Chapter XXXI. Which deals with many great things

Great was the joy that Sancho carried with him, finding himself, as he thought, in the duchess’s good graces, for he fancied that her castle would hold what Don Diego’s house and Basilio’s had held, being always fond of the good life; and so he seized the opportunity by the forelock in this business of treating himself well whenever and wherever it offered.

The history tells, then, that the duke rode on ahead before they came to the country house or castle, and gave orders to all his servants on the way they were to treat Don Quixote; and so, when he arrived with the duchess at the gates of the castle, there came out of it at once two lackeys or grooms, dressed to their feet in the robes they call morning gowns, of the finest crimson satin, and, lifting Don Quixote down in their arms in the twinkling of an eye, they said to him:

“Let your greatness go and help my lady the duchess to dismount.”

Don Quixote did so, and there was a great exchange of courtesies between the two of them over the matter; but in the end the duchess’s insistence won the day, and she would not get down or alight from her palfrey except in the duke’s arms, saying that she did not find herself worthy to lay so useless a burden on so great a knight. At last the duke came out to help her down; and as they entered a great courtyard, two beautiful damsels came up and threw over Don Quixote’s shoulders a great mantle of the finest scarlet cloth, and in an instant all the galleries of the courtyard were crowned with the menservants and maidservants of those lords and ladies, crying out in loud voices:

“Welcome be the flower and the cream of knights-errant!”

And all of them, or most, were sprinkling flasks of scented waters over Don Quixote and over the duke and duchess, at all of which Don Quixote marveled; and that was the first day on which he altogether knew and believed himself to be a true knight-errant, and not a fanciful one, seeing himself treated in the very way he had read that such knights were treated in ages past.

Sancho, abandoning the gray, stitched himself to the duchess and went into the castle; and, his conscience pricking him that he was leaving the donkey alone, he went up to a reverend duenna who had come out with others to receive the duchess, and said to her in a low voice:

“Señora González, or whatever your grace’s good name may be…”

“I am called Doña Rodríguez de Grijalba,” answered the duenna. “What is it you want, brother?”

To which Sancho replied:

“I’d like your grace to do me the favor of going out to the castle gate, where you’ll find a gray donkey of mine; may your grace be pleased to have him put, or put him yourself, in the stable, because the poor little fellow is a bit timid, and he won’t get used to being alone in any way at all.”

“If the master is as sensible as the man,” answered the duenna, “we’re in a fine way! Off with you, brother, and bad luck to you and to whoever brought you here, and look after your donkey yourself, for we duennas of this house are not used to chores of that kind.”

“Well, truly,” answered Sancho, “I’ve heard my master, who’s a water diviner when it comes to histories, telling the one about Lancelot,

“when he came out of Britain,
how ladies tended to him,
and duennas to his nag;

“and as for my donkey in particular, I wouldn’t swap him for Señor Lancelot’s nag.”

“Brother, if you are a minstrel,” replied the duenna, “save your witticisms for where they will look well and be paid for, for from me you will get nothing but a fig.”

“Just as well,” answered Sancho, “for it’ll be good and ripe, since your grace won’t lose the hand at quínola for want of points in your years!”

“Son of a whore,” said the duenna, by now all ablaze with anger, “whether I am old or not is an account I shall render to God, and not to you, you rogue stuffed with garlic.”

And she said this so loudly that the duchess heard it; and, turning and seeing the duenna so upset and her eyes so red with fury, she asked her whom she had the quarrel with.

“I have it here,” answered the duenna, “with this good man, who has begged me most earnestly to go and put a donkey of his, which is at the castle gate, in the stable, giving me as his example that this was done I don’t know where, that some ladies tended a certain Lancelot, and some duennas his nag; and, to top it all, he has very civilly called me old.”

“That I would take as an insult,” answered the duchess, “more than anything they could say to me.”

And, speaking to Sancho, she said:

“Mark you, Sancho my friend, Doña Rodríguez is very young, and she wears that coif more for dignity and custom than for her years.”

“May the years I have left to live be bad ones,” answered Sancho, “if I said it for that; I only said it because the love I have for my donkey is so great that it seemed to me I couldn’t commend him to a more charitable person than the lady Doña Rodríguez.”

Don Quixote, who was hearing it all, said to him:

“Is this talk for such a place, Sancho?”

“Sir,” answered Sancho, “everybody has to talk about his own needs wherever he happens to be; here I remembered the gray, and here I spoke of him; and if I’d remembered him in the stable, I’d have spoken of him there.”

To which the duke said:

“Sancho is quite right, and there is nothing to blame him for; the gray will be cared for to his heart’s content, and let Sancho not worry, for he will be treated like Sancho’s very self.”

