which I know better than all the knights who ever professed them in the world.”

“Sir,” answered Sancho, “and is it a good rule of chivalry for us to go wandering lost through these mountains, with no path or road, looking for a madman who, once he’s found, may perhaps take a fancy to finish what he left begun, not of his story but of your grace’s head and my ribs, finishing breaking them for us altogether?”

“Be quiet, I tell you again, Sancho,” said Don Quixote, “for I would have you know that it is not only the wish to find the madman that brings me to these parts, so much as the wish I have to do a deed in them by which I am to win everlasting name and fame over the whole of the known earth; and it shall be such that with it I shall put the seal on everything that can make a knight-errant famous and perfect.”

“And is that deed very dangerous?” asked Sancho Panza.

“No,” answered he of the Sorry Figure, “though the die might run in such a way that we throw a losing cast instead of a winning one; but everything is to depend on your diligence.”

“On my diligence?” said Sancho.

“Yes,” said Don Quixote, “because if you come back soon from where I mean to send you, soon my pain will be over and soon my glory will begin. And since it is not right to keep you in suspense any longer, waiting to see where my words will end, I want you to know, Sancho, that the famous Amadís of Gaul was one of the most perfect knights-errant. I put it badly when I say ‘one of’: he was the only one, the first, the unique, the lord of all there were in the world in his time. A bad year and a bad month to Don Belianís and to all who say he equaled him in anything, for they are deceived, I swear it for certain. I say, too, that when a painter wants to become famous in his art, he tries to copy the originals of the most singular painters he knows; and this same rule holds for nearly all the trades or occupations of account that serve to adorn commonwealths. And so must he do, and so does he do, who wishes to gain a name for prudence and endurance, imitating Ulysses, in whose person and labors Homer paints us a living portrait of prudence and endurance; just as Virgil, too, in the person of Aeneas, showed us the worth of a dutiful son and the shrewdness of a brave and skillful captain, not painting or revealing them as they were but as they ought to be, so as to leave an example of their virtues to the men who came after. In this same way Amadís was the north star, the morning star, the sun of valiant and enamored knights, the one whom all of us who fight under the banner of love and of chivalry ought to imitate. This being so, then, as it is, I find, Sancho, my friend, that the knight-errant who imitates him most closely will be nearest to reaching the perfection of chivalry. And one of the things in which this knight most showed his prudence, worth, valor, endurance, constancy, and love was when, disdained by the lady Oriana, he withdrew to do penance on the Peña Pobre, his name changed to that of Beltenebros, a name, to be sure, meaningful and fitting for the life he had chosen of his own free will. So it is easier for me to imitate him in this than in cleaving giants, beheading serpents, slaying monstrous endriagos, routing armies, sinking fleets, and undoing enchantments. And since these places are so well suited to such purposes, there is no reason to let slip the occasion, which now so conveniently offers me its forelock.”

“In short,” said Sancho, “what is it your grace means to do in such a remote place as this?”

“Have I not told you already,” answered Don Quixote, “that I mean to imitate Amadís, playing here the desperate, the witless, and the raving lover, so as to imitate at the same time the valiant Don Roldán, when he found by a fountain the signs that Angelica the Fair had done a vile thing with Medoro, for grief of which he went mad and tore up the trees, muddied the waters of the clear springs, killed shepherds, destroyed flocks, burned huts, pulled down houses, dragged off mares, and committed a hundred thousand other outrages worthy of everlasting name and record? And though I do not intend to imitate Roldán, or Orlando, or Rotolando (for he had all three of these names), point by point in all the mad things he did, said, and thought, I shall make a sketch of them, as best I can, in those that seem to me most essential. And it may be that I shall come to be content with imitating Amadís alone, who without doing any harmful madness, only tears and sorrows, won as much fame as the best of them.” “It seems to me,” said Sancho, “that the knights who did such things were provoked and had cause to do those follies and penances, but what cause has your grace for going mad? What lady has disdained you, or what signs have you found that give you to understand that the lady Dulcinea del Toboso has been up to some childishness with Moor or Christian?”

