Chapter V. Of the sensible and amusing talk that passed between Sancho Panza and his wife, Teresa Panza, and other events worthy of happy remembrance
(When the translator of this history came to write this fifth chapter, he says that he holds it to be apocryphal, because in it Sancho Panza speaks in another style than could be expected of his slender wit, and says things of such subtlety that he does not believe Sancho could have known them; but that he did not wish to leave it untranslated, so as to fulfill what he owed to his office; and so he went on, saying:)
Sancho came home so merry and cheerful that his wife could see his cheer a crossbow shot away; so much so that it made her ask him:
“What have you got there, Sancho, my friend, that you come home so cheerful?”
To which he answered:
“Wife, if God were willing, I’d be very glad not to be as happy as I look.”
“I don’t understand you, husband,” she replied, “and I don’t know what you mean by saying you’d be glad, if God were willing, not to be happy; for, fool though I be, I don’t know who takes any pleasure in not having any.”
“Look, Teresa,” answered Sancho, “I’m cheerful because I’ve made up my mind to go back to serving my master Don Quixote, who wants to go out a third time looking for adventures; and I’m going out with him again, because my need wants it so, along with the hope, which cheers me, of thinking I might find another hundred escudos like the ones I’ve spent, though it saddens me to have to part from you and from my children; and if God were willing to give me my living dry-shod and at home, without dragging me over rough paths and crossroads, since He could do it at little cost, just by wanting to, it’s plain that my cheer would be firmer and sounder, for the one I have is mixed with the sadness of leaving you; so I was right to say that I’d be glad, if God were willing, not to be happy.”
“Look, Sancho,” replied Teresa, “ever since you became a member of a knight-errant, you talk in such a roundabout way that there’s no understanding you.”
“It’s enough that God understands me, wife,” answered Sancho, “for He’s the understander of all things, and let’s leave it there; and take note, sister, that you must look after the gray these three days, so that he’s fit to bear arms: double his feed, see to the packsaddle and the rest of the tackle, because we’re not going to a wedding but off to go round the world, and to have give-and-take with giants, with dragons, and with monsters, and to hear hisses, roars, bellows, and howls; and even all that would be lavender flowers if we didn’t have to deal with Yangüeses and enchanted Moors.”
“I well believe, husband,” replied Teresa, “that errant squires don’t eat their bread for nothing; and so I’ll be praying our Lord to get you out of so much bad luck soon.”
“I tell you, wife,” answered Sancho, “that if I didn’t think I’d see myself governor of an isle before long, I’d drop dead right here.”
“Not that, husband,” said Teresa. “Let the hen live, even with the pip; you live, and let the devil take all the governments there are in the world; without a government you came out of your mother’s belly, without a government you’ve lived until now, and without a government you’ll go, or be carried, to the grave when God is pleased. There are plenty in the world who live without a government, and they don’t leave off living for all that, or being counted among the people. Hunger is the best sauce in the world; and since the poor never lack it, they always eat with relish. But look, Sancho: if by any chance a government comes your way, don’t forget me or your children. Bear in mind that Sanchico is fully fifteen now, and it’s right that he should go to school, if his uncle the abbot is going to make a churchman of him. Remember too that Mari Sancha, your daughter, won’t die if we marry her off; for I’m getting hints that she wants a husband as much as you want to see yourself with a government; and when all’s said and done, a daughter looks better badly married than well kept as some man’s mistress.”
“On my faith,” answered Sancho, “if God lets me get hold of any sort of government, I’ll marry Mari Sancha, wife, so high up that nobody will reach her without calling her my lady.”
“Not that, Sancho,” answered Teresa. “Marry her to her equal, that’s the wisest thing; for if you take her out of clogs and put her in chopines, and out of a brown skirt of coarse cloth and into a farthingale and silk Savoyard skirts, and from ‘Marica’ and a plain tú to ‘Doña So-and-so’ and ‘your ladyship,’ the girl won’t know where she is, and at every step she’ll fall into a thousand blunders, showing the threads of her coarse, rough weave.”
