Chapter XXIV. In which are told a thousand trifles as irrelevant as they are necessary to the true understanding of this great history

The one who translated this great history says that, in the original by its first author, Cide Hamete Benengeli, on reaching the chapter of the adventure of the cave of Montesinos, he found, written in the margin in Hamete’s own hand, these very words:

“I cannot make myself understand or persuade myself that everything written in the preceding chapter happened exactly so to the valiant Don Quixote: the reason is that all the adventures that have happened up to now have been possible and likely, but this one of the cave I can find no way into for holding it true, it goes so far beyond the bounds of reason. Yet for me to think that Don Quixote lied, he being the most truthful hidalgo and the noblest knight of his times, is not possible, for he would not tell a lie though they shot him full of arrows. On the other hand, I consider that he told it and related it with all the circumstances given, and that he could not have fabricated so great a contraption of nonsense in so short a space; and if this adventure seems apocryphal, I am not to blame; and so, without affirming it to be false or true, I write it down. You, reader, since you are prudent, judge as you see fit, for I neither should nor can do more; although it is held for certain that at the time of his end and death, they say, he retracted it, and said that he had invented it because it seemed to him that it suited and squared well with the adventures he had read in his histories.”

And then he goes on, saying:

The cousin was astonished, as much at Sancho Panza’s boldness as at his master’s patience, and judged that the mild temper he showed just then sprang from the contentment he felt at having seen his lady Dulcinea del Toboso, enchanted though she was; for, had it not been so, Sancho had said words and things to him that deserved a cudgeling; because it really seemed to the cousin that Sancho had been a little too bold with his master, to whom the cousin said:

“I, Señor Don Quixote of La Mancha, count the journey I have made with your grace as most excellently spent, because in it I have gained four things. The first, to have come to know your grace, which I hold a great happiness. The second, to have learned what is shut up in this cave of Montesinos, with the transformations of the Guadiana and of the lagoons of Ruidera, which will serve me for the Spanish Ovid I have in hand. The third, to understand the antiquity of playing cards, which were already in use at least in the time of the Emperor Charlemagne, as may be gathered from the words your grace says Durandarte spoke when, at the end of that long stretch in which Montesinos was talking to him, he woke and said: ‘Patience, and shuffle the cards’; and this phrase and manner of speaking he could not have learned while enchanted, but only when he was not, in France and in the time of the said Emperor Charlemagne. And this finding comes as if made to measure for the other book I am composing, which is the Supplement to Polydore Vergil on the invention of antiquities; and I believe that in his he did not remember to put in the one of cards, as I shall put it in now, which will be of great importance, the more so as I cite an authority as grave and as truthful as Señor Durandarte. The fourth is to have learned for certain the source of the river Guadiana, until now unknown to mankind.”

“Your grace is right,” said Don Quixote, “but I should like to know, if God grants you the favor of being given license to print those books of yours, which I doubt, to whom you mean to dedicate them.”

“There are lords and grandees in Spain to whom they can be dedicated,” said the cousin.

“Not many,” answered Don Quixote, “and not because they do not deserve it, but because they will not accept them, so as not to bind themselves to the recompense that seems to be owed to the labor and courtesy of their authors. I know one prince who can make up for what the rest lack, with such advantages that, if I dared to tell them, perhaps I should rouse envy in more than four generous breasts; but let this rest here for another, more convenient time, and let us go and look for somewhere to shelter tonight.”

“Not far from here,” answered the cousin, “there is a hermitage, where a hermit makes his dwelling who, they say, has been a soldier and is reputed to be a good Christian, and very sensible and charitable besides. Next to the hermitage he has a little house, which he built at his own cost; but even so, small as it is, it is big enough to take in guests.”

“Does this hermit have any hens, by any chance?” asked Sancho.

“Few hermits are without them,” answered Don Quixote, “because those in fashion now are not like the ones in the deserts of Egypt, who dressed in palm leaves and ate the roots of the earth. And let it not be thought that by speaking well of those I do not speak well of these; I only mean that the penances of the present day do not come up to the rigor and austerity of those times; but not for that do they fail to be all good; at least, I judge them good; and, if the worst comes to the worst, the hypocrite who feigns to be good does less harm than the public sinner.”

As they were saying this, they saw a man on foot coming toward where they were, walking fast and switching a he-mule that came loaded with lances and halberds. When he reached them, he greeted them and went on past. Don Quixote said to him:

“My good man, stop, for it seems you are going with more haste than that mule needs.”

“I can’t stop, sir,” answered the man, “because the arms you see I’m carrying here are to be used tomorrow; and so I’m bound not to stop, and God be with you. But if you would like to know what I’m carrying them for, I mean to put up tonight at the inn that lies beyond the hermitage; and if you happen to be going this same way, you’ll find me there, where I’ll tell you marvels. And God be with you again.”

And he goaded the mule on in such a way that Don Quixote had no chance to ask him what the marvels were that he meant to tell them; and since he was rather curious, and was always plagued by the desire to learn new things, he gave orders that they should leave at once and go to spend the night at the inn, without touching at the hermitage, where the cousin would have liked them to stay.

So it was done; they mounted, and all three followed the direct road to the inn, which they reached a little before nightfall. The cousin told Don Quixote that they should stop there for a drink. Scarcely had Sancho Panza heard this when he steered the gray toward the hermitage, and Don Quixote and the cousin did the same; but Sancho’s bad luck, it seems, ordained that the hermit should not be at home, for so they were told by a sub-hermitess they found in the hermitage. They asked her for some of the dear stuff; she answered that her master had none, but that if they wanted cheap water she would give it to them with a very good will.

