Chapter XIX. In which is told the adventure of the lovelorn shepherd, with other truly amusing events

Don Quixote had gone only a short distance from Don Diego’s village when he met two men who looked like clerics or students, and two peasants, all four riding on asses. One of the students carried, as if in a portmanteau, wrapped in a cloth of green buckram, what seemed to be a little white woolen stuff and two pairs of coarse serge stockings; the other carried nothing but two new black fencing foils, with their buttons. The peasants carried other things, which gave sign and indication that they had bought them in some large town and were on their way home with them to their village; and students and peasants alike fell into the same amazement that seized everyone who saw Don Quixote for the first time, and they were dying to know what man this might be, so unlike the run of other men.

Don Quixote greeted them, and, after learning the road they were taking, which was the same one he was following, he offered them his company and asked them to slow their pace, for their she-asses went faster than his horse; and, to oblige them, he told them in a few words who he was, and his office and profession, which was that of a knight-errant who went seeking adventures in every part of the world. He told them that his proper name was Don Quixote of La Mancha, and his title the Knight of the Lions. All this, for the peasants, was like being spoken to in Greek or in thieves’ cant, but not for the students, who at once understood the weakness of Don Quixote’s brain; but for all that, they looked at him with wonder and respect, and one of them said to him:

“If your grace, sir knight, is not traveling a set road, as those who seek adventures usually do not, let your grace come with us: you will see one of the finest and richest weddings ever celebrated to this day in La Mancha, or for many leagues around.”

Don Quixote asked him whether it was some prince’s wedding, since he made so much of it.

“It is only,” answered the student, “that of a peasant and a peasant girl: he the richest in all this country, and she the most beautiful men have ever seen. The display with which it is to be held is extraordinary and new, for it is to be celebrated in a meadow next to the bride’s village; they call her Quiteria the Fair, by way of excellence, and the bridegroom is called Camacho the Rich; she is eighteen years old, and he twenty-two; a perfect match, though some busybodies who have the lineages of the whole world by heart will have it that the fair Quiteria’s is better than Camacho’s; but nobody looks at that now, for riches are able to solder a great many cracks. In effect, this Camacho is open-handed, and he has taken it into his head to roof over the whole meadow with branches, in such a way that the sun will have a hard time of it if it wants to get in to visit the green grass that covers the ground. He has also got up dances, both sword dances and dances with little bells, for there are people in his village who can ring and shake them to perfection; of the clog dancers I say nothing, for the number he has rounded up is beyond belief; but none of these things, nor many others I have left unmentioned, will make this wedding more memorable than what I imagine the desperate Basilio will do at it. This Basilio is a young shepherd from the same village as Quiteria, whose house was wall to wall with that of Quiteria’s parents, which gave love occasion to renew for the world the long-forgotten loves of Pyramus and Thisbe; for Basilio fell in love with Quiteria from his first tender years, and she went on answering his desire with a thousand modest favors, so much so that the loves of the two children Basilio and Quiteria were told in the village as a pastime. As they grew older, Quiteria’s father resolved to deny Basilio the free entry he had into his house; and, to rid himself of going about wary and full of suspicion, he arranged to marry his daughter to Camacho the Rich, not thinking it good to marry her to Basilio, who was not as well endowed with the goods of fortune as with those of nature; for, if the truth is to be told without envy, he is the most agile young man we know: a great thrower of the bar, a superb wrestler, and a great ball player; he runs like a deer, jumps better than a goat, and knocks down the skittles as if by enchantment; he sings like a lark, and plays a guitar so that he makes it talk, and, above all, he handles a sword with the best of them.”

“For that gift alone,” said Don Quixote at this point, “this young man deserved to marry not only the fair Quiteria, but Queen Guinevere herself, if she were alive today, in spite of Lancelot and of all who might wish to prevent it.”

“Tell that to my wife!” said Sancho Panza, who until then had gone along silent and listening. “She wants nothing but for everyone to marry his equal, sticking to the proverb they quote, ‘every ewe with her mate.’ What I’d like is for that good Basilio, for I’m already growing fond of him, to marry this lady Quiteria; and may they rest in peace and have good repose, I meant to say the opposite, those who stop people who love each other from marrying.”

