Chapter XXXV. In which the news Don Quixote received of Dulcinea’s disenchantment is continued, with other wonderful events
To the measure of the pleasant music they saw coming toward them a cart of the kind they call triumphal, drawn by six gray mules, caparisoned, however, in white linen, and on each one rode a torch-bearing penitent, likewise dressed in white, with a large lighted wax torch in his hand. The cart was twice, and even three times, the size of the earlier ones, and its sides and top were taken up by twelve more penitents, white as snow, all with their torches lit, a sight that caused wonder and fear together; and on a raised throne sat a nymph, dressed in a thousand veils of silver tissue, with countless spangles of gold tinsel glittering all over them, which made her, if not richly, at least showily dressed. She had her face covered with a transparent and delicate gauze, so that, without its threads hindering it, a most beautiful maiden’s face could be made out through them, and the many lights allowed one to distinguish her beauty and her years, which, it seemed, did not reach twenty or fall below seventeen.
Beside her came a figure dressed in one of those robes they call trailing, down to the feet, its head covered with a black veil; but the moment the cart came face to face with the duke and duchess and Don Quixote, the music of the shawms stopped, and then that of the harps and lutes that were playing in the cart; and the figure in the robe, rising to its feet, threw it open on both sides and, taking the veil from its face, showed plainly that it was the very figure of death, fleshless and ugly, at which Don Quixote felt dismay and Sancho fear, and the duke and duchess made some show of alarm. This living death, risen and standing, began to speak in this manner, in a somewhat drowsy voice and with a tongue not very wide awake:
“I am that Merlin whom the histories
report to have had the devil for a father
(a lie that time has clothed with authority),
prince of the Magic Art, and monarch too
and archive of the Zoroastrian science,
rival to the ages and the centuries
that strive to cover up the gallant deeds
of the brave knights who wander through the world,
for whom I had and have a great affection.
And though the nature of enchanters is,
of wizards and of magi, all along,
forever harsh in temper, rough and hard,
mine is a tender, gentle, loving one,
and fond of doing good to all mankind.
Down in the gloomy caverns of dark Dis,
where my soul was whiling away its time
in tracing certain rhombs and characters,
there reached me the sad voice of the fair
and peerless Dulcinea del Toboso.
I learned of her enchantment and mischance,
and how from a gentle lady she was changed
into a rustic village girl; I grieved,
and, shutting up my spirit in the hollow
of this most frightful and ferocious skeleton,
after I had turned a hundred thousand books
of this my science, devilish and base,
I come to give the remedy that suits
so great a sorrow and so great an ill.
O you, the glory and honor of all who wear
the tunics made of steel and adamant,
light and lantern, pathway, north, and guide
of those who, leaving the sluggard’s sleep behind
and idle feather beds, inure themselves
to practicing the unendurable exercise
of bloodstained and of heavy arms of war!
To you I say, O man who never duly
has been lauded! to you, the valiant
and the wise together, Don Quixote,
splendor of La Mancha, star of Spain:
that, so that she may win her first estate,
the peerless Dulcinea del Toboso,
it is required that Sancho, your squire,
give himself three thousand lashes and three hundred
upon both of his valiant buttocks,
bared to the air, and laid on in such a way
that they shall sting and gall and vex him sore.
And on this all of them are now agreed
who have been the authors of her misfortune,
and this is why I come, my lords and ladies.”
“I swear!” said Sancho at this point. “I won’t say three thousand lashes, but I’d as soon give myself three of them as three stabs with a dagger. The devil take this way of disenchanting! I don’t know what my rump has to do with enchantments! By God, if Señor Merlin hasn’t found some other way to disenchant the lady Dulcinea del Toboso, she can go to her grave enchanted!”
“I shall take you,” said Don Quixote, “Don Peasant, you garlic-stuffed lout, and I shall tie you to a tree, naked as your mother bore you; and I will not say three thousand three hundred, but six thousand six hundred lashes will I give you, so well stuck on that three thousand three hundred tugs will not pull them off. And answer me not a word, or I will tear out your soul.”
Hearing which, Merlin said:
“It must not be so, for the lashes the good Sancho is to receive must be of his own free will, and not by force, and at whatever time he pleases; for no fixed term is set for him; but he is permitted, if he wishes to redeem his vexation by half of this vapulation, to let them be given by another’s hand, though it be somewhat heavy.”
