Chapter XVI. Of what befell Don Quixote with a sensible gentleman of La Mancha
With the joy, contentment, and pride that have been described, Don Quixote went on his way, imagining himself, because of his recent victory, to be the most valiant knight-errant the world had in that age; he counted as finished and brought to a happy end every adventure that might befall him from then on; he thought little of enchantments and enchanters; he no longer remembered the countless beatings he had been given in the course of his chivalries, nor the stone that knocked out half his teeth, nor the ingratitude of the galley slaves, nor the insolence and rain of stakes of the Yangüeses. In short, he said to himself that if he could find the art, means, or manner of disenchanting his lady Dulcinea, he would not envy the greatest good fortune that the most fortunate knight-errant of past ages ever attained or could attain. He was wholly taken up with these imaginings when Sancho said to him:
“Isn’t it something, sir, that I still have before my eyes the monstrous nose, bigger than the standard size, of my crony Tomé Cecial?”
“And do you by any chance believe, Sancho, that the Knight of the Mirrors was the bachelor Carrasco, and his squire your crony Tomé Cecial?”
“I don’t know what to say to that,” answered Sancho. “I only know that the marks he gave me of my house, my wife, and my children no one could have given me but the man himself; and his face, with the nose taken off, was the very face of Tomé Cecial, just as I’ve seen it many times in my village, with only a wall between his house and mine; and the tone of his voice was all one.”
“Let us be reasonable, Sancho,” replied Don Quixote. “Come here: by what reckoning can it be that the bachelor Sansón Carrasco should come as a knight-errant, armed with arms offensive and defensive, to fight with me? Have I by any chance been his enemy? Have I ever given him cause to bear me a grudge? Am I his rival, or does he make a profession of arms, that he should envy the fame I have won by them?”
“Well, what are we to say, sir,” answered Sancho, “about that knight, whoever he may be, looking so much like the bachelor Carrasco, and his squire like Tomé Cecial, my crony? And if it’s an enchantment, as your grace has said, weren’t there two other people in the world for them to look like?”
“It is all the artifice and contrivance,” answered Don Quixote, “of the malignant magicians who persecute me, who, foreseeing that I was to come out the victor in the contest, arranged for the vanquished knight to show the face of my friend the bachelor, so that the friendship I bear him would come between the edges of my sword and the rigor of my arm, and temper the just wrath of my heart, and in this way the man who with frauds and falsehoods was trying to take my life would keep his own. As proof of which, you already know, O Sancho, by an experience that will not let you lie or be deceived, how easy it is for enchanters to change one face into another, making the beautiful ugly and the ugly beautiful, since not two days ago you saw with your own eyes the beauty and gallantry of the peerless Dulcinea in all its perfection and natural form, while I saw her in the ugliness and lowliness of a coarse peasant girl, her eyes clouded with cataracts and her breath foul; and, what is more, it is no great matter for the perverse enchanter who dared to work so wicked a transformation to have worked this one of Sansón Carrasco and your crony, so as to snatch the glory of the victory out of my hands. But for all that, I take comfort, because, after all, whatever shape he may have had, I have come out the victor over my enemy.”
“God knows the truth of everything,” answered Sancho.
And since he knew that Dulcinea’s transformation had been his own contrivance and trickery, his master’s chimeras did not satisfy him; but he did not want to answer him back, so as not to say some word that might give away his fraud.
They were in the midst of this talk when they were overtaken by a man who was coming along the same road behind them, on a very handsome speckled gray mare, dressed in a coat of fine green cloth trimmed with strips of tawny velvet, with a hunting cap of the same velvet; the mare’s trappings were for the field and for short-stirrup riding, likewise in purple and green. He wore a Moorish cutlass hanging from a broad baldric of green and gold, and his buskins were worked like the baldric; his spurs were not gilt but coated with a green varnish, so smooth and burnished that, matching as they did the whole costume, they looked better than if they had been of pure gold. When he came up to them, the traveler greeted them courteously and, spurring his mare, was passing them by; but Don Quixote said to him:
“Gallant sir, if your grace is traveling our road and is in no particular hurry, I should take it as a favor if we went together.”
