Chapter XXIII. Of the wonderful things the extraordinary Don Quixote said he had seen in the deep cave of Montesinos, the impossibility and greatness of which cause this adventure to be held apocryphal

It must have been four in the afternoon when the sun, hidden among clouds, with scant light and tempered rays, gave Don Quixote the chance to tell his two most illustrious listeners, without heat or weariness, what he had seen in the cave of Montesinos. And he began in the following manner:

“Some twelve or fourteen times a man’s height down in this dungeon, on the right hand, there opens a hollow, a space large enough to hold a great cart with its mules. A little light comes into it through some chinks or holes that answer it from far off, open on the surface of the earth. I caught sight of this hollow and space just when I was growing weary and vexed at finding myself, hanging and dangling from the rope, going down through that dark region without any sure or settled way; and so I resolved to go into it and rest a little. I shouted, asking you not to let down any more rope until I told you, but you must not have heard me. I gathered in the rope you were sending down, and, making a coil or pile of it, I sat down on it, deep in thought, considering what I ought to do to get to the bottom with no one to hold me up; and, being in this thought and confusion, suddenly and without my seeking it, a most profound sleep fell upon me; and when I least expected it, without knowing how or how not, I woke from it and found myself in the midst of the loveliest, most pleasant and delightful meadow that nature can produce or the most discerning human imagination can imagine. I opened my eyes wide and rubbed them, and saw that I was not asleep but truly awake; for all that, I felt my head and my chest, to make certain whether it was I myself who was there or some empty, counterfeit phantom; but touch, feeling, and the orderly reasonings I carried on within myself assured me that the one who was there then was the one I am here now. Then there appeared before my eyes a royal and sumptuous palace or castle, whose walls and ramparts seemed to be built of clear, transparent crystal; and, two great doors of it opening, I saw coming out through them and coming toward me a venerable old man, dressed in a hooded cloak of purple baize that trailed along the ground; a collegian’s sash of green satin girded his shoulders and his breast; on his head he wore a black Milanese cap, and his beard, snow white, fell below his waist; he bore no weapon of any kind, only a rosary in his hand whose beads were larger than fair-sized walnuts, and the Our Father beads likewise like fair-sized ostrich eggs; his bearing, his step, his gravity, and his most ample presence, each thing by itself and all of them together, held me in suspense and wonder. He came up to me, and the first thing he did was embrace me tightly, and then say to me: ‘For long ages, valiant knight Don Quixote of La Mancha, we who are enchanted in these solitudes have been waiting to see you, so that you might give the world news of what is shut up and covered by the deep cave you have entered, called the cave of Montesinos: a feat kept only to be undertaken by your invincible heart and your stupendous spirit. Come with me, most illustrious sir, for I wish to show you the marvels this transparent castle conceals, of which I am the warden and perpetual chief keeper, because I am that very Montesinos after whom the cave is named.’ Scarcely had he told me he was Montesinos when I asked him whether what was told in the world up here was true: that he had taken out of the middle of the breast of his great friend Durandarte, with a little dagger, his heart, and carried it to the lady Belerma, as Durandarte had bidden him at the moment of his death. He answered me that they told the truth in everything except the dagger, because it was neither a dagger nor a little one, but a polished poniard with a point keener than an awl’s.”

“That poniard,” said Sancho at this point, “must have been one of Ramón de Hoces’s, the Sevillian.”

“I do not know,” Don Quixote went on, “but it would not have been that poniard maker’s, because Ramón de Hoces lived only yesterday, and the affair of Roncesvalles, where this misfortune happened, was many years ago; and this inquiry is of no importance, nor does it disturb or alter the truth and the context of the history.”

“That is so,” answered the cousin. “Go on, your grace, Señor Don Quixote, for no one in the world could be listening with more delight than I am.”

“And I tell it with no less,” answered Don Quixote, “and so I say that the venerable Montesinos took me into the crystal palace, where, in a ground-floor hall, exceedingly cool and all of alabaster, there was a marble tomb fashioned with great mastery, on which I saw a knight stretched out at full length, not made of bronze, nor of marble, nor of jasper, as there usually are on other tombs, but of pure flesh and pure bones. He had his right hand (which, to my mind, is rather hairy and sinewy, a sign that its owner had great strength) laid over his heart; and, before I could ask Montesinos anything, seeing me rapt in looking at the one on the tomb, he said to me: ‘This is my friend Durandarte, flower and mirror of the enamored and valiant knights of his time. He is held here enchanted, as I am and many other men and women, by Merlin, that French enchanter who they say was the son of the devil; and what I believe is that he was not the son of the devil, but that he knew, as they say, a point more than the devil. How or why he enchanted us, no one knows, and time will tell as it goes on, and that time is not very far off, as I imagine. What amazes me is that I know, as surely as it is now day, that Durandarte ended the days of his life in my arms, and that after he was dead I took out his heart with my own hands; and in truth it must have weighed two pounds, because, according to the natural philosophers, he who has a larger heart is endowed with greater valor than he who has a small one. Well, this being so, and this knight having really died, how is it that he now complains and sighs from time to time as if he were alive?’ This said, the wretched Durandarte cried out in a loud voice and said:

“‘O my cousin Montesinos!
The last thing that I begged you,
when I should come to die
and my soul be torn away,
was that you bear my heart
to where Belerma was,
drawing it out of my breast
with poniard or with dagger.’

“Hearing this, the venerable Montesinos knelt down before the stricken knight and, with tears in his eyes, said to him: ‘Already, Señor Durandarte, my dearest cousin, already I have done what you bade me on the ill-starred day of our defeat: I took out your heart as best I could, without leaving the smallest part of it in your breast; I wiped it with a lace handkerchief; I set out with it at full speed for France, having first laid you in the bosom of the earth, with so many tears that they were enough to wash my hands and clean off the blood they had on them from groping in your entrails; and, for a further token, cousin of my soul, at the first place I came to, leaving Roncesvalles, I sprinkled a little salt on your heart, so that it would not smell bad and might come, if not fresh, at least dried and cured, into the presence of the lady Belerma; and she, with you, and with me, and with Guadiana your squire, and with the duenna Ruidera and her seven daughters and two nieces, and with many others of your acquaintances and friends, has been held here enchanted by the sage Merlin these many years; and though more than five hundred have gone by, not one of us has died. Only Ruidera and her daughters and nieces are missing, for, as they wept, Merlin, out of the pity he must have felt for them, turned them into as many lagoons, which now, in the world of the living and in the province of La Mancha, they call the lagoons of Ruidera; the seven are the property of the kings of Spain, and the two nieces of the knights of a most holy order called the Order of Saint John. Guadiana, your squire, likewise lamenting your misfortune, was turned into a river named after him; and when he came to the surface of the earth and saw the sun of the other sky, so great was the grief he felt at seeing that he was leaving you that he plunged into the bowels of the earth; but, since it is not possible for him to keep from following his natural course, now and then he comes out and shows himself where the sun and people can see him. The lagoons I spoke of keep feeding him with their waters, and with these and with many others that join him, he enters Portugal in pomp and grandeur. But for all that, wherever he goes he shows his sadness and melancholy, and takes no pride in breeding dainty and prized fish in his waters, but only coarse and tasteless ones, very different from those of the golden Tagus; and this that I tell you now, O my cousin, I have told you many times; and since you do not answer me, I imagine that you do not believe me, or do not hear me, which gives me such pain as God knows. I wish to give you some news now which, though it may not serve to relieve your grief, will in no way add to it. Know that you have here in your presence (open your eyes and you will see him) that great knight of whom the sage Merlin has prophesied so many things, that Don Quixote of La Mancha, I mean, who anew, and to greater advantage than in past ages, has revived in the present ones the long-forgotten knight-errantry, by whose means and favor it might be that we should be disenchanted; for great deeds are kept for great men.’ ‘And if it should not be so,’ answered the stricken Durandarte in a faint, low voice, ‘if it should not be so, O cousin, I say: patience, and shuffle the cards.’ And, turning on his side, he went back to his accustomed silence without speaking another word. At this there were heard great wailings and weepings, accompanied by deep groans and anguished sobs; I turned my head and saw through the crystal walls that through another hall there was passing a procession of two files of most beautiful damsels, all dressed in mourning, with white turbans on their heads in the Turkish fashion. At the end and close of the files came a lady, for so her gravity showed her to be, likewise dressed in black, with white veils so wide and long that they kissed the ground. Her turban was twice as big as the biggest of any of the others; her eyebrows met, and her nose was rather flat; her mouth was large, but her lips red; her teeth, which now and then she showed, were seen to be sparse and badly set, though they were as white as peeled almonds; in her hands she carried a fine linen cloth, and in it, as far as I could make out, a heart of mummified flesh, so dry and cured did it look. Montesinos told me that all those people in the procession were servants of Durandarte and Belerma, who were enchanted there with their two masters, and that the last one, who carried the heart in the cloth and in her hands, was the lady Belerma, who with her damsels made that procession four days a week, and sang, or rather wept, dirges over the body and over the grieved heart of his cousin; and that if she had seemed to me somewhat ugly, or not as beautiful as her fame had it, the cause was the bad nights and worse days she spent in that enchantment, as I could see by the great rings under her eyes and her sickly color. ‘And her sallowness and the rings under her eyes do not come from her being in the monthly illness common to women, for she has not had it these many months, and even years, nor has it so much as shown itself at her doors, but from the grief her heart feels for the one she always holds in her hands, which renews and brings back to her memory the misfortune of her ill-fated lover; for were it not for this, the great Dulcinea del Toboso, so celebrated in all these parts and even in all the world, would scarcely equal her in beauty, grace, and spirit.’ ‘Easy there,’ I said then, ‘Señor Don Montesinos: tell your story as you should, your grace, for you know well that all comparisons are odious, and so there is no reason to compare anyone with anyone. The peerless Dulcinea del Toboso is who she is, and the lady Doña Belerma is who she is, and who she has been, and let it rest there.’ To which he answered me: ‘Señor Don Quixote, pardon me, your grace, for I confess I went astray and did not speak well in saying that the lady Dulcinea would scarcely equal the lady Belerma, since it should have been enough for me to have gathered, by I know not what hints, that your grace is her knight, to make me bite my tongue before I compared her with anything but heaven itself.’ With this satisfaction that the great Montesinos gave me, my heart grew quiet after the start I had received on hearing my lady compared with Belerma.”

