Chapter IX. In which is told what will be seen in it

Midnight it was on the stroke, or a little more or less, when Don Quixote and Sancho left the woods and entered El Toboso. The town lay in quiet silence, because all its people were asleep, resting with their legs stretched out, as the saying goes. The night was half bright, though Sancho would have liked it to be wholly dark, so as to find in its darkness an excuse for his foolishness. Nothing could be heard in the whole place but the barking of dogs, which deafened Don Quixote’s ears and troubled Sancho’s heart. Now and then a donkey brayed, pigs grunted, cats mewed, and their voices, of different sounds, grew louder in the silence of the night, all of which the enamored knight took for a bad omen; but for all that, he said to Sancho:

“Sancho, my son, lead the way to Dulcinea’s palace: perhaps we may find her awake.”

“To what palace am I to lead the way, body of the sun,” answered Sancho, “when the one where I saw her greatness was nothing but a very small house?”

“She must have withdrawn, then,” answered Don Quixote, “to some small apartment of her castle, to take her ease alone with her damsels, as is the use and custom of high ladies and princesses.”

“Sir,” said Sancho, “since your grace will have it, in spite of me, that my lady Dulcinea’s house is a castle, is this by any chance the hour to find the door open? And will it be a good thing for us to bang the knocker so they hear us and open to us, putting all the people into an uproar and a stir? Are we going, by any chance, to knock at the house of our mistresses, like those men who keep women, who turn up and knock and walk in at any hour, no matter how late?”

“Let us first find the castle, once and for all,” replied Don Quixote, “and then I shall tell you, Sancho, what it will be well for us to do. And look, Sancho, either I see poorly or that great bulk and shadow that can be made out from here must be cast by Dulcinea’s palace.”

“Then let your grace lead the way,” answered Sancho. “Maybe it is; though I’ll see it with my eyes and touch it with my hands, and I’ll believe it as much as I believe it’s daytime now.”

Don Quixote led the way, and, when he had gone some two hundred paces, he came upon the bulk that cast the shadow, and he saw a great tower, and then he realized that the building was no castle but the main church of the town. And he said:

“It is the church we have come upon, Sancho.”

“So I see,” answered Sancho, “and God grant we don’t come upon our graves, for it’s no good sign to go wandering through graveyards at such hours, especially since I told your grace, if I remember right, that this lady’s house must be in a little dead-end alley.”

“God curse you, you fool!” said Don Quixote. “Where have you ever found that castles and royal palaces are built in little dead-end alleys?”

“Sir,” answered Sancho, “every land has its own custom: maybe it’s the custom here in El Toboso to build palaces and great buildings in little alleys; and so I beg your grace to let me search through these streets or alleys in front of me: maybe in some corner I’ll run into that castle, and may I see it eaten by dogs, for it has us so harried and hounded.”

“Speak with respect, Sancho, of the things of my lady,” said Don Quixote, “and let us hold the feast in peace, and not fling the rope in after the bucket.”

“I’ll control myself,” answered Sancho, “but how am I to bear it patiently that your grace will have it that from the one time I saw our mistress’s house I must always know it and find it at midnight, when your grace can’t find it, and you must have seen it thousands of times?”

“You will drive me to despair, Sancho,” said Don Quixote. “Come here, you heretic: have I not told you a thousand times that in all the days of my life I have never seen the peerless Dulcinea, nor ever crossed the threshold of her palace, and that I am in love only by hearsay and from the great fame she has for beauty and good sense?”

“I hear it now,” answered Sancho, “and I say that since your grace hasn’t seen her, and I haven’t either…”

“That cannot be,” replied Don Quixote, “for at the very least you have told me that you saw her sifting wheat, when you brought me the answer to the letter I sent her by you.”

“Don’t hold to that, sir,” answered Sancho, “because I tell you that my seeing her and the answer I brought you were by hearsay too; for I know who the lady Dulcinea is about as well as I can punch the sky.”

“Sancho, Sancho,” answered Don Quixote, “there are times for jesting, and times when jests fall flat and look bad. Just because I say I have never seen the lady of my soul or spoken with her, you need not say you have neither spoken to her nor seen her, when it is quite the reverse, as you know.”

While the two of them were in this talk, they saw someone with two mules coming to pass where they stood, and from the noise made by the plow, which was dragging along the ground, they judged that he must be a farmhand who had risen before daybreak to go to his work in the fields; and so it was in truth. The farmhand came along singing the ballad that goes:

Ill it went for you, Frenchmen,
in that affair of Roncesvalles.

“May they kill me, Sancho,” said Don Quixote, on hearing him, “if anything good is going to happen to us tonight. Don’t you hear what that peasant is singing as he comes?”

“I do hear it,” answered Sancho, “but what has the hunt at Roncesvalles got to do with our business? He might just as well be singing the ballad of Calaínos, for it would be all one as far as our affair turning out well or badly.”

At this point the farmhand came up, and Don Quixote asked him:

“Can you tell me, good friend, and may God give you good fortune, where the palaces of the peerless princess Doña Dulcinea del Toboso are hereabouts?”

“Sir,” answered the young man, “I’m a stranger, and I’ve only been a few days in this town, working for a rich farmer in his fields; in that house opposite live the priest and the sexton of the place; both of them, or either one, will be able to tell your grace about this lady princess, because they have the list of everyone who lives in El Toboso; though for my part I don’t think any princess lives in the whole town; plenty of ladies of quality, yes, for every one of them can be a princess in her own house.”

“Well, among those, friend,” said Don Quixote, “must be the one I am asking you about.”

“It could be,” answered the young man, “and goodbye, for the dawn is coming.”

And, urging on his mules, he waited for no more questions. Sancho, seeing his master in suspense and very ill pleased, said to him:

“Sir, day is coming on fast now, and it won’t be wise to let the sun find us in the street; it’ll be better for us to go out of the city, and for your grace to hide in some forest near here, and I’ll come back by day, and I won’t leave a nook or cranny in this whole place where I don’t look for my lady’s house, castle, or palace, and I’d be mighty unlucky if I didn’t find it; and when I’ve found it, I’ll speak with her grace and tell her where and how your grace is waiting for her to give you orders and a plan for seeing her, without damage to her honor and good name.”

“You have spoken, Sancho,” said Don Quixote, “a thousand maxims enclosed in the circle of a few words: the advice you have just given me I welcome and accept most gladly. Come, my son, and let us go and look for a place where I can hide, and you shall come back, as you say, to look for my lady, and see her and speak with her, from whose good sense and courtesy I hope for more than miraculous favors.”

Sancho was dying to get his master out of the town, so that he would not discover the lie of the answer he had brought him in the Sierra Morena on Dulcinea’s behalf; and so he hurried their leaving, which took place at once, and two miles from the town they found a forest or wood, where Don Quixote hid himself while Sancho went back to the city to speak to Dulcinea; on which embassy things befell him that call for fresh attention and fresh belief.