“Quiet, you silly thing,” said Sancho, “it will only be a matter of wearing it two or three years; after that the ladyship and the dignity will come to her as if made to measure; and if not, what does it matter? Let her be your ladyship, and come what may.”
“Measure yourself by your station, Sancho,” answered Teresa, “and don’t try to raise yourself to higher things, and mind the proverb that says: ‘Wipe your neighbor’s son’s nose and take him into your house.’ Oh yes, very nice it would be, to marry our María to some great lump of a count, or some jumped-up gentleman who, whenever he took the fancy, would give her a dressing-down, calling her a peasant, the daughter of a clod-buster and a spinning-wench! Not in my day, husband! That’s not what I raised my daughter for, I can tell you! You bring the money, Sancho, and leave the marrying of her to me; for there’s Lope Tocho, Juan Tocho’s son, a plump, healthy lad, and one we know, and I know he doesn’t look on the girl with a bad eye; and with him, since he’s our equal, she’ll be well married, and we’ll always have him under our eyes, and we’ll all be one family, parents and children, grandchildren and sons-in-law, with God’s peace and blessing going around among all of us; and don’t you go marrying her off to me now in those courts and those great palaces, where they won’t understand her and she won’t understand herself.”
“Come here, you beast, you Barabbas’s wife,” replied Sancho. “Why do you want now, for no rhyme or reason, to keep me from marrying my daughter to someone who’ll give me grandchildren to be called your lordship? Look, Teresa: I’ve always heard my elders say that he who can’t enjoy good luck when it comes to him shouldn’t complain if it passes him by. And it wouldn’t be right, now that it’s knocking at our door, for us to shut it in its face; let’s let ourselves be carried by this favorable wind that’s blowing on us.”
(Because of this way of speaking, and because of what Sancho says further on, the translator of this history said that he held this chapter to be apocryphal.)
“Don’t you think, you animal,” Sancho went on, “that it will be a good thing for me to land in some profitable government that will pull our feet out of the mud? And let Mari Sancha be married to whoever I like, and you’ll see how they’ll call you Doña Teresa Panza, and you’ll sit in church on a carpet, with cushions and hangings, in spite of all the hidalgo ladies in the village, and to their vexation. No, you’d rather always stay as you are, without growing or shrinking, like a figure on a wall hanging! And let’s not talk any more about this, for Sanchica is to be a countess, say what you will.”
“Do you hear what you’re saying, husband?” answered Teresa. “Well, for all that, I fear this countship of my daughter’s will be her ruin. You do what you like, whether you make her a duchess or a princess, but I can tell you it won’t be with my will or consent. I’ve always been fond of equality, brother, and I can’t bear airs and graces without grounds. Teresa they named me at my baptism, a plain, bare name, without additions or trimmings or frills of Dons or Doñas; Cascajo my father was called, and because I’m your wife they call me Teresa Panza, though by rights they ought to call me Teresa Cascajo. But kings go where laws want them to, and with this name I’m content, without their putting a Doña on top of it that weighs so much I can’t carry it, and I don’t want to give people something to talk about when they see me going about dressed like a countess or a governor’s lady, for they’ll say at once: ‘Look how high and mighty the dirty sow is! Yesterday she was forever pulling at a tuft of tow, and she went to Mass with the skirt of her petticoat over her head instead of a mantle, and today she goes in a farthingale, with brooches and airs, as if we’d never laid eyes on her.’ If God keeps my seven senses for me, or my five, or however many I have, I don’t mean to give anybody the chance to see me in such a fix. You, brother, go off and be a government or a he-isle, and put on airs to your heart’s content; for my daughter and I, by my mother’s soul, aren’t going to stir one step from our village: the honest woman, a broken leg, and at home; and for the modest maiden, doing some work is her holiday. Go off with your Don Quixote to your adventures, and leave us women with our misadventures, for God will better them for us as long as we’re good; and I certainly don’t know who put a Don on him, for neither his parents nor his grandparents ever had one.”
