Chapter XVIII. Of what befell Don Quixote in the castle or house of the Knight of the Green Coat, with other extravagant things

Don Quixote found Don Diego de Miranda’s house to be roomy, in the village manner, with his coat of arms, though of rough stone, over the street door; the wine store in the courtyard, the cellar under the entrance, and many earthenware jars all around, which, being from El Toboso, revived in him the memory of his enchanted and transformed Dulcinea; and, sighing, and without heeding what he was saying or in whose presence he was, he said:

“O sweet tokens, found to my sorrow,

“sweet and joyful when God willed!

“O jars of El Toboso, that have brought to my memory the sweet token of my greatest bitterness!”

These words were overheard by Don Diego’s son, the student poet, who had come out to welcome him together with his mother, and mother and son were left astounded at the sight of Don Quixote’s strange figure; who, dismounting from Rocinante, went with great courtesy to ask for her hands to kiss them, and Don Diego said:

“Receive, madam, with your customary kindness Señor Don Quixote of La Mancha, for this is he whom you see before you, a knight-errant, and the most valiant and the most sensible the world holds.”

The lady, whose name was Doña Cristina, received him with signs of much affection and much courtesy, and Don Quixote offered his services to her in a great many sensible and courteous phrases. Almost the same courtesies passed between him and the student, whom Don Quixote, on hearing him speak, took to be sensible and sharp.

Here the author paints every detail of Don Diego’s house, painting for us in them all that the house of a rich gentleman farmer contains; but the translator of this history thought best to pass over these and other such trifles in silence, because they did not suit the main purpose of the history, whose strength lies more in truth than in cold digressions.

They brought Don Quixote into a hall; Sancho took off his armor; he was left in Walloon breeches and a chamois doublet, all smeared with the grime of the armor; his collar was a falling band in the student style, without starch and without lace; his buskins were date-colored, and his shoes waxed. He girded on his good sword, which hung from a sealskin baldric, for it is believed he suffered for many years from his kidneys; he put on a short cloak of good brown cloth; but before anything else, with five or six cauldrons of water, for as to the number of cauldrons there is some disagreement, he washed his head and face, and still the water stayed the color of whey, thanks to Sancho’s greed and his purchase of those black-hearted curds that had made his master so white. In the said attire, and with fine grace and gallantry, Don Quixote went out into another hall, where the student was waiting to entertain him while the tables were being laid; for, at the coming of so noble a guest, the lady Doña Cristina wished to show that she knew how, and was able, to regale those who came to her house.

While Don Quixote was taking off his armor, Don Lorenzo, for that was the name of Don Diego’s son, had the chance to say to his father:

“Who are we to say, sir, this gentleman is whom your grace has brought home to us? For his name, his figure, and his saying he is a knight-errant have my mother and me astounded.”

“I do not know what to tell you, son,” answered Don Diego. “I can only tell you that I have seen him do things worthy of the greatest madman in the world, and say things so sensible that they blot out and undo his deeds: you talk to him, and take the pulse of what he knows, and since you are sensible, judge whatever is most reasonable about his good sense or his folly; though, to tell the truth, I take him for mad rather than sane.”

With this Don Lorenzo went off to entertain Don Quixote, as has been said, and among other things they talked of, Don Quixote said to Don Lorenzo:

“Señor Don Diego de Miranda, your grace’s father, has told me of the rare ability and subtle wit your grace has, and, above all, that your grace is a great poet.”

“A poet, that may well be,” answered Don Lorenzo, “but a great one, not in my wildest thoughts. True, I am somewhat fond of poetry and of reading the good poets, but not in such a way that I can be given the name of great that my father gives me.”

“I do not dislike that humility,” answered Don Quixote, “for there is no poet who is not arrogant and does not think himself the greatest poet in the world.”

“There is no rule without an exception,” answered Don Lorenzo, “and there must be one who is a great poet and does not think so.”

“Few,” answered Don Quixote. “But tell me, your grace, what verses are these you have in hand at present, which your father tells me have made you somewhat restless and pensive? And if it is some glosa, I know something about the business of glosas, and I would be glad to hear them; and if they are for a literary joust, your grace should try to win the second prize, for the first always goes to favor or to the great rank of the person, the second to plain justice, and the third comes to be the second, and the first, by this reckoning, will be the third, after the manner of the degrees given in the universities; but for all that, the name of first is a great personage.”

“So far,” said Don Lorenzo to himself, “I cannot judge you mad; let us go on.”

And he said to him:

“It seems to me your grace has attended the schools: what sciences have you studied?”

“That of knight-errantry,” answered Don Quixote, “which is as good as that of poetry, and even two little fingers better.”

“I do not know what science that may be,” replied Don Lorenzo, “and until now it has not come to my notice.”