“Truly,” answered the man on the mare, “I would not have passed you by so quickly if it had not been for fear that the company of my mare might excite that horse.”
“You can perfectly well, sir,” Sancho put in at this point, “you can perfectly well hold your mare’s reins, because our horse is the most chaste and well-behaved in the world: never on such occasions has he done anything low, and the one time he forgot himself and did, my master and I paid for it sevenfold. I say again that your grace can stop if you like, for even if she were served up to him between two plates, you can be sure the horse wouldn’t so much as look at her.”
The traveler drew rein, marveling at Don Quixote’s bearing and face, for he was riding without his helmet, which Sancho carried like a piece of luggage on the front bow of the gray’s packsaddle; and if the man in green looked hard at Don Quixote, Don Quixote looked much harder at the man in green, who seemed to him a man of substance. His age appeared to be about fifty; his gray hairs were few, and his face hawkish; his look between cheerful and grave; in short, his dress and bearing showed him to be a man of good parts.
What the man in green made of Don Quixote of La Mancha was that he had never seen a man of such a manner or appearance: he marveled at the length of his horse, the height of his body, the leanness and sallowness of his face, his arms, his air and bearing: a figure and portrait not seen for long ages past in that land. Don Quixote was well aware of the attention with which the traveler was looking at him, and read his wish in his wonder; and, being so courteous and so fond of pleasing everyone, before he could ask him anything, he went out to meet him, saying:
“This figure your grace has seen in me is so new and so far removed from those in common use that I would not be surprised if it had surprised you; but your grace will cease to be surprised when I tell you, as I do tell you, that I am a knight
“of those of whom the people say
that they ride forth on their adventures.
“I left my homeland, I pledged my estate, I gave up my comfort, and I delivered myself into the arms of Fortune, to carry me wherever she might please. I wished to bring back to life the now dead knight-errantry, and for many days now, stumbling here, falling there, plunging headlong in one place and getting up in another, I have fulfilled a great part of my desire, succoring widows, protecting damsels, and aiding wives, orphans, and wards, the proper and natural office of knights-errant; and so, by my many valiant and Christian exploits, I have earned the right to go about in print in nearly all, or most, of the nations of the world. Thirty thousand copies of my history have been printed, and it is on its way to being printed thirty thousand times thousands, if heaven does not prevent it. In short, to sum it all up in a few words, or in one, I say that I am Don Quixote of La Mancha, by another name called the Knight of the Sorry Figure; and though self-praise debases, I am obliged at times to speak my own, and that is understood to be when there is no one present to speak it for me; and so, my good gentleman, neither this horse, this lance, nor this shield, nor squire, nor all these arms together, nor the sallowness of my face, nor my wasted leanness, will be able to astonish you from now on, now that you know who I am and the profession I follow.”
When he had said this Don Quixote fell silent, and the man in green, from how long he took to answer, seemed to be at a loss for a reply; but after a good while he said to him:
“You were right, sir knight, in reading my wish from my wonder; but you have not succeeded in removing the amazement that seeing you causes me; for although, as you say, sir, knowing who you are might remove it, it has not been so; on the contrary, now that I know, I am left more astonished and amazed. How can it be possible that there are knights-errant in the world today, and that there are printed histories of real deeds of chivalry? I cannot persuade myself that there is anyone on earth today who aids widows, protects damsels, honors wives, or succors orphans, and I would not believe it had I not seen it in your grace with my own eyes. Blessed be heaven! For with this history your grace says is in print, of your high and true chivalries, the countless ones of the fictitious knights-errant must have been consigned to oblivion, the ones the world was full of, so much to the harm of good morals and to the prejudice and discredit of good histories.”
“There is a great deal to be said,” answered Don Quixote, “on the question of whether the histories of knights-errant are fictitious or not.”
“Why, is there anyone who doubts,” answered the man in green, “that such histories are false?”
“I doubt it,” answered Don Quixote, “and let us leave it there; for if our journey lasts, I hope in God to make your grace understand that you have done wrong in going along with the current of those who take it for certain that they are not true.”