“And what I marvel at,” said Sancho, “is how your grace didn’t climb on top of the old codger and kick every bone in his body to powder and pluck out his beard without leaving him a hair in it.”

“No, Sancho my friend,” answered Don Quixote, “it was not fitting for me to do that, because we are all bound to respect the old, even if they are not knights, and above all those who are knights and are enchanted. I know well that we did not come out owing each other anything in many other questions and answers that passed between us.”

At this point the cousin said:

“I do not know, Señor Don Quixote, how your grace, in the short time you have been down there, can have seen so many things and spoken and answered so much.”

“How long is it since I went down?” asked Don Quixote.

“A little over an hour,” answered Sancho.

“That cannot be,” replied Don Quixote, “because night fell and day broke for me down there, and night fell and day broke again, three times; so that, by my count, I have been three days in those remote parts hidden from our sight.”

“My master must be telling the truth,” said Sancho, “for since all the things that have happened to him come by enchantment, maybe what seems an hour to us must seem three days and nights down there.”

“So it must be,” answered Don Quixote.

“And has your grace eaten in all this time, sir?” asked the cousin.

“I have not broken my fast with a mouthful,” answered Don Quixote, “nor have I even been hungry, not so much as in thought.”

“And do the enchanted eat?” said the cousin.

“They do not eat,” answered Don Quixote, “nor do they have the greater excrements; though it is held that their nails, their beards, and their hair grow.”

“And do the enchanted sleep, by any chance, sir?” asked Sancho.

“Certainly not,” answered Don Quixote. “At least, in these three days I have been with them, not one of them has shut an eye, nor have I either.”

“Here the proverb fits nicely,” said Sancho, “that goes ‘tell me who you keep company with, and I’ll tell you who you are.’ Your grace keeps company with fasting, wakeful enchanted folk, so see if it’s any wonder you neither eat nor sleep while you’re keeping company with them. But forgive me, your grace, my master, if I tell you that of everything you’ve said here, God take me (I was going to say the devil) if I believe a thing.”

“How not?” said the cousin. “Why, was Señor Don Quixote going to lie, when, even if he had wanted to, he has had no time to make up and imagine such a million lies?”

“I don’t believe my master is lying,” answered Sancho.

“If not, what do you believe?” Don Quixote asked him.

“I believe,” answered Sancho, “that that Merlin, or those enchanters who enchanted the whole rabble your grace says you’ve seen and talked with down there, stuck into your noddle or your memory all that contraption you’ve told us, and all that you still have left to tell.”

“All that might be, Sancho,” replied Don Quixote, “but it is not so, because what I have told, these eyes of mine saw and these very hands touched. But what will you say when I tell you now how, among the infinite other things and marvels Montesinos showed me, which I will tell you slowly and in due time in the course of our journey, since they do not all belong here, he showed me three peasant girls who were going about those most pleasant fields leaping and capering like goats; and, scarcely had I seen them, when I knew one to be the peerless Dulcinea del Toboso, and the other two those same peasant girls who came with her, whom we spoke to on the way out of El Toboso? I asked Montesinos if he knew them; he answered no, but that he imagined they must be some enchanted ladies of rank, who had appeared in those meadows only a few days before; and that I was not to marvel at this, because many other ladies of past and present ages were there, enchanted in different and strange shapes, among whom he recognized Queen Guinevere and her duenna Quintañona, pouring the wine for Lancelot, when he came out of Britain.”