“It is a science,” replied Don Quixote, “that contains within itself all or most of the sciences in the world, because he who professes it must be a jurist and know the laws of distributive and commutative justice, so as to give each man what is his and what befits him; he must be a theologian, so as to know how to give a reason for the Christian law he professes, clearly and distinctly, wherever it may be asked of him; he must be a physician, and above all a herbalist, so as to know, in the midst of wildernesses and deserts, the herbs that have the virtue of healing wounds, for the knight-errant must not be going around at every turn looking for someone to dress them; he must be an astrologer, so as to tell from the stars how much of the night has gone by, and in what part and what climate of the world he is; he must know mathematics, because at every step he will find himself in need of them; and, leaving aside that he must be adorned with all the theological and cardinal virtues, and coming down to other trifles, I say that he must know how to swim as they say Nicholas the Fish, or Nicolao, swam; he must know how to shoe a horse and mend saddle and bridle; and, to return to higher things, he must keep faith with God and with his lady; he must be chaste in his thoughts, decent in his words, liberal in his deeds, valiant in his feats, patient in his labors, charitable to the needy, and, finally, a champion of the truth, though defending it should cost him his life. Of all these great and least parts a good knight-errant is composed; so that your grace may see, Señor Don Lorenzo, whether it is a sniveling science that the knight who studies and professes it learns, and whether it can be put on a level with the loftiest that are taught in the gymnasiums and schools.”

“If that is so,” replied Don Lorenzo, “I say that this science surpasses them all.”

“What do you mean, if that is so?” answered Don Quixote.

“My meaning,” said Don Lorenzo, “is that I doubt there have ever been, or that there are now, knights-errant adorned with so many virtues.”

“Many times I have said what I say again now,” answered Don Quixote, “that most people in the world are of the opinion that there have never been knights-errant in it; and since it seems to me that, unless heaven miraculously gives them to understand the truth that there were and are, any effort one makes must be in vain, as experience has many times shown me, I do not wish to stop now to draw your grace out of the error you share with the many; what I mean to do is pray heaven to draw you out of it, and give you to understand how profitable and how necessary knights-errant were to the world in past ages, and how useful they would be in the present if they were in use; but now, for the sins of the people, sloth, idleness, gluttony, and soft living triumph.”

“Our guest has slipped away from us,” said Don Lorenzo to himself at this point. “But for all that, he is a splendid madman, and I would be a feeble fool not to think so.”

Here they put an end to their talk, for they were called to dinner. Don Diego asked his son what he had made out of the guest’s wits. To which he answered:

“All the doctors and good scriveners in the world won’t get him out of the rough draft of his madness: he is a streaky madman, full of lucid intervals.”

They went to dinner, and the meal was just as Don Diego had said on the road he usually gave his guests: neat, plentiful, and tasty; but what pleased Don Quixote most was the marvelous silence there was in the whole house, which was like a Carthusian monastery. When, then, the cloths had been removed, and thanks given to God and water to their hands, Don Quixote earnestly begged Don Lorenzo to recite the verses for the literary joust; to which he answered that, so as not to seem one of those poets who, when they are begged to recite their verses, refuse, and when no one asks for them, spew them up… “I will recite my glosa, for which I expect no prize, since I wrote it only to exercise my wits.”

“A sensible friend of mine,” answered Don Quixote, “was of the opinion that no one should weary himself glossing verses; and the reason, he said, was that the glosa could never come up to the text, and that many times, or most times, the glosa strayed from the intent and purpose of what the glossed lines called for; and besides, that the laws of the glosa were too narrow: they allowed no questions, nor said he, nor I shall say, nor making nouns of verbs, nor changing the sense, with other bonds and restrictions by which those who write glosas are tied, as your grace must know.”

“Truly, Señor Don Quixote,” said Don Lorenzo, “I keep wanting to catch your grace in a run of bad Latin, and I cannot, for you slip out of my hands like an eel.”

“I do not understand,” answered Don Quixote, “what your grace is saying, or means, by that business of my slipping.”

“I will make myself understood,” answered Don Lorenzo. “And for now let your grace attend to the glossed lines and to the glosa, which go like this:

“If only my was would turn to is
with no more waiting for will be,
or else the time would come at once
of what is yet to be hereafter…!

“Glosa

“At last, since everything must pass,
there passed the good that Fortune gave,
Fortune, who once was not so sparing,
and never did she give it back,
not in abundance nor by measure.
For ages now you’ve seen me, Fortune,
lying here prostrate at your feet;
make me a fortunate man again,
for happy would my being be
if only my was would turn to is.
I want no other joy or glory,
no other palm or conquest won,
no other triumph, other victory,
than to return to that content
which is a sorrow in my memory.
If you will take me back to it,
Fortune, then tempered and subdued
is all the fury of my fire,
the more so if this good comes now,
with no more waiting for will be.
Impossible the things I ask,
for to bring time back into being
once it has been and is no more,
there is no power on the earth
that ever stretched so far as that.
Time runs, it flies, it goes its way
so light of foot, and won’t return,
and he would err who asked of it
either that time should now be gone
or else the time come back at once.
I live a life perplexed and torn,
now hoping and now fearing still:
it is a death well known to all,
and it is better far, by dying,
to seek a way out of the pain.
It would have been my gain, I think,
to make an end, but it is not,
since, on a wiser reckoning,
what gives me life is very fear
of what is yet to be hereafter.”