“Neither another’s, nor my own, nor heavy, nor heavy-handed,” replied Sancho. “No hand at all is going to touch me. Did I give birth to the lady Dulcinea del Toboso, by any chance, that my rump should pay for what her eyes sinned? My master, now, he’s a part of her, since he calls her at every step his life, his soul, his sustenance and his support; he can and should whip himself for her and take all the steps needed for her disenchantment; but whip myself, me…? Abernuncio!”
Sancho had scarcely finished saying this when the silvery nymph who came beside Merlin’s spirit rose to her feet and, taking the thin veil from her face, revealed it to be such that it seemed to everyone more than exceedingly beautiful; and, with a mannish ease and in a voice none too ladylike, speaking straight to Sancho Panza, she said:
“O ill-starred squire, pitcher-head, heart of cork oak, with innards of pebble and flint! If they ordered you, you face-flaying thief, to throw yourself from a high tower to the ground; if they asked you, you enemy of the human race, to eat a dozen toads, two dozen lizards, and three dozen snakes; if they urged you to kill your wife and your children with some truculent and sharp scimitar, it would be no wonder for you to show yourself squeamish and shy; but to make a fuss over three thousand three hundred lashes, when there isn’t a charity-school boy, however wretched, who doesn’t get as many every month, amazes, stuns, and appalls all the compassionate hearts of those who hear it, and even those of all who may come to know of it in the course of time. Set, O miserable and hardened animal, set, I say, those eyes of yours like a skittish young mule’s on the pupils of these of mine, which are compared to sparkling stars, and you will see them weep thread by thread and skein by skein, making furrows, tracks, and paths across the fair fields of my cheeks. Let it move you, you sly and ill-meaning monster, that my age, so flowery, which is still in the ten-and… of its years, for I am nineteen and not yet twenty, is wasting and withering beneath the bark of a rustic peasant girl; and if I do not look like one now, it is a special favor Señor Merlin, who is here present, has done me, only so that my beauty may soften you; for the tears of a beauty in affliction turn crags to cotton and tigers to ewes. Lay on, lay on to those great slabs of flesh, you untamed brute, and rouse out of its sloth that vigor of yours that inclines you only to eating and more eating, and set free the smoothness of my flesh, the gentleness of my nature, and the beauty of my face; and if you will not soften or come to some reasonable terms for my sake, do it for that poor knight you have at your side; for your master, I mean, whose soul I can see stuck crosswise in his throat, not ten fingers’ breadth from his lips, waiting only for your hard or soft answer, either to come out through his mouth or to go back down into his stomach.”
Don Quixote, hearing this, felt his throat and said, turning to the duke:
“By God, sir, Dulcinea has told the truth, for here I have my soul stuck crosswise in my throat, like the nut of a crossbow.”
“What do you say to this, Sancho?” asked the duchess.
“I say, my lady,” answered Sancho, “what I’ve said already: as for the lashes, abernuncio.”
“Abrenuncio (I renounce) is what you should say, Sancho, and not what you are saying,” said the duke.
“Leave me be, your greatness,” answered Sancho, “for I’m in no state now to look into fine points or a letter more or less; because these lashes they’re going to give me, or I’m to give myself, have got me so upset that I don’t know what I’m saying or what I’m doing. But I’d like to know from the lady my lady Doña Dulcina del Toboso where she learned this way of begging she has: she comes asking me to lay my flesh open with lashes, and calls me pitcher-head and untamed brute, with a whole string of bad names, and may the devil put up with them. Is my flesh made of bronze, by any chance, or is it anything to me whether she gets disenchanted or not? What basket of white linen, of shirts, of kerchiefs and socks, though I don’t wear them, does she bring along with her to soften me, instead of one insult after another, knowing that proverb they say around here, that an ass loaded with gold goes lightly up a mountain, and that gifts break rocks, and praying to God and swinging the mallet, and that one ‘take this’ is worth more than two ‘I’ll give you’? And my master, who ought to stroke my neck and coax me so I’d turn into wool and carded cotton, says that if he catches me he’ll tie me naked to a tree and double the stakes on the lashes; and these afflicted lords and ladies ought to consider that it’s not only a squire they’re asking to whip himself, but a governor; as if to say, ‘drink it with cherries in.’ Let them learn, and bad luck to them, let them learn how to beg, and how to ask, and how to have manners, for all times are not the same, nor are men always in a good humor. Here I am now, bursting with grief at seeing my green coat torn, and they come asking me to whip myself of my own free will, when I’ve as little will for it as for turning into a cacique.”
