Chapter XLVII. In which is continued how Sancho Panza conducted himself in his government
The history tells that from the courtroom they took Sancho Panza to a sumptuous palace, where in a great hall a royal and spotless table had been laid; and as soon as Sancho came into the hall, shawms sounded, and four pages came out to give him water for his hands, which Sancho received with great gravity.
The music stopped, and Sancho sat down at the head of the table, for there was no seat but that one, and no other place set at the whole of it. A personage, who later turned out to be a physician, took his stand beside him with a little whalebone rod in his hand. They lifted a very rich white cloth with which the fruit and a great variety of dishes of different foods were covered; one who looked like a student said the blessing, and a page tied a lace-trimmed bib on Sancho; another, who was acting as table steward, set a plate of fruit before him; but scarcely had he eaten a mouthful when the man with the rod touched the plate with it, and they whisked it away from in front of him with the greatest speed; but the table steward set before him another, of another dish. Sancho was about to taste it; but before he could reach it or try it, the rod had already touched it, and a page had lifted it away as quickly as the fruit. Seeing this, Sancho was left bewildered, and, looking at all of them, he asked whether this meal was to be eaten like a conjuror’s trick. To which the man with the rod answered:
“It is not to be eaten, lord governor, except as is the use and custom in the other isles where there are governors. I, sir, am a physician, and I am salaried in this isle to be physician to its governors, and I look after their health much more than after my own, studying night and day and sounding out the governor’s constitution so as to hit on the right cure when he falls ill; and the chief thing I do is to attend his dinners and suppers, and to let him eat what seems to me good for him, and to take away from him what I imagine will do him harm and be noxious to the stomach; and so I ordered the plate of fruit taken away, because it was excessively moist, and the plate of the other dish I also ordered taken away, because it was excessively hot and had many spices, which increase thirst; and the man who drinks a great deal kills and consumes the radical moisture, wherein life consists.”
“In that case, that plate of partridges over there, roasted and, as far as I can see, well seasoned, won’t do me any harm.”
To which the physician answered:
“Those the lord governor shall not eat as long as I have life in me.”
“Why not?” said Sancho.
And the physician answered:
“Because our master Hippocrates, the north star and light of medicine, says in one of his aphorisms: Omnis saturatio mala, perdices autem pessima. Which means, ‘All surfeit is bad, but surfeit of partridges worst of all.’”
“If that’s so,” said Sancho, “let the Señor Doctor see which of all the dishes on this table will do me the most good and the least harm, and let me eat of it without his rapping it away; because, by the governor’s life, and may God let me enjoy it, I’m dying of hunger, and to deny me food, however much it grieves the Señor Doctor and whatever more he tells me, will sooner take my life away than add to it.”
“Your grace is right, lord governor,” answered the physician, “and so it is my opinion that your grace should leave those stewed rabbits alone, for it is a hairy dish. As for that veal, if it were not roasted and marinated, it might still be tried, but there is no call for it.”
And Sancho said:
“That big platter farther along, steaming away, looks to me like an olla podrida, and with all the different things there are in such ollas podridas, I can’t fail to come across something that will be tasty and good for me.”
“Absit!” said the physician. “Far from us be so evil a thought: there is nothing in the world worse for nourishment than an olla podrida. Leave ollas podridas to canons, or to the rectors of colleges, or to peasant weddings, and let the tables of governors be free of them, where every refinement and every nicety should be present; and the reason is that always, and everywhere, and by everyone, simple medicines are more highly esteemed than compound ones, because in simple ones there is no going wrong, and in compound ones there is, through altering the quantity of the things they are compounded of; but what I know the lord governor ought to eat now, to preserve his health and fortify it, is a hundred or so rolled wafers and some thin little slices of quince paste, to settle his stomach and help his digestion.”
Hearing this, Sancho leaned back against the back of his chair and stared hard at this physician, and in a grave voice asked him what his name was and where he had studied. To which he answered:
“I, lord governor, am called Doctor Pedro Recio de Agüero, and I was born in a place called Tirteafuera, which lies between Caracuel and Almodóvar del Campo, on the right hand, and I hold the degree of doctor from the University of Osuna.”
To which Sancho answered, all ablaze with anger:
“Well, then, Señor Doctor Pedro Recio de Mal Agüero, of Ill Omen, native of Tirteafuera, a place that lies on the right hand as we go from Caracuel to Almodóvar del Campo, graduate of Osuna, get yourself out of my sight this minute; if not, I swear by the sun I’ll take a cudgel and with cudgel blows, beginning with him, I won’t leave a single physician in the whole isle, at least of those I take to be ignorant; for the wise, prudent, and sensible physicians I’ll set on my head and honor like divine persons. And I say again, Pedro Recio, get away from here; if not, I’ll take this chair I’m sitting on and smash it over his head; and let them call me to account for it when my term is reviewed, for I’ll clear myself by saying I did God a service by killing a bad physician, an executioner of the commonwealth. And give me something to eat, or else take back your government, for an office that doesn’t feed the man who holds it isn’t worth two beans.”
