Chapter XVII. In which is declared the last point and extreme that Don Quixote’s unheard-of courage reached and could reach, with the happily concluded adventure of the lions

The history tells that when Don Quixote was shouting for Sancho to fetch him the helmet, Sancho happened to be buying curds from the shepherds; and, harried by his master’s great haste, he did not know what to do with them or what to carry them in, and, so as not to lose them, since he had already paid for them, he decided to put them into his master’s helmet; and with this fine provision he went back to see what his master wanted of him, who, as soon as he came up, said to him:

“Hand me that helmet, my friend, for unless I know very little about adventures, what I make out over there is one that will oblige me, and does oblige me, to take up my arms.”

The man in the green coat, hearing this, cast his eyes in every direction and made out nothing but a cart coming toward them with two or three small flags, which gave him to understand that the cart must be carrying His Majesty’s money; and so he told Don Quixote; but Don Quixote did not believe him, always believing and thinking that everything that befell him must be adventures and more adventures; and so he answered the hidalgo:

“A man forewarned is half the battle won: nothing is lost by my being forewarned, for experience has taught me that I have enemies both visible and invisible, and I cannot tell when, or where, or at what time, or in what shapes they will attack me.”

And, turning to Sancho, he asked him for the helmet; and Sancho, since he had had no chance to take the curds out, was obliged to give it to him as it was. Don Quixote took it, and without noticing what was inside, clapped it on his head in all haste; and as the curds were squeezed and pressed, the whey began to run all down Don Quixote’s face and beard, which gave him such a fright that he said to Sancho:

“What can this be, Sancho, for it seems that my skull is going soft, or my brains are melting, or I am sweating all over from top to toe? And if I am sweating, truly it is not from fear; I believe beyond doubt that the adventure about to befall me now is a terrible one. If you have anything I can wipe myself with, give it to me, for the copious sweat is blinding my eyes.”

Sancho said nothing and gave him a cloth, and gave thanks to God along with it that his master had not caught on. Don Quixote wiped himself and took off the helmet to see what it was that, as it seemed to him, was chilling his head, and, seeing that white mush inside the helmet, he raised it to his nose, and on smelling it said:

“By the life of my lady Dulcinea del Toboso, these are curds you have put in here for me, you traitor, you scoundrel, you ill-mannered squire.”

To which Sancho, with great phlegm and pretense, answered:

“If they’re curds, let your grace hand them over and I’ll eat them… But no, the devil can eat them, since he must be the one who put them there. Me, have the nerve to dirty your grace’s helmet? You’ve found your bold man, all right! On my faith, sir, from what God gives me to understand, I must have enchanters persecuting me too, as your grace’s creature and member, and they’ll have put that filth there to rouse your patience to anger and make you pound my ribs, as you usually do. Well, truly, this time they’ve jumped and missed, for I trust in my master’s good sense, and he’ll have considered that I have no curds, or milk, or anything like it, and that if I had, I’d sooner put it in my stomach than in the helmet.”

“Anything may be,” said Don Quixote.

And the hidalgo was watching it all, and marveling at it all, especially when, after Don Quixote had wiped his head, face, beard, and helmet, he clapped it on; and, settling himself firmly in the stirrups, trying his sword in its scabbard and grasping his lance, he said:

“Now come what may, for here I stand, ready to take on Satan himself in person.”

At this the cart with the flags came up, and there was no one with it but the carter, on the mules, and a man sitting at the front. Don Quixote planted himself in front of it and said:

“Where are you going, brothers? What cart is this, what are you carrying in it, and what flags are these?”

To which the carter answered:

“The cart is mine; what’s in it is two fierce caged lions that the general of Oran is sending to court as a present for His Majesty; the flags are the king our lord’s, as a sign that something of his goes here.”

“And are the lions big?” asked Don Quixote.

“So big,” answered the man at the door of the cage, “that none bigger, or as big, have ever crossed from Africa into Spain; and I’m the lion keeper, and I’ve brought others across, but none like these. They’re a female and a male; the male is in this first cage, and the female in the one behind; and they’re hungry now because they haven’t eaten today; so let your grace stand aside, for we have to get quickly to where we can feed them.”

To which Don Quixote said, smiling a little:

“Lion cubs at me? At me, lion cubs, and at this hour? Well, by God, those gentlemen who send them this way shall see whether I am a man to be frightened of lions! Get down, my good man, and since you are the lion keeper, open those cages and turn those beasts out for me, for in the middle of this field I will make them know who Don Quixote of La Mancha is, in spite and despite of the enchanters who send them to me.”

