Chapter LII. Of the quarrel Don Quixote had with the goatherd, with the rare adventure of the penitents, which he brought to a happy end at the cost of his sweat
The goatherd’s tale gave general pleasure to all who had heard it; it pleased the canon most of all, who noted with uncommon interest the manner in which he had told it, as far from seeming a rustic goatherd as it was close to showing him a polished courtier; and so he said that the priest had been quite right in saying that the mountains bred scholars. They all offered Eugenio their services; but the one who showed himself most liberal in this was Don Quixote, who said to him:
“Truly, brother goatherd, if I found myself in a position to undertake any adventure, I would set out at once, at once, so that things might go well for you; for I would take Leandra out of the convent, where beyond any doubt she must be against her will, in spite of the abbess and of all who might try to hinder it, and I would put her into your hands, for you to do with her entirely at your will and pleasure, observing, however, the laws of chivalry, which command that no foul wrong be done to any damsel; though I trust in God our Lord that the might of one malicious enchanter cannot be so great that the might of another, better-intentioned enchanter cannot prevail over it; and for that day I promise you my favor and help, as my profession obliges me, which is none other than to aid the helpless and the needy.”
The goatherd looked at him, and, seeing Don Quixote so shabby in coat and countenance, he was astonished, and asked the barber, who was next to him:
“Sir, who is this man who has such a look about him and talks in such a way?”
“Who should he be,” answered the barber, “but the famous Don Quixote of La Mancha, the undoer of injuries, the righter of wrongs, the shield of damsels, the terror of giants, and the winner of battles?”
“That sounds to me,” answered the goatherd, “like what you read in the books of knights-errant, who did all those things your grace says of this man; though for my part I take it that either your grace is joking or this gentleman must have the rooms of his head to let.”
“You are a most enormous villain,” said Don Quixote at this, “and it is you who are the empty one and the half-wit, for I am fuller than ever was the most whoreson whore that bore you.”
And no sooner said than done: he snatched up a loaf that was beside him and hit the goatherd full in the face with it, with such fury that it squashed his nose flat; but the goatherd, who was no man for jokes, seeing how much in earnest he was being mistreated, and with no regard for the carpet, or the tablecloths, or all those who were eating, leaped on Don Quixote, got both hands around his neck, and would not have hesitated to throttle him if Sancho Panza had not come up at that moment and grabbed him by the shoulders and thrown him down on top of the table, breaking plates, smashing cups, and spilling and scattering everything on it. Don Quixote, finding himself free, rushed to get on top of the goatherd, who, his face covered with blood and pounded by Sancho’s kicks, was crawling about on all fours looking for a knife from the table to take some bloody vengeance; but the canon and the priest prevented him; the barber, however, managed it so that the goatherd got Don Quixote under him, and on him rained down so many punches that from the poor knight’s face there rained as much blood as from the goatherd’s own.
The canon and the priest were bursting with laughter, the troopers were jumping for joy, and both sides were egging them on, as people do with dogs when they are locked in a fight; only Sancho Panza was in despair, because he could not get loose from one of the canon’s servants, who kept him from going to help his master.
In short, while everyone was enjoying the fun and the feast, except for the two pummelers who were mauling each other, they heard the sound of a trumpet so mournful that it made them turn their faces toward where it seemed to be coming from; but the one most excited at hearing it was Don Quixote, who, although he was lying under the goatherd, very much against his will and more than moderately battered, said to him:
“Brother devil, for it is impossible that you should be anything else, since you have had the valor and strength to overcome mine, I pray you let us make a truce, for no more than an hour; for the doleful sound of that trumpet that reaches our ears seems to me to be calling me to some new adventure.”
The goatherd, who by now was tired of pounding and being pounded, let him go at once, and Don Quixote got to his feet, turning his face likewise toward where the sound was heard, and suddenly saw a great many men dressed in white, in the manner of penitents, coming down a slope.
The fact was that that year the clouds had denied their dew to the earth, and in all the villages of that district processions, rogations, and scourgings were being held, asking God to open the hands of His mercy and send them rain; and for this purpose the people of a village close by were coming in procession to a holy hermitage that stood on a slope of that valley.
