Chapter XXX. Which deals with the clever device and plan that was used to draw our lovesick knight out of the very harsh penance he had taken upon himself
The priest had hardly finished when Sancho said:
“Well, upon my faith, Señor Licentiate, the one who did that deed was my master, and not because I didn’t tell him beforehand and warn him to look at what he was doing, and that it was a sin to set them free, because they were all going there for being the biggest rogues.” “Blockhead!” said Don Quixote at this. “It is no concern or business of knights-errant to find out whether the afflicted, the chained, and the oppressed whom they meet along the roads go that way, or are in that distress, for their faults or for their merits; their only concern is to help them as people in need, keeping their eyes on their sufferings and not on their roguery. I came upon a rosary and string of gloomy, wretched folk, and I did with them what my order requires of me, and as for the rest, let it sort itself out; and to whoever has taken it amiss, saving the holy dignity of the señor licentiate and his honorable person, I say that he knows little of the matter of chivalry, and that he lies like a son of a whore and a low-born churl; and this I shall make him acknowledge with my sword, wherein it is more fully set forth.”
And this he said, setting himself firm in the stirrups and pulling down his morion; for the barber’s basin, which by his reckoning was Mambrino’s helmet, he carried hanging from the saddlebow until he could repair the ill treatment the galley slaves had given it.
Dorotea, who was quick-witted and full of grace, and who by now knew Don Quixote’s crack-brained humor and that everyone was making fun of him except Sancho Panza, did not wish to be behind the rest, and, seeing him so angry, she said to him: “Sir knight, let your grace call to mind the boon you have promised me, and that, in keeping with it, you may not meddle in any other adventure, however urgent it may be; calm your breast, your grace, for if the señor licentiate had known that it was by that unconquered arm that the galley slaves had been freed, he would have put three stitches in his mouth, and even bitten his tongue three times, before he said a word that would redound to your grace’s displeasure.”
“That I swear indeed,” said the priest, “and I would even have shaved off half my mustache.” “I shall be silent, my lady,” said Don Quixote, “and I shall curb the just anger that had already risen in my breast, and I shall go quiet and peaceable until I fulfill the boon I promised you; but, in payment for this good intention, I beg you to tell me, if it does not trouble you, what your woe is, and how many, who, and what manner of persons they are on whom I must take due, satisfying, and complete vengeance for you.”
“That I shall do gladly,” answered Dorotea, “if you are not wearied by hearing of sorrows and misfortunes.”
“It will not weary me, my lady,” answered Don Quixote.
To which Dorotea answered:
“Then, since that is so, let your graces give me your attention.”
No sooner had she said this than Cardenio and the barber came up beside her, eager to see how the clever Dorotea would make up her story; and so did Sancho, who was as much deceived about her as his master. And she, after settling herself well in the saddle and preparing herself by coughing and making other gestures, very gracefully began to speak in this manner: “First of all, I want your graces to know, my lords, that I am called…”
And here she stopped for a moment, because she had forgotten the name the priest had given her; but he came to the rescue, for he understood what she was stuck on, and said:
“It is no wonder, my lady, that your greatness should be flustered and hindered in telling of your misfortunes, for they are often such that they take away the memory of those they ill-treat, so that they cannot even remember their own names, as they have done with your great ladyship, who no longer recalls that her name is Princess Micomicona and that she is the lawful heiress to the great kingdom of Micomicón; and with this prompting your greatness can now easily bring back to your sorrowing memory all you wish to tell.” “That is the truth,” answered the damsel, “and from here on I think there will be no need to prompt me in anything, for I shall bring my true history safe into harbor. Which is that the king my father, who is called Tinacrio the Sapient, was very learned in what they call the magic art, and he found out by his science that my mother, Queen Jaramilla by name, would die before he did, and that a short time after he too was to pass from this life and I would be left an orphan with neither father nor mother. But he said that this did not trouble him so much as it threw him into confusion to know, as a very certain thing, that a monstrous giant, lord of a great isle that almost borders on our kingdom, called Pandafilando of the Grim Gaze (for it is an established fact that, though his eyes are in their place and straight, he always looks askew, as if he were cross-eyed, and this he does out of malice and to put fear and terror into those he looks at); I say that he knew that this giant, on learning that I was an orphan, would come over with a great host against my kingdom and take it all from me, without leaving me a small village to take refuge in; but that all this ruin and misfortune could be escaped if I would consent to be his wife; though, as far as he could tell, he never thought it would come into my mind to make so unequal a marriage; and in this he told the plain truth, for it has never entered my thoughts to marry that giant, nor any other, however great and monstrous he might be. My father also said that, after he was dead and I saw that Pandafilando was beginning to come over against my kingdom, I was not to wait to put myself in a state of defense, for that would be to destroy myself, but should freely leave the kingdom clear to him, if I wished to spare my good and loyal vassals from death and utter destruction, since it would not be possible to defend myself against the devilish strength of the giant; but that I should at once, with some of my people, set out for the Spains, where I would find the remedy for my ills by finding a knight-errant, whose fame at that time would extend over the whole of this kingdom, and whose name, if I remember right, was to be Don Azote or Don Gigote.”