“There is the point,” answered Don Quixote, “and that is the refinement of my business; for a knight-errant who goes mad with cause earns neither thanks nor credit: the whole art is to lose my wits without occasion and let my lady understand that if I do this dry, what would I do wet? Besides, I have occasion enough in the long absence I have made from her who is ever my lady, Dulcinea del Toboso; for, as you heard that shepherd of the other day, Ambrosio, say, he who is absent suffers every ill and fears every ill. So, Sancho, my friend, do not waste time advising me to leave off so rare, so happy, and so unexampled an imitation. Mad I am, and mad I must be until you come back with the answer to a letter I mean to send by you to my lady Dulcinea; and if it is such as my faith deserves, my folly and my penance will be over; and if it is the opposite, I shall be mad in earnest, and, being so, I shall feel nothing. So, however she answers, I shall come out of the strife and trouble in which you leave me, either enjoying the good you bring me, as a sane man, or not feeling the ill you bear me, as a madman. But tell me, Sancho, are you keeping Mambrino’s helmet safe? For I saw you pick it up from the ground when that ungrateful fellow tried to smash it to pieces. But he could not, from which the fineness of its temper may be seen.”

To which Sancho answered:

“As God lives, Sir Knight of the Sorry Figure, there are some things your grace says that I can’t bear or put up with patiently, and because of them I come to imagine that all your talk to me of chivalry, of winning kingdoms and empires, of giving isles and doing other favors and grand things, as is the custom of knights-errant, must all be wind and lies, and all humbuggery, or humbug, or whatever we may call it. Because anyone who heard your grace say that a barber’s basin is Mambrino’s helmet, and saw you not get out of that error in more than four days, what must he think but that whoever says and maintains such a thing must have his brains addled? The basin I’m carrying in the sack, all dented, and I’m carrying it to mend it at home and shave in it, if God grants me the grace to see myself with my wife and children some day.”

“Look here, Sancho, by the same One you swore by just now, I swear to you,” said Don Quixote, “that you have the shortest understanding that any squire in the world has or ever had. Is it possible that in all the time you have been going about with me you have not noticed that all the things of knights-errant look like chimeras, follies, and nonsense, and that they are all done backward? And not because they are so, but because among us there always goes a mob of enchanters who change and swap all our things and turn them as they please, and as they have a mind to favor us or destroy us; and so what looks to you like a barber’s basin looks to me like Mambrino’s helmet, and to another it will look like something else. And it was a rare piece of foresight in the sage who takes my part to have what is truly and really Mambrino’s helmet seem a basin to all eyes, because, as it is of such value, the whole world would hunt me down to take it from me; but when they see it is nothing but a barber’s basin, they do not trouble to get it, as was plain from the fellow who set about breaking it and then went off and left it lying there on the ground; for, upon my faith, if he had known it, he would never have left it. Keep it, my friend, for I have no need of it for now; rather I must take off all this armor and be left naked as when I was born, if it should come into my head to follow Roldán rather than Amadís in my penance.”

Talking in this way, they reached the foot of a high mountain that stood alone, almost like a sheer-cut crag, among many others that surrounded it. A gentle brook ran along its skirts, and all around it lay a meadow so green and lush that it gave delight to the eyes that looked on it. There were many wild trees thereabouts, and some plants and flowers, which made the place pleasant. This spot the Knight of the Sorry Figure chose for doing his penance; and so, on seeing it, he began to say in a loud voice, as if he had lost his wits:

“This is the place, O heavens, that I appoint and choose for weeping over the misfortune into which you yourselves have cast me. This is the spot where the moisture of my eyes shall swell the waters of this little brook, and my ceaseless and deep sighs shall stir without cease the leaves of these mountain trees, in witness and token of the pain my harried heart endures. O ye, whoever you may be, rustic gods who have your dwelling in this uninhabitable place, hear the complaints of this unhappy lover, whom a long absence and some imagined jealousies have brought to lament among these rugged rocks and to complain of the hard nature of that fair ingrate, the bound and end of all human beauty! O ye napaeae and dryads, who are wont to dwell in the thickets of the mountains, so may the nimble and lustful satyrs, by whom you are loved, though in vain, never disturb your sweet repose, help me to lament my misfortune, or at least do not weary of hearing it! O Dulcinea del Toboso, day of my night, glory of my pain, north star of my roads, star of my fortune, so may heaven grant you good fortune in all you may think to ask of it, consider the place and the state to which your absence has brought me, and answer with kindness what is owed to my faith! O lonely trees, who from this day forward are to keep company with my solitude, give some sign, by the gentle stirring of your branches, that my presence does not displease you! O you, my squire, pleasant companion in my more prosperous and adverse fortunes, fix well in your memory what you shall see me do here, so that you may tell and recite it to the sole cause of it all!”

