Chapter XLI. Of the coming of Clavileño, with the end of this lengthy adventure

Night came on at this, and with it the appointed moment for the famous horse Clavileño to come, whose delay was already wearing on Don Quixote, for it seemed to him that, since Malambruno was slow in sending him, either he was not the knight for whom that adventure was reserved, or Malambruno did not dare meet him in single combat. But behold, all of a sudden there came into the garden four wild men, all dressed in green ivy, carrying on their shoulders a great wooden horse. They set him on his feet on the ground, and one of the wild men said:

“Let him who has the spirit for it mount this machine.”

“Here’s one who isn’t mounting,” said Sancho, “because I haven’t got the spirit, and I’m not a knight.”

And the wild man went on, saying:

“And let the squire, if there is one, take the crupper, and let him trust the valiant Malambruno, for by no sword but his, and by no other malice, will he be harmed; and there is nothing to do but turn this peg he has set on his neck, and he will carry them through the air to where Malambruno awaits them; but, so that the height and sublimity of the road does not make them dizzy, they must cover their eyes until the horse neighs, which will be the sign that he has come to the end of his journey.”

This said, leaving Clavileño behind, they went back the way they had come with a fine bearing. The Sorrowing One, as soon as she saw the horse, said to Don Quixote, almost in tears:

“Valiant knight, Malambruno’s promises have proved true: the horse is in the house, our beards are growing, and each of us, and with every hair of them, beseech you to shave and shear us, for it depends on nothing more than your mounting him with your squire and making a happy beginning of your new journey.”

“That I shall do, lady Countess Trifaldi, most willingly and with a better mien, without stopping to get a cushion or put on spurs, so as not to delay: so great is the wish I have to see you, lady, and all these duennas shaven and smooth.”

“That I won’t do,” said Sancho, “with a bad mien or a good one, in any way at all; and if there’s no shaving to be had unless I get up on the crupper, my master can very well look for another squire to go with him, and these ladies for another way of smoothing their faces; for I’m no wizard, to enjoy going about through the air. And what will my islanders say when they learn their governor goes strolling around on the winds? And one thing more: since it’s three thousand and some leagues from here to Candaya, if the horse gets tired or the giant gets angry, we’ll take half a dozen years to get back, and by then there’ll be neither isle nor he-isles left in the world that know me; and since it’s commonly said that in delay lies danger, and that ‘when they give you the heifer, run with the halter,’ these ladies’ beards must forgive me, for Saint Peter is fine in Rome; I mean that I’m fine in this house, where so much kindness is done me and from whose master I hope for such a great good as seeing myself a governor.”

To which the duke said:

“Sancho my friend, the isle I have promised you is neither movable nor fugitive: it has roots so deep, sunk in the abysses of the earth, that they will not pull it up or shift it from where it is with three tugs; and, since you know that I know there is no kind of office of the weightier sort that is not won with some sort of bribe, some more, some less, the one I mean to take for this government is that you go with your master Don Quixote to put the crown and end to this memorable adventure; for whether you come back now on Clavileño with the speed his lightness promises, or contrary fortune brings you back on foot, turned pilgrim, from tavern to tavern and from inn to inn, whenever you come back you will find your isle where you leave it, and your islanders with the same wish to receive you as their governor that they have always had, and my will shall be the same; and do not doubt this truth, Señor Sancho, for that would be doing a notorious wrong to the wish I have to serve you.”

“No more, sir,” said Sancho. “I’m a poor squire and can’t carry so many courtesies on my back; let my master get up, let them blindfold these eyes of mine and commend me to God, and let them tell me whether, when we’re going through those high-flyingnesses, I can commend myself to our Lord or call on the angels to help me.”

To which Trifaldi answered:

“Sancho, you may well commend yourself to God or to anyone you like, for Malambruno, though he is an enchanter, is a Christian, and works his enchantments with great shrewdness and great care, without meddling with anyone.”

“Come on, then,” said Sancho, “God help me, and the Most Holy Trinity of Gaeta!”

“Not since the memorable adventure of the fulling mills,” said Don Quixote, “have I seen Sancho as frightened as now, and if I were as given to omens as others are, his faintheartedness would put some tickling into my spirit. But come here, Sancho, for with these lords’ leave I wish to have two words with you apart.”

And, drawing Sancho aside among some trees in the garden and taking him by both hands, he said to him:

“You see now, Sancho my brother, the long journey that awaits us, and God knows when we shall come back from it, or what ease and leisure our affairs will allow us; so I would have you withdraw now to your room, as if you were going to look for something you need for the road, and, in a hand-me-the-straw, give yourself, on account of the three thousand three hundred lashes you are bound to, at least five hundred, for once given you will have them, for to begin things is to have them half done.”

