Chapter I. Of what passed between the priest and the barber and Don Quixote concerning his illness
In the second part of this history, which is Don Quixote’s third sally, Cide Hamete Benengeli tells that the priest and the barber went almost a month without seeing him, so as not to stir up and bring back to his memory the things that had passed; but they did not for that reason stop visiting his niece and his housekeeper, charging them to take care to look after him well, giving him things to eat that were comforting and good for the heart and the brain, from which, by sound reasoning, all his misfortune proceeded. The women said that they were doing so, and would go on doing so, with all the goodwill and care possible, because they could see that their master, from one moment to the next, was giving signs of being in his full senses; at which the two men were greatly pleased, for it seemed to them that they had done right in bringing him home enchanted in the ox-cart, as was told in the first part of this history, as great as it is exact, in its last chapter. And so they resolved to visit him and test his improvement, although they held it almost impossible that he had improved at all, and they agreed not to touch on any point of knight-errantry, so as not to risk opening the stitches of a wound still so tender.
They visited him, at last, and found him sitting up in bed, dressed in a little jacket of green baize, with a red Toledo cap on his head; and he was so dried up and shriveled that he looked like nothing so much as mummy meat. He received them very well; they asked after his health, and he gave an account of himself and of it with much good sense and in very elegant words; and in the course of their talk they came to discuss what they call reason of state and methods of government, correcting this abuse and condemning that one, reforming one custom and banishing another, each of the three turning lawgiver, a Lycurgus of our day or a Solon fresh from the mint; and they so remade the commonwealth that it looked as though they had put it into a forge and drawn out a different one from the one they had put in; and Don Quixote spoke so sensibly on every subject they touched on that the two examiners believed beyond all doubt that he was entirely well and in his full senses.
The niece and the housekeeper were present at the conversation, and they could not thank God enough for seeing their master with so sound an understanding; but the priest, changing his first intention, which was not to touch him on any matter of chivalry, wished to make a thorough test of whether Don Quixote’s recovery was false or true, and so, from one thing to the next, he came to tell some news that had come from the court; and, among other things, he said it was taken as certain that the Turk was on his way down with a mighty fleet, though his design was not known, or where so great a storm cloud would break; and with this fear, which sounds the call to arms for us almost every year, all Christendom was standing to arms, and His Majesty had ordered defenses for the coasts of Naples and Sicily and for the island of Malta. To this Don Quixote answered:
“His Majesty has acted like a most prudent warrior in providing for his states in good time, lest the enemy catch him off guard; but were my counsel taken, I would advise him to adopt a precaution which His Majesty, at the present hour, must be very far from thinking of.”
Scarcely had the priest heard this when he said to himself:
“God keep you in his hand, poor Don Quixote: for it seems to me that you are plunging from the high summit of your madness into the deep abyss of your simplicity!”
But the barber, who had already hit on the same thought as the priest, asked Don Quixote what this warning of the precaution might be that he said ought to be taken; perhaps it might be one fit to be put on the list of the many impertinent pieces of advice that are usually given to princes.
“Mine, Señor Shaver,” said Don Quixote, “will not be impertinent, but pertinent.”
“I don’t say it for that reason,” replied the barber, “but because experience has shown that all or most of the schemes that are put before His Majesty are either impossible, or absurd, or harmful to the king or to the kingdom.”
“Well, mine,” answered Don Quixote, “is not impossible, nor is it absurd; it is the easiest, the most just, and the handiest and quickest that could ever enter the mind of any schemer.”
“Your grace is slow to tell it, Señor Don Quixote,” said the priest.
“I would not wish,” said Don Quixote, “to tell it here now and have it wake up tomorrow in the ears of the lords of the Council, and have someone else carry off the thanks and the reward for my labor.”
“As for me,” said the barber, “I pledge my word, here and before God, not to repeat what your grace says to king or rook, or to any earthly man, an oath I learned from the ballad of the priest who, in the preface of the Mass, warned the king about the thief who had robbed him of the hundred doubloons and his ambling mule.”
