Chapter VIII. In which is told what befell Don Quixote as he went to see his lady Dulcinea del Toboso

“Blessed be the mighty Allah!” says Hamete Benengeli at the beginning of this eighth chapter. “Blessed be Allah!” Three times he repeats it; and he says that he gives these blessings because he sees that he now has Don Quixote and Sancho out in the field, and that the readers of his pleasant history may reckon that from this point on the deeds and drolleries of Don Quixote and his squire begin; he urges them to forget the past chivalries of the ingenious hidalgo and fix their eyes on those to come, which start now on the road to El Toboso, just as the earlier ones started on the plain of Montiel; and what he asks is not much for all that he promises; and so he goes on, saying:

Don Quixote and Sancho were left alone, and Sansón had scarcely gone off when Rocinante began to neigh and the gray to sigh, which both of them, knight and squire, took for a good sign and a most happy omen; although, if the truth is to be told, the sighs and brays of the gray were more than the neighs of the nag, from which Sancho gathered that his luck was bound to outdo and rise above his master’s, basing himself on I know not what judicial astrology that he knew, since the history does not make it plain; it was only heard from him that when he stumbled or fell he wished he had never left home, because from stumbling or falling nothing came but a torn shoe or broken ribs; and, fool though he was, in this he was not very far off the road. Don Quixote said to him:

“Sancho, my friend, night is coming on us apace, and with more darkness than we needed to be able to see El Toboso by daylight, where I have resolved to go before I engage in any other adventure, and there I shall receive the blessing and kind leave of the peerless Dulcinea, with which leave I mean, and hold it certain, to finish and bring to a happy conclusion every perilous adventure, because nothing in this life makes knights-errant more valiant than to see themselves favored by their ladies.”

“I believe so,” answered Sancho, “but I think it will be hard for your grace to speak with her or meet her, at least in any place where you can receive her blessing, unless she throws it to you over the yard wall, where I saw her the first time, when I took her the letter with the news of the follies and mad things your grace was doing in the heart of the Sierra Morena.”

“Did you fancy that those were yard walls, Sancho,” said Don Quixote, “where or over which you saw that never sufficiently praised grace and beauty? They can only have been galleries or corridors, or arcades, or whatever they call them, of rich and royal palaces.”

“It all could be,” answered Sancho, “but to me they looked like yard walls, unless my memory fails me.”

“For all that, let us go there, Sancho,” replied Don Quixote, “for so long as I see her, it is all one to me whether it be over yard walls or through windows, or chinks, or garden gratings; for any ray from the sun of her beauty that reaches my eyes will light up my understanding and strengthen my heart, so that I shall be unique and without equal in wisdom and in valor.”

“Well, in truth, sir,” answered Sancho, “when I saw that sun of the lady Dulcinea del Toboso, it wasn’t bright enough to give off any rays at all, and it must have been that, since her grace was sifting that wheat I told you of, the great deal of dust she raised came before her face like a cloud and darkened it.”

“So you still persist, Sancho,” said Don Quixote, “in saying, in thinking, in believing, and in insisting that my lady Dulcinea was sifting wheat, that being a task and occupation far removed from everything done, and that ought to be done, by persons of rank, who are set apart and kept for other occupations and pastimes that show their rank a crossbow shot away! You have a poor memory, O Sancho, for those verses of our poet in which he paints for us the work done in their crystal dwellings by those four nymphs who raised their heads out of the beloved Tagus and sat down in the green meadow to work those rich fabrics which the ingenious poet describes to us there, all of them of gold, silk, and pearls, interwoven and embroidered. And my lady’s work must have been of this kind when you saw her; only the envy that some wicked enchanter must bear toward my affairs changes and turns everything that is to give me pleasure into shapes other than its own; and so I fear that in that history they say is going about in print of my deeds, if by chance its author was some sage who is my enemy, he will have put one thing for another, mixing a thousand lies with one truth, and amusing himself by telling of other doings outside what the continuity of a true history requires. O envy, root of infinite evils and woodworm of the virtues! All the vices, Sancho, bring with them some touch or other of pleasure, but envy brings nothing but displeasure, rancor, and rage.”

