Chapter XXIX. Which deals with the wit of the beautiful Dorotea, with other things of great amusement and pastime

“This, gentlemen, is the true history of my tragedy: see and judge now whether the sighs you heard, the words you listened to, and the tears that came from my eyes had cause enough to show themselves in even greater abundance; and, when you have considered the nature of my misfortune, you will see that consolation will be in vain, since there is no possible remedy for it. I only beg you (and this you can easily do, and ought to) to advise me where I may spend my life without being finished off by the fear and alarm I live in of being found by those who are looking for me; for, though I know that the great love my parents bear me assures me that I would be well received by them, so great is the shame that fills me at the mere thought that I must appear before them not as they thought me to be, that I hold it better to banish myself forever from being seen than to see their faces while thinking that they look on mine as a stranger to the modesty they must have been promised of me.”

She fell silent on saying this, and her face was covered with a color that showed very plainly the feeling and shame of her soul. In their own souls those who had listened to her felt as much pity as wonder at her misfortune; and, though the priest would have liked to console and advise her at once, Cardenio took the lead, saying:

“So, lady, you are the beautiful Dorotea, the only daughter of the rich Clenardo.”

Dorotea was amazed when she heard her father’s name, and to see how little was the man who named him, for it has already been said how wretchedly Cardenio was dressed; and so she said to him:

“And who are you, brother, who know my father’s name in this way? For until now, if I remember right, in the whole course of the tale of my misfortune I have not named him.”

“I am,” answered Cardenio, “that luckless man who, as you, madam, have said, Luscinda declared to be her husband. I am the unhappy Cardenio, whom the wicked dealing of the same man who has put you in the state you are in has brought to the pass in which you see me: ragged, half naked, bereft of all human comfort and, what is worst of all, bereft of reason, for I have it only when heaven takes a fancy to give it to me for some brief space. I, Teodora, am the one who was present at Don Fernando’s outrages, and the one who waited to hear the yes that Luscinda spoke to be his wife. I am the one who had not the courage to see what came of her fainting, or what followed from the paper that was found in her bosom, for my soul had not the endurance to see so many misfortunes together; and so I abandoned the house and my patience, and a letter which I left with a host of mine, whom I begged to put it into Luscinda’s hands, and I came to these wildernesses, meaning to end in them my life, which from that moment I loathed as my mortal enemy. But fortune has not chosen to take it from me, content with taking away my reason, perhaps to keep me for the good fortune I have had in finding you; for, if what you have told here is true, as I believe it is, it might still be that heaven has a better outcome in store for both of us in our disasters than we think. For, granted that Luscinda cannot marry Don Fernando, since she is mine, nor Don Fernando her, since he is yours, and since she has declared it so plainly, we may well hope that heaven will restore to us what is ours, since it still exists and has been neither alienated nor destroyed. And since we have this consolation, born of no very remote hope nor founded on wild imaginings, I beg you, madam, to take another resolution in your honorable thoughts, as I mean to take one in mine, and to make yourself ready to hope for better fortune; for I swear to you, on the faith of a gentleman and a Christian, not to forsake you until I see you in Don Fernando’s possession, and, if I cannot with reasons bring him to recognize what he owes you, to use then the freedom my being a gentleman allows me and with just title challenge him, by reason of the unreason he does you, without remembering my own wrongs, whose vengeance I shall leave to heaven so as to attend on earth to yours.”

What Cardenio said filled Dorotea with amazement, and, not knowing what thanks to return for such great offers, she tried to take his feet to kiss them; but Cardenio would not allow it, and the licentiate answered for both of them, and approved Cardenio’s good reasoning, and, above all, begged, advised, and urged them to go with him to his village, where they could supply themselves with the things they lacked, and where plans would be made for seeking out Don Fernando, or for taking Dorotea to her parents, or for doing whatever seemed best to them. Cardenio and Dorotea thanked him and accepted the kindness offered them. The barber, who had been listening to it all in silent suspense, also made his fine little speech and offered himself, with no less goodwill than the priest, for everything that might serve them. He likewise told briefly the reason that had brought them there, with the strangeness of Don Quixote’s madness, and how they were waiting for his squire, who had gone to look for him. Cardenio recalled, as if in a dream, the quarrel he had had with Don Quixote, and told the others about it, but he could not say what the cause of their dispute had been.