The doctor was alarmed to see the governor in such a rage and would have liked to make a Tirteafuera of it, a get-yourself-out, from the hall, except that at that instant a post horn sounded in the street, and the table steward, looking out of the window, came back saying:
“A courier is coming from the duke my lord; he must be bringing some dispatch of importance.”
The courier came in, sweating and flustered, and, taking a folded letter from his bosom, put it into the governor’s hands, and Sancho put it into the steward’s, whom he ordered to read the address, which ran thus: To Don Sancho Panza, governor of the isle of Barataria, into his own hand or that of his secretary. Hearing which, Sancho said:
“Who is my secretary here?”
And one of those present answered:
“I, sir, because I know how to read and write, and I am a Biscayan.”
“With that addition,” said Sancho, “you could very well be secretary to the emperor himself. Open that letter and see what it says.”
The newborn secretary did so, and, having read what it said, said it was a matter to be dealt with in private. Sancho ordered the hall cleared, and that no one stay in it but the steward and the table steward, and the rest and the physician went away; and then the secretary read the letter, which said:
It has come to my notice, Señor Don Sancho Panza, that certain enemies of mine and of that isle are to make a furious assault on it, I do not know what night; you must keep watch and be on the alert, so that they do not catch you unprepared. I know too, from trustworthy spies, that four persons in disguise have entered that town to take your life, because they fear your wit; keep your eyes open, and watch who comes to speak to you, and eat nothing that is offered you. I will take care to come to your aid if you find yourself in trouble, and in everything you will act as is expected of your understanding. From this place, the 16th of August, at four in the morning.
Your friend,
The Duke.
Sancho was dumbfounded, and the bystanders made a show of being so too; and, turning to the steward, he said to him:
“What has to be done now, and done at once, is to put Doctor Recio in a dungeon; because if anybody is going to kill me, it’s him, and with a death adminicular and pessima, which is the death of hunger.”
“It also seems to me,” said the table steward, “that your grace should not eat anything that is on this table, because it was sent as a present by some nuns, and, as they say, behind the cross stands the devil.”
“I don’t deny it,” answered Sancho, “and for now let them bring me a piece of bread and some four pounds of grapes, for there can’t be poison in them; because, in effect, I can’t get along without eating, and if we have to be ready for these battles that threaten us, we’ll need to be well fed, because the guts carry the heart, not the heart the guts. And you, secretary, answer the duke my lord and tell him that what he commands will be carried out as he commands it, without missing a point; and you’ll give my lady the duchess a kiss of the hands from me, and say I beg her not to forget to send my letter and my bundle to my wife Teresa Panza by a messenger of her own, for I’ll take it as a great favor and I’ll take care to serve her with everything my strength can reach; and on the way you can fit in a kiss of the hands for my master Don Quixote of La Mancha, so he’ll see that I’m bread that knows gratitude; and you, as a good secretary and a good Biscayan, can add anything you like and anything more that fits. And let these tablecloths be taken up, and give me something to eat, for I’ll deal with all the spies and murderers and enchanters that come at me and at my isle.”
At this a page came in and said:
“There is a farmer with some business here who wants to speak to your lordship about a matter, so he says, of great importance.”
“It’s a strange thing,” said Sancho, “with these people who come on business. Is it possible they’re so foolish they don’t see that hours like these aren’t the hours to come doing business? Do they think, by any chance, that we who govern, we who are judges, aren’t men of flesh and bone, and that we don’t need to be let rest for the time necessity asks, but that we’re made of marble stone? By God and on my conscience, if my government lasts (which it won’t, from what I can make out), I’ll bring more than one of these business folk to heel. Now tell that good man to come in; but let it be looked into first that he isn’t one of the spies, or a murderer of mine.”
“No, sir,” answered the page, “because he looks like a pitcher-head, and either I know very little or he’s as good as good bread.”
“There is nothing to fear,” said the steward, “for we are all here.”
“Would it be possible, table steward,” said Sancho, “now that Doctor Pedro Recio isn’t here, for me to eat something with weight and substance to it, even if it were a piece of bread and an onion?”
“Tonight, at supper, the lack of dinner will be made good, and your lordship will be left satisfied and paid in full,” said the table steward.
“God grant it,” answered Sancho.
And at this the farmer came in, a man of very good presence, and one could see from a thousand leagues off that he was a good man and a good soul. The first thing he said was:
“Which of you here is the lord governor?”
“Who should it be,” answered the secretary, “but the one sitting in the chair?”
“Then I humble myself in his presence,” said the farmer.
And, kneeling, he begged to kiss his hand. Sancho would not give it and ordered him to get up and say what he wanted. The farmer did so, and then said:
“I, sir, am a farmer, a native of Miguel Turra, a place two leagues from Ciudad Real.”
“We have another Tirteafuera!” said Sancho. “Speak, brother, for what I can tell you is that I know Miguel Turra very well, and it’s not very far from my own village.”
“The case, then, sir,” the farmer went on, “is that I, by the mercy of God, am married in peace and in the face of the Holy Roman Catholic Church; I have two sons who are students, the younger studying to be a bachelor and the elder to be a licentiate; I am a widower, because my wife died, or, to put it better, a bad physician killed her for me by purging her when she was pregnant, and if God had been pleased for the child to be born, and it had been a son, I would have set him to study to be a doctor, so that he wouldn’t envy his brothers the bachelor and the licentiate.”
