Chapter XIV. In which the adventure of the Knight of the Wood is continued

Among the many words that passed between Don Quixote and the Knight of the Forest, the history says that the Knight of the Wood said to Don Quixote:

“In short, sir knight, I would have you know that it was my destiny, or rather my own choosing, that brought me to love the peerless Casildea de Vandalia. Peerless I call her, since she has no equal, either in the greatness of her body or in the height of her rank and her beauty. This same Casildea, then, of whom I am telling, repaid my honorable thoughts and courteous desires by making me undertake, as his stepmother did Hercules, many and various perils, promising me at the end of each that at the end of the next would come the end of my hope; but my labors have gone on linking themselves together, so that there is no counting them, nor do I know which is to be the last, the one that will begin the fulfillment of my honorable desires. Once she ordered me to go and challenge that famous giantess of Seville called the Giralda, who is as valiant and strong as if she were made of bronze, and who, without ever moving from one spot, is the most changeable and fickle woman in the world. I came, I saw her, and I conquered her, and I made her stand still and keep within bounds, for in more than a week nothing blew but north winds. Another time, too, she ordered me to go and weigh in my arms the ancient stones of the valiant Bulls of Guisando, an enterprise better entrusted to porters than to knights. Another time she ordered me to hurl myself down and plunge into the chasm of Cabra, an unheard-of and fearful peril, and to bring her a detailed account of what is shut up in that dark depth. I stopped the Giralda’s motion, I weighed the Bulls of Guisando, I flung myself into the chasm and brought to light what lay hidden in its abyss; and my hopes stayed as dead as dead, and her commands and disdain as alive as alive. In short, she has lately ordered me to travel through all the provinces of Spain and make every knight-errant wandering through them confess that she alone surpasses in beauty all the women living today, and that I am the most valiant and the most truly enamored knight on earth; in which quest I have already traveled the greater part of Spain, and in it I have vanquished many knights who dared to contradict me. But what I most pride myself and glory in is to have overcome, in single combat, that far-renowned knight Don Quixote of La Mancha, and to have forced him to confess my Casildea lovelier than his Dulcinea; and by this one victory alone I reckon that I have vanquished all the knights in the world, because this Don Quixote I speak of has vanquished them all, and, since I have vanquished him, his glory, his fame, and his honor have been transferred and passed on to my person;

“and the victor gains the greater honor
the greater the renown of the defeated;

“so that the countless exploits of the aforesaid Don Quixote are now set down to my account and are mine.”

Don Quixote was astonished to hear the Knight of the Wood, and a thousand times he was on the point of telling him he lied, and he already had the you lie on the tip of his tongue; but he restrained himself as best he could, so as to make him confess his lie with his own mouth; and so he said to him calmly:

“That your grace, sir knight, has vanquished most of the knights-errant of Spain, and even of the whole world, I say nothing against; but that you have vanquished Don Quixote of La Mancha, I call in doubt. It may have been someone else who looked like him, though there are few who look like him.”

“What do you mean, no?” replied the Knight of the Wood. “By the heaven that covers us, I fought with Don Quixote, and I vanquished him and made him yield; and he is a man tall of body, lean of face, long and dried out in the limbs, his hair going gray, his nose aquiline and somewhat hooked, with a large black mustache that droops. He takes the field under the name of the Knight of the Sorry Figure, and he has for his squire a peasant named Sancho Panza; he presses the back and governs the bit of a famous horse called Rocinante; and, finally, he has for the lady of his will one Dulcinea del Toboso, once called Aldonza Lorenzo, just as mine, because her name is Casilda and she is from Andalusia, I call Casildea de Vandalia. If all these marks are not enough to vouch for my truth, here is my sword, which will make incredulity itself give it credit.”

