Chapter XII. Of the strange adventure that befell the valiant Don Quixote with the bold Knight of the Mirrors

The night that followed the day of the encounter with Death, Don Quixote and his squire spent beneath some tall and shady trees, Don Quixote having eaten, at Sancho’s urging, from the stores the gray carried; and during supper Sancho said to his master:

“Sir, what a fool I’d have been if I’d chosen, as my reward for the news, the spoils of the first adventure your grace brought off, instead of the foals of the three mares! In effect, in effect, a bird in the hand is worth more than a vulture on the wing.”

“All the same,” answered Don Quixote, “if you, Sancho, had let me attack as I wished, there would have fallen to you as spoils at the very least the Empress’s golden crown and Cupid’s painted wings, for I would have plucked them off against the grain and put them in your hands.”

“The scepters and crowns of play-acting emperors,” answered Sancho Panza, “were never of pure gold, only tinsel or tin plate.”

“That is the truth,” replied Don Quixote, “for it would not be fitting for the trappings of the play to be fine, but rather feigned and for show, as the play itself is; and I would have you, Sancho, think well of the play and hold it in your good graces, and by the same token those who perform plays and those who write them, because they are all instruments of great good to the commonwealth, setting a mirror before us at every step in which the actions of human life are seen to the life; and there is no comparison that shows us more to the life what we are and what we are to be than the play and the players. If not, tell me: have you not seen some play performed in which kings, emperors, and pontiffs, knights, ladies, and various other personages are brought on? One plays the ruffian, another the liar, this one the merchant, that one the soldier, another the shrewd simpleton, another the simple lover; and when the play is over and they have taken off its costumes, all the players are equal.”

“Yes, I’ve seen it,” answered Sancho.

“Well, the same thing,” said Don Quixote, “happens in the play and dealings of this world, where some play the emperors, others the pontiffs, and, in short, every figure that can be brought into a play; but when they come to the end, which is when life is over, death strips them all of the robes that made them different, and they are equal in the grave.”

“A fine comparison!” said Sancho. “Though not so new that I haven’t heard it many and various times, like the one about the game of chess: while the game lasts, each piece has its particular office, and when the game is over, they are all mixed up, thrown together, and shuffled, and tossed into a bag, which is like tossing life into the grave.”

“Every day, Sancho,” said Don Quixote, “you grow less simple and more sensible.”

“Yes, for some of your grace’s good sense is bound to rub off on me,” answered Sancho, “since lands that are barren and dry by nature, if you dung them and till them, come to bear good fruit: what I mean is that talking with your grace has been the manure dropped on the barren ground of my dried-up wits; the tilling, the time I’ve been serving you and keeping company with you; and with this I hope to bear fruits of myself that will be a blessing, such that they won’t fall away or slip off the paths of good breeding your grace has made in my parched understanding.”

Don Quixote laughed at Sancho’s affected phrases, and it seemed to him true, what he said about his improvement, for now and then he spoke in a way that amazed him; though every time, or most times, that Sancho tried to talk like a scholar in a disputation or a courtier, he ended his speech by tumbling headlong from the mountain of his simplicity into the depths of his ignorance; and the place where he proved most elegant and most retentive of memory was in bringing in proverbs, whether or not they came pat to the matter in hand, as will have been seen and noted in the course of this history.

In these and other talks a good part of the night went by, and Sancho felt a wish to let down the floodgates of his eyes, which was his phrase for wanting to sleep, and, unharnessing the gray, he gave him free and plentiful pasture. He did not take the saddle off Rocinante, for it was his master’s express command that, for as long as they were in the field or did not sleep under a roof, he was not to unharness Rocinante: an ancient custom established and observed by knights-errant, to take off the bridle and hang it from the saddlebow, but take the saddle off the horse? Heaven forbid! And so Sancho did, and gave him the same freedom as the gray, whose friendship with Rocinante was so singular and so close-knit that there is a report, handed down by tradition from fathers to sons, that the author of this true history wrote special chapters about it, but that, to preserve the decency and decorum owed to so heroic a history, he did not put them in it; although at times he forgets this purpose of his and writes that, as soon as the two beasts came together, they would set about scratching each other, and that, once they were tired and satisfied, Rocinante would lay his neck across the gray’s neck (more than half a yard of it hung over on the other side), and the two of them, gazing intently at the ground, would stand like that for three days, or at least for as long as nobody disturbed them, or until hunger forced them to go in search of food.

I say that they say the author left it written that he had compared them in friendship to Nisus and Euryalus, and Pylades and Orestes; and if this is so, one could see, to the wonder of all, how steadfast the friendship of these two peaceable animals must have been, and to the shame of men, who know so poorly how to keep friendship with one another. For this reason it was said:

There is no friend for a friend:
the jousting canes are turned to lances;

and that other who sang:

From friend to friend, the bedbug, etc.

And let no one suppose that the author wandered somewhat off the road when he likened the friendship of these animals to the friendship of men, for from beasts men have taken many warnings and learned a great many things of importance, such as: from storks, the enema; from dogs, vomiting and gratitude; from cranes, vigilance; from ants, providence; from elephants, modesty; and loyalty, from the horse.

At last Sancho fell asleep at the foot of a cork oak, and Don Quixote dozed at the foot of a sturdy holm oak; but only a short space of time had passed when he was woken by a noise he heard behind him, and, getting up with a start, he set himself to look and listen for where the noise was coming from, and saw that it was two men on horseback, and that one of them, letting himself slide down from the saddle, said to the other:

“Dismount, friend, and take the bridles off the horses, for this place, it seems to me, abounds in grass for them, and in the silence and solitude my amorous thoughts require.”

