Chapter XLVIII. Of what befell Don Quixote with Doña Rodríguez, the duchess’s duenna, with other happenings worthy of writing and of eternal memory

Exceedingly glum and melancholy was the sorely wounded Don Quixote, his face bandaged and branded, not by God’s hand, but by a cat’s claws, misfortunes that go with knight-errantry. For six days he did not appear in public, and on one of those nights, as he lay awake and sleepless, thinking of his misfortunes and of Altisidora’s pursuit of him, he heard someone opening the door of his room with a key, and at once he imagined that the enamored damsel was coming to assail his chastity and put him in danger of failing in the faith he was bound to keep to his lady Dulcinea del Toboso.

“No,” he said, believing his imagination, and this in a voice that could be heard, “the greatest beauty on earth shall not avail to make me cease adoring her whom I bear engraved and stamped in the midst of my heart and in the most hidden depths of my being, whether you be, my lady, transformed into an onion-reeking peasant girl, or into a nymph of the golden Tagus, weaving cloths of gold and silk, or whether Merlin or Montesinos hold you wherever they will; for wherever you are, you are mine, and wherever I have been, I have been, and shall be, yours.”

The ending of these words and the opening of the door were all one. He got to his feet on the bed, swathed top to bottom in a coverlet of yellow satin, a nightcap on his head, and his face and mustaches bandaged: his face, because of the scratches; his mustaches, so that they would not droop and fall; in which attire he looked like the most extraordinary phantom that could be imagined.

He fixed his eyes on the door, and when he expected to see the yielding and lovelorn Altisidora come in through it, he saw come in a most reverend duenna in long white coifs, hemmed and pleated, so long that they covered and cloaked her from her feet to her head. Between the fingers of her left hand she carried half a lighted candle, and with her right she shaded it so that the light would not strike her eyes, which were covered by a very large pair of spectacles. She came treading very softly, and moved her feet gently.

Don Quixote looked at her from his watchtower, and when he saw her getup and noted her silence, he thought that some witch or sorceress was coming in that dress to do him some evil mischief, and he began to cross himself in great haste. The vision kept coming on, and when it reached the middle of the room it raised its eyes and saw the haste with which Don Quixote was making the sign of the cross; and if he was frightened at seeing such a figure, she was terrified at seeing his, because as soon as she saw him so tall and so yellow, with the coverlet and with the bandages that disfigured him, she gave a great cry, saying:

“Jesus! What is this I see?”

And with the fright the candle fell from her hands; and, finding herself in the dark, she turned her back to go, and in her fear she tripped on her skirts and took a great fall. Don Quixote, frightened, began to say:

“I conjure you, phantom, or whatever you are, to tell me who you are, and to tell me what it is you want of me. If you are a soul in torment, tell me, for I will do for you everything my strength can reach, because I am a Catholic Christian and fond of doing good to all the world; for this I took up the order of knight-errantry that I profess, whose exercise extends even to doing good to the souls in purgatory.”

The battered duenna, hearing herself conjured, gathered Don Quixote’s fear from her own, and in a low and afflicted voice answered him:

“Señor Don Quixote, if your grace is in fact Don Quixote, I am no phantom, nor vision, nor soul from purgatory, as your grace must have thought, but Doña Rodríguez, the duenna of honor to my lady the duchess, and I come to your grace with one of those needs that your grace is accustomed to remedy.”

“Tell me, Señora Doña Rodríguez,” said Don Quixote, “has your grace by any chance come to do some go-between’s work? Because I would have you know that I am of no use to anyone, thanks to the peerless beauty of my lady Dulcinea del Toboso. I say, in short, Señora Doña Rodríguez, that provided your grace leaves out and sets aside every amorous message, you may go and light your candle again, and come back, and we will discourse of whatever you may command and whatever is most to your liking, saving, as I say, all provocative coyness.”

“I, carry a message from anyone, my good sir?” answered the duenna. “Your grace little knows me; no indeed, for I am not yet so far along in years that I should take to such childishness, since, God be praised, I still have my soul in my flesh, and all my teeth and molars in my mouth, apart from a few that have been usurped from me by some colds, which are so common in this land of Aragon. But wait for me a little, your grace; I will go out and light my candle, and I will be back in an instant to tell my woes, as to the remedier of all the woes in the world.”

And, without waiting for an answer, she went out of the room, where Don Quixote remained, calm and thoughtful, waiting for her; but soon a thousand thoughts about that new adventure came over him, and it seemed to him an ill deed and a worse thought to put himself in danger of breaking the faith he had promised his lady, and he said to himself:

“Who knows whether the devil, who is subtle and crafty, will try to deceive me now with a duenna, as he has not managed to do with empresses, queens, duchesses, marchionesses, or countesses? For I have heard it said many times, and by many sensible people, that if he can, he will hand her to you snub-nosed rather than hawk-nosed. And who knows whether this solitude, this occasion, and this silence will awaken my desires that are sleeping, and make me, at the end of my years, come to fall where I have never stumbled? And in such cases it is better to flee than to wait for the battle. But I must not be in my right mind, since I say and think such nonsense; for it is not possible that a white-coifed, lanky, bespectacled duenna could stir or raise a lascivious thought in the most godless breast in the world. Is there by any chance a duenna on earth who has good flesh on her? Is there by any chance a duenna in the whole orb who is not impertinent, puckered, and finicky? Away, then, duennaish throng, useless for any human pleasure! Oh, how well that lady did of whom it is told that she had two dummy duennas, with their spectacles and their sewing cushions, at the end of her dais, as if they were doing needlework, and those statues served her as well for the dignity of the room as real duennas!”