“Aha!” said the hidalgo to himself at this point. “Our good knight has given a sign of who he is: the curds, no doubt, have softened his skull and ripened his brains.”

At this Sancho came up to him and said:

“Sir, for God’s sake, let your grace see to it that my master Don Quixote doesn’t take on these lions, for if he does, they’ll make mincemeat of the lot of us right here.”

“Why, is your master so mad,” answered the hidalgo, “that you fear and believe he will take on such fierce animals?”

“He isn’t mad,” answered Sancho, “just daring.”

“I will see to it that he is not,” replied the hidalgo.

And, going up to Don Quixote, who was hurrying the lion keeper to open the cages, he said to him:

“Sir knight, knights-errant should undertake adventures that hold out hope of coming out of them well, and not those that take it away altogether; for valor that strays into the jurisdiction of rashness has more of madness than of fortitude. What is more, these lions are not coming against your grace, nor do they dream of it: they are going as a present to His Majesty, and it will not be right to stop them or hinder their journey.”

“Let your grace go, Señor Hidalgo,” answered Don Quixote, “and attend to your tame decoy partridge and your bold ferret, and leave each man to do his own office. This is mine, and I know whether these señores lions are coming at me or not.”

And, turning to the lion keeper, he said to him:

“I swear, Don Rogue, that if you do not open the cages right now, this very moment, I will stitch you to the cart with this lance!”

The carter, seeing the determination of that armed phantom, said to him:

“My lord, may your grace be pleased, for charity’s sake, to let me unyoke the mules and get myself to safety with them before the lions are unsheathed, because if they kill them for me, I’ll be ruined for the rest of my life; for I have no other property but this cart and these mules.”

“O man of little faith!” answered Don Quixote. “Get down and unyoke, and do as you please, for soon you will see that you labored in vain and might have spared yourself the trouble.”

The carter got down and unyoked in great haste, and the lion keeper said in a loud voice:

“Let all here be my witnesses that I am opening the cages and loosing the lions unwillingly and by force, and that I protest to this gentleman that all the harm and damage these beasts do shall run and go on his account, with my wages and fees besides. Let your graces, sirs, get to safety before I open, for I’m sure they won’t do me any harm.”

Once again the hidalgo urged him not to do such a mad thing, for it was tempting God to undertake such folly. To which Don Quixote answered that he knew what he was doing. The hidalgo answered that he should think it over well, for he understood that he was mistaken.

“Now, sir,” replied Don Quixote, “if your grace does not wish to be a spectator of what in your opinion is to be a tragedy, spur on your gray mare and get to safety.”

Hearing this, Sancho, with tears in his eyes, begged him to give up such an enterprise, compared to which the one of the windmills, and the fearful one of the fulling mills, and, in short, all the feats he had undertaken in the whole course of his life, had been cakes and fancy bread.

“Look, sir,” Sancho was saying, “there’s no enchantment here, nor anything like it; for I’ve seen through the bars and cracks of the cage the claw of a real lion, and from it I gather that the lion that claw must belong to is bigger than a mountain.”

“Fear, at least,” answered Don Quixote, “will make him look bigger to you than half the world. Withdraw, Sancho, and leave me; and if I die here, you already know our old agreement: you will go to Dulcinea, and I say no more.”

To these he added other words with which he took away all hope that he would give up pursuing his wild intent. The man in the green coat would have liked to oppose him, but he saw that he was no match in arms, and it did not seem to him wise to take on a madman, which Don Quixote now seemed to him in every respect; and Don Quixote, hurrying the lion keeper once again and repeating his threats, gave the hidalgo occasion to spur his mare, and Sancho his gray, and the carter his mules, all of them trying to get as far from the cart as they could before the lions came out of their crates.

Sancho was weeping for his master’s death, which this time he believed beyond doubt was coming in the lions’ claws; he cursed his luck and called it an unlucky hour when it came into his head to serve him again; but for all his weeping and lamenting he did not stop thrashing the gray to get him away from the cart. The lion keeper, then, seeing that those who were fleeing were now well away, again demanded of Don Quixote and gave him formal notice of what he had already demanded and given him notice of, and Don Quixote answered that he heard him, and that he should not trouble himself with any more notices and demands, for it would all be of little use, and that he should hurry.

In the time the lion keeper took to open the first cage, Don Quixote was considering whether it would be better to do battle on foot rather than on horseback; and in the end he resolved to do it on foot, fearing that Rocinante would take fright at the sight of the lions. So he leaped off his horse, flung down his lance, and braced his shield on his arm, and, drawing his sword, step by step, with marvelous boldness and a valiant heart, he went and took his stand before the cart, commending himself wholeheartedly to God, and after Him to his lady Dulcinea.