With this talk, which pleased everyone except Don Quixote, they reached the upper floor and brought Don Quixote into a hall hung with the richest cloths of gold and brocade; six damsels took off his armor and served him as pages, all of them instructed and coached by the duke and duchess in what they were to do and how they were to treat Don Quixote, so that he would imagine and see that they were treating him as a knight-errant. Once his armor was off, Don Quixote was left in his narrow breeches and his chamois doublet, dry, tall, long-drawn, with his cheeks so hollow that they kissed each other on the inside; a figure such that, had the damsels who were serving him not taken care to hide their laughter—which was one of the strict orders their masters had given them—they would have burst with laughing.

They asked him to let himself be undressed for a shirt, but he would by no means consent, saying that modesty became knights-errant as well as valor. All the same, he told them to give the shirt to Sancho, and, shutting himself up with him in a chamber where there was a rich bed, he stripped and got into the shirt; and, once alone with Sancho, he spoke to him thus:

“Tell me, you modern buffoon and age-old blockhead: do you think it right to dishonor and insult a duenna so venerable and so worthy of respect as that one? Was that a time for you to remember the gray, or are these lords the kind to let beasts fare badly, when they treat their owners so elegantly? For God’s sake, Sancho, restrain yourself, and do not show the coarse thread so that they come to see you are woven of rustic and common cloth. Mind, sinner that you are, that a lord is held in so much more esteem the more honorable and wellborn servants he has, and that one of the greatest advantages princes have over other men is that they are served by servants as good as they are. Do you not see, wretch that you are, and luckless that I am, that if they see you are a coarse peasant or a witty fool, they will think I am some charlatan or some knight of sham goods? No, no, Sancho my friend: flee, flee these pitfalls, for whoever stumbles into being a talker and a wit falls at the first kick and ends up a sorry buffoon. Bridle your tongue, weigh and chew your words before they leave your mouth, and remember that we have come to a place from which, with God’s favor and the valor of my arm, we are to come away bettered by the third and the fifth in fame and fortune.”

Sancho promised him in all earnest to sew up his mouth, or bite his tongue, before he spoke a word that was not very much to the purpose and well considered, as his master ordered him, and told him not to worry on that score, for through him it would never be discovered who they were.

Don Quixote dressed, buckled on his baldric and sword, flung the scarlet mantle about him, put on a cap of green satin that the damsels gave him, and in this array went out into the great hall, where he found the damsels drawn up in two rows, as many on one side as on the other, and all of them ready with water for him to wash his hands, which they gave him with many curtsies and ceremonies.

Then twelve pages came with the steward to take him to dinner, for the lord and lady were already waiting for him. They placed him in their midst and, full of pomp and majesty, led him to another hall, where a rich table had been laid with only four covers. At the door of the hall the duchess and the duke came out to receive him, and with them a grave churchman, one of those who govern the houses of princes; one of those who, not being born princes, do not manage to teach those who are princes how to be them; one of those who would have the greatness of the great measured by the narrowness of their own souls; one of those who, wanting to show those they govern how to be restrained, make them miserly; one of these, I say, must have been the grave man of religion who came out, together with the duke and duchess, to welcome Don Quixote. A thousand courteous compliments were exchanged, and finally, placing Don Quixote between them, they went to sit down at the table.

The duke invited Don Quixote to the head of the table, and, though he declined it, the duke pressed him so hard that he had to take it. The churchman sat facing him, and the duke and the duchess on either side.

Sancho was present through it all, dazed and astonished to see the honor those princes were doing his master; and, seeing all the ceremonies and entreaties that passed between the duke and Don Quixote to make him sit at the head of the table, he said:

“If your graces will give me leave, I’ll tell you a story about this business of seats that happened in my village.”

Sancho had hardly said this when Don Quixote trembled, believing without a doubt that he was going to say something foolish. Sancho looked at him and understood him, and said:

“Don’t be afraid, sir, my master, that I’ll get out of hand or say anything that isn’t right on the mark, for I haven’t forgotten the advice your grace gave me a little while ago about talking much or little, or well or badly.”

“I remember nothing of the sort, Sancho,” answered Don Quixote. “Say whatever you like, so long as you say it quickly.”

“Well, what I want to tell,” said Sancho, “is so true that my master Don Quixote, who is here present, won’t let me lie.”

“As far as I am concerned,” replied Don Quixote, “lie, Sancho, as much as you like, for I will not stay your hand; but watch what you are going to say.”

“I’ve watched it and rewatched it so well that the man ringing the bells is safe and sound, as you’ll see by the work.”

“It would be well,” said Don Quixote, “for your greatnesses to order this fool thrown out of here, for he will say a thousand absurdities.”

“By the duke’s life,” said the duchess, “Sancho is not to stir one inch from my side: I am very fond of him, for I know he is very sensible.”

“Sensible days may your holiness live,” said Sancho, “for the good opinion you have of me, though there’s none of it in me. And the story I want to tell is this: ‘A hidalgo of my village invited, a very rich and important one, because he came of the Álamos of Medina del Campo, who married Doña Mencía de Quiñones, who was the daughter of Don Alonso de Marañón, a knight of the habit of Santiago, who drowned at La Herradura, over whom there was that quarrel years ago in our village, which, as I understand it, my master Don Quixote was in on, from which Tomasillo the Scamp came out wounded, the son of Balbastro the blacksmith…’ Isn’t all this true, master of ours? Say so, by your life, so these lords and ladies won’t take me for some lying chatterbox.”

