Chapter XXXII. Which deals with what befell Don Quixote’s whole company at the inn

The good meal over, they saddled up at once, and, without anything worth telling happening to them, they reached the next day the inn that was the terror and dread of Sancho Panza; and, although he would have liked not to go in, he could not avoid it. The innkeeper’s wife, the innkeeper, their daughter, and Maritornes, who saw Don Quixote and Sancho coming, went out to receive them with signs of great joy, and he received them with grave countenance and approval, and told them to make him up a better bed than the last time; to which the hostess answered that, provided he paid better than the other time, she would give him one fit for princes. Don Quixote said he would, and so they made him up a passable one in the same attic as before, and he lay down at once, because he arrived very battered and short of wits.

He had scarcely shut himself in when the hostess flew at the barber, and, seizing him by the beard, said:

“By the cross I sign myself with, you’re not going to get any more use out of my tail for your beard, and you’re going to give me back my tail; for my husband’s thing is lying about on the floor, and it’s a disgrace; I mean the comb, that I used to hang on my good tail.”

The barber would not give it to her, however much she pulled, until the licentiate told him to give it up, for there was no further need to use that device; he could now uncover himself and show himself in his own shape, and tell Don Quixote that when the thieving galley slaves robbed him he had fled to that inn; and that, if he asked after the princess’s squire, they would tell him she had sent him ahead to let the people of her kingdom know that she was on her way and was bringing with her the liberator of them all. With this, the barber gladly gave the tail back to the innkeeper’s wife, and they likewise returned to her all the gear she had lent for Don Quixote’s deliverance. All the people at the inn were amazed at Dorotea’s beauty, and even at the fine figure of the shepherd lad Cardenio. The priest had them prepare something to eat from whatever there was at the inn, and the host, in hope of better pay, diligently got them up a passable meal; and all this while Don Quixote slept, and they were of the opinion not to wake him, because sleeping would do him more good just then than eating.

Over the meal, with the innkeeper, his wife, his daughter, Maritornes, and all the travelers present, they talked of Don Quixote’s strange madness and of the state in which they had found him. The hostess told them what had happened to them with him and with the muleteer, and, looking round to see whether Sancho happened to be there, and not seeing him, she told the whole story of his blanket-tossing, which gave them no small amusement. And when the priest said that the books of chivalry Don Quixote had read had turned his brain, the innkeeper said:

“I don’t know how that can be; for in truth, as far as I can see, there’s no better reading in the world, and I’ve got two or three of them in there, with some other papers, that have truly been the life of me, and not only of me but of many others. Because, when it’s harvest time, a lot of reapers gather here on feast days, and there are always some who know how to read, and one of them takes one of these books in his hands, and more than thirty of us crowd around him, and we sit listening to him with so much pleasure that it takes a thousand gray hairs off us; at least, I can say for myself that when I hear tell of those furious and terrible blows the knights lay on, I get the urge to do as much myself, and I’d like to be hearing them night and day.”

“And so would I, neither more nor less,” said the innkeeper’s wife, “because I never get a moment’s peace in my house except while you’re listening to the reading: you’re so spellbound that you forget to scold for the time being.”

“That’s the truth,” said Maritornes, “and on my faith I enjoy hearing those things a lot too, for they’re very pretty; and most of all when they tell how some lady or other is under some orange trees in the arms of her knight, and a duenna is keeping watch for them, dying of envy and all of a fright. I say all that is pure honey.”

“And you, young lady, what do you think?” said the priest, speaking to the innkeeper’s daughter.

“Upon my soul, sir, I don’t know,” she answered. “I listen too, and in truth, though I don’t understand it, I do enjoy hearing it; but it isn’t the blows my father likes that I like, but the laments the knights make when they’re away from their ladies: for in truth they sometimes make me cry for the pity I feel for them.”

“Then you would soon give them relief, young lady,” said Dorotea, “if they wept for you?”