“If all those who love each other were to marry,” said Don Quixote, “parents would be robbed of the choice and jurisdiction of marrying their children to whom and when they ought; and if the choosing of husbands were left to the daughters’ will, there would be one who would choose her father’s servant, and another the man she saw going by in the street, dashing and haughty to her eyes, though he were a dissolute swashbuckler; for love and fancy easily blind the eyes of the understanding, so necessary for choosing a state in life, and that of matrimony runs a great risk of going wrong, and great care and the particular favor of heaven are needed to hit on it right. A man wants to make a long journey, and, if he is prudent, before setting out he looks for some safe and agreeable company to travel with; why, then, should he not do the same who has to travel his whole life long, to the last stopping place of death, and all the more if that company is to keep him company in bed, at table, and everywhere, as a wife does her husband? A man’s own wife is not merchandise that, once bought, can be returned, or bartered, or exchanged, for she is an inseparable accident that lasts as long as life lasts: she is a noose that, once you put it around your neck, turns into the Gordian knot, which, if death’s scythe does not cut it, cannot be untied. I could say many more things on this subject, were it not for the wish I have to know whether the Señor Licentiate has anything more to tell about the story of Basilio.”

To which the student, the bachelor, or licentiate, as Don Quixote called him, replied:

“Of the whole of it there is nothing left for me to tell except that from the moment Basilio learned that the fair Quiteria was marrying Camacho the Rich, no one has seen him laugh or speak a sensible word again, and he goes about always pensive and sad, talking to himself, by which he gives sure and clear signs that his wits have turned: he eats little and sleeps little, and what he eats is fruit, and where he sleeps, if he sleeps, is in the open field, on the hard ground, like a brute beast; now and then he looks up at the sky, and at other times fixes his eyes on the earth in such a trance that he seems nothing but a clothed statue whose garments the wind stirs. In short, he shows such signs of a stricken heart that all of us who know him fear that tomorrow the fair Quiteria’s saying yes will be his death sentence.”

“God will make it come out better,” said Sancho, “for God, who gives the wound, gives the remedy; nobody knows what’s to come: between now and tomorrow there are many hours, and in one of them, and even in a moment, the house falls down; I’ve seen it rain and shine at one and the same time; many a man goes to bed sound at night who can’t stir the next day. And tell me, will there be anyone, by any chance, who can boast he has driven a nail into Fortune’s wheel? No, certainly not; and between a woman’s yes and her no I wouldn’t dare put the point of a pin, for it wouldn’t fit. Give me Quiteria loving Basilio with a good heart and a good will, and I’ll give him a sackful of good luck; for love, so I’ve heard tell, looks through spectacles that make copper look like gold, poverty like riches, and the gum in your eyes like pearls.”

“Where are you heading, Sancho, curse you?” said Don Quixote. “For when you start stringing proverbs and tales together, no one can wait for you but Judas himself, and may he carry you off. Tell me, you animal, what do you know of nails, or wheels, or anything else at all?”

“Oh! Well, if I’m not understood,” answered Sancho, “it’s no wonder my sayings are taken for nonsense. But it doesn’t matter: I understand myself, and I know I haven’t said many foolish things in what I’ve said; only your grace, my master, is always the persecutor of my sayings, and even of my doings.”

“Prosecutor, you should say,” said Don Quixote, “not persecutor, you corrupter of good language, God confound you.”

“Don’t pick on me, your grace,” answered Sancho, “for you know I wasn’t brought up at court, nor did I study at Salamanca, to know whether I’m adding or taking away a letter in my words. Yes, for, God help me, there’s no reason to make the man from Sayago talk like the man from Toledo, and there may be Toledans who aren’t so sharp at this business of polished talk.”

“That is so,” said the licentiate, “for those brought up in the Tanneries and in Zocodover cannot speak as well as those who stroll almost all day in the cloister of the cathedral, and they are all Toledans. Pure language, proper, elegant, and clear, is found in sensible courtiers, even if they were born in Majalahonda: I said sensible, because there are many who are not, and good sense is the grammar of good language, which goes hand in hand with usage. I, gentlemen, have for my sins studied canon law at Salamanca, and I rather pride myself somewhat on stating my reasons in clear, plain, and meaningful words.”

“If you did not pride yourself more on knowing how to wield those black foils you carry than your tongue,” said the other student, “you would have come first in your degree, instead of bringing up the tail as you did.”