“Calm yourself, sir knight,” said Don Quixote, “and hear what I have to say to you. You must know that this Don Quixote you speak of is the best friend I have in this world, so much so that I may say I hold him as I hold my own person; and from the marks you have given me of him, so exact and so certain, I cannot but think that it is the same man you vanquished. On the other hand, I see with my eyes and touch with my hands that it cannot possibly be the same, unless it be that, since he has many enemies who are enchanters, especially one who habitually persecutes him, one of them has taken his shape and let himself be vanquished, so as to rob him of the fame his high deeds of chivalry have won and gained him throughout all the known world. And in confirmation of this, I would also have you know that these same enchanters, his adversaries, no more than two days ago transformed the shape and person of the beautiful Dulcinea del Toboso into a coarse and lowly village girl, and in the same way they will have transformed Don Quixote; and if all this is not enough to bring you round to the truth of what I say, here is Don Quixote himself, who will maintain it with his arms, on foot or on horseback or in any other manner you please.”

And, saying this, he rose to his feet and grasped his sword, waiting to see what resolution the Knight of the Wood would take; who, in a voice just as calm, answered and said:

“A good payer is not pained by pledges: he who once, Señor Don Quixote, could vanquish you transformed may well hope to make you yield in your own proper being. But since it is not right for knights to do their feats of arms in the dark, like highwaymen and ruffians, let us wait for the day, so that the sun may see our deeds. And it must be a condition of our battle that the vanquished is to remain at the will of the victor, for him to do with him whatever he pleases, provided that what is ordered of him befits a knight.”

“I am more than content with that condition and agreement,” answered Don Quixote.

And with this they went to where their squires were, and found them snoring, and in the same position they had been in when sleep took them by surprise. They woke them and ordered them to have the horses ready, because as soon as the sun came up the two of them were to fight a bloody, single, and unequal battle; at which news Sancho was astounded and dumbfounded, fearing for his master’s safety, because of the feats he had heard the squire of the Wood tell of his own; but, without saying a word, the two squires went off to look for their livestock, for by now all three horses and the gray had smelled one another out and were all together.

On the way the squire of the Wood said to Sancho:

“Your grace must know, brother, that it’s the custom among the fighting men of Andalusia, when they act as seconds in some quarrel, not to stand idle with their hands folded while their principals are fighting. I tell you so you’ll be forewarned: while our masters go at it, we two must also come to blows and smash each other to splinters.”

“That custom, Señor Squire,” answered Sancho, “may be current and go down well over there among the ruffians and fighting men you speak of, but among the squires of knights-errant, not a bit of it. At least, I’ve never heard my master speak of any such custom, and he knows all the ordinances of knight-errantry by heart. What’s more, suppose I grant it’s true, and an express ordinance, that squires fight while their masters are fighting; but I don’t mean to keep it, only to pay whatever penalty is laid on such peaceable squires, which I’m sure won’t come to more than two pounds of wax; and I’d rather pay those pounds, for I know they’ll cost me less than the lint I might spend in doctoring my head, which I already count as split and divided in two. There’s more: not having a sword makes it impossible for me to fight, for I’ve never worn one in my life.”

“For that I know a good remedy,” said the squire of the Wood. “I have here two linen sacks of the same size: you take one and I the other, and we’ll fight with sack blows, with equal arms.”

“In that case, and welcome,” answered Sancho, “for a fight like that will serve to dust us off rather than wound us.”

“It isn’t to be like that,” replied the other, “because inside the sacks, so that the wind doesn’t carry them off, we have to put half a dozen nice smooth pebbles, as heavy one lot as the other, and in that way we’ll be able to sack each other without doing ourselves any hurt or harm.”

“Look at that, body of my father,” answered Sancho, “what sable furs, or what tufts of carded cotton he puts in the sacks, so that our skulls won’t get pounded and our bones ground as fine as henna! But even if they were filled with silk cocoons, you should know, my good sir, that I’m not going to fight: let our masters fight, and that’s their business, and let us drink and live, for time takes care of taking our lives from us without our going around looking for appetizers to make them end before they reach their season and their term and drop off from ripeness.”

“All the same,” replied the squire of the Wood, “we have to fight for half an hour at least.”