“I don’t know what I’d do,” answered the girl; “all I know is that some of those ladies are so cruel that their knights call them tigers and lions and a thousand other nasty things. And, Jesus! I don’t know what sort of people they are, so heartless and so without conscience, that sooner than look at an honorable man they’ll let him die or lose his mind. I can’t see what all that primness is for: if they do it because they’re virtuous, let them marry them, for that’s all the knights want.”

“Hush, girl,” said the innkeeper’s wife, “for it seems you know a great deal about these things, and it isn’t proper for maidens to know or to talk so much.”

“Since this gentleman asked me,” she answered, “I couldn’t help answering him.”

“Well, then,” said the priest, “bring me those books, Señor Host, for I want to see them.”

“With pleasure,” he answered.

And, going into his room, he brought out of it an old little trunk, shut with a small chain, and, opening it, he found in it three large books and some papers in a very fine hand, written out by pen. The first book he opened he saw was Don Cirongilio of Thrace; the second, Felixmarte of Hircania; and the third, the History of the Great Captain Gonzalo Hernández de Córdoba, with the Life of Diego García de Paredes. As soon as the priest read the first two titles, he turned his face toward the barber and said:

“What we lack here now is my friend’s housekeeper and his niece.”

“We lack nothing,” answered the barber, “for I too know how to carry them out to the yard or to the fireplace; and there’s a very good fire in it, to be sure.”

“So your grace wants to burn more books?” said the innkeeper. “No more,” said the priest, “than these two: the one of Don Cirongilio and the one of Felixmarte.”

“Why, are my books by any chance heretics or phlegmatics,” said the innkeeper, “that you want to burn them?”

“Schismatics, you mean, friend,” said the barber, “not phlegmatics.”

“That’s it,” replied the innkeeper, “but if you want to burn one, let it be that one about the Great Captain and that Diego García, for I’d sooner let a son of mine be burned than let either of those others burn.”

“My brother,” said the priest, “these two books are full of lies and stuffed with absurdities and idle fancies; and this one of the Great Captain is true history, and contains the deeds of Gonzalo Hernández de Córdoba, who, for his many great exploits, deserved to be called by the whole world the Great Captain, a famous and illustrious title, and one deserved by him alone. And this Diego García de Paredes was a leading gentleman, a native of the city of Trujillo, in Estremadura, a most valiant soldier, and of such natural strength that he could stop a mill wheel in the midst of its fury with one finger; and, posted with a two-handed sword at the entrance to a bridge, he held back a whole countless army so that it did not cross it; and he did other such things that if, instead of his telling and writing them himself, with the modesty of a gentleman who is his own chronicler, another writer, free and dispassionate, had set them down, they would have put those of the Hectors, Achilleses, and Roldáns into oblivion.”

“Go and tell that to my father!” said the said innkeeper. “Look at what amazes him: stopping a mill wheel! By God, your grace ought to read what Felixmarte of Hircania did, who with a single backstroke split five giants through the middle as if they were made of beans, like the little bean friars children make. And another time he charged a very great and very mighty army, with more than a million six hundred thousand soldiers in it, every one in armor from top to toe, and he scattered the lot of them as if they were flocks of sheep. Well, and what will they tell me about the good Don Cirongilio of Thrace, who was so valiant and bold, as will be seen in the book, where it tells that, as he was sailing on a river, a fiery serpent came up out of the middle of the water at him, and he, as soon as he saw it, threw himself on it and got astride its scaly back and squeezed its throat with both hands so hard that the serpent, seeing that it was being choked, had no help for it but to let itself go down to the riverbed, dragging the knight along behind it, for he would never let go of it? And once they reached the bottom, there he was among palaces and gardens so lovely that it was a marvel; and then the serpent turned into an aged old man, who told him so many things that there’s nothing more to hear. Hush, sir, for if you heard this you’d go mad with pleasure. Two figs for the Great Captain and for that Diego García you talk about!”

Hearing this, Dorotea said quietly to Cardenio:

“Our host is not far from making the second part of Don Quixote.”