And, saying this, he got off Rocinante and in a moment took off his bridle and saddle; and, giving him a slap on the haunches, he said to him:

“He who is left without liberty gives you liberty, O steed as excellent in your deeds as you are unhappy in your lot! Go where you will, for you bear written on your forehead that neither the Hippogriff of Astolfo nor the renowned Frontino, which cost Bradamante so dear, could match you in swiftness.”

Seeing this, Sancho said:

“Bless whoever has just spared us the trouble of taking the packsaddle off the gray; for, upon my faith, there’d be no lack of little pats to give him or things to say in his praise; but if he were here, I wouldn’t let anyone take his packsaddle off, since there’d be no call for it, for none of the general articles on lovers or on desperate men applied to him, since his master wasn’t one, which was me, back when God was willing. And truly, Sir Knight of the Sorry Figure, if my going and your grace’s madness are in earnest, it would be a good thing to saddle Rocinante again, to make up for the want of the gray, because it would save time on my going and coming; for if I do it on foot, I don’t know when I’ll get there or when I’ll come back, because, to sum up, I’m a poor walker.” “I say, Sancho,” answered Don Quixote, “let it be as you wish, for your plan does not seem bad to me; and I say that three days from now you shall set out, because I want you in this time to see what I do and say for her, so that you can tell it to her.”

“Well, what more have I got to see,” said Sancho, “than what I’ve seen?”

“Much you know about it!” answered Don Quixote. “I have still to tear my garments, scatter my arms, and dash my head against these rocks, with other things of the kind that will amaze you.”

“For the love of God,” said Sancho, “let your grace mind how you go about dashing your head, for you may come upon such a rock, and at such a spot, that with the first knock the whole machine of this penance would be finished; and I would be of the opinion that, since your grace thinks knocks on the head are needed here and this work can’t be done without them, you should be content, since all this is make-believe and counterfeit and a joke, you should be content, I say, with giving them in the water, or on something soft, like cotton; and leave it to me, for I’ll tell my lady that your grace was giving them against a rock point harder than a diamond’s.”

“I thank you for your good intention, Sancho, my friend,” answered Don Quixote, “but I would have you know that all these things I do are not in jest but very much in earnest; for otherwise it would be going against the orders of chivalry, which command us to tell no lie at all, on pain of being treated as relapsed, and doing one thing for another is the same as lying. So my knocks on the head must be true, firm, and valid, without anything sophistical or fantastical about them. And you will have to leave me some lint to dress my wounds, since fortune willed that we should lose the balm.”

“Losing the ass was worse,” answered Sancho, “since the lint and everything were lost with him. And I beg your grace not to remember that cursed brew any more, for just hearing it named turns my soul, let alone my stomach. And I beg you one thing more: count the three days you gave me for seeing the mad things you do as already gone, for I take them as seen and as passed into a settled judgment, and I’ll tell my lady wonders; and write the letter and send me off at once, because I have a great wish to come back and get your grace out of this purgatory where I’m leaving you.”

“Purgatory you call it, Sancho?” said Don Quixote. “You would do better to call it hell, and even worse, if there is anything that is.”

“‘Him that’s in hell, nula es retencio,’” answered Sancho, “as I’ve heard tell.”

“I do not understand what retencio means,” said Don Quixote.

“Retencio is,” answered Sancho, “that whoever is in hell never gets out of it, and can’t. Which will be the other way round with your grace, or my feet will serve me badly, if I’ve got spurs to liven up Rocinante; and just let me once land in El Toboso, before my lady Dulcinea, and I’ll tell her such things about the follies and mad things, which are all one, that your grace has done and is still doing, that I’ll make her softer than a glove, even if I find her harder than a cork oak; and with her sweet and honeyed answer I’ll come back through the air like a wizard and get your grace out of this purgatory, which looks like hell and isn’t, since there’s hope of getting out of it, which, as I’ve said, those who are in hell haven’t got, nor do I think your grace will say otherwise.”