“Not that,” answered Sancho. “I won’t be so discourteous or so ungrateful as to pick any quarrel, however small, with someone I’ve eaten and drunk with; besides, being without any anger or vexation, who the devil could bring himself to fight in cold blood?”

“For that,” said the squire of the Wood, “I’ll provide a sufficient remedy: before we begin the fight, I’ll come up nice and easy to your grace and give you three or four slaps that will lay you at my feet, and with them I’ll wake your anger, even if it’s sleepier than a dormouse.”

“Against that cut I know another,” answered Sancho, “that doesn’t lag behind it: I’ll grab a cudgel, and before your grace gets to waking my anger, I’ll put yours to sleep with such a cudgeling that it won’t wake except in the next world, for it’s well known I’m not a man to let anyone paw my face; and let each look to his own arrow; though the wisest thing would be for each of us to let his anger sleep, for nobody knows anybody’s soul, and a man may go for wool and come back shorn; and God blessed peace and cursed quarrels, because if a cat that’s hounded, shut in, and cornered turns into a lion, I, who am a man, God knows what I might turn into; and so from now on I give your grace notice, Señor Squire, that all the harm and damage that comes of our quarrel will be on your account.”

“Very well,” replied the squire of the Wood. “God will bring the day, and we shall thrive.”

By now a thousand kinds of bright-colored little birds were beginning to warble in the trees, and in their various and merry songs they seemed to be giving their congratulations and greeting the fresh dawn, who was already revealing the beauty of her face through the gates and balconies of the east, shaking from her hair a numberless host of liquid pearls, in whose sweet moisture the grasses bathed and seemed in their turn to sprout and rain down small white seed pearls; the willows distilled delicious manna, the fountains laughed, the brooks murmured, the woods rejoiced, and the meadows grew rich at her coming. But hardly had the light of day allowed things to be seen and told apart when the first that met the eyes of Sancho Panza was the nose of the squire of the Wood, which was so big that it almost cast a shadow over his whole body. It is told, in effect, that it was of excessive size, hooked in the middle and all covered with warts, of a purplish color like an eggplant’s, and that it hung down two fingers below his mouth; and the size, color, warts, and hook of it so disfigured his face that Sancho, on seeing it, began to kick and flail with hands and feet like a child in a fit, and resolved in his heart to let himself be given two hundred slaps sooner than wake his anger to fight with that monster.

Don Quixote looked at his opponent and found him already with his helmet on and its visor down, so that he could not see his face, but he noticed that he was a sturdily built man, and not very tall of body. On top of his armor he had on a surcoat or cassock made, to all appearances, of the finest cloth of gold, scattered all over with little moons of shining mirrors, which made him look exceedingly gallant and showy; above his helmet streamed a great quantity of green, yellow, and white plumes; his lance, which he had leaning against a tree, was very long and thick, with a steel head more than a span in length.

Don Quixote looked at it all and noted it all, and judged from what he had seen and observed that the said knight must be of great strength; but he was not afraid on that account, as Sancho Panza was; rather, with gallant boldness, he said to the Knight of the Mirrors:

“If your great eagerness to fight, sir knight, does not use up your courtesy, by that courtesy I ask you to raise your visor a little, so that I may see whether the gallantry of your face answers to that of your bearing.”

“Whether you come out of this enterprise vanquished or victor, sir knight,” answered the Knight of the Mirrors, “you will have time and room enough and to spare to see me; and if I do not satisfy your wish now, it is because it seems to me I should do a notable wrong to the beautiful Casildea de Vandalia by wasting the time it would take me to raise my visor without making you confess what you already know I claim.”

“Well, while we mount,” said Don Quixote, “you may at least tell me whether I am that Don Quixote you said you vanquished.”

“To that we answer you,” said the Knight of the Mirrors, “that you resemble the very knight I overcame as closely as one egg resembles another; but since you say that enchanters persecute him, I shall not dare to affirm whether you are the man in question or not.”