“Well, truly, Sancho my friend,” said the duke, “unless you soften more than a ripe early fig, you are not to lay hands on the government. A fine thing it would be for me to send my islanders a cruel governor, with flinty innards, who does not bend to the tears of afflicted damsels, or to the entreaties of wise, commanding, and ancient enchanters and sages! In short, Sancho, either you are to be whipped, or they are to whip you, or you are not to be governor.”
“Sir,” answered Sancho, “couldn’t I be given two days’ grace to think over what’s best for me?”
“No, by no means,” said Merlin. “Here, at this instant and in this place, it must be settled what is to be done in this business: either Dulcinea will go back to the cave of Montesinos and to her former state of peasant girl, or else, in the being she now has, she will be carried off to the Elysian Fields, where she will wait for the number of the vapulation to be fulfilled.”
“Come, good Sancho,” said the duchess, “be of good heart and make a good return for the bread you have eaten of Señor Don Quixote, whom we must all serve and please for his good nature and his lofty chivalries. Say yes, my son, to this whipping, and let the devil go to the devil and fear to the faint-hearted; for a stout heart breaks bad luck, as you well know.”
To these words Sancho answered with these crazy ones, speaking to Merlin and asking him:
“Tell me, your grace, Señor Merlin: when the courier devil came here and gave my master a message from Señor Montesinos, ordering him on his behalf to wait for him here, because he was coming to give orders for the lady Doña Dulcinea del Toboso to be disenchanted, and up to now we haven’t seen Montesinos, or anybody like him.”
To which Merlin answered:
“The Devil, Sancho my friend, is an ignoramus and a very great rogue: I sent him in search of your master, but not with a message from Montesinos, only with one from me, for Montesinos is in his cave, intent upon, or, to put it better, waiting for, his own disenchantment, for the tail is still left to skin. If he owes you anything, or you have any business to settle with him, I shall bring him to you and put him wherever you like best. And for now, finish saying yes to this discipline, and believe me that it will be of great profit to you, as much for your soul as for your body: for your soul, because of the charity with which you will perform it; for your body, because I know you are of a sanguine complexion, and it can do you no harm to let a little blood.”
“There are a lot of doctors in the world: even enchanters are doctors,” replied Sancho. “But since everybody tells me so, though I can’t see it myself, I say that I’m content to give myself the three thousand three hundred lashes, on condition that I’m to give them to myself whenever and however I please, without any limit being set on the days or the time; and I’ll try to get out of debt as quickly as possible, so the world can enjoy the beauty of the lady Doña Dulcinea del Toboso, since, it seems, contrary to what I thought, she really is beautiful. It’s also to be a condition that I’m not to be obliged to draw blood with the whip, and that if some lashes are only fly-swats, they’re to be counted toward the total. Item, that if I make a mistake in the number, Señor Merlin, since he knows everything, is to take care to count them and let me know how many I’m short or how many over.”
“Of the overs there will be no need to give notice,” answered Merlin, “because, once the full number is reached, the lady Dulcinea will at once and suddenly be disenchanted, and will come in gratitude to look for the good Sancho, and to give him thanks, and even rewards, for the good deed. So there is no reason to have scruples about overs or shorts, nor may heaven permit me to deceive anyone, even by a hair of his head.”
“Come on, then, in God’s hands be it!” said Sancho. “I consent to my bad luck; I say that I accept the penance with the conditions laid down.”
Sancho had scarcely said these last words when the music of the shawms struck up again and countless harquebuses were fired off once more, and Don Quixote hung on Sancho’s neck, giving him a thousand kisses on the forehead and on the cheeks. The duchess and the duke and all those present showed signs of having been greatly pleased, and the cart began to move off; and as it went past, the beautiful Dulcinea bowed her head to the duke and duchess and made a deep curtsy to Sancho.
And by now the dawn was coming on apace, merry and smiling: the little flowers of the fields lifted their heads and stood erect, and the liquid crystal of the brooks, murmuring among white and gray pebbles, went to pay tribute to the rivers that awaited them. The glad earth, the clear sky, the pure air, the serene light, each by itself and all together, gave plain signs that the day, which came treading on the skirts of the dawn, was to be calm and clear. And the duke and duchess, satisfied with the hunt and with having carried out their plan so cleverly and so happily, went back to their castle, intending to follow up with more jests, for to them there was nothing in earnest that gave them more pleasure.