“That’s what I say too,” answered Sancho, “and I think in that legend or history the bachelor Carrasco told us he’d seen about us, my honor must be getting dragged all over the place, cinched up tight, and, as they say, knocked from pillar to post, here and there, sweeping the streets. Well, on the word of an honest man, I’ve never spoken ill of any enchanter, and I haven’t got so many goods that I could be envied; it’s true enough that I’m a bit mischievous, and I have my certain touches of the rogue, but all that is covered and cloaked by the great cape of my simplicity, always natural and never artful. And if I had nothing else but believing, as I always do believe, firmly and truly, in God and in everything the Holy Roman Catholic Church holds and believes, and being a mortal enemy of the Jews, as I am, the historians owe me some mercy and good usage in what they write. But let them say whatever they please; for naked I was born, naked I am now: I neither lose nor gain; though, as long as I see myself put in books and going about the world from hand to hand, I don’t give a fig if they say whatever they like about me.”

“That reminds me, Sancho,” said Don Quixote, “of what happened to a famous poet of our times, who, having written a malicious satire against all the courtesans, did not put in or name a certain lady of whom it could be doubted whether she was one or not; and she, seeing that she was not on the list with the others, complained to the poet, asking him what he had seen in her not to put her among the number of the others, and telling him to lengthen the satire and put her in the extension; if not, he had better look out for what he had been born for. The poet did so, and put her in such terms as duennas would never utter, and she was satisfied, seeing herself famous, though infamous. Along the same lines comes what they tell of that shepherd who set fire to and burned down the famous temple of Diana, counted one of the seven wonders of the world, only so that his name would live on in the ages to come; and although it was ordered that no one should name him or make any mention of his name in word or in writing, so that he would not achieve the end of his desire, it still became known that he was called Herostratus. This is also hinted at by what happened to the great emperor Charles the Fifth with a gentleman in Rome. The emperor wished to see that famous temple of the Rotunda, which in antiquity was called the temple of all the gods, and now, under a better invocation, is called that of all the saints, and it is the most intact of the buildings that the pagans raised in Rome, and the one that best keeps the fame of the grandeur and magnificence of its founders: it is shaped like half an orange, exceedingly large, and very bright inside, though no light enters it but what is let in by one window, or, better said, a round skylight at its top; and as the emperor was looking at the building from there, a Roman gentleman stood with him at his side, explaining to him the beauties and refinements of that great structure and memorable architecture; and, when they had come away from the skylight, he said to the emperor: ‘A thousand times, Sacred Majesty, the desire came over me to throw my arms around Your Majesty and hurl myself down from that skylight, so as to leave eternal fame of myself in the world.’ ‘I thank you,’ answered the emperor, ‘for not having put so wicked a thought into effect, and from now on I shall not put you in the way of having to test your loyalty again; and so I order you never to speak to me, nor to be where I am.’ And, after these words, he granted him a great favor. I mean to say, Sancho, that the desire to win fame is a most powerful force. Who do you think threw Horatius off the bridge, armed with all his arms, into the depths of the Tiber? Who burned the arm and the hand of Mucius? Who drove Curtius to fling himself into the deep, burning chasm that opened in the middle of Rome? Who, against all the omens that had appeared against him, made Caesar cross the Rubicon? And, with more modern examples, who scuttled the ships and left stranded and cut off the valiant Spaniards led by the most courteous Cortés in the New World? All these and other great and various deeds are, were, and will be the works of fame, which mortals desire as the reward and portion of the immortality their famous deeds deserve, although we Christians, Catholics, and knights-errant must look more to the glory of the ages to come, which is eternal in the ethereal and heavenly regions, than to the vanity of the fame that is won in this present, perishable age; which fame, however long it lasts, must end at last with the world itself, which has its appointed end. So, O Sancho, our works must not go beyond the bounds set for us by the Christian religion that we profess. In giants we must slay pride; envy, by generosity and a good heart; anger, by calm bearing and quietness of mind; gluttony and sleep, by the little we eat and the long watches we keep; lust and lasciviousness, by the loyalty we keep to those we have made the ladies of our thoughts; sloth, by going about all the parts of the world seeking the occasions that may make us, and do make us, famous knights as well as Christians. Here you see, Sancho, the means by which are won the highest praises that good fame brings with it.”

“Everything your grace has told me up to now,” said Sancho, “I’ve understood very well, but for all that, I’d like your grace to absorb a doubt for me that has just this moment come into my head.”