“By God,” said Sancho, “your grace must be out of your wits! This is like what they say: ‘You see me in a hurry and you ask me for my maidenhead!’ Now that I’m to go sitting on a bare board, your grace wants me to hurt my rump? Truly, truly, your grace isn’t right. Let’s go now and shave these duennas, and when we get back I promise your grace, as sure as I am who I am, to hurry so hard to get out of my obligation that your grace will be satisfied, and I’ll say no more.”

And Don Quixote answered:

“Well, with that promise, good Sancho, I go comforted, and I believe you will keep it, because, in effect, though a fool, you are a veridical man.”

“I’m not verde, green, I’m brown,” said Sancho, “but even if I were of mixed color, I’d keep my word.”

And with this they went back to mount Clavileño, and as he mounted Don Quixote said:

“Cover your eyes, Sancho, and get up, Sancho, for one who sends for us from lands so far afar will not do so to deceive us, for the little glory that can come to him from deceiving one who trusts him; and even if everything were to turn out the opposite of what I imagine, no malice will be able to obscure the glory of having undertaken this exploit.”

“Let’s go, sir,” said Sancho, “for I have these ladies’ beards and tears nailed in my heart, and I won’t eat a mouthful that tastes good to me until I see them back in their first smoothness. Let your grace get up and cover your eyes first, for if I’m to go on the crupper, it’s plain the one in the saddle gets up first.”

“That is the truth,” replied Don Quixote.

And, taking a handkerchief from his pocket, he asked the Sorrowing One to bind his eyes very well, and, when she had done so, he uncovered them again and said:

“If I remember rightly, I have read in Virgil that business of the Palladium of Troy, which was a wooden horse the Greeks presented to the goddess Pallas, which went pregnant with armed knights, who afterward were the utter ruin of Troy; and so it would be well to see first what Clavileño carries in his stomach.”

“There is no need,” said the Sorrowing One, “for I will vouch for him, and I know Malambruno has nothing of the malicious or the traitor in him; your grace, Señor Don Quixote, may mount without any fear, and let any harm that befalls you be on my head.”

It seemed to Don Quixote that anything he might reply about his safety would be to the detriment of his valor; and so, without more argument, he mounted Clavileño and tried the peg, which gave easily under his hand; and, with no stirrups and both legs dangling, he looked for all the world like a figure in a Flemish hanging, painted or woven in some Roman triumph. Unwillingly and little by little Sancho came to mount, and, settling himself as best he could on the crupper, he found it somewhat hard and nothing like soft, and asked the duke whether, if possible, they might fit him with some cushion or pillow, even if it were from the dais of his lady the duchess or from some page’s bed, because the crupper of that horse seemed more like marble than wood.

To this the Trifaldi said that Clavileño would suffer no trappings or any kind of ornament on him; what he could do was sit sideways, woman-fashion, and so he would not feel the hardness so much. Sancho did so, and, saying “God be with you,” let his eyes be bandaged; and, after they were bandaged, he uncovered them again and, looking at everyone in the garden tenderly and with tears, said they should help him in that pass with an Our Father and a Hail Mary apiece, so that God would provide someone to say them for them when they found themselves in such straits. To which Don Quixote said:

“You thief, are you on the gallows, by any chance, or at the last end of your life, to be using such prayers? Are you not, you soulless and cowardly creature, in the very place the fair Magalona occupied, from which she came down, not to the grave, but to be queen of France, if the histories do not lie? And I, who go at your side, can I not put myself in the place of the valiant Pierres, who pressed this same seat that I now press? Cover your eyes, cover your eyes, you heartless animal, and let the fear you have not come out of your mouth, at least in my presence.”

“Blindfold me,” answered Sancho, “and, since they won’t let me commend myself to God or be commended, what wonder if I’m afraid there may be some region of devils around here to dump us in Peralvillo?”

They covered their eyes, and Don Quixote, feeling that all was as it should be, felt for the peg, and he had scarcely put his fingers on it when all the duennas and everyone present raised their voices, saying:

“God guide you, valiant knight!”

“God be with you, dauntless squire!”

“Now, now you are going through the air, cleaving it faster than an arrow!”

“Now you are beginning to astonish and amaze all who are watching you from the earth!”

“Hold on, valiant Sancho, you’re swaying! Mind you don’t fall, for your fall will be worse than that of the daring youth who tried to drive the chariot of the Sun, his father!”

Sancho heard the voices and, pressing close to his master and clasping his arms around him, said to him:

“Sir, how can these people say we’re so high up, when we can hear their voices, and it’s as if they were standing right next to us talking?”