“That is enough for me,” answered Don Quixote, “to believe that you are deceived; yet, to rid you of the deception altogether, let our horses be brought, for in less time than you would have taken to raise your visor, if God, my lady, and my arm avail me, your face will be before my eyes, and you will know me for no vanquished Don Quixote such as you suppose.”

With this, cutting words short, they mounted, and Don Quixote turned Rocinante’s reins to take as much of the field as was needed to come back and meet his adversary, and the Knight of the Mirrors did the same. But Don Quixote had not gone twenty paces when he heard himself called by the Knight of the Mirrors, and, each of them coming halfway, the Knight of the Mirrors said to him:

“Bear in mind, sir knight, that the condition of our battle is that the vanquished, as I have said before, is to remain at the discretion of the victor.”

“I know it already,” answered Don Quixote, “provided that what is imposed on the vanquished and commanded of him are things that do not go beyond the bounds of chivalry.”

“That is understood,” answered the Knight of the Mirrors.

At this point the squire’s strange nose came into Don Quixote’s view, and he was no less amazed to see it than Sancho had been, so much so that he took him for some monster, or for a new kind of man, one of those not found in the world. Sancho, who saw his master setting off to take his run, did not want to be left alone with the big-nosed man, fearing that a single flick of that nose against his own would put an end to his quarrel, leaving him stretched on the ground from the blow, or from the fright; and he went after his master, holding on to one of Rocinante’s stirrup straps, and when it seemed to him time for his master to turn, he said to him:

“I beg your grace, my master, before you turn to charge, to help me climb up into that cork oak, from where I’ll be able to watch more to my liking, better than from the ground, the gallant encounter your grace is going to have with this knight.”

“I rather think, Sancho,” said Don Quixote, “that you want to clamber up onto a scaffold to watch the bulls without danger.”

“To tell the truth,” answered Sancho, “that squire’s monstrous nose has me astounded and full of terror, and I don’t dare stay near him.”

“It is such a nose,” said Don Quixote, “that, were I not who I am, it would frighten me too; and so come, I will help you up where you say.”

While Don Quixote stopped to get Sancho up into the cork oak, the Knight of the Mirrors took as much of the field as seemed necessary to him, and, believing that Don Quixote would have done the same, without waiting for the sound of a trumpet or any other signal to warn them, he turned his horse’s reins—the horse was no swifter and no better-looking than Rocinante—and at his full speed, which was a middling trot, went to meet his enemy; but, seeing him busy with Sancho’s ascent, he reined in and stopped in the middle of his course, for which his horse was most grateful, since he could no longer move. Don Quixote, who thought his enemy was already flying at him, drove his spurs hard into Rocinante’s lean flanks and made him go at such a pace that the history tells that this was the only time he was known to have actually run a little, for every other time it was always plain trotting; and with this unprecedented fury he came up to where the Knight of the Mirrors was digging his spurs into his horse up to the buttons, without being able to budge him one finger’s breadth from the spot where he had brought his course to a halt.

At this good moment and juncture Don Quixote found his adversary hampered by his horse and busy with his lance, which he never managed, or never had time, to fix in its rest. Don Quixote, who paid no heed to these difficulties, safely and without any danger whatever, struck the Knight of the Mirrors with such force that, much against his will, he brought him to the ground over his horse’s crupper, and he took such a fall that, without moving hand or foot, he gave signs of being dead.

Hardly had Sancho seen him fall when he slid down from the cork oak and came in all haste to where his master was, who, dismounting from Rocinante, went over to the Knight of the Mirrors and undid the laces of his helmet to see whether he was dead, and so that the air might reach him if by chance he was alive; and he saw… Who can tell what he saw without causing astonishment, wonder, and terror in those who hear it? He saw, the history says, the very face, the very figure, the very look, the very physiognomy, the very likeness, the very perspective of the bachelor Sansón Carrasco; and, as soon as he saw it, he said in a loud voice:

“Come here, Sancho, and look at what you will see and not believe! Hurry, my son, and mark what magic can do, what sorcerers and enchanters can do!”