“That is the truth,” said he of the Sorry Figure; “but what shall we do to write the letter?”

“And the donkey-colt draft too,” added Sancho.

“It will all go in together,” said Don Quixote; “and it would be good, since there is no paper, for us to write it, as the ancients did, on the leaves of trees, or on some little wax tablets; though that would be as hard to find now as paper. But it has just come to my mind where it will be good, and better than good, to write it: in the little notebook that belonged to Cardenio; and you shall take care to have it copied onto paper, in a good hand, in the first village you come to where there is a schoolmaster for boys, or if not, any sexton will copy it for you; and do not give it to any notary to copy, for they write a court hand that Satan himself would not understand.” “Well, what’s to be done about the signature?” said Sancho.

“The letters of Amadís were never signed,” answered Don Quixote.

“That’s all very well,” answered Sancho, “but the draft has to be signed, no two ways about it, and if that one is copied, they’ll say the signature is forged and I’ll be left without my donkey colts.”

“The draft will go signed in the notebook itself, and when my niece sees it she will make no difficulty about honoring it. And as for the love letter, you shall put as its signature: ‘Yours until death, the Knight of the Sorry Figure.’ And it will matter little that it goes in another man’s hand, because, as far as I can remember, Dulcinea can neither write nor read, and in all her life she has never seen a letter or a line of my writing, because my love and hers have always been platonic, never going beyond a modest look. And even that so seldom that I dare swear truly that in the twelve years I have loved her more than the light of these eyes that the earth is to eat, I have not seen her four times; and it may even be that of these four times she did not once notice that I was looking at her: so closely and so modestly have her father, Lorenzo Corchuelo, and her mother, Aldonza Nogales, kept her shut away in her upbringing.”

“Well, well!” said Sancho. “So the daughter of Lorenzo Corchuelo is the lady Dulcinea del Toboso, otherwise called Aldonza Lorenzo?”

“That is she,” said Don Quixote, “and she is the one who deserves to be lady of the whole universe.”

“I know her well,” said Sancho, “and I can tell you she pitches the bar as well as the strongest lad in the whole village. By the Giver of life, she’s a girl of mettle, full-grown and straight-built and with hair on her chest, and she can pull the beard out of the mud for any knight-errant, or knight-to-be-errant, who has her for his lady! Oh, the son of a whore, what strength she has, and what a voice! I can tell you she got up one day on top of the village bell tower to call some lads of hers who were out in one of her father’s fallow fields, and though they were more than half a league away, they heard her as if they’d been at the foot of the tower. And the best thing about her is that she isn’t the least bit prissy, because she’s got a good deal of the court lady in her: she jokes with everybody and makes fun and mockery of everything. Now I say, Sir Knight of the Sorry Figure, that not only can and should your grace do mad things for her, but you can rightly despair and hang yourself; for nobody who hears of it will fail to say you did very well, even if the devil takes you. And I’d like to be on the road already, just to see her; for it’s many days since I saw her, and she must be changed by now, because always going about the fields, in the sun and the wind, wears out women’s faces a lot. And I confess a truth to your grace, Señor Don Quixote: up to now I’ve been in great ignorance; for I thought, honestly and faithfully, that the lady Dulcinea must be some princess your grace was in love with, or some person such as would deserve the rich presents your grace has sent her: the one of the Biscayan as well as the one of the galley slaves, and many others there must be, judging by how many the victories must be that your grace has won and won in the time when I wasn’t your squire yet. But, when you think it over, what does it matter to the lady Aldonza Lorenzo, I mean to the lady Dulcinea del Toboso, that the vanquished your grace sends her and is going to send her should go and kneel down before her? Because it might be that, at the moment they arrived, she’d be out combing flax, or threshing on the threshing floors, and they’d be ashamed to see her, and she’d laugh and be annoyed at the present.”