And it should be known that, on reaching this point, the author of this true history exclaims and says: “O strong and, beyond all praise, courageous Don Quixote of La Mancha, mirror in which all the valiant of the world may look at themselves, a second and new Don Manuel de León, who was the glory and honor of Spanish knights! With what words shall I tell this so fearful feat, or with what reasons shall I make it credible to the ages to come, or what praises can there be that do not suit and fit you, though they be hyperboles above all hyperboles? You on foot, you alone, you intrepid, you magnanimous, with only a sword, and not one of the sharp ones with the little dog’s mark, with a shield not of very bright and polished steel, stand waiting and watching for the two fiercest lions the African forests ever bred. Let your own deeds be the ones to praise you, valiant Manchegan, for I leave them here as they stand, for lack of words with which to extol them.”

Here the said exclamation of the author ceased, and he went on, taking up the thread of the history again, saying that the lion keeper, seeing Don Quixote now in position, and that he could not avoid letting loose the male lion on pain of falling into the disfavor of the angry and daring knight, flung wide the first cage, in which, as has been said, the lion was, who appeared to be of extraordinary size and of a frightful and ugly aspect. The first thing he did was to turn around in the cage where he had been lying, and put out his claw, and stretch himself all over; then he opened his mouth and yawned very slowly, and with nearly two spans of tongue that he put out he wiped the dust from his eyes and washed his face; this done, he put his head out of the cage and looked all around with eyes like live coals, a sight and a bearing to strike terror into rashness itself. Only Don Quixote watched him attentively, wishing he would leap down from the cart at once and come to grips with him, between whose hands he meant to tear him to pieces.

This was as far as the extreme of his never-seen madness went. But the noble lion, more courteous than arrogant, paying no heed to childishness or bravado, after looking this way and that, as has been said, turned his back and showed his hind parts to Don Quixote, and with great phlegm and calm stretched out once more in the cage. At this Don Quixote ordered the lion keeper to beat him with a stick and provoke him into coming out.

“That I won’t do,” answered the lion keeper, “because if I goad him, the first one he’ll tear to pieces will be me. Let your grace, sir knight, be content with what has been done, which is all that can be said in the way of valor, and don’t try your fortune a second time. The lion has the door open: it’s up to him to come out or not; but since he hasn’t come out so far, he won’t come out all day. The greatness of your grace’s heart is already well declared: no brave fighter, as far as I understand it, is obliged to do more than challenge his enemy and wait for him in the field; and if the adversary doesn’t come, the infamy stays with him, and the one who waits wins the crown of victory.”

“That is the truth,” answered Don Quixote. “Close the door, my friend, and give me a certificate, in the best form you can, of what you have seen me do here; namely, that you opened for the lion, I waited for him, he did not come out; I waited for him again, again he did not come out, and he lay down again. I owe no more, and away with enchantments, and God help reason and truth and true chivalry; and close it, as I have said, while I signal to those who fled and are absent, so that they may learn of this feat from your mouth.”

The lion keeper did so, and Don Quixote, fixing on the point of his lance the cloth with which he had wiped his face of the rain of curds, began to call to the others, who did not stop fleeing nor turning their heads at every step, all in a troop and driven along ahead of the hidalgo; but Sancho, catching sight of the signal of the white cloth, said:

“May they kill me if my master hasn’t beaten the wild beasts, since he’s calling us.”

They all stopped and saw that the one making the signals was Don Quixote; and, losing some of their fear, little by little they came nearer until they could clearly hear the shouts of Don Quixote, who was calling them. At last they came back to the cart, and when they arrived Don Quixote said to the carter:

“Yoke your mules again, brother, and go on your way; and you, Sancho, give him two gold escudos, for himself and for the lion keeper, in recompense for the delay they have suffered on my account.”

“Those I’ll give with very good will,” answered Sancho. “But what’s become of the lions? Are they dead or alive?”

Then the lion keeper, in detail and at his leisure, told the end of the contest, exaggerating as best he could and knew how the valor of Don Quixote, at the sight of whom the lion, cowed, would not and dared not come out of the cage, though the door of the cage had been open a good while; and he said that, because he had told that knight it was tempting God to provoke the lion into coming out by force, as he wanted him provoked, much against his will and contrary to all his wishes he had allowed the door to be closed.