Don Quixote, seeing the strange garments of the penitents, and without its crossing his mind how many times he must have seen them before, imagined that this was a matter of adventure, and that undertaking it was his task alone, as a knight-errant; and he was further confirmed in this fancy by thinking that an image they were carrying, covered in mourning, must be some great lady whom those caitiffs and discourteous miscreants were carrying off by force; and, as soon as this came into his mind, he ran with great speed to Rocinante, who was grazing nearby, took the bridle and the shield from the saddlebow, bridled him in an instant, and, asking Sancho for his sword, mounted Rocinante, braced his shield on his arm, and said in a loud voice to all who were present:
“Now, valiant company, ye shall see how much it matters that there be knights in the world who profess the order of knight-errantry; now, I say, ye shall see, in the freeing of that good lady who goes captive yonder, whether knights-errant are to be held in esteem.”
And with these words he pressed his thighs to Rocinante, for he had no spurs, and at a full gallop, since nowhere in all this true history do we read that Rocinante ever ran flat out, he went to meet the penitents, though the priest and the canon and the barber ran to stop him; but they could not, nor did the shouts Sancho sent after him stop him either:
“Where are you going, Señor Don Quixote? What demons have you got in your breast, that drive you to go against our Catholic faith? Look, curse me, that’s a procession of penitents, and that lady they’re carrying on the stand is the most blessed image of the spotless Virgin; mind what you’re doing, sir, for this time it can truly be said you don’t know what you’re about.”
Sancho wore himself out in vain, for his master was so set on reaching the sheeted men and freeing the lady in mourning that he did not hear a word; and even if he had heard it, he would not have turned back if the king had ordered him to. He reached the procession, then, and reined in Rocinante, who was already longing to rest a little, and in a troubled, hoarse voice he said:
“You who hide your faces, perhaps because you are not good men, attend and hearken to what I would say to you.”
The first to stop were those carrying the image; and one of the four clerics who were chanting the litanies, seeing Don Quixote’s strange appearance, Rocinante’s leanness, and other laughable circumstances he noted and discovered in Don Quixote, answered him, saying:
“Brother, sir, if you wish to say something to us, say it quickly, because these brethren are laying their flesh open, and we cannot stop to hear anything, nor is it right that we should, unless it is so brief that it can be said in two words.”
“I shall say it in one,” replied Don Quixote, “and it is this: that you set that beautiful lady free at once, this very instant, for her tears and her sorrowful countenance are clear signs that you are carrying her off against her will and that ye have done her some notorious foul wrong; and I, who was born into the world to undo such injuries, will not consent that you go one step farther without giving her the longed-for freedom she deserves.”
From these words all who heard them gathered that Don Quixote must be some madman, and they began to laugh very heartily; and their laughter was like putting gunpowder to Don Quixote’s anger, for, without another word, he drew his sword and charged at the stand. One of those carrying it, leaving the load to his companions, came out to meet Don Quixote, brandishing a forked prop, or staff, with which he held up the stand when they rested; and, catching on it a great slash Don Quixote aimed at him, which cut it in two, with the last third, which was left in his hand, he dealt Don Quixote such a blow on the shoulder, on his sword side, which his shield could not cover against such churlish force, that poor Don Quixote came to the ground in very sorry shape.
Sancho Panza, who was coming up panting behind him, seeing him fallen, shouted to his pounder not to give him another blow, because he was a poor enchanted knight who had never done anyone any harm in all the days of his life. But it was not Sancho’s shouts that stopped the peasant; it was the sight of Don Quixote lying without moving hand or foot; and so, believing he had killed him, he hastily hitched his tunic up to his waist and took off across the countryside like a deer.
By this time all Don Quixote’s company had come up to where he lay; and those in the procession, seeing them come running, and the troopers with their crossbows among them, feared some ill outcome, and they all bunched together in a huddle around the image; and, with their hoods raised, gripping their scourges, and the clerics their processional candlesticks, they awaited the assault, determined to defend themselves, and even to attack their assailants if they could; but fortune managed things better than anyone expected, for Sancho did nothing but throw himself on his master’s body, raising over it the most doleful and laughable lament in the world, in the belief that he was dead.