“Don Quixote she must mean, my lady,” said Sancho Panza at this, “or, by another name, the Knight of the Sorry Figure.”
“That is the truth,” said Dorotea. “He said further that he was to be tall of body, lean of face, and that on his right side, under the left shoulder, or somewhere near there, he was to have a brown mole with some hairs like bristles.”
On hearing this, Don Quixote said to his squire:
“Here, Sancho, my son, help me undress, for I want to see whether I am the knight that wise king foretold.”
“But why does your grace want to undress?” said Dorotea. “To see whether I have that mole your father spoke of,” answered Don Quixote. “There’s no need to undress,” said Sancho, “for I know your grace has a mole of that description in the middle of your backbone, which is the sign of a strong man.”
“That is enough,” said Dorotea, “for with friends one should not look too closely at small things, and shoulder or backbone, it makes little difference; the mole is there, and that suffices, wherever it may be, since it is all the same flesh; and no doubt my good father was right in everything, and I have done right in commending myself to Señor Don Quixote, for he is the one my father spoke of, since the marks of his face agree with those of the good fame this knight has, not only in Spain but in all La Mancha, for no sooner had I set foot ashore at Osuna than I heard tell of so many of his exploits that my soul told me at once he was the very one I had come to seek.”
“But how did your grace land at Osuna, my lady,” asked Don Quixote, “if it is not a seaport?”
But, before Dorotea could answer, the priest took up the word and said:
“The lady princess must mean that, after she landed at Málaga, the first place where she heard news of your grace was Osuna.” “That is what I meant,” said Dorotea.
“And that makes sense,” said the priest, “and let your majesty go on.” “There is nothing more to go on with,” answered Dorotea, “except that, in the end, my luck has been so good in finding Señor Don Quixote that I already count and hold myself queen and lady of all my kingdom, since he, out of his courtesy and magnificence, has promised me the boon of going with me wherever I may take him, which will be nowhere else than to set him before Pandafilando of the Grim Gaze, so that he may kill him and restore to me what he has usurped from me so much against reason: for all this is to happen just as one could wish, since so it was foretold by Tinacrio the Sapient, my good father; who also left it said and written in Chaldean or Greek letters, for I cannot read them, that if this knight of the prophecy, after he had cut the giant’s throat, should wish to marry me, I was to grant myself to him at once, without any demur, as his lawful wife, and give him possession of my kingdom, together with that of my person.”
“What do you think of that, Sancho, my friend?” said Don Quixote at this point. “Do you not hear what is happening? Did I not tell you so? See whether we have not a kingdom to rule now and a queen to marry.”
“I swear it,” said Sancho, “and the bugger who wouldn’t marry, once he’s slit Señor Pandahilado’s little windpipe! And a bad sort the queen is, isn’t she! I wish the fleas in my bed would all turn into such as she!”
And, saying this, he cut two capers in the air with signs of the greatest joy, and then went and took the reins of Dorotea’s mule and, making her stop, knelt down before her, begging her to give him her hands to kiss, in token that he accepted her as his queen and lady. Who among the bystanders could have kept from laughing, seeing the madness of the master and the simplicity of the servant? In effect, Dorotea gave them to him, and promised that he should be a great lord in her kingdom once heaven did her the kindness of letting her recover and enjoy it. Sancho thanked her in such words that he set them all laughing again.