“Pay no heed to that, Sancho, for, as these things and these flights go beyond the ordinary courses, you will see and hear whatever you like from a thousand leagues away. And do not squeeze me so tight, for you are knocking me off; and truly I do not know what you are upset or frightened about, for I dare swear that in all the days of my life I have not ridden a mount of smoother pace: it is just as if we were not moving from one spot. Banish fear, my friend, for, in effect, the thing is going as it ought to go, and we have the wind astern.”

“That’s the truth,” answered Sancho, “for on this side such a strong wind is hitting me that it seems they’re blowing on me with a thousand bellows.”

And so it was, for some great bellows were making a wind on them: so well planned was this adventure by the duke and duchess and their steward that it lacked no requisite to make it perfect.

Don Quixote, then, feeling the wind blowing, said:

“Without any doubt, Sancho, we must be reaching the second region of the air by now, where the hail and the snow are bred; the thunder, the lightning, and the thunderbolts are bred in the third region; and if we go on rising in this way, we shall soon strike the region of fire, and I do not know how to set this peg so that we do not rise to where we are burned.”

At this, with some tow that caught fire and went out easily, hung from the end of a cane, they warmed their faces from a distance. Sancho, feeling the heat, said:

“Kill me if we’re not in the place of fire already, or very near it, because a large part of my beard has been singed, and I’ve half a mind, sir, to uncover my eyes and see where we are.”

“Do no such thing,” answered Don Quixote, “and remember the true story of the licentiate Torralba, whom the devils carried flying through the air, astride a cane, with his eyes shut, and in twelve hours he reached Rome and got down at the Torre de Nona, which is a street in the city, and saw the whole calamity and assault and the death of Bourbon, and by morning he was already back in Madrid, where he gave an account of all he had seen; and he likewise said that, as he was going through the air, the devil told him to open his eyes, and he opened them and saw himself so close, as it seemed to him, to the body of the moon that he could have grasped it with his hand, and that he did not dare look at the earth for fear of growing dizzy. So, Sancho, there is no reason to uncover ourselves; for he who has us in his charge will answer for us, and perhaps we are wheeling about and climbing on high so as to drop all at once on the kingdom of Candaya, as the saker or the peregrine falcon does on the heron to seize it, however high it soars; and, though it seems to us barely half an hour since we set out from the garden, believe me, we must already be a great way along.”

“I don’t know what it is,” answered Sancho Panza. “I only know how to say that if the lady Magallanes or Magalona was content with this crupper, she can’t have been very tender of flesh.”

All this talk of the two valiant men was heard by the duke and duchess and those in the garden, and they took extraordinary pleasure in it; and, wishing to put the finishing touch to the strange and well-contrived adventure, they set fire to Clavileño’s tail with some tow, and at once, the horse being full of thundering rockets, he flew up into the air with a strange noise and threw Don Quixote and Sancho Panza to the ground, half singed.

By this time the whole bearded squadron of the duennas, and the Trifaldi and all, had vanished from the garden, and those in the garden lay as if in a swoon, stretched out on the ground. Don Quixote and Sancho got up in a sorry state and, looking all around, were astounded to find themselves in the same garden they had set out from and to see so many people lying stretched on the ground; and their wonder grew when they saw at one side of the garden a great lance driven into the ground, and, hung from it by two green silk cords, a smooth white parchment, on which, in great golden letters, stood written what follows:

The illustrious knight Don Quixote of La Mancha concluded and finished the adventure of the Countess Trifaldi, called by another name the Sorrowing Duenna, and company, merely by attempting it.

Malambruno declares himself content and satisfied to his heart’s desire, and the duennas’ beards are now left smooth and clean, and the sovereigns Don Clavijo and Antonomasia in their pristine state. And when the squirely vapulation is fulfilled, the white dove will see herself free of the pestilent gerfalcons that pursue her, and in the arms of her beloved cooer; for so it is ordained by the sage Merlin, proto-enchanter of enchanters.

Don Quixote, then, having read the letters on the parchment, understood clearly that they spoke of Dulcinea’s disenchantment; and, giving many thanks to heaven that he had accomplished so great a feat with so little danger, restoring to their former complexion the faces of the venerable duennas, who were no longer to be seen, he went over to the duke and duchess, who had not yet come round, and, grasping the duke’s hand, said to him:

“Come, good sir, take heart; take heart, for it is all nothing! The adventure is now finished with no harm to anyone, as the writing set on that post plainly shows.”