When Don Lorenzo had finished reciting his glosa, Don Quixote rose to his feet, and, in a raised voice that seemed a shout, clasping Don Lorenzo’s right hand in his own, said:

“By the heavens where they are highest, noble youth, you are the best poet on earth, and you deserve to be crowned with laurel, not by Cyprus nor by Gaeta, as a poet said, God forgive him, but by the academies of Athens, if they were alive today, and by those that live today in Paris, Bologna, and Salamanca! Heaven grant that whatever judges deny you the first prize be shot through with Phoebus’s arrows, and that the Muses never cross the thresholds of their houses. Recite me, sir, if you please, some verses in a longer meter, for I wish to take the full pulse of your admirable wit.”

Is it not a fine thing that they say Don Lorenzo was pleased to hear himself praised by Don Quixote, though he took him for a madman? O power of flattery, how far you reach, and how wide are the bounds of your pleasant jurisdiction! Don Lorenzo bore out this truth, for he granted Don Quixote’s request and wish, reciting for him this sonnet on Pyramus and Thisbe, their fable or story:

Sonnet

The wall is broken by the lovely maid
who opened Pyramus’s gallant breast;
Love sets out from Cyprus, going straight
to see the narrow, wondrous breach she made.
There silence speaks, because the voice, afraid,
dare not pass through so strait and narrow a strait;
but souls can pass, for Love is wont indeed
to make the hardest thing an easy one.
Desire went beyond all measure, and the step
of the imprudent virgin courts her death
for her own pleasure; see, what a story:
that both of them at once, O strange event,
are slain, are hidden, and are raised again
by a sword, a sepulcher, a memory.

“Blessed be God!” said Don Quixote, when he had heard Don Lorenzo’s sonnet. “For among the countless consumptive poets there are, I have seen one consummate poet, as your grace is, my good sir; for so the artistry of this sonnet gives me to understand.”

Four days Don Quixote stayed, most handsomely entertained, in Don Diego’s house, at the end of which he asked his leave to go, telling him that he thanked him for the kindness and good treatment he had received in his house, but that, since it was not fitting for knights-errant to give many hours to idleness and luxury, he wished to go and fulfill his office, seeking adventures, of which he had heard that land abounded, and where he hoped to pass the time until the day of the jousts in Zaragoza, which was his direct destination; but that first he had to enter the cave of Montesinos, of which so many and such wonderful things were told in those parts, also learning and inquiring into the source and true springs of the seven lagoons commonly called the lagoons of Ruidera.

Don Diego and his son praised his honorable resolve, and told him to take from their house and their estate whatever he pleased, for they would serve him with all the goodwill possible; that the worth of his person and his honorable profession obliged them to it.

At last the day of his departure came, as joyful for Don Quixote as it was sad and ill-starred for Sancho Panza, who was very comfortable with the abundance of Don Diego’s house and was loath to go back to the hunger customary in forests and wildernesses and to the scantiness of his ill-stocked saddlebags. For all that, he filled them and crammed them with what seemed to him most necessary; and on taking leave Don Quixote said to Don Lorenzo:

“I do not know if I have told your grace before, and if I have, I say it again, that whenever your grace wishes to save yourself roads and labors in reaching the inaccessible summit of the temple of Fame, you need do nothing but leave to one side the path of poetry, which is somewhat narrow, and take the very narrow one of knight-errantry, enough to make you an emperor before you can say hand me the straw.”

With these words Don Quixote finished closing the case for his madness, and still more with those he added, saying:

“God knows I would like to take Señor Don Lorenzo with me, to teach him how the humble are to be spared and the proud trampled and kicked down, virtues attached to the profession I profess; but since his youth does not call for it, and his praiseworthy pursuits will not allow it, I content myself only with advising your grace that, being a poet, you may be famous if you are guided more by the opinion of others than by your own, because there is no father or mother to whom their children seem ugly, and in the children of the understanding this deception runs stronger still.”

Father and son marveled afresh at Don Quixote’s mixed speeches, now sensible and now absurd, and at the obsession and persistence with which he set himself wholly to the search for his unfortunate adventures, which he held to be the end and aim of his desires. Offers and courtesies were repeated, and, with the good leave of the lady of the castle, Don Quixote and Sancho, on Rocinante and the gray, departed.