“Absolve, you mean, Sancho,” said Don Quixote. “Speak, and welcome, for I shall answer what I know.”

“Tell me, sir,” Sancho went on, “those Julys and Augusts, and all those knights of mighty deeds you’ve mentioned who are dead now, where are they now?”

“The pagans,” answered Don Quixote, “are in hell, beyond a doubt; the Christians, if they were good ones, are in purgatory or else in heaven.”

“That’s all very well,” said Sancho, “but now let’s find out: those tombs where the bodies of those great lords are, do they have silver lamps in front of them, or are the walls of their chapels decked with crutches, shrouds, locks of hair, and legs and eyes of wax? And if not with these, what are they decked with?”

To which Don Quixote answered:

“The tombs of the pagans were for the most part sumptuous temples: the ashes of the body of Julius Caesar were placed on top of a stone pyramid of enormous size, which in Rome today they call Saint Peter’s Needle; the emperor Hadrian had for his tomb a castle as big as a good-sized village, which they called Moles Hadriani (Hadrian’s Mass), and which is now the Castle of Sant’Angelo in Rome; Queen Artemisia buried her husband Mausolus in a tomb that was counted among the seven wonders of the world; but not one of these tombs, nor of many others that the pagans had, was decked with shrouds or with other offerings and signs that showed those buried in them to be saints.”

“That’s just what I’m getting at,” replied Sancho. “And tell me now: which is more, raising a dead man or killing a giant?”

“The answer is at hand,” answered Don Quixote: “raising a dead man is more.”

“I’ve got you there,” said Sancho. “Then the fame of the one who raises the dead, gives sight to the blind, makes the lame walk straight, and gives health to the sick, and before whose tombs lamps burn, and whose chapels are full of devout people on their knees worshiping his relics, will be a better fame, for this world and the next, than the one left, and to be left, by all the pagan emperors and knights-errant there have ever been in the world.”

“I confess that truth too,” answered Don Quixote.

“Well, this fame, these graces, these prerogatives, as they call them,” answered Sancho, “are what the bodies and relics of the saints have, and, with the approval and license of our holy mother the Church, have lamps, candles, shrouds, crutches, paintings, locks of hair, eyes, and legs, with which they increase devotion and magnify their Christian fame. Kings carry the bodies of the saints, or their relics, on their shoulders, they kiss the bits of their bones, they adorn and enrich their oratories and their most prized altars with them…”

“What do you want me to infer, Sancho, from all you have said?” said Don Quixote.

“I mean,” said Sancho, “that we should take to being saints, and we’ll win the good fame we’re after more quickly; and mark, sir, that yesterday or the day before, for it was so recent that it can be put that way, they canonized or beatified two little barefoot friars, and now people count it great good fortune to kiss and touch the iron chains they girded and tormented their bodies with, and they’re held in more veneration than, as I said, Roldán’s sword in the armory of the king our lord, whom God preserve. So, my master, it’s better to be a humble little friar, of whatever order it may be, than a valiant knight-errant; two dozen lashings get more with God than two thousand lance thrusts, whether they’re given to giants or to monsters or to dragons.”

“All that is so,” answered Don Quixote, “but we cannot all be friars, and many are the roads by which God leads his own to heaven: chivalry is a religious order; there are saintly knights in glory.”

“Yes,” answered Sancho, “but I’ve heard tell there are more friars in heaven than knights-errant.”

“That is,” answered Don Quixote, “because the number of religious is greater than that of knights.”

“Many are the errant,” said Sancho.

“Many,” answered Don Quixote, “but few who deserve the name of knights.”

In these and other such talks that night and the following day went by for them, without anything happening to them worth telling, which grieved Don Quixote not a little. At last, the next day, at nightfall, the great city of El Toboso came into view, and seeing it lifted Don Quixote’s spirits and sank Sancho’s, because he did not know Dulcinea’s house, nor had he ever seen her in his life, any more than his master had; so that the one to see her, and the other for never having seen her, were both in a flutter, and Sancho could not imagine what he would do when his master sent him into El Toboso. At last Don Quixote decided to enter the city when night had fallen, and, while waiting for the hour to come, they stayed among some holm oaks near El Toboso, and, when the appointed moment arrived, they entered the city, where things befell them that amount to something.