“I know nothing of stories,” said Don Quixote, “but I know that oath is a good one, for I know Señor Barber to be an honest man.”
“Even if he were not,” said the priest, “I vouch for him and stand surety for him that in this case he will speak no more than a mute, under penalty of paying whatever is judged and sentenced.”
“And who stands surety for your grace, Señor Priest?” said Don Quixote.
“My profession,” answered the priest, “which is to keep secrets.”
“Body of me!” said Don Quixote at this point. “Is there anything more to it than for His Majesty to order by public proclamation that all the knights-errant who wander about Spain are to assemble at court on an appointed day? For even if no more than half a dozen came, there might be one among them who alone would be enough to destroy the whole might of the Turk. Pay attention, your graces, and follow me. Is it by any chance a new thing for a single knight-errant to destroy an army of two hundred thousand men, as though the whole host had but one throat or were made of sugar paste? If not, tell me: how many histories are full of these marvels? If only, in an evil hour for me, and I will not say for anyone else, the famous Don Belianís were alive today, or any of the innumerable line of Amadís of Gaul! For if any one of them were alive today and stood face to face with the Turk, on my faith, I would not envy the Turk his winnings! But God will watch over his people and will provide someone who, if not as brave as the knights-errant of old, will at least not be their inferior in spirit; and God understands me, and I say no more.”
“Ay!” said the niece at this point. “May they kill me if my master doesn’t want to be a knight-errant again!”
To which Don Quixote said:
“A knight-errant I shall die, and the Turk may come down or go up whenever he likes and as powerfully as he can; for I say again that God understands me.”
At this point the barber said:
“I beg your graces to give me leave to tell a short tale of something that happened in Seville, which, since it fits here as if made to measure, I have a mind to tell.”
Don Quixote gave him leave, and the priest and the others lent him their attention, and he began in this way:
“In the madhouse of Seville there was a man whom his relatives had put there for want of sense. He was a graduate in canon law from Osuna, but, in the opinion of many, even if he had been one from Salamanca he would not have been any less mad. After some years shut up there, this graduate got the idea that he was sane and in his right mind, and with this notion he wrote to the archbishop, begging him earnestly and with very well-ordered arguments to order him taken out of the misery in which he lived, since by the mercy of God he had now recovered the sense he had lost; but, he said, his relatives kept him there so as to enjoy his share of the estate, and, in spite of the truth, wanted him to be mad until his death.
“The archbishop, persuaded by many well-ordered and sensible notes, ordered one of his chaplains to find out from the rector of the house whether what that licentiate wrote him was true, and also to speak with the madman himself, and, if he seemed to be in his senses, to take him out and set him free. The chaplain did so, and the rector told him that the man was still mad: for although he often spoke like a person of great understanding, in the end he would burst out with so many follies that in number and in size they equaled his earlier good sense, as could be tested by talking to him. The chaplain wished to make the test, and, being put in with the madman, he talked with him for an hour and more, and in all that time the madman never said a crooked or absurd word; on the contrary, he spoke so judiciously that the chaplain was forced to believe the madman was sane; and among other things the madman told him that the rector had a grudge against him, so as not to lose the presents his relatives gave the rector for saying that he was still mad, though with lucid intervals; and that the greatest adversary he had in his misfortune was his great wealth, since, in order to enjoy it, his enemies acted in bad faith and cast doubt on the mercy our Lord had shown him in turning him from a beast back into a man. In short, he talked in such a way that he made the rector look suspect, his relatives greedy and heartless, and himself so sensible that the chaplain resolved to take him away with him, so that the archbishop could see him and touch the truth of the business with his own hand.