From this last remark of Don Quixote’s the traveler began to suspect that Don Quixote must be some kind of madman, and waited for him to confirm it with others; but before they could turn to other topics, Don Quixote begged him to tell him who he was, since he himself had told him of his condition and his life. To which the Knight of the Green Coat answered:
“I, Señor Knight of the Sorry Figure, am a hidalgo, a native of a village where we shall go to dine today, God willing. I am more than moderately rich, and my name is Don Diego de Miranda; I spend my life with my wife, and with my children, and with my friends; my pastimes are hunting and fishing, but I keep neither falcon nor greyhounds, only some tame decoy partridge or a bold ferret. I have some six dozen books, some in Spanish and some in Latin, some of history and others of devotion; books of chivalry have not yet crossed the threshold of my doors. I leaf through the secular ones more than the devotional, provided they are of decent entertainment, delight with their language, and astonish and hold one with their invention, though there are very few of these in Spain. Sometimes I dine with my neighbors and friends, and often I invite them; my entertainments are neat and clean, and not at all stingy; I do not care for gossip, nor do I allow anyone to gossip in my presence; I do not pry into other people’s lives, nor am I a lynx for the doings of others; I hear Mass every day; I share my goods with the poor, without making a show of good works, so as not to give entry into my heart to hypocrisy and vainglory, enemies that gently take possession of the most guarded heart; I try to make peace between those I know to be at odds; I am devoted to Our Lady, and I trust always in the infinite mercy of God our Lord.”
Sancho was most attentive to the account of the hidalgo’s life and pastimes; and, thinking it a good and holy life, and that the man who led it must work miracles, he flung himself off the gray and in great haste ran to seize his right stirrup, and with a devout heart and almost in tears kissed his feet again and again. Seeing this, the hidalgo asked him:
“What are you doing, brother? What are these kisses?”
“Let me kiss,” answered Sancho, “because your grace seems to me the first saint riding short-stirrup that I’ve seen in all the days of my life.”
“I am no saint,” answered the hidalgo, “but a great sinner; it is you, brother, who must be good, as your simplicity shows.”
Sancho went back to his packsaddle, having drawn laughter out of the deep melancholy of his master and caused Don Diego fresh astonishment. Don Quixote asked him how many children he had, and told him that one of the things in which the ancient philosophers, who lacked the true knowledge of God, placed the highest good was the goods of nature, the goods of fortune, having many friends, and having many good children.
“I, Señor Don Quixote,” answered the hidalgo, “have one son, and if I did not have him I might perhaps think myself happier than I am; not because he is bad, but because he is not as good as I would like. He must be about eighteen: six of those years he has spent in Salamanca learning the Latin and Greek languages; and when I wanted him to go on to study other sciences, I found him so wrapped up in that of poetry, if it can be called a science, that it is not possible to make him face that of law, which I would like him to study, nor the queen of them all, theology. I would like him to be the crown of his lineage, since we live in an age in which our kings richly reward virtuous and good letters; for letters without virtue are pearls on a dunghill. His whole day goes in settling whether Homer put a given line of the Iliad well or badly, whether Martial was or was not indecent in a given epigram, whether this or that passage of Virgil should be taken one way or the other. In short, all his conversation is with the books of those poets I have named, and with those of Horace, Persius, Juvenal, and Tibullus; for of the modern poets in Spanish he takes little account; and for all the dislike he seems to have for poetry in Spanish, his thoughts are now all in a whirl with writing a glosa on four lines that have been sent to him from Salamanca, and I think they are for a literary joust.”