“Now I say,” replied Sancho, “that you’ve got some familiar spirit in that body. God help me, woman, the things you’ve strung together one after another, without head or tail! What have Cascajo, brooches, proverbs, and airs got to do with what I’m saying? Come here, you foolish, ignorant woman (for I can call you that, since you don’t understand what I say and you run away from good fortune): if I said my daughter was to throw herself off a tower, or go roaming the world, as the Infanta Doña Urraca wanted to, you’d be right not to go along with me; but if in two shakes, and in less than the blink of an eye, I slap a Doña and a ladyship on her back, and take her out of the stubble fields, and set her under a canopy and on a pedestal, on a dais with more velvet cushions, almohadas, than the Almohads of Morocco had Moors in their line, why won’t you consent and want what I want?”
“Do you know why, husband?” answered Teresa. “Because of the proverb that says: ‘What covers you uncovers you!’ Everyone’s eyes pass over the poor man in a hurry, and they stop on the rich man; and if that rich man was once poor, then comes the grumbling and the backbiting, and the worst of it is the backbiters keep on and on, for there are heaps of them in the streets, like swarms of bees.”
“Look, Teresa,” answered Sancho, “and listen to what I want to tell you now; maybe you won’t have heard it in all the days of your life, and I’m not speaking from my own head now; for everything I mean to say are maxims of the father preacher who preached in this village last Lent, who, if I remember right, said that all present things that the eyes are looking at present themselves, stand, and remain in our memory much better and with more force than things past.”
(All these words that Sancho is saying here are the second reason why the translator says that he holds this chapter to be apocryphal, for they exceed Sancho’s capacity. He went on, saying:)
“From which it comes about that when we see some person well turned out, decked in rich clothes, and with a train of servants, it seems to move us and invite us, as if by force, to show that person respect, even though at that moment memory may show us some low state in which we once saw that person; and that ignomony, whether it be of poverty or of lineage, since it has passed, is no longer, and only what we see present is. And if the one whom fortune has drawn out of the rough draft of his lowliness (for those were the very words the father used) to the height of his prosperity is well bred, liberal, and courteous with everyone, and does not go picking quarrels with those who are noble by long descent, you may be sure, Teresa, that there will be no one who remembers what he was, but they will revere what he is, except for the envious, from whom no prosperous fortune is safe.”
“I don’t understand you, husband,” replied Teresa. “Do as you like, and don’t split my head any more with your harangues and rhetorics. And if you’re dissolved to do what you say…”
“Resolved, you should say, woman,” said Sancho, “not dissolved.”
“Don’t start disputing with me, husband,” answered Teresa. “I speak as God pleases, and I don’t go in for any more flourishes; and I say that if you’re set on having a government, you should take your son Sancho with you, so that you can teach him from now on how to have a government, for it’s right that sons should inherit and learn their fathers’ trades.”
“As soon as I have a government,” said Sancho, “I’ll send for him by the post, and I’ll send you money, for I won’t be short of it, since there’s never any lack of people to lend it to governors when they haven’t got any; and you dress him so as to hide what he is and look like what he’s going to be.”
“Money is your part,” said Teresa, “and I’ll turn him out for you as neat as a palm shoot.”
“In effect, then, we’re agreed,” said Sancho, “that our daughter is to be a countess.”
“The day I see her a countess,” answered Teresa, “I’ll reckon I’m burying her; but I tell you again, do whatever you please, for we women are born with this burden, of being obedient to our husbands, even if they’re blockheads.”
And at this she began to weep as earnestly as if she already saw Sanchica dead and buried. Sancho comforted her by telling her that, since he had to make her a countess, he would do it as late as could possibly be. With this their talk ended, and Sancho went back to see Don Quixote to make arrangements for their departure.