“I have told you many times before now, Sancho,” said Don Quixote, “that you are a very great talker, and that, though blunt of wit, you often show a sharp point. But so that you may see how foolish you are and how sensible I am, I want you to hear a short tale. You must know that there was a widow, beautiful, young, free, and rich, and above all free and easy, who lost her heart to a lay brother, a young, plump, well-built fellow. His superior came to know of it, and one day he said to the good widow, by way of brotherly reproof: ‘I am astonished, madam, and not without good cause, that a woman of such standing, so beautiful and so rich as your grace, should have fallen in love with a man as coarse, as low, and as ignorant as So-and-so, when in this house there are so many masters, so many graduates, and so many theologians, among whom your grace could pick and choose as you would among pears, and say, “This one I’ll have, that one I won’t.”’ But she answered him, with great wit and boldness: ‘Your grace, my dear sir, is greatly deceived, and thinks in a very old-fashioned way, if your grace imagines I have chosen badly in So-and-so, however ignorant he seems to you, for, for what I want him for, he knows as much philosophy as Aristotle, and more.’ So, Sancho, for what I want Dulcinea del Toboso for, she is worth as much as the highest princess on earth. Yes, for it is not true that all the poets who praise ladies under a name they give them at their own whim really have them. Do you think that the Amaryllises, the Phyllises, the Silvias, the Dianas, the Galateas, the Alidas, and others of the kind that fill the books, the ballads, the barbers’ shops, and the playhouses were really ladies of flesh and blood, and belonged to those who celebrate and have celebrated them? Certainly not; most of them are made up, to give a subject to their verses and so that people will take them for lovers and for men who have the worth to be so. And so it is enough for me to think and believe that the good Aldonza Lorenzo is beautiful and virtuous; and as for her lineage it matters little, for no one is going to inquire into it in order to give her the habit of some order, and I make up my mind that she is the highest princess in the world. Because you must know, Sancho, if you do not know it already, that only two things move us to love more than any others, which are great beauty and good name; and these two things are found to perfection in Dulcinea, because in beauty none equals her, and in good name few come near her. And to conclude it all, I imagine that everything I say is so, without a jot too much or too little; and I paint her in my imagination as I would have her, as much in beauty as in rank, and neither Helen comes up to her nor Lucretia reaches her, nor any other of the famous women of ages past, Greek, barbarian, or Latin. And let each one say what he likes; for if I am reproved for this by the ignorant, I shall not be punished by the strict.”

“I say your grace is right in everything,” answered Sancho, “and that I’m an ass. But I don’t know why I put the word ass in my mouth, for you mustn’t mention rope in the hanged man’s house. But let’s have the letter, and God be with you, for I’m off.”

Don Quixote took out the notebook and, going off to one side, began very calmly to write the letter; and, when he had finished it, he called Sancho and told him he wanted to read it to him, so that he might learn it by heart, in case he should lose it on the way, for with his ill luck anything might be feared. To which Sancho answered:

“Your grace should write it out two or three times in the book there and hand it to me, for I’ll carry it well guarded, because to think I’m going to learn it by heart is nonsense: my memory is so bad that I often forget my own name. But for all that, let your grace say it to me, for I’ll be very glad to hear it, for it must be as neat as print.”

“Listen, for this is how it goes,” said Don Quixote:

Letter from Don Quixote to Dulcinea del Toboso

Sovereign and exalted lady:

He who is wounded by the point of absence and lacerated in the fibers of the heart, most dulcet Dulcinea del Toboso, sends you the health that he has not. If your beauteousness scorns me, if your worth is not in my favor, if your disdain is to my affliction, though I be long-suffering enough, ill shall I sustain myself in this woe, which, besides being sore, is most lasting. My good squire Sancho will give you a full account, O fair ingrate, my beloved enemy, of the state I am left in for your sake. If it please you to succor me, I am yours; and if not, do as you see fit; for by ending my life I shall have satisfied your cruelty and my desire.

Yours until death,

The Knight of the Sorry Figure.

“By my father’s life,” said Sancho on hearing the letter, “that’s the loftiest thing I ever heard. Confound me, how your grace says everything you want to say there, and how well The Knight of the Sorry Figure fits into the signature! I truly say your grace is the very devil, and there’s nothing you don’t know.”

“Everything is needed,” answered Don Quixote, “for the trade I follow.” “Come on, then,” said Sancho, “let your grace put the order for the three donkey colts on the other side of that page, and sign it very clearly, so they’ll know it when they see it.”

“With pleasure,” said Don Quixote.