To all of which Don Quixote replied:
“Children, sir, are pieces of their parents’ flesh, and so they are to be loved, whether they are good or bad, just as we love the souls that give us life; the parents’ part is to set them from childhood on the paths of virtue, of good breeding, and of good and Christian ways, so that when grown they may be a staff to their fathers and mothers in old age and a glory to those who come after; and as for forcing them to study this or that science, I do not hold it wise, though persuading them will do no harm; and when one does not have to study pane lucrando (to earn one’s bread), the student being so fortunate that heaven has given him parents who leave him bread enough, I would be of the opinion that they should let him follow the science to which they see him most inclined; and although that of poetry is less useful than delightful, it is not one of those that usually dishonor whoever possesses it. Poetry, Señor Hidalgo, in my opinion, is like a tender young maiden, extremely beautiful in every way, whom many other maidens, who are all the other sciences, take care to enrich, polish, and adorn, and she is to make use of them all, and all are to gain authority from her; but this maiden does not want to be handled, nor dragged through the streets, nor proclaimed at the corners of the squares or in the nooks of palaces. She is made of an alchemy of such virtue that whoever knows how to treat her will turn her into the purest gold of inestimable price; he who has her must keep her within bounds, not letting her run into base satires or soulless sonnets; she must not be for sale in any way, unless it be in heroic poems, in mournful tragedies, or in merry and ingenious comedies; she must not let herself be handled by buffoons, nor by the ignorant common herd, incapable of knowing or esteeming the treasures shut up in her. And do not think, sir, that by the common herd I mean here only plebeian and humble folk; for anyone who does not know, even if he be a lord or a prince, can and must be counted among the common herd. And so whoever treats and keeps poetry with the requirements I have stated will be famous, and his name esteemed in all the civilized nations of the world. And as to what you say, sir, that your son does not much esteem poetry in Spanish, I take it that he is not very right in that, and the reason is this: the great Homer, being Greek, did not write in Latin, and Virgil, being a Latin, did not write in Greek. In short, every one of the ancient poets wrote in the tongue he had drunk in with his mother’s milk, and did not go looking for foreign ones to express the loftiness of their conceptions. And this being so, it would be reasonable for this custom to extend to all nations, and for the German poet not to be held cheap for writing in his own tongue, nor the Castilian, nor even the Biscayan who writes in his. But your son, as I imagine, sir, cannot be at odds with poetry in Spanish, but rather with poets who are mere writers of Spanish verse, without knowing other languages or other sciences to adorn and awaken and assist their natural gift; and even in this there may be error, because, according to a true opinion, the poet is born: they mean that the natural poet comes out of his mother’s womb a poet, and, with that inclination heaven gave him, without more study or art, composes things that prove right the one who said: est Deus in nobis (there is a god in us)…, et cetera. I also say that the natural poet who helps himself with art will be much better, and will surpass the poet who tries to be one only because he knows the art; the reason is that art does not surpass nature, but perfects it; so that nature and art mixed together, art with nature, will produce a most perfect poet. Let the conclusion of my discourse be, then, Señor Hidalgo, that your grace should let your son walk where his star calls him; for, being as good a student as he must be, and having already happily climbed the first step of learning, which is that of languages, with them he will climb by himself to the summit of humane letters, which look so well on a gentleman of cape and sword, and adorn, honor, and exalt him as miters do bishops or gowns learned jurists. Let your grace scold your son if he writes satires that harm the honor of others, and punish him, and tear them up; but if he writes sermons in the manner of Horace, in which he reproves vices in general, as Horace did so elegantly, praise him; for it is lawful for the poet to write against envy and to speak ill of the envious in his verses, and likewise of the other vices, provided he points at no particular person; but there are poets who, for the sake of saying one malicious thing, will run the risk of being banished to the islands of Pontus. If the poet is chaste in his ways, he will be so in his verses as well; the pen is the tongue of the soul: whatever the conceptions begotten in it, such will be its writings; and when kings and princes see the miraculous science of poetry in prudent, virtuous, and grave persons, they honor them, esteem them, and enrich them, and even crown them with the leaves of the tree the lightning does not harm, as a sign that those whose temples they see honored and adorned with such crowns are not to be harmed by anyone.”
The man in the green coat was astonished at Don Quixote’s discourse, so much so that he began to abandon the opinion he had held of him, that he was a madman. But in the middle of this talk Sancho, since it was not much to his taste, had left the road to ask a little milk of some shepherds close by who were milking ewes; and just as the hidalgo, exceedingly pleased with Don Quixote’s good sense and sound reasoning, was about to take up the conversation again, Don Quixote, raising his head, saw coming along the road they were traveling a cart full of royal flags; and, believing it must be some new adventure, he shouted loudly for Sancho to come and give him his helmet. Sancho, hearing himself called, left the shepherds, spurred the gray in all haste, and came up to where his master was, to whom there befell a terrifying and preposterous adventure.