Our priest was recognized by another priest who was walking in the procession, and this recognition put to rest the fear the two squadrons had conceived. The first priest gave the second, in a few words, an account of who Don Quixote was, and so he and the whole crowd of penitents went to see whether the poor knight was dead, and they heard Sancho Panza saying, with tears in his eyes:
“O flower of chivalry, who with a single blow of a cudgel ended the course of your so well-spent years! O honor of your lineage, honor and glory of all La Mancha, and even of the whole world, which, with you gone from it, will be left full of evildoers with no fear of being punished for their evil deeds! O liberal above all the Alexanders, since for only eight months of service you had as good as given me the best isle the sea girds and surrounds! O humble with the proud and arrogant with the humble, undertaker of dangers, sufferer of affronts, in love without cause, imitator of the good, scourge of the wicked, enemy of the base; in short, a knight-errant, which is all there is to say!”
At Sancho’s cries and moans Don Quixote revived, and the first word he spoke was:
“He who lives absent from you, sweetest Dulcinea, is subject to greater miseries than these. Help me, Sancho, my friend, onto the enchanted cart, for I am in no state now to press the saddle of Rocinante, because I have this whole shoulder broken to pieces.”
“That I’ll do very gladly, my master,” answered Sancho, “and let’s go back to my village in the company of these gentlemen, who wish you well, and there we’ll make arrangements for another sally that will bring us more profit and fame.”
“You speak well, Sancho,” answered Don Quixote, “and it will be great prudence to let the evil influence of the stars that now prevails pass by.”
The canon and the priest and the barber told him he would do very well to do as he said; and so, having been greatly amused by Sancho Panza’s simplicities, they put Don Quixote in the cart as he had been before. The procession formed up again and went on its way; the goatherd took his leave of them all; the troopers did not want to go any farther, and the priest paid them what was owed them. The canon asked the priest to let him know what became of Don Quixote, whether he was cured of his madness or went on in it, and with that he took his leave and went on with his journey. In the end the whole party broke up and scattered, and there remained only the priest and the barber, Don Quixote and Panza, and the good Rocinante, who bore everything he had seen with as much patience as his master.
The ox-driver yoked his oxen and settled Don Quixote on a bundle of hay, and with his accustomed phlegm followed the road the priest chose, and six days later they arrived at Don Quixote’s village, which they entered at noon on what happened to be a Sunday, when the people were all in the square, through the middle of which Don Quixote’s cart passed. Everyone came running to see what was in the cart, and when they recognized their fellow townsman they were amazed, and a boy ran to carry word to his housekeeper and his niece that their master and uncle was coming home thin and sallow, stretched out on a heap of hay on an ox-cart. It was a pitiful thing to hear the cries the two good women raised, the slaps they gave themselves, the curses they heaped anew on the accursed books of chivalry; all of which was renewed when they saw Don Quixote come in at their door.
At the news of Don Quixote’s coming, Sancho Panza’s wife came running, for she had already learned that he had gone with him to serve as his squire, and as soon as she saw Sancho, the first thing she asked him was whether the donkey had come back well. Sancho answered that he had come back better than his master.
“Thanks be to God,” she replied, “who has been so good to me; but tell me now, my friend, what good have you got out of your squirings? What Savoyard skirt have you brought for me? What little shoes for your children?”
“I’m not bringing any of that, wife,” said Sancho, “though I am bringing other things of more moment and consideration.”
“That I’m very glad to hear,” answered his wife. “Show me those things of more consideration and more moment, my friend, for I want to see them, so that this heart of mine may be cheered, which has been so sad and discontented through all the ages of your absence.”
“I’ll show them to you at home, wife,” said Panza, “and for now be content; for, if it is God’s will that we set out on our travels again in search of adventures, you’ll soon see me a count or governor of an isle, and not one of the run-of-the-mill ones, but the best that can be found.”
