Chapter XXI. In which the wedding of Camacho is continued, with other delightful events

While Don Quixote and Sancho were in the midst of the talk set down in the preceding chapter, loud shouts and a great uproar were heard, raised and made by the young men on the mares, who at a long gallop and with much hallooing were riding out to meet the bride and groom, who, surrounded by a thousand kinds of instruments and pageants, were coming along accompanied by the priest, and the kinsfolk of both, and all the finest people of the neighboring villages, every one in holiday dress. And when Sancho saw the bride, he said:

“In good faith, she hasn’t come dressed as a farm girl but as a fine lady of the court! By God, from what I can make out, the medallions she ought to be wearing are rich corals, and the green Cuenca serge is thirty-pile velvet! And a fine thing, the trimming’s strips of white linen, is it? I swear it’s satin! And then look at her hands, decked with jet rings, are they? May I never prosper if those aren’t gold rings, and good gold too, set with pearls as white as curds, every one of them worth an eye out of your head. Oh, the son of a whore, what hair! If it isn’t false, I’ve never in all my life seen any longer or fairer. Go on, find fault with her spirit and her figure, and don’t compare her to a palm tree swaying under its clusters of dates, for that’s just what the trinkets look like that she has hanging from her hair and her throat! I swear on my soul she’s a sterling lass, and could get past the sandbanks of Flanders.”

Don Quixote laughed at Sancho Panza’s rustic praises; it seemed to him that, his lady Dulcinea del Toboso excepted, he had never set eyes on a lovelier woman. The fair Quiteria came somewhat pale, and it must have been from the bad night that brides always spend getting themselves ready for their wedding day. They were drawing near a stage that stood to one side of the meadow, hung with carpets and boughs, where the betrothal was to take place and from which they were to watch the dances and the pageants; and just as they reached the spot they heard loud shouts behind them, and one voice saying:

“Wait a moment, you people as thoughtless as you are hasty.”

At these shouts and words they all turned their heads, and saw that they came from a man dressed, as it seemed, in a black jerkin slashed with crimson in flame patterns. He was crowned, as was seen presently, with a crown of funereal cypress, and in his hands he carried a great staff. When he came nearer, everyone recognized him as the gallant Basilio, and they all stood in suspense, waiting to see where his shouts and his words would lead, and fearing that some evil outcome would come of his arrival at such a moment.

He arrived at last, weary and out of breath, and, planting himself in front of the betrothed pair and driving the staff, which had a steel tip at its foot, into the ground, his color changed and his eyes fixed on Quiteria, he spoke these words in a trembling, hoarse voice:

“You know well, unmindful Quiteria, that by the holy law we profess, while I am alive you cannot take a husband; and you are not unaware either that, in my hope that time and my diligence would better the goods of my fortune, I would not fail to keep the decorum that befitted your honor. But you, casting behind you every obligation you owe to my true love, would make another the master of what is mine, another whose riches serve him not only as good fortune but as the best of luck. And so that he may have it brimming over, and not as I think he deserves it but as heaven chooses to give it to him, I, by my own hands, will undo the impossibility or the hindrance that may stand in its way, by taking myself out of the way. Long life, long life to Camacho the Rich with the ungrateful Quiteria, for long and happy ages, and death, death to Basilio the Poor, whose poverty clipped the wings of his happiness and laid him in the grave!”

And, saying this, he took hold of the staff he had driven into the ground, and, half of it staying in the earth, he showed that it served as a sheath for a middling rapier that was hidden in it; and, setting what might be called the hilt on the ground, with a light, offhand air and a settled purpose he threw himself upon it, and in an instant the bloody point showed at his back, with half the steel blade, and the poor wretch lay stretched on the ground, bathed in his blood, pierced through by his own weapon.

His friends ran up at once to help him, grieved at his misery and pitiful misfortune; and Don Quixote, leaving Rocinante, ran to help him and took him in his arms, and found that he had not yet breathed his last. They wanted to draw out the rapier, but the priest, who was present, was of the opinion that it should not be drawn before he had confessed him, because drawing it and his dying would be one and the same moment. But Basilio, coming to himself a little, said in a faint and grieving voice:

“If you would, cruel Quiteria, give me your hand as my wife in this last and inescapable hour, I would still think my rashness had some excuse, since by it I attained the blessing of being yours.”

The priest, hearing this, told him to see to the health of his soul before the pleasures of his body, and to beg God most earnestly to pardon his sins and his desperate resolve. To which Basilio replied that on no account would he confess unless Quiteria first gave him her hand as his wife, for that happiness would put his will in order and give him the breath to confess.

When Don Quixote heard the wounded man’s request, he said in a loud voice that Basilio was asking a thing that was very just and reasonable, and very easy to do besides, and that Señor Camacho would be as much honored in receiving Señora Quiteria as the widow of the valiant Basilio as if he received her from her father’s side:

“Here there need be no more than a single yes, with no other effect than the uttering of it, for the bridal bed of this wedding is to be the grave.”

Camacho heard all of it, and all of it kept him in suspense and confusion, not knowing what to do or what to say; but the cries of Basilio’s friends were so many, begging him to consent to Quiteria’s giving him her hand as his wife, so that his soul would not be lost by his leaving this life in despair, that they moved him, and even forced him, to say that if Quiteria was willing to give it, he was content, since it all came only to putting off the fulfillment of his desires for a moment.

Then they all went to Quiteria, and some with pleas, and others with tears, and others with forceful arguments, urged her to give her hand to poor Basilio; and she, harder than marble and stiller than a statue, showed that she neither knew how, nor was able, nor wished to answer a word; nor would she have answered if the priest had not told her to make up her mind quickly what she was going to do, because Basilio already had his soul between his teeth and there was no time to wait on undecided decisions.