Sancho came up, and when he saw the face of the bachelor Carrasco he began to cross himself a thousand times and bless himself as many more. Through all this the fallen knight gave no sign of being alive, and Sancho said to Don Quixote:

“I’m of the opinion, my master, that, just in case, your grace should stick your sword down the mouth of this one who looks like the bachelor Sansón Carrasco; maybe in him you’ll kill one of your enemies the enchanters.”

“That is not a bad idea,” said Don Quixote, “for of enemies, the fewer the better.”

And, drawing his sword to put Sancho’s advice and counsel into effect, he was met by the squire of the Knight of the Mirrors, now without the nose that had made him so ugly, who cried out in a loud voice:

“Let your grace look what you are doing, Señor Don Quixote, for the one you have at your feet is the bachelor Sansón Carrasco, your friend, and I am his squire.”

And Sancho, seeing him without that first ugliness, said to him:

“And the nose?”

To which he answered:

“Here I have it, in my pocket.”

And, putting his hand into the right-hand one, he drew out a pasteboard and varnish nose, a mask’s nose, of the make that has been described. And Sancho, looking at him harder and harder, said in a loud voice full of wonder:

“Holy Mary, help me! Isn’t this Tomé Cecial, my neighbor and my crony?”

“And how I am!” answered the now noseless squire. “Tomé Cecial I am, my crony and friend Sancho Panza, and later I’ll tell you the channels, tricks, and tangles by which I came here; and meanwhile ask and beg your master not to touch, mistreat, wound, or kill the Knight of the Mirrors he has at his feet, because beyond any doubt he is the rash and ill-advised bachelor Sansón Carrasco, our fellow-countryman.”

At this the Knight of the Mirrors came to himself, and Don Quixote, seeing it, set the naked point of his sword over his face and said to him:

“You are a dead man, knight, if you do not confess that the peerless Dulcinea del Toboso surpasses your Casildea de Vandalia in beauty; and besides this you must promise, if you come out of this contest and fall alive, to make your way to the city of El Toboso and appear before her in my name, so that she may do with you whatever she pleases; and if she leaves you free to do your own will, you must likewise come back to look for me, for the track of my exploits will serve you as a guide to bring you to where I am, and tell me what has passed between you and her; conditions which, in keeping with those we set before our battle, do not go beyond the bounds of knight-errantry.”

“I confess,” said the fallen knight, “that the lady Dulcinea del Toboso’s torn and dirty shoe is worth more than Casildea’s beard, ill-combed though clean, and I promise to go into her presence and return from it to yours, and give you a full and detailed account of what you ask of me.”

“You must also confess and believe,” added Don Quixote, “that the knight you vanquished was not and could not be Don Quixote of La Mancha, but someone else who looked like him, just as I confess and believe that you, though you look like the bachelor Sansón Carrasco, are not he, but someone else who looks like him, and that my enemies have put you here before me in his shape so that I may hold back and temper the fury of my anger and make gentle use of the glory of my victory.”

“I confess, judge, and feel it all just as you believe, judge, and feel it,” answered the crippled knight. “Let me get up, I beg you, if the blow of my fall allows it, for it has left me sorely battered.”

Don Quixote helped him up, together with Tomé Cecial, his squire, from whom Sancho never took his eyes, asking him things whose answers gave him plain signs that he truly was the Tomé Cecial he said he was; but the impression made on Sancho by what his master had said, that the enchanters had changed the shape of the Knight of the Mirrors into that of the bachelor Carrasco, would not let him believe the truth he was looking at with his own eyes. In the end master and man were left with this delusion, and the Knight of the Mirrors and his squire, glum and ill-errant, went off from Don Quixote and Sancho with the intention of looking for some place where they could plaster and splint his ribs. Don Quixote and Sancho went back to following their road to Zaragoza, where the history leaves them, to give an account of who the Knight of the Mirrors and his big-nosed squire were.