And, having written it, he read it to him; and it ran thus:

By this first bill of exchange in donkey colts, my lady niece, your grace will be pleased to give Sancho Panza, my squire, three of the five that I left at home and that are in your grace’s keeping. Which three donkey colts I order to be delivered and paid for as many received here in hand, as is attested, and with his receipt they will be duly given. Dated in the bowels of the Sierra Morena, on the twenty-second of August of this present year.

“That’s good,” said Sancho; “let your grace sign it.”

“There is no need to sign it,” said Don Quixote, “only to put my flourish, which is the same as a signature, and it would be enough for three asses, and even for three hundred.”

“I trust your grace,” answered Sancho. “Let me go, I’ll saddle Rocinante, and your grace get ready to give me your blessing, for I mean to set off at once, without seeing the foolish things your grace is going to do, for I’ll say I saw you do so many that she won’t want any more.”

“At least, Sancho, I want, and because it must be so, I want, I say, you to see me stripped to the skin and doing a dozen or two mad things, which I shall do in less than half an hour, so that, having seen them with your own eyes, you may safely swear to the rest you care to add; and I assure you you will not tell of as many as I mean to do.”

“For the love of God, my master, don’t let me see your grace stripped to the skin, for it will grieve me very much and I won’t be able to keep from crying; and my head is so bad from the crying I did last night over the gray that I’m in no state to start on fresh tears; and if your grace wants me to see some mad things, do them with your clothes on, short ones, and the ones that come handiest to you. Besides, for my part there was no need for any of that, and, as I’ve said already, it would shorten the road back, which is to be with the news your grace desires and deserves. And if not, let the lady Dulcinea get ready; for if she doesn’t answer as she should, I make a solemn vow to whoever I may that I’ll kick and slap the good answer out of her belly. Because where is it to be borne that a knight-errant as famous as your grace should go mad, without why or wherefore, for a…? Don’t let the lady make me say it, because by God I’ll rant and throw the whole lot in at twelve, even if it never sells. I’m a fine one for that! She doesn’t know me! Why, upon my faith, if she knew me, she’d keep fast-days for fear of me!”

“Upon my faith, Sancho,” said Don Quixote, “from the look of it, you are no saner than I am.”

“I’m not so mad,” answered Sancho, “but I’m more hot-tempered. But, leaving that aside, what is your grace going to eat until I come back? Are you going to go out on the road, like Cardenio, and take it from the shepherds?”

“Do not let that worry trouble you,” answered Don Quixote, “for even if I had food, I would eat nothing but the herbs and fruits this meadow and these trees may give me, for the refinement of my business lies in not eating and in doing other equal austerities.”

“God be with you, then. But does your grace know what I’m afraid of? That I won’t manage to find my way back to this place where I’m leaving you now, it’s so hidden.” “Take good note of the landmarks, for I shall try not to stray from these parts,” said Don Quixote, “and I shall even take care to climb up these highest crags, to see if I can spot you when you come back. Besides, the surest thing, so that you do not miss me and lose yourself, will be for you to cut some of the broom that grows so thick around here and set it out at intervals until you come out onto open ground, and it will serve you as markers and signs to find me when you return, in imitation of the thread in Theseus’s labyrinth.” “That’s what I’ll do,” answered Sancho Panza.

And, having cut a few, he begged his master’s blessing and parted from him, the two of them shedding many tears. And, climbing onto Rocinante, whom Don Quixote commended to him earnestly, bidding him look after him as he would his own person, he set off toward the plain, strewing the broom branches at intervals, as his master had advised him. And so he went, though Don Quixote still pressed him to watch him do at least a couple of mad things. But he had not gone a hundred paces when he came back and said:

“I say, sir, that your grace spoke very well: so that I can swear without a burden on my conscience that I’ve seen you do mad things, it would be good for me to see at least one, though I’ve seen a very big one in your grace’s staying here.”

“Did I not tell you so?” said Don Quixote. “Wait, Sancho, for I shall do them in the time it takes to say a Creed.”

And, pulling off his breeches in all haste, he was left in his skin and his shirttails, and then, without more ado, he cut two capers in the air and turned two somersaults, head down and heels up, uncovering things that made Sancho, so as not to see them a second time, turn Rocinante’s rein, and he was content and satisfied that he could swear his master was mad. And so we shall let him go his way until his return, which was brief.