At this point they heard shouts, and recognized that the one who was giving them was Sancho Panza, who, not having found them in the place where he had left them, was calling for them at the top of his voice. They went out to meet him, and, when they asked him about Don Quixote, he told them how he had found him stripped to his shirt, thin, yellow, and dying of hunger, and sighing for his lady Dulcinea; and that, though he had told him she commanded him to leave that place and go to El Toboso, where she was waiting for him, he had answered that he was resolved not to appear before her beauteousness until he had done deeds that would make him worthy of her favor. And that if this went on, he ran the risk of not coming to be an emperor, as he was bound to, or even an archbishop, which was the least he could be. So they should see what was to be done to get him out of there.

The licentiate answered him not to worry, for they would get him out of there, whether he liked it or not. Then he told Cardenio and Dorotea what they had planned as a remedy for Don Quixote, or at least to take him home. To which Dorotea said that she would play the damsel in distress better than the barber, and besides, she had clothes there with which to do it to the life, and they should leave to her the business of knowing how to act out everything necessary to carry their plan forward, for she had read many books of chivalry and knew well the style the woeful damsels used when they begged their boons of knights-errant.

“Then nothing more is needed,” said the priest, “but to put it into practice at once; for no doubt good fortune is showing itself in our favor, since, so unexpectedly, a door has begun to open for your remedy, gentlemen, and the one we needed has been made easy for us.” Dorotea then took from her pillowcase a whole gown of some rich light stuff and a short mantle of another showy green cloth, and from a little box a necklace and other jewels, with which in an instant she adorned herself so that she looked like a rich and great lady. All that, and more, she said she had brought from her house for whatever might come up, and until then no occasion had come up for needing it. Her great grace, charm, and beauty pleased them all exceedingly, and they confirmed Don Fernando as a man of little discernment, since he cast off so much beauty.

But the one who wondered most was Sancho Panza, for it seemed to him—as was indeed the truth—that in all the days of his life he had never seen so beautiful a creature; and so he asked the priest very earnestly to tell him who that so beauteous lady was, and what she was looking for in those out-of-the-way places. “This beautiful lady,” answered the priest, “Sancho, brother, is, if you please, nothing less than the heiress, by straight descent in the male line, of the great kingdom of Micomicón, and she comes in search of your master to ask a boon of him, which is that he right a wrong or grievance that a wicked giant has done her; and, at the fame of a good knight that your master has throughout the known world, this princess has come all the way from Guinea to look for him.”

“A happy seeking and a happy finding,” said Sancho Panza at this, “and the more so if my master is lucky enough to right that grievance and straighten out that wrong, killing that son of a whore of a giant your grace speaks of; and he’ll kill him, all right, if he meets him, unless he’s a phantom, for against phantoms my master has no power at all. But I want to beg one thing of your grace, among others, Señor Licentiate, and it is this: so that my master won’t take a fancy to be an archbishop, which is what I’m afraid of, your grace should advise him to marry this princess right away, and that way he’ll be unable to receive archbishop’s orders and he’ll come easily to his empire and I to the end of my desires; for I’ve looked into it carefully and I find by my reckoning that it doesn’t suit me for my master to be an archbishop, because I’m useless to the Church, since I’m married, and to go about now getting dispensations so I can hold an income from the Church, having, as I do, a wife and children, would be never-ending. So, sir, the whole point is for my master to marry this lady right away, whose good name I don’t know yet, and so I don’t call her by it.”

“Her name,” answered the priest, “is Princess Micomicona, for, since her kingdom is called Micomicón, it is clear that she must be called so.”

“There’s no doubt about that,” answered Sancho, “for I’ve seen plenty of people take their surname and family name from the place where they were born, calling themselves Pedro de Alcalá, Juan de Úbeda, and Diego de Valladolid; and this same thing must be the custom there in Guinea: the queens taking the names of their kingdoms.”

“So it must be,” said the priest; “and as for your master’s marrying, I shall do my utmost in it.”

At which Sancho was as pleased as the priest was amazed at his simplicity, and at seeing how firmly lodged in his fancy were the same absurdities as his master’s, since he took it for granted beyond all doubt that his master was to become an emperor.