His saying this and stretching himself on the ground happened at one and the same moment; and as he flung himself down, the armor he was wearing rattled, a plain sign by which Don Quixote knew that he must be a knight-errant; and, going over to Sancho, who was asleep, he took him by the arm, and with no little trouble brought him back to his senses, and said to him in a low voice:

“Brother Sancho, we have an adventure.”

“God send us a good one,” answered Sancho. “And where, my master, is her grace this lady adventure?”

“Where, Sancho?” replied Don Quixote. “Turn your eyes and look, and you will see a knight-errant lying stretched out there who, so far as I can make out, cannot be overly cheerful, for I saw him fling himself off his horse and stretch out on the ground with some signs of despair, and as he fell his armor clanked.”

“Well, what makes your grace think,” said Sancho, “that this is an adventure?”

“I do not mean to say,” answered Don Quixote, “that this is an adventure entirely, but the beginning of one, for this is how adventures begin. But listen: it seems he is tuning a lute or a vihuela, and, to judge by how he spits and clears his chest, he must be preparing to sing something.”

“On my faith, so he is,” answered Sancho, “and he must be a knight in love.”

“There is not one of the errant who is not,” said Don Quixote. “And let us listen to him, for by the thread we will come to the ball of his thoughts, if he sings; for out of the abundance of the heart the tongue speaks.”

Sancho meant to reply to his master, but the voice of the Knight of the Wood, which was neither very bad nor very good, prevented him; and, as the two of them stood there astonished, they heard that what he sang was this sonnet:

“Give me, my lady, a course I may pursue,
cut to the measure of your own desire,
and mine will hold it in such high esteem
that never by one jot will it depart.
If you would have me, silent in my pain,
die, count me as already at an end;
if you would have me tell it in a way
unheard of, I will make Love tell it out.
I have been made proof against both extremes,
of yielding wax and of the hardest diamond,
and to the laws of Love I fit my soul.
Soft as it is, or strong, I bare my breast:
carve there or stamp whatever pleases you,
for I will keep it, so I swear, forever.”

With an “Ah!” torn, it seemed, from the depths of his heart, the Knight of the Wood brought his song to an end, and a little after, in a grieving and wounded voice, he said:

“O most beautiful and most ungrateful woman on earth! How can it be possible, most serene Casildea de Vandalia, that you will allow this captive knight of yours to waste away and be worn out in endless wanderings and in harsh and hard labors? Is it not enough that I have made all the knights of Navarre, all the Leonese, all the Tartessians, all the Castilians, and, finally, all the knights of La Mancha confess you to be the most beautiful in the world?”

“Not that,” said Don Quixote at this point, “for I am from La Mancha and have never confessed any such thing, nor could I or should I confess a thing so damaging to the beauty of my lady; and this knight, as you can see, Sancho, is raving. But let us listen: perhaps he will declare himself further.”

“He will,” replied Sancho, “for he looks set to go on complaining for a month on end.”

But it was not so, for the Knight of the Wood, having half heard that people were talking near him, went no further with his lament but rose to his feet and said in a resonant and courteous voice:

“Who goes there? What people? Are you perchance of the number of the contented, or of the afflicted?”

“Of the afflicted,” answered Don Quixote.

“Then come to me,” answered the Knight of the Wood, “and you may reckon that you are coming to sorrow itself and to affliction itself.”

Don Quixote, finding himself answered so tenderly and courteously, went over to him, and Sancho neither more nor less.

The lamenting knight took Don Quixote by the arm, saying:

“Sit here, sir knight, for to know that you are one, and of those who profess knight-errantry, it is enough for me to have found you in this place, where solitude and the night dew keep you company, the natural beds and proper lodgings of knights-errant.”

To which Don Quixote replied:

“A knight I am, and of the profession you name; and though sorrows, misfortunes, and mishaps have their own seat in my soul, the compassion I feel for the miseries of others has not been driven out of it on that account. From what you were telling a little while ago I gathered that yours are amorous, I mean, born of the love you bear that beautiful ingrate you named in your laments.”

By the time this passed between them they were sitting together on the hard ground, in good peace and fellowship, as if at the break of day they were not to break each other’s heads.

“Perchance, sir knight,” the Knight of the Wood asked Don Quixote, “are you in love?”

“By mischance I am,” answered Don Quixote, “though the harms that spring from well-placed thoughts ought to be held as favors rather than misfortunes.”

“That is the truth,” replied the Knight of the Wood, “if disdain did not disturb our reason and understanding, for disdain, when there is much of it, looks like vengeance.”

“I was never disdained by my lady,” answered Don Quixote.

“No, certainly not,” said Sancho, who was close by, “because my lady is as meek as a little ewe lamb: she’s softer than butter.”

“Is this your squire?” asked the Knight of the Wood.

“He is,” answered Don Quixote.

“I have never seen a squire,” replied the Knight of the Wood, “who dares to speak where his master is speaking; at least, there is that one of mine, as big as his father, and no one can prove he has ever unsealed his lips when I am speaking.”

“Well, on my faith,” said Sancho, “I have spoken, and I can speak before another just as…, and let it rest there, for stirring it only makes it worse.”

The squire of the Wood took Sancho by the arm, saying to him:

“Let’s you and me go off where we can talk all we like, squire-fashion, and leave these lords our masters to lock horns telling each other the stories of their loves; for you can be sure the day will catch them at it and they won’t have finished.”

“And welcome,” said Sancho. “And I’ll tell your grace who I am, so you can see whether I can be counted among the dozen of the most talkative squires.”

With this the two squires went apart, and between them there passed a colloquy as amusing as the one that passed between their masters was grave.