The duke, little by little, and like one waking from a heavy sleep, came to himself, and in the same fashion the duchess and all those who had fallen in the garden, with such signs of wonder and fright that one could almost have taken it that what they knew so well how to feign in jest had happened to them in earnest. The duke read the placard with his eyes half shut, and then, with open arms, went to embrace Don Quixote, telling him he was the best knight that had ever been seen in any age.

Sancho kept looking about for the Sorrowing One, to see what face she had without the beard, and whether she was as beautiful without it as her gallant figure promised, but they told him that, as soon as Clavileño came down burning through the air and struck the ground, the whole squadron of duennas, with the Trifaldi, had vanished, and that they were already shaven and without stubble. The duchess asked Sancho how that long journey had gone for him. Sancho answered:

“I, my lady, felt that we were flying, as my master told me, through the region of fire, and I wanted to uncover my eyes a little, but my master, whom I asked for leave to uncover them, wouldn’t allow it; but I, who have some little shreds of curiosity in me and of wanting to know what’s kept from me and stood in my way, nicely and without anybody seeing, pushed the handkerchief that covered my eyes a tiny bit aside, near my nose, and looked down at the earth from there, and it seemed to me that the whole of it was no bigger than a grain of mustard, and the men who were walking on it not much bigger than hazelnuts; so you can see how high we must have been going then.”

To this the duchess said:

“Sancho my friend, mind what you are saying, for, from the look of it, you did not see the earth, but the men who were walking on it; and it is clear that if the earth looked to you like a grain of mustard, and each man like a hazelnut, one man alone would cover the whole earth.”

“That’s true,” answered Sancho, “but, all the same, I uncovered it a little bit at one side, and saw the whole of it.”

“Mind, Sancho,” said the duchess, “that from a little bit at one side one does not see the whole of what one is looking at.”

“I don’t know about all that looking,” replied Sancho. “I only know it would be well for your ladyship to understand that, since we were flying by enchantment, by enchantment I could see the whole earth and all the men, wherever I looked at them; and if this isn’t believed of me, neither will your grace believe how, uncovering myself up by my eyebrows, I saw myself so close to the sky that there wasn’t a span and a half between me and it, from which I can swear, my lady, that it’s tremendously big. And it happened that we were going through the part where the stars called the Seven Little Goats are; and by God and by my soul, since as a boy I was a goatherd back home, as soon as I saw them, such a longing came over me to amuse myself with them a while…! And if I hadn’t satisfied it, I think I’d have burst. So I come, and up I go, and what do I do? Not a word to a soul, nor to my master either, nicely and quietly I got down from Clavileño and amused myself with the little goats, who are like gillyflowers and like flowers, for nearly three quarters of an hour, and Clavileño didn’t move from the spot or go on any further.”

“And while the good Sancho was amusing himself with the goats,” asked the duke, “what was Señor Don Quixote amusing himself with?”

To which Don Quixote answered:

“As all these things and such events go beyond the natural order, it is no great wonder that Sancho says what he says. For my part I can say that I did not uncover myself either above or below, nor did I see the sky or the earth, or the sea or the sands. It is quite true that I felt I was passing through the region of the air, and even that I was touching that of fire; but that we passed beyond it I cannot believe, since the region of fire lies between the last region of the air and the heaven of the moon, and so we could not reach the heaven where the Seven Little Goats are that Sancho speaks of without being burned up; and since we were not scorched, either Sancho is lying or Sancho is dreaming.”

“I’m neither lying nor dreaming,” answered Sancho. “If not, ask me what those goats look like, and by that you’ll see whether I’m telling the truth or not.”

“Tell us, then, Sancho,” said the duchess.

“They are,” answered Sancho, “two of them green, two of them crimson, two of them blue, and one of mixed color.”

“That is a new kind of goat,” said the duke, “and in this region of ours down on the ground such colors are not in use; I mean, goats of such colors.”

“That’s plain enough,” said Sancho. “Of course there has to be a difference between the goats of the sky and those of the ground.”

“Tell me, Sancho,” asked the duke, “did you see any billy goat up there among those goats?”

“No, sir,” answered Sancho, “but I heard tell that none of them got past the horns of the moon.”

They did not want to ask him any more about his journey, because it seemed to them that Sancho was on his way to strolling through all the heavens and giving news of everything that went on up there, without having stirred from the garden.

In short, this was the end of the adventure of the Sorrowing Duenna, which gave the duke and duchess something to laugh at, not only at that time, but for the whole of their lives, and Sancho something to tell for centuries, if he had lived them; and Don Quixote, going up to Sancho, said in his ear:

“Sancho, since you want people to believe what you saw in the sky, I want you to believe me about what I saw in the cave of Montesinos; and I say no more.”