“If I’d had a thirst for water,” answered Sancho, “there are wells along the road where I could have quenched it. Ah, Camacho’s wedding and the plenty of Don Diego’s house, how many times am I going to miss you!”

With this they left the hermitage and spurred on toward the inn; and a little way along they came upon a young lad who was walking ahead of them without much hurry, and so they overtook him. He carried his sword over his shoulder, and on it a bundle or roll, apparently of his clothes, which, by the look of it, must have been his breeches or galligaskins, and a short cloak, and a shirt or so, for he wore a velvet jacket with some glimmers of satin, and his shirt showing; his stockings were of silk, and his shoes square-toed, in the court fashion; he would be eighteen or nineteen years of age, cheerful of face and, to all appearances, nimble in his person. He was singing seguidillas to beguile the toil of the road. When they came up to him, he was just finishing one, which the cousin learned by heart, and which they say went:

To the war I am going,
by my needs driven out;
if I only had money,
I would not go, no doubt.

The first to speak to him was Don Quixote, who said:

“You travel very light, your grace, my gallant sir. And where are you bound, in a good hour? Let us know, if you care to say.”

To which the young man answered:

“Traveling so light is caused by the heat and by poverty, and where I am going is to the war.”

“How, by poverty?” asked Don Quixote. “For by the heat it may well be.”

“Sir,” replied the lad, “in this bundle I carry a pair of velvet galligaskins, the companions of this jacket; if I wear them out on the road, I won’t be able to do myself honor in them in the city, and I haven’t the means to buy others; and, for that as much as to get some air, I go like this until I catch up with some companies of infantry that are not twelve leagues from here, where I will enlist, and there will be no lack of baggage wagons to travel in from there on to where we take ship, which they say is to be Cartagena. And I would rather have the king for my master and lord, and serve him in the war, than some penniless nobody at court.”

“And does your grace have some extra pay, by any chance?” asked the cousin.

“If I had served some grandee of Spain or some person of rank,” answered the young man, “I would surely have it, for that is what serving good masters brings: from the servants’ hall men go on to be ensigns or captains, or get some good allowance; but I, unlucky one, always served upstarts and hangers-on, on board and wages so wretched and so thin that half of it went on paying for the starching of a collar; and it would be held a miracle if a page out to seek his fortune came by any fortune that was even reasonable.”

“And tell me, upon your life, friend,” asked Don Quixote, “is it possible that in the years you served you have not been able to come by a livery?”

“They gave me two,” answered the page, “but, just as they take the habit off a man who leaves some religious order before professing and give him back his own clothes, so my masters gave me back mine, for, once the business they came to court for was done, they went back to their homes and took back the liveries they had given only for show.”

“A notable piece of espilorchería, of stinginess, as the Italian says,” said Don Quixote; “but even so, count it a happy fortune to have left the court with as good an intention as the one you bring; for there is nothing on earth more honorable or more profitable than to serve God, first of all, and then one’s king and natural lord, especially in the exercise of arms, by which, if not more riches, at least more honor is won than by letters, as I have said many times; for, though letters have founded more entailed estates than arms, still the men of arms have a certain I-know-not-what over the men of letters, with an I-do-know-what of splendor to be found in them that sets them above all others. And keep in your memory what I am going to tell you now, for it will be of great profit and relief to you in your hardships; and it is that you put out of your imagination the adverse events that may befall you, for the worst of them all is death, and, if this be a good one, the best of all is to die. Julius Caesar, that valiant Roman emperor, was asked what was the best death; he answered: the unthought-of one, the sudden and unforeseen; and though he answered as a heathen and a stranger to the knowledge of the true God, even so, he spoke well, to spare himself human feeling; for, supposing they kill you in the first action and skirmish, either by a cannon shot or blown up by a mine, what does it matter? It is all dying, and the work is done; and, according to Terence, a soldier makes a finer show slain in battle than safe and sound in flight; and a good soldier gains as much fame as he shows obedience to his captains and to those who have the right to command him. And mark, my son, that gunpowder suits a soldier better than the scent of civet, and that if old age catches you in this honorable calling, even though it be full of wounds and maimed or lame, at least it cannot catch you without honor, and such honor that poverty cannot lessen it for you; all the more since orders are now being given for the maintenance and relief of old and maimed soldiers, because it is not right to do with them what those are wont to do who free and give liberty to their black slaves when they are old and can no longer serve, and, turning them out of the house with the title of free men, make them slaves of hunger, from which they cannot hope to be freed except by death. And for now I will tell you no more, except that you should get up on the crupper of this horse of mine as far as the inn, and there you will sup with me, and in the morning you will go on your way, and may God give it to you as good as your desires deserve.”

The page did not accept the invitation to the crupper, though he did accept the one to sup with him at the inn; and at this point, they say, Sancho said to himself:

“God keep you, what a master! And is it possible that a man who can say things such as these, so many and so good as he has said here, should say he has seen the impossible pieces of nonsense he tells about the cave of Montesinos? Well, well, time will tell.”

And at this they reached the inn, just as night was falling, and not without pleasure on Sancho’s part, at seeing that his master judged it to be a true inn this time, not a castle, as was his habit. They had scarcely got inside when Don Quixote asked the innkeeper about the man with the lances and halberds, and he answered that he was in the stable seeing to his mule. The cousin and Sancho did the same for their beasts, giving Rocinante the best manger and the best place in the stable.