Then the fair Quiteria, without answering a single word, troubled and, to all appearances, sad and sorrowful, came up to where Basilio lay, his eyes already turned up, his breath short and quick, murmuring Quiteria’s name between his teeth, and giving signs of dying like a heathen and not like a Christian. Quiteria reached him at last and, kneeling down, asked him for his hand by signs and not by words. Basilio opened his eyes wide and, looking at her intently, said to her:

“Oh, Quiteria, you have come to be merciful at a time when your mercy must serve as the knife that finishes taking my life, for I no longer have the strength to bear the glory you give me in choosing me as yours, nor to hold back the pain that is so quickly covering my eyes with the dreadful shadow of death! What I beg of you, oh my fatal star, is that the hand you ask of me and wish to give me be not out of mere courtesy, nor to deceive me afresh, but that you confess and declare that, without forcing your will, you hand it over and give it to me as to your lawful husband; for it is not right that at such an hour as this you should deceive me or use pretenses with one who has dealt with you in nothing but truths.”

Amid these words he kept fainting, so that all who were present thought each swoon would carry his soul away with it. Quiteria, all modesty and all bashfulness, taking Basilio’s right hand in hers, said to him:

“No force would be enough to bend my will; and so, with the freest will I have, I give you my hand as your lawful wife, and I receive yours, if you give it to me of your own free choice, untroubled and unhindered by the calamity your headlong course has brought you to.”

“Yes, I give it,” answered Basilio, “not troubled or confused, but with the clear understanding that heaven was pleased to give me; and so I give and deliver myself as your husband.”

“And I as your wife,” answered Quiteria, “whether you live long years or they carry you from my arms to the grave.”

“For a lad so badly wounded,” said Sancho Panza at this point, “he does a lot of talking. Make him leave off sweet nothings and see to his soul, for to my mind he has it more on his tongue than between his teeth.”

Basilio and Quiteria, then, being hand in hand, the priest, tender and tearful, gave them his blessing and prayed heaven to grant the newly wed man’s soul a good resting place; and he, the moment he had received the blessing, sprang to his feet with nimble quickness and with an ease never seen drew out the rapier, for which his body had served as a sheath.

All the bystanders were left amazed, and some of them, more simple than curious, began to shout:

“A miracle, a miracle!”

But Basilio replied:

“Not ‘a miracle, a miracle,’ but a trick, a trick!”

The priest, bewildered and astounded, ran with both hands to feel the wound, and found that the blade had gone, not through the flesh and ribs of Basilio, but through a hollow iron tube filled with blood that he had fitted neatly in that place; the blood had been prepared, as was learned afterward, so that it would not congeal.

In the end the priest and Camacho, with most of the bystanders, considered themselves tricked and mocked. The bride showed no sign of being sorry about the trick; on the contrary, hearing it said that the marriage, having been a deception, could not be valid, she said that she confirmed it anew; from which they all gathered that the business had been planned with the consent and knowledge of the two of them, at which Camacho and his supporters were so mortified that they turned their vengeance over to their hands, and, unsheathing a great many swords, they charged at Basilio, in whose favor almost as many were unsheathed in an instant. And Don Quixote, riding out in front, his lance resting on his arm and his shield held well before him, made them all give way before him. Sancho, who never found pleasure or delight in doings of that sort, took refuge among the great jars from which he had taken his welcome skimmings, for that spot seemed to him a sanctuary, bound to be held in respect. Don Quixote cried out loudly:

“Hold, sirs, hold, for it is not right to take vengeance for the wrongs that love does us; and mark that love and war are one and the same thing, and just as in war it is lawful and customary to use wiles and stratagems to defeat the enemy, so in the quarrels and rivalries of lovers the tricks and schemes contrived to gain the desired end are held to be fair, so long as they are not to the detriment and dishonor of the beloved. Quiteria was Basilio’s and Basilio was Quiteria’s, by the just and favorable disposition of heaven. Camacho is rich, and will be able to buy his pleasure when, where, and how he likes. Basilio has nothing but this one ewe, and no one, however powerful, shall take her from him; for those two whom God joins, man shall not be able to part; and whoever attempts it must first pass the point of this lance.”

And with that he brandished it so hard and so skillfully that he struck fear into all who did not know him; and Quiteria’s disdain fixed itself so sharply in Camacho’s imagination that it wiped her from his memory in an instant; and so the persuasions of the priest, who was a prudent and well-meaning man, took hold with him, and with them Camacho and those of his party were left calmed and at peace, in token of which they put their swords back in their places, blaming Quiteria’s fickleness more than Basilio’s cunning; Camacho reasoning that if Quiteria had loved Basilio as a maiden she would love him as a married woman too, and that he ought to give thanks to heaven more for having taken her from him than he would have for giving her to him.

Camacho and the men of his band, then, being consoled and at peace, all those of Basilio’s band quieted down; and Camacho the Rich, to show that he did not resent the trick or think it of any account, wanted the festivities to go forward as if he had really been married; but neither Basilio nor his bride nor their followers would attend them; and so they went off to Basilio’s village, for the virtuous and sensible poor also have those who follow, honor, and shelter them, as the rich have those who flatter them and keep them company.

They took Don Quixote with them, esteeming him a man of valor with hair on his chest. Only Sancho’s soul was darkened, seeing himself unable to wait for Camacho’s splendid feast and festivities, which lasted until nightfall; and so, worn out and gloomy, he followed his master, who was going with Basilio’s band, and thus left behind him the fleshpots of Egypt, though he carried them in his soul, and their skimmings, now almost used up and finished, which he carried in the cauldron, set before his mind the glory and the abundance of the good he was losing; and so, troubled and thoughtful, though not hungry, without getting down off the gray, he followed in Rocinante’s tracks.