“May heaven will it so, husband, for we need it badly enough. But tell me, what’s this about isles? I don’t understand it.”
“Honey isn’t for the donkey’s mouth,” answered Sancho. “You’ll see in good time, woman, and you’ll even be amazed to hear all your vassals call you your ladyship.”
“What’s this you’re saying, Sancho, about ladyships, isles, and vassals?” answered Juana Panza, for that was the name of Sancho’s wife, though they were not kin, but because it is the custom in La Mancha for wives to take their husbands’ surnames.
“Don’t be in such a hurry to know all this, Juana; it’s enough that I’m telling you the truth, and sew up your mouth. I’ll only tell you, in passing, that there’s nothing more pleasant in the world than being an honored squire to a knight-errant who goes looking for adventures. It’s true enough that most of the ones you find don’t turn out as well as a man would like, because out of a hundred you run into, ninety-nine usually turn out crooked and contrary. I know it from experience, for out of some I’ve come off tossed in a blanket, and out of others pounded to a pulp; but, for all that, it’s a fine thing to go looking for what will happen, crossing mountains, searching forests, treading rocks, visiting castles, lodging in inns at your own sweet will without paying a single maravedí, the devil take it.”
All these conversations passed between Sancho Panza and Juana Panza, his wife, while Don Quixote’s housekeeper and niece received him, undressed him, and laid him in his old bed. He looked at them askance and could not quite make out where he was. The priest charged the niece to take great care to make much of her uncle and to keep watch so that he did not escape them again, telling them what it had taken to bring him home. At this the two raised their cries to heaven once more; then the curses on the books of chivalry were renewed, then they begged heaven to confound in the depths of the abyss the authors of so many lies and absurdities. In the end they were left bewildered and afraid that they would find themselves without their master and uncle the moment he was any better; and it turned out just as they imagined.
But the author of this history, although he has searched with care and diligence for the deeds Don Quixote performed on his third sally, has not been able to find any account of them, at least in authentic writings; fame alone has preserved, in the memories of La Mancha, that Don Quixote, the third time he left home, went to Zaragoza, where he took part in some famous jousts held in that city, and there things befell him worthy of his valor and good understanding. Nor could he learn anything of his end and passing, nor would he have learned or known of it had good fortune not brought him an old physician who had in his keeping a lead box which, he said, had been found in the demolished foundations of an old hermitage that was being rebuilt; in which box had been found some parchments written in Gothic letters, but in Castilian verse, which contained many of his exploits and gave an account of the beauty of Dulcinea del Toboso, the shape of Rocinante, the fidelity of Sancho Panza, and the tomb of Don Quixote himself, with various epitaphs and eulogies of his life and character.
And those that could be read and made out clearly are the ones the trustworthy author of this new and never-before-seen history sets down here. And this author asks of those who read it, in reward for the immense labor it cost him to investigate and search all the archives of La Mancha to bring it to light, only that they give it the same credit that sensible people usually give to the books of chivalry that are so much in favor in the world; for with this he will consider himself well paid and satisfied, and will be encouraged to seek out and bring forth others, if not as true, at least of as much invention and entertainment.
The first words that were written on the parchment that turned up in the lead box were these:
THE ACADEMICIANS OF ARGAMASILLA,
A PLACE IN LA MANCHA,
UPON THE LIFE AND DEATH OF THE VALIANT
DON QUIXOTE OF LA MANCHA,
HOC SCRIPSERUNT (WROTE THIS):
THE MONICONGO (KING OF THE CONGO), ACADEMICIAN OF ARGAMASILLA,
ON THE TOMB OF DON QUIXOTE
Epitaph
The harebrained madcap who adorned La Mancha
with richer spoils than Jason out of Crete;
the judgment that, just like a weathervane,
was sharp where it had served him better broad;
the arm whose strength stretched out so wide a span
that it reached all the way from Cathay to Gaeta;
the most horrendous and most knowing Muse
that ever carved its verses on a plate of brass;
he who left all the Amadíses in the rear
and held the Galaors of little worth,
propped on his love and on his gallantry;
he who struck all the Belianíses dumb;
he who went wandering errant on Rocinante,
lies here beneath this cold slab of stone.