“This, gentlemen,” Dorotea went on, “is my history: it only remains to tell you that of all the train of people I brought from my kingdom, none is left to me but this good bearded squire, for all were drowned in a great storm we met within sight of port, and he and I came ashore on two planks, as if by a miracle; and so the whole course of my life is miracle and mystery, as you will have noticed. And if I have gone too far in anything, or been less accurate than I should, lay the blame on what the señor licentiate said at the beginning of my tale: that continual and extraordinary troubles take away the memory of the one who suffers them.”
“They shall not take mine away, O high and valiant lady,” said Don Quixote, “all those I may undergo in serving you, however great and unheard-of they may be; and so once again I confirm the boon promised you, and I swear to go with you to the world’s end, until I stand before that fierce enemy of yours, whose proud head, with God’s help and that of my arm, I mean to hew off with the edges of this… I will not say good sword, for which I may thank Ginés de Pasamonte, who carried off mine.”
This he said between his teeth, and then went on, saying:
“And after I have cut it off and put you in peaceful possession of your estate, it will rest with your will to do with your person whatever may be most to your pleasure; because, while my memory is occupied and my will captive, my understanding lost, to that one…, and I say no more, it is not possible for me to face, even in thought, the idea of marrying, even if it were the phoenix.”
What his master had said last about not wishing to marry seemed so bad to Sancho that, in great anger, raising his voice, he said:
“I vow to myself and I swear to myself that your grace, Señor Don Quixote, is not in your right mind. Why, how is it possible that your grace has doubts about marrying so high a princess as this one? Do you think fortune is going to offer you, behind every little stone, such luck as is offered you now? Is my lady Dulcinea any more beautiful, by any chance? No, indeed, not by half, and I’m even ready to say she doesn’t come up to the shoe of the one who’s here in front of us. A fine chance I’ll have, then, of getting the earldom I’m hoping for, if your grace goes about asking for groundnuts in the open sea. Marry, marry at once, Satan take you, I say, and take this kingdom that drops into your hands de vobis, vobis, for nothing, and once you’re king, make me a marquis or a governor of a province, and then the devil can take it all, for all I care.”
Don Quixote, who heard such blasphemies spoken against his lady Dulcinea, could not bear it, and, raising his long lance, without saying a word to Sancho, without so much as a by-your-leave, he gave him two such blows that he laid him on the ground; and if Dorotea had not cried out to him not to give him any more, he would no doubt have taken his life there and then.
“Do you think,” he said to him after a while, “you vile peasant, that there is always to be room for you to take liberties with me, and that it is always to be your erring and my pardoning you? Well, do not think it, you excommunicated rogue, for that is surely what you are, since you have set your tongue on the peerless Dulcinea. And do you not know, you plowboy, you porter, you beggar, that, were it not for the valor she infuses into my arm, I would not have enough of it to kill a flea? Tell me, you sly dog with a viper’s tongue, and who do you think it is that has won this kingdom, beheaded this giant, and turned you into a marquis, for all this I already take as done and as a matter passed into settled judgment, if not the valor of Dulcinea, taking my arm as the instrument of her deeds? She fights in me and conquers in me, and I live and breathe in her, and have life and being. Oh, you son of a whore of a rogue, what ingratitude: here you are lifted out of the dust of the earth to become a lord with a title, and you answer so good a deed by speaking ill of the one who did it for you!”
Sancho was not so battered that he did not hear everything his master said to him, and, getting up rather quickly, he went and put himself behind Dorotea’s palfrey, and from there he said to his master:
“Tell me, sir: if your grace has made up your mind not to marry this great princess, it’s clear the kingdom won’t be yours; and, if it isn’t, what favors can you do me? That’s what I’m complaining of; marry this queen, your grace, once and for all, now that we have her here as if she’d rained down from heaven, and afterward you can go back to my lady Dulcinea; for there must have been kings in the world who kept mistresses. As for beauty, I don’t meddle in that; for, truly, if I’m to tell it, they both seem fine to me, though I’ve never seen the lady Dulcinea.” “What do you mean, you have never seen her, you blaspheming traitor?” said Don Quixote. “Why, have you not just brought me a message from her?”
“I mean I didn’t see her at such leisure,” said Sancho, “that I could have taken particular note of her beauty and her good parts point by point; but, just roughly, she seems fine to me.”
“Now I excuse you,” said Don Quixote, “and forgive me for the vexation I have caused you, for first impulses are not in a man’s control.”
“I can see that,” answered Sancho, “and so with me the urge to talk is always a first impulse, and I can’t keep from saying, at least once, what comes to my tongue.”