When Sancho Panza heard his master say this, he thought he would lose his wits or die of laughing; for, since he knew the truth about Dulcinea’s pretended enchantment, of which he himself had been the enchanter and the raiser of such false witness, he came to know beyond any doubt that his master was out of his mind and mad through and through; and so he said to him:

“At an evil hour and in a worse season and on an ill-starred day your grace went down to the other world, my dear patron, and at a bad moment you met Señor Montesinos, who has sent you back to us like this. Your grace was well off up here with your whole wits, just as God had given them to you, speaking maxims and giving advice at every step, and not now, telling the biggest pieces of nonsense that can be imagined.”

“Since I know you, Sancho,” answered Don Quixote, “I take no notice of your words.”

“Nor I of your grace’s,” replied Sancho, “even if you wound me, even if you kill me for the ones I’ve said to you, or for the ones I mean to say if you don’t correct and mend your own. But tell me, your grace, now that we’re at peace: how or by what did you know the lady our mistress? And if you spoke to her, what did you say, and what did she answer?”

“I knew her,” answered Don Quixote, “by her wearing the same clothes she wore when you pointed her out to me. I spoke to her, but she did not answer me a word; instead she turned her back on me and went off fleeing in such haste that an arrow would not have caught her. I wanted to follow her, and I would have done so had Montesinos not advised me not to tire myself with it, because it would be in vain, and all the more because the hour was coming when I must come up out of the chasm again. He told me likewise that, in the course of time, I would be given word of how he, and Belerma, and Durandarte were to be disenchanted, with all who were there; but what grieved me most of all the things I saw and noted there was that, while Montesinos was saying these words to me, one of the two companions of the luckless Dulcinea came up to me from one side without my seeing her come, and, her eyes full of tears, said to me in a troubled, low voice: ‘My lady Dulcinea del Toboso kisses your grace’s hands, and begs your grace to do her the favor of letting her know how you are; and that, being in great need, she likewise begs your grace, as earnestly as she can, to be so good as to lend her, on this new cotton petticoat I have brought here, half a dozen reales, or whatever your grace may have, for she gives her word to return them to you very soon.’ The message left me in suspense and amazement, and, turning to Señor Montesinos, I asked him: ‘Is it possible, Señor Montesinos, that enchanted persons of rank suffer want?’ To which he answered me: ‘Believe me, your grace, Señor Don Quixote of La Mancha, this thing they call want is in use everywhere, and reaches into everything, and comes to everyone, and does not spare even the enchanted; and since the lady Dulcinea del Toboso sends to ask for those six reales, and the pledge is good, as it seems, there is nothing for it but to give them to her, for no doubt she must be in some great strait.’ ‘A pledge I will not take,’ I answered him, ‘still less will I give her what she asks, because I have only four reales’; and these I gave her (they were the ones you gave me, Sancho, the other day to give as alms to the poor I might come across on the roads), and I said to her: ‘Tell your lady, my friend, that her troubles grieve me to the soul, and that I would like to be a Fugger to remedy them; and let her know that I cannot and should not have health while I lack her pleasing sight and sensible conversation, and that I beg her, as earnestly as I can, to be pleased to let herself be seen and spoken with by this her captive servant and harried knight. You will tell her too that, at the moment she least thinks of it, word will reach her that I have made an oath and a vow, after the fashion of the one the Marquis of Mantua made to avenge his nephew Baldovinos when he found him about to breathe his last in the midst of the mountain, which was not to eat bread off a tablecloth, with the other trifles he added there, until he had avenged him; and so I shall vow not to rest, and to travel the seven parts of the world more punctually than the Infante Don Pedro of Portugal traveled them, until I have disenchanted her.’ ‘All that, and more, your grace owes my lady,’ the damsel answered me. And, taking the four reales, instead of making me a curtsy she cut a caper that took her two full yards up into the air.”

“O holy God!” cried Sancho at this, in a loud voice. “Is it possible that there’s such a thing in the world, and that enchanters and enchantments have such power in it that they’ve turned my master’s good sense into such a crackbrained madness? Oh, sir, sir, for God’s sake, let your grace look to yourself and stand up for your honor, and don’t give credit to these empty things that have shrunk and unhinged your senses!”

“It is because you love me, Sancho, that you talk that way,” said Don Quixote, “and since you are not experienced in the things of the world, all things that have some difficulty about them seem impossible to you; but time will pass, as I have said before, and I will tell you some of the things I have seen down there, which will make you believe the ones I have told here, whose truth admits neither reply nor dispute.”