“So far,” said the churchman, “I take you more for a chatterbox than for a liar, but from here on I do not know what I shall take you for.”

“You give so many witnesses, Sancho, and so many particulars, that I cannot help saying you must be telling the truth. Get on, and make the story shorter, for you are on the way not to finish in two days.”

“He is not to cut it short at all,” said the duchess, “if he wishes to please me; rather, he is to tell it the way he knows it, even if he does not finish it in six days; for if there were that many, they would be the best I had ever spent in my life.”

“‘I say, then, my lords and ladies,’” Sancho went on, “‘that this same hidalgo, whom I know like my own two hands, because from my house to his isn’t a crossbow shot, invited a farmer who was poor but honest.’”

“On with you, brother,” said the man of religion at this point, “for you are on the way not to stop with your story until the next world.”

“I’ll stop at less than halfway there, God willing,” answered Sancho. “‘And so, I say that, when this same farmer reached the house of the said hidalgo who’d invited him, may his soul rest well, for he’s dead now, and what’s more they say he died the death of an angel, for I wasn’t there myself, as I’d gone off to reap at Tembleque at the time…’”

“By your life, son, come back quickly from Tembleque, and, without burying the hidalgo, unless you want to hold more funeral rites, finish your story.”

“‘The case, then,’” replied Sancho, “‘is that, as the two of them were about to sit down at the table, and it seems to me I can see them now better than ever…’”

The duke and duchess took great pleasure in the displeasure the good man of religion showed at the delays and pauses with which Sancho told his story, and Don Quixote was consuming himself with anger and rage.

“‘I say, then,’” said Sancho, “‘that, as I’ve said, the two of them being about to sit down at the table, the farmer kept insisting that the hidalgo take the head of the table, and the hidalgo kept insisting too that the farmer take it, because in his house what he ordered had to be done; but the farmer, who prided himself on being courteous and well-bred, would never do it, until the hidalgo, in a huff, put both hands on his shoulders and made him sit down by force, saying to him: “Sit down, you chaff-pounder, for wherever I sit will be the head of the table for you.”’ And that’s the story, and truly I don’t believe it’s been brought in here off the point.”

Don Quixote turned a thousand colors, which mottled and showed on his swarthy skin; the lord and lady hid their laughter, so that Don Quixote would not be utterly mortified, having understood Sancho’s mischief; and, to change the subject and keep Sancho from going on with more nonsense, the duchess asked Don Quixote what news he had of the lady Dulcinea, and whether he had sent her any presents of giants or miscreants in recent days, since he could not fail to have vanquished many. To which Don Quixote answered:

“My lady, my misfortunes had a beginning, but they will never have an end. Giants I have vanquished, and caitiffs and miscreants I have sent her; but where were they to find her, if she is enchanted and turned into the ugliest peasant girl that can be imagined?”

“I don’t know,” said Sancho Panza, “to me she looks like the most beautiful creature in the world; at least, in nimbleness and in jumping I know very well she won’t give an acrobat any odds; on my faith, my lady duchess, she leaps from the ground onto a she-ass as if she were a cat.”

“Have you seen her enchanted, Sancho?” asked the duke.

“And have I seen her!” answered Sancho. “Why, who the devil but me was the first to hit on this enchantery business? She’s as enchanted as my father!”

The churchman, who heard talk of giants, of caitiffs, and of enchantments, realized that this must be Don Quixote of La Mancha, whose history the duke was in the habit of reading, and he had often rebuked him for it, telling him it was nonsense to read such nonsense; and, being assured that what he suspected was true, he said with great anger, speaking to the duke:

“Your Excellency, my lord, must render account to our Lord for what this good man does. This Don Quixote, or Don Dimwit, or whatever he is called, I imagine cannot be such a simpleton as Your Excellency would have him be, putting opportunities into his hands for him to carry on with his follies and inanities.”

And, turning his talk to Don Quixote, he said to him:

“And you, pitcher-head, who has stuffed it into your brain that you are a knight-errant and that you vanquish giants and capture miscreants? Go your way in good time, and may the same be said to you: go back to your home, and bring up your children, if you have any, and look after your property, and stop wandering about the world, gaping at the wind and giving everyone who knows you and does not know you something to laugh at. Where in the world, confound it, have you found that there ever were or are now knights-errant? Where in Spain are there giants, or in La Mancha miscreants, or enchanted Dulcineas, or the whole rabble of simplicities that are told of you?”

Don Quixote was attentive to the words of that venerable man, and, seeing that he had now fallen silent, without regard for the duke and duchess, with an angry countenance and a troubled face, he rose to his feet and said…

But this reply deserves a chapter to itself.