“In this good faith the good chaplain asked the rector to have the licentiate given the clothes in which he had entered the house; the rector told him again to mind what he was doing, because, without any doubt at all, the licentiate was still mad. The rector’s precautions and warnings were of no use in keeping the chaplain from taking him; the rector obeyed, seeing that it was the archbishop’s order; they put the licentiate in his clothes, which were new and decent, and as soon as he saw himself dressed as a sane man and stripped of the madman, he begged the chaplain, for charity’s sake, to give him leave to go and say goodbye to his companions the madmen. The chaplain said he would like to go with him and see the madmen there were in the house. They went upstairs, in effect, and with them some others who happened to be present; and the licentiate, coming to a cage in which there was a raving madman, though at that moment calm and quiet, said to him: ‘Brother, see whether your grace has any errand for me, for I am going home; for God has been pleased, in his infinite goodness and mercy, and though I did not deserve it, to give me back my wits: I am now well and sane; for with the power of God nothing is impossible. Have great hope and trust in Him, for since He has returned me to my former state, He will return you to yours as well, if you trust in Him. I will see that some dainties are sent to you, and you must eat them by all means, for I tell you that I imagine, as one who has been through it, that all our madness comes from having our stomachs empty and our brains full of air. Take heart, take heart, for despondency in misfortune wears down health and brings on death.’
“All these words of the licentiate were heard by another madman who was in another cage, opposite the raving one’s, and, getting up from an old mat where he had been lying stark naked, he asked at the top of his voice who it was that was leaving well and sane. The licentiate answered: ‘I am the one who is leaving, brother; for I have no further need to stay here, for which I give infinite thanks to heaven, which has shown me so great a mercy.’ ‘Mind what you say, licentiate, don’t let the devil deceive you,’ replied the madman. ‘Keep your feet still and stay quietly in your own house here, and you’ll save yourself the trip back.’ ‘I know I am well,’ replied the licentiate, ‘and there will be no reason to go making the rounds of the stations again.’ ‘You, well?’ said the madman. ‘Very well, then, time will tell; go with God; but by Jupiter, whose majesty I represent on earth, I swear to you that for this one sin alone which Seville commits today in taking you out of this house and holding you sane, I shall inflict such a punishment on it that the memory of it will last for ever and ever, amen. Don’t you know, you wretched little licentiate, that I can do it, since, as I say, I am Jupiter the Thunderer, and hold in my hands the scorching thunderbolts with which I can and often do threaten and destroy the world? But I mean to punish this ignorant town with one thing only, and that is by not raining on it or on all its district and surroundings for three whole years, to be counted from the day and moment this threat has been made onward. You free, you well, you sane, and I mad, and I sick, and I tied up…? I’d as soon think of raining as of hanging myself.’
“The bystanders listened closely to the madman’s shouting and his words, but our licentiate, turning to our chaplain and taking him by the hands, said to him: ‘Let your grace not be troubled, my good sir, and take no notice of what this madman has said, for if he is Jupiter and will not rain, I am Neptune, the father and god of the waters, and I will rain whenever I take the fancy and whenever there is need.’ To which the chaplain replied: ‘Even so, Señor Neptune, it would not be well to anger Señor Jupiter: let your grace stay at home here, and another day, when it is more convenient and there is more time, we shall come back for your grace.’ The rector and those present laughed, and their laughter left the chaplain half abashed; they stripped the licentiate of his clothes, he stayed in the house, and the tale was over.”