“For all that,” said Don Quixote, “mind what you say, Sancho, for the little pitcher goes so many times to the fountain…, and I say no more.”
“Well, now,” answered Sancho, “God is in heaven, who sees the tricks, and he’ll be the judge of who does more harm: I in not speaking well, or your grace in not doing well.”
“Let there be no more of this,” said Dorotea: “run, Sancho, and kiss your master’s hand, and ask his pardon, and from now on go more carefully in your praises and your abuse, and do not speak ill of that Tobosan lady, whom I do not know except to serve her, and trust in God, for you will not lack an estate where you may live like a prince.”
Sancho went with his head hanging and asked his master for his hand, and he gave it to him with a composed countenance; and, after Sancho had kissed it, he gave him his blessing, and told Sancho that they should go on a little ahead, for he had things of great importance to ask him and to talk over with him. Sancho did so, and the two went a little way ahead, and Don Quixote said to him: “Since you came back, I have not had the chance or the leisure to ask you many particulars about the embassy you carried and the answer you brought; and now, since fortune has granted us time and place, do not deny me the happiness you can give me with such good news.” “Let your grace ask whatever you like,” answered Sancho, “for I’ll find as good a way out of everything as I had a way in. But I beg your grace, my master, not to be so vengeful from now on.”
“Why do you say that, Sancho?” said Don Quixote.
“I say it,” he answered, “because these blows just now were more for the quarrel the devil stirred up between the two of us the other night than for what I said against my lady Dulcinea, whom I love and revere like a relic, though there’s nothing of a relic about her, only because she’s something of your grace’s.”
“Do not go back to that talk, Sancho, on your life,” said Don Quixote, “for it grieves me; I forgave you then, and you know very well what they say: for a new sin, a new penance.”
While the two of them were going along in this talk, the priest told Dorotea that she had acted very cleverly, as much in the tale as in its brevity, and in its likeness to those of the books of chivalry. She said she had spent many hours amusing herself by reading them, but that she did not know where the provinces or the seaports were, and so she had said at random that she had landed at Osuna.
“I understood it so,” said the priest, “and that is why I rushed in at once to say what I said, which set everything right. But is it not a strange thing to see how easily this unfortunate hidalgo believes all these inventions and lies, only because they have the style and manner of the nonsense in his books?”
“It is,” said Cardenio, “and so rare and so unheard-of that I do not know whether, if one tried to invent and fabricate it as a lie, there would be a wit sharp enough to hit upon it.”
“Well, there is another thing in it,” said the priest: “that, apart from the simplicities this good hidalgo utters touching on his madness, if other matters are discussed with him, he reasons very soundly and shows a clear and pleasant understanding in everything. So that, as long as his chivalries are not touched on, there is no one who would judge him to be anything but a man of very good understanding.”
While they were going along in this conversation, Don Quixote went on with his and said to Sancho:
“Let us throw these little hairs into the sea, Panza, my friend, in this matter of our quarrels, and tell me now, without any thought of anger or rancor: Where, how, and when did you find Dulcinea? What was she doing? What did you say to her? What did she answer you? What face did she make when she read my letter? Who copied it out for you? And everything you see in this case that is worth knowing, asking, and answering, without adding or lying to please me, nor cutting it short so as not to rob me of pleasure.”
“Sir,” answered Sancho, “if the truth is to be told, nobody copied the letter for me, because I didn’t carry any letter at all.”
“It is as you say,” said Don Quixote, “for I found the notebook in which I wrote it in my possession two days after you left, which caused me very great distress, not knowing what you would do when you found yourself without a letter, and I believed all along that you would come back from the place where you missed it.”
“So I would have,” answered Sancho, “if I hadn’t learned it by heart when your grace read it to me, so that I said it to a sexton, who copied it out of my head so point by point that he said he had never in his whole life, for all the letters of excommunication he had read, seen or read so fine a letter as that one.”
“And have you still got it in your memory, Sancho?” said Don Quixote.
“No, sir,” answered Sancho, “because after I gave it, since I saw it was going to be of no more use, I set about forgetting it. And if I remember anything, it’s that bit about the slovenly, I mean the sovereign lady, and the end: Yours until death, the Knight of the Sorry Figure. And in between these two things I put in more than three hundred ‘my souls’ and ‘my lifes’ and ‘my eyes.’”