“Look here, Bachelor,” answered the licentiate, “you hold the most mistaken opinion in the world about the art of fencing, taking it for a vain thing.”

“For me it is not opinion, but settled truth,” replied Corchuelo, “and if you want me to show it to you by experience, you carry swords, there is room here, I have wrists and strength which, together with my courage, which is no small thing, will force you to own that I am not deceived. Get down, and use your measured footwork, your circles and your angles and your science; for I hope to make you see stars at noon with my modern, rough-and-ready skill, in which I trust, after God, that the man who will make me show my back has not been born yet, and that there is no one in the world I cannot make give ground.”

“Whether you turn your back or not is no affair of mine,” replied the swordsman, “though it might be that on the very spot where you first plant your foot, your grave will be dug for you: I mean that you will be left dead there by the art you despise.”

“We shall see now,” answered Corchuelo.

And, getting down with great speed from his donkey, he snatched furiously at one of the swords the licentiate was carrying on his.

“It is not to be that way,” said Don Quixote at this moment, “for I wish to be the master of this bout of fencing, and the judge of this question so often left unsettled.”

And, dismounting from Rocinante and seizing his lance, he took up his post in mid-road, at the very moment when the licentiate, with fine grace of body and measured footwork, was advancing on Corchuelo, who came at him shooting, as the saying goes, fire from his eyes. The other two peasants of the party, without getting down from their she-asses, served as spectators of the mortal tragedy. The slashes, thrusts, downstrokes, backhand cuts, and two-handed blows that Corchuelo dealt were without number, thicker than liver and faster than hail. He charged like an angry lion, but out came to meet him a mouth-stopper from the button of the licentiate’s sword, which checked him in the middle of his fury and made him kiss it as if it were a relic, though not with as much devotion as relics ought to be and usually are kissed.

In the end, the licentiate counted off with thrusts every button of a short cassock he was wearing, slashing its skirts into strips like octopus tails; he knocked his hat off twice, and wore him out so that, from spite, anger, and rage, Corchuelo seized his sword by the hilt and flung it into the air with such force that one of the attending peasants, who was a notary and went to fetch it, afterward testified that he had hurled it almost three quarters of a league; which testimony serves and has served to show and make known in all truth how strength is overcome by art.

Corchuelo sat down, tired out, and Sancho, going up to him, said:

“By my faith, Señor Bachelor, if your grace takes my advice, from now on you won’t challenge anybody to fence, only to wrestle or throw the bar, since you have the years and strength for that; for I’ve heard it said of these ones they call masters of the art that they can thread a sword point through a needle’s eye.”

“I am content,” answered Corchuelo, “to have fallen off my donkey, and that experience has shown me the truth, from which I was so far.”

And, rising, he threw his arms around the licentiate, and the two were left better friends than ever; and they did not want to wait for the notary who had gone for the sword, thinking he would be a long time; and so they decided to go on, so as to arrive early at Quiteria’s village, where they all came from.

For the rest of the way the licentiate went on telling them the excellences of the sword, with so many demonstrative reasons and so many mathematical figures and demonstrations that they were all convinced of the goodness of the science, and Corchuelo was brought round from his obstinacy.

Night had fallen, but before they arrived it seemed to them all that there was a sky full of countless shining stars in front of the village. They heard, too, confused and gentle sounds of various instruments, such as flutes, tabors, psalteries, shepherds’ pipes, tambourines, and jingles; and when they came near they saw that the trees of a bower of branches, set up by hand at the entrance to the village, were all full of lights, which the wind did not trouble, for at that time it blew so gently that it had no strength to stir the leaves of the trees. The musicians were the merrymakers of the wedding, who were going about that pleasant place in various bands, some dancing, and others singing, and others playing the variety of instruments mentioned. In effect, it seemed nothing less than that joy was running and contentment leaping all over that meadow.

Many others were busy putting up scaffolds from which they could watch in comfort, the next day, the performances and dances that were to be held in that place set apart for solemnizing the wedding of Camacho the Rich and the obsequies of Basilio. Don Quixote would not go into the village, though both the peasant and the bachelor asked him to; but he gave as his excuse, a most sufficient one in his opinion, that knights-errant were accustomed to sleep in fields and forests rather than in towns, even under gilded roofs; and with this he turned off the road a little, much against Sancho’s will, as there came back to his memory the good lodging he had had in the castle or house of Don Diego.