“What do you think of that, Sancho?” said Don Quixote. “Are there enchantments that can prevail against true valor? The enchanters may well take good fortune from me, but effort and courage, that will be impossible.”

Sancho gave the escudos, the carter yoked his mules, the lion keeper kissed Don Quixote’s hands for the favor received and promised to tell of that valiant feat to the king himself when he found himself at court.

“Then if by chance His Majesty should ask who performed it, tell him the Knight of the Lions, for from now on I wish the name I have had until now, of the Knight of the Sorry Figure, to be exchanged, changed, turned, and transformed into this; and in this I follow the ancient custom of knights-errant, who changed their names when they liked, or when it suited them.”

The cart went on its way, and Don Quixote, Sancho, and the man in the green coat went on theirs.

In all this time Don Diego de Miranda had not said a word, wholly intent on watching and noting the deeds and words of Don Quixote, who seemed to him a sane madman and a madman verging on sanity. The first part of his history had not yet come to his notice; for had he read it, the wonder his deeds and words caused him would have ceased, since he would have known what kind of madness it was; but since he did not know, he took him now for sane and now for mad, because what he said was well reasoned, elegant, and well put, and what he did was absurd, rash, and foolish. And he said to himself:

“What greater madness can there be than to put on a helmet full of curds and persuade oneself that enchanters were softening one’s skull? And what greater rashness and folly than to want to fight lions by main force?”

Don Quixote drew him out of these imaginings and this soliloquy, saying to him:

“Who doubts, Señor Don Diego de Miranda, that your grace holds me in your opinion to be an absurd madman? And it would be no great wonder if it were so, for my deeds can bear witness to nothing else. Yet, for all that, I would have your grace observe that I am not as mad or as witless as I must have seemed to you. It looks well for a gallant knight, before the eyes of his king, in the middle of a great square, to give a fierce bull a successful thrust of the lance; it looks well for a knight, clad in shining armor, to run the tilt in merry jousts before the ladies; and all those knights look well who, in military exercises, or what look like them, entertain and gladden and, if one may say so, honor the courts of their princes; but above all these looks better a knight-errant who, through deserts, through wildernesses, through crossroads, through forests and through mountains, goes seeking perilous adventures with the intention of bringing them to a happy and fortunate conclusion, only to win glorious and lasting fame. Better looks, I say, a knight-errant succoring a widow in some lonely place than a courtier knight paying compliments to a maiden in the cities. All knights have their particular exercises: let the courtier serve the ladies; let him lend dignity to his king’s court with liveries; let him sustain poor gentlemen with the splendid fare of his table; let him arrange jousts, hold tournaments, and show himself great, liberal, and magnificent, and above all a good Christian, and in this way he will fulfill his precise obligations. But let the knight-errant seek out the corners of the world; let him enter the most tangled labyrinths; let him attempt the impossible at every step; let him withstand in the deserted wastes the burning rays of the sun in midsummer, and in winter the harsh inclemency of the winds and the frosts; let lions not daunt him, nor monsters frighten him, nor dragons terrify him, for to seek out the latter, attack the former, and vanquish them all are his principal and true exercises. I, then, since it fell to my lot to be one of the number of knight-errantry, cannot fail to undertake all that seems to me to fall within the jurisdiction of my exercises; and so attacking the lions I attacked just now was my direct concern, though I knew it to be exorbitant rashness, for I know well what valor is, that it is a virtue set between two vicious extremes, which are cowardice and rashness; but it is less bad for the valiant man to rise to the point of rashness than to sink and touch the point of cowardice; for, just as it is easier for the prodigal than for the miser to become liberal, so it is easier for the rash man to turn into a truly valiant one than for the coward to rise to true valor; and in this matter of undertaking adventures, believe me, your grace, Señor Don Diego, one had better lose the hand by holding one card too many than one too few, for ‘such a knight is rash and daring’ sounds better in the ears of those who hear it than ‘such a knight is timid and cowardly.’”

“I say, Señor Don Quixote,” answered Don Diego, “that all that your grace has said and done is leveled by the balance of reason itself, and I believe that if the ordinances and laws of knight-errantry were lost, they would be found in your grace’s breast as in their own depository and archive. And let us hurry, for it is getting late, and let us reach my village and house, where your grace will rest from your recent labor, which, if it has not been of the body, has been of the spirit, and that sometimes overflows into weariness of the body.”

“I hold the offer a great favor and kindness, Señor Don Diego,” answered Don Quixote.

And, spurring on more than they had until then, it must have been about two in the afternoon when they reached the village and the house of Don Diego, whom Don Quixote called the Knight of the Green Coat.