By now Dorotea was mounted on the priest’s mule and the barber had his ox-tail beard fixed on his face, and they told Sancho to guide them to where Don Quixote was; and they warned him not to say that he knew the licentiate or the barber, for the whole point of his master’s coming to be an emperor lay in his not knowing them; though neither the priest nor Cardenio would go with them, so that Don Quixote should not be reminded of the quarrel he had had with Cardenio, and the priest because his presence was not needed for the time being. And so they let the others go on ahead, and they followed them on foot, little by little. The priest did not fail to advise Dorotea of what she was to do; to which she said they need not worry, for everything would be done, without missing a point, as the books of chivalry required and depicted it. They must have gone three quarters of a league when they caught sight of Don Quixote among some tangled rocks, dressed by now, though not in armor; and, as soon as Dorotea saw him and was told by Sancho that that was Don Quixote, she gave her palfrey a lash of the whip, followed by the well-bearded barber. And, on coming up to him, the squire leaped down from his mule and went to take Dorotea in his arms, and she, alighting with great ease, went and knelt before Don Quixote’s knees; and, though he struggled to raise her, she, without rising, spoke to him in this wise:

“From this spot I shall not rise, O valiant and doughty knight, until a boon be granted me by your goodness and courtesy, one that shall redound to the honor and glory of your person and to the profit of the most disconsolate and aggrieved damsel the sun hath ever seen. And if the valor of your mighty arm answers to the voice of your immortal fame, you are bound to succor the luckless one who comes from lands so far away, drawn by the scent of your famous name, seeking you as the remedy of her misfortunes.”

“I shall not answer you a word, fair lady,” answered Don Quixote, “nor hear aught more of your affairs, until you rise from the ground.”

“I shall not rise, sir,” answered the afflicted damsel, “unless the boon I ask is first granted me by your courtesy.”

“I grant and bestow it upon you,” answered Don Quixote, “provided it is not to be fulfilled to the harm or detriment of my king, of my country, and of her who holds the key to my heart and my freedom.”

“It shall not be to the harm or detriment of those you name, my good lord,” replied the sorrowful damsel.

And while this was going on, Sancho Panza came up to his master’s ear and said to him very softly:

“Your grace can very well grant her the boon she asks, sir, for it’s a mere nothing: it’s only killing a great big giant, and this one who asks it is the high Princess Micomicona, queen of the great kingdom of Micomicón in Ethiopia.”

“Be she who she may,” answered Don Quixote, “I shall do what I am bound to and what my conscience dictates, in accordance with what I have professed.”

And, turning to the damsel, he said:

“Let your great beauteousness arise, for I grant it the boon it may please to ask of me.”

“Then the one I ask,” said the damsel, “is that your magnanimous person come away at once with me wherever I may lead you, and promise me not to meddle in any other adventure or quest until you have given me vengeance on a traitor who, against all law divine and human, has usurped my kingdom.”

“I say that I grant it so,” answered Don Quixote, “and so, lady, from this day forth you may cast off the melancholy that oppresses you and let your fainting hope gather new spirit and strength; for, with the help of God and that of my arm, you shall soon see yourself restored to your kingdom and seated on the throne of your ancient and great estate, in spite and despite of the caitiffs who would gainsay it. And to work, for in delay, they say, lies danger.”

The damsel in distress strove with great insistence to kiss his hands, but Don Quixote, who was in everything a courteous and well-mannered knight, would by no means allow it; rather, he made her rise and embraced her with great courtesy and good manners, and ordered Sancho to see to Rocinante’s girths and arm him at once. Sancho took down the arms, which were hanging like a trophy from a tree, and, seeing to the girths, armed his master in an instant; and he, seeing himself armed, said:

“Let us go from here, in the name of God, to succor this great lady.” The barber was still on his knees, taking great care to hide his laughter and to keep his beard from falling off, for if it had fallen they might all have failed to achieve their good purpose; and, seeing that the boon was now granted, and the diligence with which Don Quixote was making ready to go and fulfill it, he got up and took his lady by the other hand, and between the two of them they put her up on the mule. Then Don Quixote got up on Rocinante, and the barber took his seat on his own mount, and Sancho was left on foot, where the loss of the gray came back to him afresh, with the want he felt of him then; but he bore it all gladly, for it seemed to him that his master was now well on the road, and very near, to becoming an emperor; for he thought beyond all doubt that he was to marry that princess and be at least king of Micomicón. The only thing that troubled him was the thought that that kingdom lay in the land of the blacks, and that the folk to be handed him as vassals would every one of them be black; for which he soon found a good remedy in his imagination, and he said to himself: “What do I care if my vassals are black? Will there be anything more to it than loading them up and bringing them to Spain, where I can sell them, and where they’ll pay me cash for them, and with that money I can buy some title or some office to live at my ease on all the days of my life? Oh, no, go to sleep, why don’t you, and have no wit or skill to manage things and sell thirty or ten thousand vassals before you can say hand me that straw! By God, I’ll make them fly, small and big together, or however I can, and, black as they are, I’ll turn them into white or yellow, silver or gold. Come on, then, do you think I suck my thumb?”

With this he went along so busy and so happy that he forgot the hardship of going on foot.

Cardenio and the priest were watching all this from among some brambles, and did not know what to do to join them; but the priest, who was a great schemer, soon thought of what they would do to get what they wanted; and it was that with some scissors he carried in a case he very quickly cut off Cardenio’s beard, and dressed him in a little brown coat he had on and gave him a black cape, while he himself was left in breeches and doublet; and Cardenio became so different from what he had looked like before that he would not have known himself, even if he had looked in a mirror. This done, though the others had got ahead of them during their disguising, they reached the highroad first without trouble, because in that thick brush and those bad passes the riders could not make the speed of the men on foot. In effect, they posted themselves on the plain, at the mouth of the sierra, and, as soon as Don Quixote and his comrades came out of it, the priest set himself to gaze at him very slowly, giving signs that he was beginning to recognize him; and, after he had been looking at him for a good while, he went up to him with open arms, saying aloud: “Well met, mirror of chivalry, my good compatriot Don Quixote of La Mancha, the flower and the cream of gentility, the shelter and remedy of the needy, the quintessence of knights-errant.” And, saying this, he held Don Quixote clasped by the knee of his left leg; and Don Quixote, astonished at what he saw and heard that man say and do, set himself to look at him attentively, and at last recognized him, and was as if astonished to see him, and made a great effort to get down; but the priest would not allow it, at which Don Quixote said:

“Let me get down, your grace, Señor Licentiate, for it is not right that I should be on horseback and so reverend a person as your grace on foot.” “That I shall by no means allow,” said the priest: “let your greatness stay on horseback, for it is on horseback that you accomplish the greatest deeds and adventures our age has seen; as for me, an unworthy priest, it will be enough to get up on the haunches of one of the mules of these gentlemen who travel with your grace, if they take it not amiss. And I shall even consider that I ride mounted on the horse Pegasus, or on the zebra or charger that the famous Moor Muzaraque rode, who to this day lies enchanted on the great slope of Zulema, not far from the great Compluto.”

“I had not thought of that, my lord licentiate,” answered Don Quixote, “and I know that my lady the princess will be pleased, for love of me, to order her squire to give your grace the saddle of his mule, for he can settle himself on the haunches, if the mule will bear it.”

“She will bear it, I believe,” answered the princess; “and I know too that there will be no need to order it of my lord squire, for he is so courteous and so courtly that he will not allow a person of the Church to go on foot when he might go mounted.”

“That is so,” answered the barber.

And, getting down in an instant, he invited the priest to take the saddle, and the priest took it without waiting to be much begged. And the trouble was that as the barber got up on the haunches, the mule, which was in fact a hired one, and that is enough to say it was a bad one, raised its hindquarters a little and let fly two kicks in the air, which, had they landed on Master Nicolás’s chest, or on his head, would have made him send his coming in search of Don Quixote to the devil. Even so, they so startled him that he fell to the ground, with so little care for his beard that it fell to the ground; and, when he saw himself without it, he had no other remedy than to rush to cover his face with both hands and complain that his molars had been knocked out. Don Quixote, when he saw that whole bunch of beard, without jaw and without blood, lying far from the fallen squire’s face, said:

“As God lives, this is a great miracle! It has knocked his beard off and torn it from his face as if it had been taken off on purpose!”

