Chapter XXX. Of what befell Don Quixote with a beautiful huntress
Very melancholy and out of humor, knight and squire came back to their animals, Sancho especially, for it went to his soul to touch the money in their purse, since it seemed to him that whatever was taken from it was taken from the apple of his eye. At last, without a word to each other, they mounted and left the famous river, Don Quixote buried in thoughts of his love, and Sancho in thoughts of his advancement, which just then seemed to him a long way from being in his hands; for, simple as he was, he could see well enough that his master’s doings, all or most of them, were pieces of nonsense, and he was looking for a chance, without going into accounts or leave-takings with his master, to slip away one day and go home. But fortune ordered things very differently from what he feared.
It happened, then, that the next day, at sunset, as he was leaving a wood, Don Quixote let his gaze run across a green meadow, and at its farthest edge he saw people, and, drawing near, he knew them to be falconers flying their hawks. He drew nearer, and among them he saw a gallant lady on a palfrey or hackney of the purest white, adorned with green trappings and with a silver sidesaddle. The lady was likewise dressed in green, so splendidly and richly that splendor itself seemed transformed into her. On her left hand she carried a goshawk, a sign that gave Don Quixote to understand that she was some great lady, who must be the mistress of all those huntsmen, as was the truth; and so he said to Sancho:
“Run, Sancho my son, and tell that lady of the palfrey and the goshawk that I, the Knight of the Lions, kiss the hands of her great beauteousness, and that, if her greatness gives me leave, I will go and kiss them and serve her in all my strength can do and her highness may command me. And mind, Sancho, how you speak, and take care not to stick in any proverb of yours in your embassy.”
“A fine one you’ve found to go sticking things in!” answered Sancho. “You’re telling me! As if this were the first time in this life I’ve carried embassies to high and mighty ladies!”
“Except for the one you carried to the lady Dulcinea,” replied Don Quixote, “I do not know that you have carried any other, at least while in my service.”
“That’s true,” answered Sancho, “but a good payer is not pained by pledges, and in a full house supper is soon cooked; I mean that there’s no need to tell me or warn me about anything, for I have something for everything and know a little about it all.”
“I believe it, Sancho,” said Don Quixote. “Go, and good luck, and God guide you.”
Sancho set off at a run, pushing the gray out of his usual pace, and came to where the beautiful huntress was, and, dismounting and kneeling before her, said to her:
“Beautiful lady, that knight who can be seen over there, called the Knight of the Lions, is my master, and I am a squire of his, whom they call Sancho Panza at home. This said Knight of the Lions, who not long ago was called the Knight of the Sorry Figure, sends me to say to your greatness that you be pleased to give him leave so that, with your purpose and good pleasure and consent, he may come and put into effect his desire, which is no other, as he says and I think, than to serve your towering high-flyingness and beauteousness; and in giving it your ladyship will do a thing that will redound to your benefit, and he will receive a most signal favor and contentment.”
“Indeed, good squire,” answered the lady, “you have delivered your embassy with all the circumstances such embassies require. Rise from the ground, for it is not right that the squire of so great a knight as the Knight of the Sorry Figure, of whom we already have much news here, should be on his knees; rise, friend, and tell your master that he is most welcome to come and make use of me and of the duke my husband, in a country house we have here.”
Sancho rose, amazed as much at the good lady’s beauty as at her great breeding and courtesy, and still more at her having told him that she had news of his master the Knight of the Sorry Figure, and that if she had not called him the Knight of the Lions, it must be because he had taken the name so recently. The duchess, whose title is not yet known, asked him:
“Tell me, brother squire: this master of yours, is he not one about whom a history is going about in print, called The Ingenious Hidalgo Don Quixote of La Mancha, who has for the lady of his soul a certain Dulcinea del Toboso?”
“He is the very one, my lady,” answered Sancho; “and that squire of his who goes about, or must go about, in that history, whom they call Sancho Panza, is me, unless they switched me in the cradle; I mean, unless they switched me in the printing.”
“I am very glad of all that,” said the duchess. “Go, brother Panza, and tell your master that he is welcome and most welcome to my estates, and that nothing could come to me that would give me greater pleasure.”