“So,” said Sancho, “if your wife hadn’t died, or hadn’t been killed, you wouldn’t be a widower now.”
“No, sir, not in any way,” answered the farmer.
“We’re getting on nicely!” replied Sancho. “Go on, brother, for it’s more the hour for sleeping than for business.”
“I say, then,” said the farmer, “that this son of mine who is to be a bachelor fell in love, in our own village, with a damsel called Clara Perlerina, daughter of Andrés Perlerino, a very rich farmer; and this name of Perlerines doesn’t come to them from ancestry or any other lineage, but because everyone in this family is palsied, perlático, and to improve the name they call them Perlerines; though, if the truth be told, the damsel is like an oriental pearl, and, looked at from the right side, she seems a flower of the field; from the left not so much, because she lacks that eye, which popped out with smallpox; and, though the pits in her face are many and big, those who love her say they aren’t pits but graves where the souls of her lovers are buried. She is so clean that, so as not to dirty her face, she carries her nose, as they say, turned up, so that it looks for all the world as if it were running away from her mouth; and for all that, she looks extremely well, because she has a big mouth, and if it weren’t for missing ten or twelve teeth and molars, she could pass muster, and even stand out, among the best-shaped mouths. Of her lips I have nothing to say, because they are so fine and delicate that, if it were the custom to reel lips, a skein could be made of them; but since they have a different color from the one usual in lips, they seem miraculous, because they are veined like jasper with blue and green and eggplant purple; and may the lord governor forgive me if I go painting so minutely the parts of the one who, in the end, in the end, is to be my daughter, for I love her and she doesn’t look bad to me.”
“Paint whatever you like,” said Sancho, “for I’m enjoying the painting, and if I’d had my dinner, there’d be no better dessert for me than your portrait.”
“That dish I have yet to serve you,” answered the farmer, “but a time will come when we shall, if we can’t now. And I say, sir, that if I could paint her elegance and the height of her body, it would be a thing to marvel at; but that can’t be, because she is bent double and hunched up, and has her knees up against her mouth, and for all that, it can be seen plainly that if she could stand up, she would hit her head on the ceiling; and she would already have given her hand in marriage to my bachelor, except that she can’t stretch it out, for it’s all knotted up; and still, in her long, fluted nails her goodness and fine make show themselves.”
“That’s fine,” said Sancho, “and take it, brother, that you’ve painted her from head to foot. What is it you want now? And come to the point, without detours or back alleys, or scraps or add-ons.”
“I would like, sir,” answered the farmer, “for your grace to do me the favor of giving me a letter of recommendation to my son’s father-in-law-to-be, begging him to be pleased to let this marriage take place, since we are not unequal in the goods of fortune nor in those of nature; because, to tell the truth, lord governor, my son is possessed by a devil, and there isn’t a day that the evil spirits don’t torment him three or four times; and from having fallen into the fire once, his face is as wrinkled as parchment, and his eyes are somewhat watery and running; but he has the disposition of an angel, and if it weren’t that he beats himself and punches himself with his own fists, he would be a blessed soul.”
“Do you want anything else, good man?” replied Sancho.
“There is something else I would like,” said the farmer, “only I don’t dare say it; but here goes, for after all it mustn’t rot in my breast, stick or not stick. I say, sir, that I would like your grace to give me three hundred or six hundred ducats to help with my bachelor’s dowry; I mean to help set up his house, because, after all, they must live on their own, without being subject to the impertinences of their in-laws.”
“See whether you want anything else,” said Sancho, “and don’t leave it unsaid out of bashfulness or shame.”
“No, certainly not,” answered the farmer.
And scarcely had he said this when the governor, rising to his feet, seized the chair he was sitting on and said:
“I swear, Don Lout, you rude ill-bred rustic, that if you don’t clear out and hide yourself from my presence at once, I’ll break and split your head open with this chair! You son of a whore, you rogue, painter for the devil himself, is this the hour you come to ask me for six hundred ducats? And where do I have them, you stinker? And why should I give them to you, even if I had them, you sly fox and halfwit? And what do I care about Miguel Turra, or about the whole lineage of the Perlerines? Get away from me, I say; if not, by the life of the duke my lord, I’ll do what I’ve said! You can’t be from Miguel Turra, but some sly fox hell has sent here to tempt me. Tell me, you heartless wretch, I haven’t had the government a day and a half yet, and you already want me to have six hundred ducats?”
The table steward signaled to the farmer to leave the hall, and he did so with his head hanging and, to all appearances, afraid that the governor might carry out his anger, for the big rascal knew very well how to play his part.
But let us leave Sancho with his anger, and let peace go round the ring, and let us return to Don Quixote, whom we left with his face bandaged and treated for his cattish wounds, from which he was not healed for eight days, on one of which there befell him what Cide Hamete promises to tell with the exactness and truth with which he usually tells the things of this history, however small they may be.