The priest, who saw the danger his scheme was in of being discovered, rushed at once to the beard and went with it to where Master Nicolás lay, still crying out, and with one movement, drawing his head to his own chest, he put it back on him, muttering over him some words which he said were a certain charm suited for sticking on beards, as they would see; and, when he had it on him, he drew back, and the squire was left as well bearded and as sound as before, at which Don Quixote marveled exceedingly, and begged the priest to teach him that charm when he had the chance; for he understood that its virtue must extend to more than sticking on beards, since it was clear that where a beard was torn off the flesh must be left raw and battered, and that, since it healed everything, it was good for more than beards.

“So it is,” said the priest, and he promised to teach it to him at the first opportunity. They agreed that for the time being the priest should ride, and that the three should take turns at intervals until they reached the inn, which would be some two leagues from there. With the three on horseback, that is to say, Don Quixote, the princess, and the priest, and the three on foot, Cardenio, the barber, and Sancho Panza, Don Quixote said to the damsel:

“Let your greatness, my lady, lead the way wherever it pleases you most.”

And, before she could answer, the licentiate said:

“Toward what kingdom does your ladyship wish to lead us? Is it, perchance, toward that of Micomicón? For so it must be, or I know little of kingdoms.”

She, who was well up on everything, understood that she was to answer yes; and so she said:

“Yes, sir, toward that kingdom lies my road.”

“If that is so,” said the priest, “we must pass through the middle of my village, and from there your grace will take the road to Cartagena, where you can take ship with good luck; and if there is a fair wind, a calm sea, and no storm, in a little less than nine years you will be able to come in sight of the great lagoon of Meona, the Piddler, I mean of Maeotis, which lies a little over a hundred days’ travel short of your greatness’s kingdom.”

“Your grace is mistaken, sir,” she said, “for it is not two years since I left it, and truly I never had good weather, and for all that I have come to see what I so much desired, which is Señor Don Quixote of La Mancha, the news of whom reached my ears as soon as I set foot in Spain, and it moved me to seek him out, to commend myself to his courtesy and entrust my just cause to the valor of his invincible arm.”

“No more: let my praises cease,” said Don Quixote at this, “for I am an enemy of every kind of flattery; and, though this may not be flattery, such talk still offends my chaste ears. What I can say, my lady, is that whether I have valor or not, what I may or may not have shall be spent in your service until I lose my life; and so, leaving this for its proper time, I beg the señor licentiate to tell me what is the cause that has brought him to these parts, so alone, and so without servants, and so lightly equipped, that it fills me with alarm.”

“To that I shall answer briefly,” answered the priest, “for your grace must know, Señor Don Quixote, that Master Nicolás, our friend and our barber, and I were going to Seville to collect a certain sum of money that a relative of mine who went over to the Indies many years ago had sent me, and not so little either, for it comes to no less than sixty thousand assayed pesos, which is something else again; and, passing through these parts yesterday, four highwaymen came out to meet us and stripped us of everything down to our beards; and they took them so thoroughly that the barber had to put on a false one; and even this young man who is with us here”—pointing to Cardenio—“they gave a thorough going-over. And the best of it is that it is common talk throughout this country round about that those who robbed us are some of the galley slaves who, they say, were set free, almost on this very spot, by a man so valiant that, in spite of the commissary and the guards, he let them all loose; and, beyond any doubt, he must have been out of his mind, or he must be as great a rogue as they are, or some man without soul or conscience, since he chose to turn the wolf loose among the sheep, the fox among the hens, and the fly into the honey; he chose to cheat justice, to go against his king and natural lord, since he went against his just commands. He chose, I say, to rob the galleys of their feet, to set the Holy Brotherhood in an uproar, which had been at rest for many years; he chose, in short, to do a deed by which his soul is lost and his body not won.”

Sancho had told the priest and the barber about the adventure of the galley slaves, which his master had brought to an end with such glory to himself, and that was why the priest laid it on thick in telling it, to see what Don Quixote would do or say; and Don Quixote’s color changed at every word, and he did not dare to say that he had been the liberator of those good people.

“These, then,” said the priest, “were the ones who robbed us; and may God in his mercy forgive the man who would not let them be taken to the punishment they deserved.”