“So it seems to me,” answered Cardenio, “for, by the signs he gives, he takes it for certain that everything these books tell happened neither more nor less than as they write it, and barefoot friars will not make him believe otherwise.” “Look, brother,” the priest said again, “there never was in the world any Felixmarte of Hircania or Don Cirongilio of Thrace, or other knights like them that the books of chivalry tell of, because it is all the invention and fiction of idle wits, who composed them for the purpose you speak of, to while away the time, as your reapers while it away by reading them; for I truly swear to you that no such knights ever existed in the world, nor did such exploits and absurdities ever happen in it.”

“Throw that bone to some other dog!” answered the innkeeper. “As if I didn’t know how many make five and where my shoe pinches! Don’t let your grace think you can feed me pap, for by God I’m nobody’s greenhorn. A fine thing, your grace wanting to make me believe that everything these good books say is nonsense and lies, when it’s printed by license of the gentlemen of the Royal Council, as if those were the sort of people who would let so many lies be printed all together, and so many battles and so many enchantments that drive you out of your wits!”

“I have told you already, friend,” replied the priest, “that this is done to entertain our idle thoughts; and, just as in well-ordered commonwealths chess, ball games, and billiards are permitted, to entertain some who neither have to work, nor ought to, nor can, so it is permitted to print such books and to let them exist, in the belief, which is the truth, that there will be no one so ignorant as to take any of these books for true history. And if it were proper for me now, and the audience called for it, I would say things about what books of chivalry must have in order to be good, which might perhaps be of profit, and even of pleasure, to some; but I hope a time will come when I may communicate it to someone who can remedy the matter, and in the meantime, Señor Innkeeper, believe what I have told you, and take your books, and settle it as best you can with their truths or their lies, and much good may they do you, and God grant you do not limp on the same foot your guest Don Quixote limps on.”

“Not that,” answered the innkeeper, “for I won’t be so mad as to turn knight-errant: I can see well enough that what was the custom in those days, when they say these famous knights went about the world, isn’t the custom now.”

Sancho had come in halfway through this talk, and was left very bewildered and thoughtful by what he had heard said, that knights-errant were not the custom now and that all books of chivalry were foolishness and lies, and he made up his mind, in his heart, to wait for the outcome of this journey of his master’s, and that, if it did not end as happily as he expected, he was resolved to quit him and return to his usual work with his wife and children.

The innkeeper was carrying off the trunk and the books, but the priest said to him: “Wait, for I want to see what papers those are that are written in so fine a hand.”

The host took them out, and, giving them to him to read, he saw some eight sheets or so written by hand, and at the beginning they had a large title that said: The Novel of the Ill-Advised Curiosity. The priest read three or four lines to himself and said:

“Indeed, I do not dislike the title of this novel, and I feel a wish to read it all.”

To which the innkeeper answered:

“Well, your reverence may read it, for I can tell you that some guests who have read it here liked it very much and have begged me hard for it; but I wouldn’t give it to them, because I mean to return it to the man who left this trunk here, forgotten, with these books and those papers; for it may very well be that its owner will come back this way sometime, and, although I know I’m going to miss the books, on my faith I’ll give them back to him: for, innkeeper or not, I’m still a Christian.”

“You are very right, friend,” said the priest, “but, for all that, if the novel pleases me, you must let me copy it.”

“With all my heart,” answered the innkeeper.

While the two of them were saying this, Cardenio had taken the novel and begun to read in it; and, thinking the same of it as the priest, he begged him to read it so that they could all hear it.

“I would read it,” said the priest, “if it were not better to spend this time sleeping than reading.”

“It will be rest enough for me,” said Dorotea, “to pass the time hearing some tale, since my spirit is not yet so calm that it will let me sleep when it would be right to.”

“Then in that case,” said the priest, “I will read it, out of curiosity if nothing else; perhaps it will have something pleasing in it.”

Master Nicolás came to ask the same of him, and Sancho too; seeing which, and understanding that he would give pleasure to them all and receive it himself, the priest said: “Well, since that is how it is, give me your attention, all of you, for the novel begins in this manner:”