Sancho, with this most agreeable answer, went back very gladly to his master, to whom he told all that the great lady had said to him, praising to the skies in his rustic terms her great beauteousness, her great grace and courtesy. Don Quixote drew himself up gallantly in the saddle, set himself well in the stirrups, settled his visor, spurred Rocinante, and with fine boldness went to kiss the duchess’s hands; and she, having the duke her husband called, told him, while Don Quixote was coming up, the whole of his embassy; and the two of them, having read the first part of this history and having learned from it of Don Quixote’s crackbrained humor, awaited him with the greatest pleasure and a desire to know him, with the intention of humoring him and agreeing with him in all he said to them, treating him as a knight-errant for as many days as he stayed with them, with all the ceremonies customary in the books of chivalry, which they had read, and of which they were even very fond.
At this Don Quixote arrived, his visor raised; and, as he made to dismount, Sancho ran to hold his stirrup; but he was so unlucky that, as he got down off the gray, one foot caught in a rope of the packsaddle in such a way that it was not possible to free it; instead he was left hanging by it, with his mouth and chest on the ground. Don Quixote, who was not used to dismounting without having his stirrup held, thinking that Sancho had already come to hold it, swung his body down all at once and brought Rocinante’s saddle down after him, for it must have been badly girthed, and saddle and he came to the ground, not without shame on his part and many curses muttered between his teeth at the unlucky Sancho, who still had his foot in the shackle.
The duke ordered his huntsmen to go to the help of the knight and the squire, and they lifted up Don Quixote, battered by the fall, and, limping and as best he could, he went to kneel before the two lords; but the duke would by no means allow it; instead, getting down off his horse, he went to embrace Don Quixote, saying to him:
“I am sorry, Señor Knight of the Sorry Figure, that the first thing your grace has done in my land should have turned out as badly as we have seen; but the carelessness of squires is apt to be the cause of other, worse mishaps.”
“The one I have had in seeing you, valiant prince,” answered Don Quixote, “cannot possibly be bad, even had I fallen all the way down to the bottom of the abyss, for from there the glory of having seen you would have raised me up and drawn me out. My squire, God curse him, is better at loosing his tongue to say malicious things than at tying and girthing a saddle so that it stays firm; but, however I may find myself, fallen or risen, on foot or mounted, I shall be ever at your service and at the service of my lady the duchess, your worthy consort, and worthy mistress of beauty and universal princess of courtesy.”
“Gently, my lord Don Quixote of La Mancha!” said the duke. “Where my lady Doña Dulcinea del Toboso is, it is not right that other beauteousnesses be praised.”
By this time Sancho Panza was free of the noose, and, being close by, before his master could answer, he said:
“It can’t be denied, but only affirmed, that my lady Dulcinea del Toboso is very beautiful; but the hare leaps out where you least expect it; for I’ve heard say that this thing they call nature is like a potter who makes clay pots, and he who makes one beautiful pot can make two, and three, and a hundred; I say this because my lady the duchess, upon my faith, doesn’t fall behind my mistress the lady Dulcinea del Toboso.”
Don Quixote turned to the duchess and said:
“Let your greatness imagine that no knight-errant in the world ever had a squire more talkative or more amusing than the one I have, and he will prove me truthful if your great celsitude should wish to make use of me for some days.”
To which the duchess answered:
“That good Sancho is amusing I value highly, because it is a sign that he is sensible; for wit and drollery, Señor Don Quixote, as your grace well knows, do not sit on dull minds; and since good Sancho is witty and droll, from now on I confirm him as sensible.”
“And talkative,” added Don Quixote.
“So much the better,” said the duke, “because many witty things cannot be said in few words. And so that our time does not go by in them, let the great Knight of the Sorry Figure come…”
“Of the Lions, your highness ought to say,” said Sancho, “for there’s no Sorry Figure any more, nor any figure of fun.”
“Let it be of the Lions,” the duke went on. “I say, let the Señor Knight of the Lions come to a castle of mine that is close by here, where he will be given the welcome justly due to so high a person, and the one the duchess and I are wont to give all knights-errant who come to it.”
By now Sancho had put Rocinante’s saddle to rights and girthed it well; and, Don Quixote mounting him, and the duke a handsome horse, they placed the duchess between them and made for the castle. The duchess ordered Sancho to ride beside her, because she took infinite pleasure in hearing his sensible sayings. Sancho did not need to be asked twice, and wove himself in among the three and made a fourth in the conversation, to the great pleasure of the duchess and the duke, who counted it great good fortune to receive in their castle such a knight-errant and such an errand-trotting squire.