“So this is the tale, Señor Barber,” said Don Quixote, “that fit here so well, as if made to measure, that you could not keep from telling it? Ah, Señor Scraper, Señor Scraper, how blind is the man who cannot see through the mesh of a sieve! And is it possible that your grace does not know that comparisons made between wit and wit, valor and valor, beauty and beauty, and lineage and lineage are always odious and ill received? Señor Barber, I am not Neptune, the god of the waters, and I do not try to pass for sensible when I am not; I only labor to make the world understand the error it is in by not renewing in itself that most happy time when the order of knight-errantry held the field. But this depraved age of ours does not deserve to enjoy as great a good as those ages enjoyed in which knights-errant took upon themselves and bore on their shoulders the defense of kingdoms, the protection of damsels, the succor of orphans and wards, the punishment of the proud, and the reward of the humble. Most of the knights in fashion nowadays have the damasks, brocades, and other rich stuffs they dress in rustling on them, rather than the mail they arm themselves with; there is no knight now who sleeps out in the fields, exposed to the rigor of the heavens, armed with all his arms from head to foot; and there is no one now who, without taking his feet out of the stirrups, leaning on his lance, tries only to snatch a nap, as they say, as the knights-errant used to do. There is no one now who, coming out of this forest, goes into that mountain, and from there treads a barren and deserted shore of the sea, most often stormy and wild, and, finding on it, at the water’s edge, a little boat without oars, sail, mast, or any rigging, throws himself into it with a dauntless heart, giving himself up to the implacable waves of the deep sea, which now lift him to the sky and now drop him into the abyss; and he, setting his breast against the irresistible tempest, when he least expects it, finds himself more than three thousand leagues from the spot where he set out to sea, and, leaping onto a far and unknown shore, has things befall him worthy of being written not on parchment but in bronze. But now sloth triumphs over diligence, idleness over labor, vice over virtue, arrogance over valor, and the theory of arms over their practice, which lived and shone only in the golden ages and in the knights-errant. If not, tell me: who was more virtuous and more valiant than the famous Amadís of Gaul? Who more sensible than Palmerín of England? Who more agreeable and easy to deal with than Tirante the White? Who more gallant than Lisuarte of Greece? Who more slashed or more slashing than Don Belianís? Who more dauntless than Perión of Gaul, or who readier to rush upon danger than Felixmartes of Hircania, or who more sincere than Esplandián? Who more reckless than Don Cirongilio of Thrace? Who braver than Rodamonte? Who more prudent than King Sobrino? Who bolder than Reinaldos? Who more invincible than Roldán? And who more gallant and more courteous than Rugero, from whom the dukes of Ferrara are descended today, according to Turpin in his Cosmography? All these knights, and many others I could name, Señor Priest, were knights-errant, and the light and glory of chivalry. These, or their like, are the ones I would want for my scheme, for if they were, His Majesty would find himself well served and would save a great deal of expense, and the Turk would be left tearing at his beard; and with this, I have no wish to be the one left at home, since there is no chaplain taking me out of it; and if your Jupiter, as the barber has said, will not rain, here I am, and I will rain whenever I please. I say this so that Señor Basin may know that I understand him.”
“In truth, Señor Don Quixote,” said the barber, “I did not mean it that way; God help me as surely as my intention was good, and your grace has no cause to take offense.”
“Whether I may take offense or not,” answered Don Quixote, “I know well enough myself.”
To this the priest said:
“Although I have hardly said a word until now, I would not like to be left with a scruple that is gnawing and scratching at my conscience, born of what Señor Don Quixote here has said.”
“For more things than that,” answered Don Quixote, “Señor Priest has leave; and so he may speak his scruple, for it is no pleasure to go about with a scrupulous conscience.”
“Well then, with that permission,” answered the priest, “I say that my scruple is that I cannot in any way persuade myself that the whole troop of knights-errant your grace has mentioned, Señor Don Quixote, were really and truly persons of flesh and blood in the world; rather, I imagine that it is all fiction, fable, and lies, and dreams told by men awake, or, better said, half asleep.”