BY THE PANIAGUADO (THE HANGER-ON), ACADEMICIAN OF ARGAMASILLA,
In laudem Dulcineae del Toboso (In praise of Dulcinea del Toboso)
Sonnet
She whom you see here with the tripe-puffed face,
high in the bosom, spirited in mien,
is Dulcinea, El Toboso’s queen,
with whom the great Quixote fell in love.
For her he trod the one side and the other
of the great Sierra Negra, and the famed
plain of Montiel, as far as the grassy
meadows of Aranjuez, on foot and weary.
The fault was Rocinante’s! O hard star!
For this Manchegan lady and this knight,
unconquered and errant, in their tender years,
she, in her dying, ceased to be a beauty;
and he, though he stands written still in marble,
could not escape from love, from wrath, from guile.
BY THE CAPRICHOSO (THE WHIMSICAL), MOST LEARNED ACADEMICIAN OF ARGAMASILLA,
IN PRAISE OF ROCINANTE, HORSE OF DON QUIXOTE OF LA MANCHA
Sonnet
Upon the proud and adamantine throne
that Mars treads down with feet that drip with blood,
the frenzied Manchegan flies his standard high
and waves it with a valor rare and strange.
He hangs his arms up, and the fine steel with which
he shatters, lays to waste, and cleaves, and splits:
new feats of prowess! But art now invents
a new style for this new paladin.
And if Gaul takes such pride in its Amadís,
through whose brave offspring Greece a thousand times
triumphed, and spread her fame on every side,
today the hall where Bellona presides
crowns Quixote, and, more than Greece or Gaul,
lofty La Mancha takes her pride in him.
Oblivion never blots his glories, since
even Rocinante, in his gallantry,
outdoes both Brilladoro and Bayardo.
BY THE BURLADOR (THE MOCKER), ARGAMASILLESQUE ACADEMICIAN,
TO SANCHO PANZA
Sonnet1
This, whom you see, is Sancho Panza: small
of body, but a giant in his soul;
no squire the round world ever knew was found
more plain and simple, or more free of guile.
He came within a hair of being count,
and would have been, had not the spite and venom
of this mean, grudging age conspired against him,
an age that will not even spare an ass.
For on an ass (forgive me for the word)
this gentle squire, by Rocinante’s side,
went in attendance on his roving master.
O idle hopes, that lead the crowd along
with promises of rest and heart’s content,
in shadow, smoke, and dream you always end!
BY THE CACHIDIABLO (THE HOBGOBLIN), ACADEMICIAN OF ARGAMASILLA,
ON THE TOMB OF DON QUIXOTE
Epitaph
Here lies buried the knight,
well pounded and ill-errant,
whom Rocinante carried
along this path and that.
Sancho Panza, the dolt,
lies also at his side,
the most faithful squire
the squiring trade has seen.
BY THE TIQUITOC (TICKTOCK), ACADEMICIAN OF ARGAMASILLA,
ON THE TOMB OF DULCINEA DEL TOBOSO
Epitaph
Here Dulcinea rests;
and, though she was plump of flesh,
frightful and ugly death
has turned her to dust and ash.
She came of a pure-bred stock,
and had something of the lady;
she was the great Quixote’s flame,
and the glory of her village.
These were the verses that could be read; the rest, because the writing was worm-eaten, were handed over to an academician to make them out by conjecture. It is known that he has done so, at the cost of many sleepless nights and much toil, and that he intends to bring them to light, in hope of Don Quixote’s third sally.
Forsi altro canterà con miglior plectio. (Perhaps another will sing with a better plectrum.)
Finis (The End)
Notes
1. The fourteen lines of this sonnet are missing from the Spanish text this translation follows, which gives only its heading. In this edition they are supplied in new English after the sense of John Ormsby’s English version of 1885, so these lines reach the reader through an English translation rather than directly from Cervantes’s Spanish.