“That is another error,” answered Don Quixote, “into which many have fallen who do not believe there have been such knights in the world; and many times, with various people and on various occasions, I have tried to bring this almost universal deception into the light of truth; but sometimes I have not carried my point, and other times I have, propping it on the shoulders of truth; and this truth is so certain that I am ready to say that I saw Amadís of Gaul with my own eyes, and that he was a man tall of body, fair of face, with a well-trimmed beard, though a black one, of a look between gentle and stern, sparing of words, slow to anger and quick to set anger aside; and in the way I have sketched Amadís I could, I believe, paint and portray every knight-errant who walks through the histories of the world; for from my conviction that they were as their histories tell, and from the deeds they did and the dispositions they had, their features, their coloring, and their stature can be deduced by sound philosophy.”
“How big does your grace think, my lord Don Quixote,” asked the barber, “the giant Morgante must have been?”
“On this matter of giants,” answered Don Quixote, “there are different opinions as to whether there have ever been any in the world or not; but Holy Scripture, which cannot fall short of the truth by a single atom, shows us that there were, telling us the story of that great hulking Philistine Golías, who was seven and a half cubits tall, which is an enormous size. In the island of Sicily, too, shinbones and shoulder blades have been found of such a size that it shows their owners to have been giants, tall as great towers; for geometry puts this truth beyond doubt. But for all that, I cannot say for certain what size Morgante was, although I imagine he cannot have been very tall; and what moves me to this opinion is finding, in the history where his deeds are particularly recorded, that he often slept under a roof; and since he could find a house he fit into, it is clear that his size was not enormous.”
“That is so,” said the priest.
And he, enjoying hearing him talk such great nonsense, asked him what he thought about the faces of Reinaldos of Montalbán and Don Roldán and the rest of the Twelve Peers of France, since they had all been knights-errant.
“Of Reinaldos,” answered Don Quixote, “I venture to say that he was broad of face, ruddy of complexion, with dancing and somewhat bulging eyes, touchy and choleric to excess, a friend of thieves and lost men. Of Roldán, or Rotolando, or Orlando, since the histories give him all three names, I am of the opinion, and I affirm it, that he was of middling height, broad of shoulder, somewhat bowlegged, swarthy of face and red of beard, hairy of body and threatening of look; sparing of words, but very courteous and well bred.”
“If Roldán was no more of a gentleman than your grace has said,” replied the priest, “it is no wonder that the lady Angélica the Fair scorned him and left him for the elegance, spirit, and charm that the little Moor with the budding beard to whom she gave herself must have had; and she showed good sense in loving the softness of Medoro rather than the roughness of Roldán.”
“That Angélica, Señor Priest,” answered Don Quixote, “was a dissolute damsel, a gadabout, and somewhat capricious, and she left the world as full of her follies as of the fame of her beauty: she scorned a thousand lords, a thousand valiant men, and a thousand sensible ones, and contented herself with a smooth-cheeked little page with no other fortune or name than the name for gratitude that his loyalty to his friend could give him. The great singer of her beauty, the famous Ariosto, because he did not dare, or did not wish, to sing what befell this lady after her base surrender, which cannot have been anything too decent, left her where he said:
“And how she took the scepter of Cathay,
perhaps another will sing with a better plectrum.
“And without a doubt this was like a prophecy; for poets are also called vates, which means diviners. This truth is plainly seen, because since then a famous Andalusian poet has wept and sung her tears, and another famous and peerless Castilian poet has sung her beauty.”
“Tell me, Señor Don Quixote,” said the barber at this point, “hasn’t there been some poet who has written a satire on this lady Angélica, among all those who have praised her?”
“I fully believe,” answered Don Quixote, “that if Sacripante or Roldán had been poets, they would have given the damsel a fine lathering by now; for it is the proper and natural thing for poets scorned and not accepted by their feigned ladies—or feigned, in effect, by those whom they chose as ladies of their thoughts—to avenge themselves with satires and libels (a revenge, to be sure, unworthy of generous breasts); but until now no defamatory verse against the lady Angélica, who set the world in an uproar, has come to my notice.”
“A miracle!” said the priest.
And at this they heard the housekeeper and the niece, who had already left the conversation, shouting loudly in the courtyard, and they all hurried toward the noise.