And, saying this, he leaped from the bed, meaning to shut the door and not let Señora Rodríguez in; but when he went to shut it, Señora Rodríguez was already coming back, with a white wax candle lit, and when she saw Don Quixote closer, wrapped in the coverlet, with the bandages, the nightcap or skullcap, she was frightened again, and, drawing back some two steps, she said:

“Are we safe, sir knight? For I do not take it as a very chaste sign that your grace has got up out of bed.”

“That very thing is what I ought to ask, my lady,” answered Don Quixote; “and so I ask whether I shall be safe from being assaulted and forced.”

“Of whom or from whom do you ask this assurance, sir knight?” answered the duenna.

“Of you and from you I ask it,” replied Don Quixote, “for I am not made of marble nor you of bronze, nor is it now ten in the morning, but midnight, and even a little past, as I imagine, and in a room more shut away and secret than the cave must have been where the treacherous and daring Aeneas enjoyed the beautiful and tender Dido. But give me your hand, my lady, for I want no greater assurance than my own continence and modesty, and that offered by those most reverend coifs.”

And, saying this, he kissed his own right hand and took hold of hers, which she gave him with the same ceremonies.

Here Cide Hamete makes a parenthesis, and says that by Mohammed he would have given the better of the two Moorish robes he owned to see the two of them going along like that, hand in hand and linked together, from the door to the bed.

At last Don Quixote got into his bed, and Doña Rodríguez sat down on a chair a little way off from it, without taking off her spectacles or putting down the candle. Don Quixote huddled up and covered himself entirely, leaving nothing but his face uncovered; and, the two of them having settled down, the first to break the silence was Don Quixote, saying:

“Now, my lady Doña Rodríguez, your grace may unstitch yourself and unbosom all that you have inside your woeful heart and grieving entrails, for it will be heard by me with chaste ears and relieved with compassionate deeds.”

“So I believe,” answered the duenna, “for from your grace’s gentle and pleasing presence nothing could be expected but so Christian an answer. ‘The case, then, Señor Don Quixote, is that though your grace sees me sitting in this chair, and in the middle of the kingdom of Aragon, and in the dress of a worn-out, hard-driven duenna, I am a native of the Asturias of Oviedo, and of a lineage crossed with many of the best in that province; but my short luck and the carelessness of my parents, who grew poor before their time, without knowing how or how not, brought me to the court, to Madrid, where, for the sake of peace and to avoid greater misfortunes, my parents placed me as a sewing maid in the service of a great lady; and I would have your grace know that in hemstitching and plain needlework nobody has got a foot ahead of me in all my life. My parents left me in service and went back to their own country, and a few years after that they must have gone to heaven, because they were exceedingly good and Catholic Christians. I was left an orphan, and dependent on the miserable wages and the pinched favors that are usually given to such servants in great houses; and at this time, without my giving any occasion for it, a squire of the household fell in love with me, a man well on in years, bearded and of good presence, and above all as much an hidalgo as the king, because he came from the mountains of the north. We did not carry on our love so secretly that it did not come to the notice of my lady, who, to avoid tittle-tattle, had us married in peace and in the face of Holy Mother the Roman Catholic Church; and from this marriage a daughter was born, to finish off my good fortune, if I had any; not because I died in childbirth, for I had her right and in due season, but because shortly after that my husband died of a certain fright he had, which, if there were time now to tell it, I know your grace would marvel at.’”

And at this she began to weep tenderly, and said:

“Forgive me, your grace, Señor Don Quixote, for it is beyond my power, because every time I remember my poor departed one my eyes brim with tears. God help me, and with what dignity he used to carry my lady on the crupper of a powerful mule, as black as jet itself! For in those days coaches and chairs were not used, as they say they are now, and ladies rode on the cruppers behind their squires. This much, at least, I cannot leave untold, so that the breeding and punctiliousness of my good husband may be noted. ‘As he turned into the Calle de Santiago in Madrid, which is rather narrow, a judge of the court was coming out of it with two constables before him, and as soon as my good squire saw him, he turned the mule’s reins, making as if to turn back and escort him. My lady, who was riding behind, said to him in a low voice, “What are you doing, you wretch? Don’t you see that I am here?” The judge, out of courtesy, reined in his horse and said to him, “Go on your way, sir, for it is I who ought to escort my lady Doña Casilda,” for that was my mistress’s name. Still my husband insisted, with his cap in his hand, on wanting to go escorting the judge, and seeing this, my lady, full of rage and anger, took a thick pin, or I believe a bodkin, out of her case and stuck it into his loins, so that my husband gave a great cry and twisted his body, in such a way that he brought his lady down on the ground. Two lackeys of hers ran to lift her up, and the judge and the constables did the same; the Guadalajara Gate was in an uproar, I mean the idle people who were there; my mistress went home on foot, and my husband ran to a barber’s house, saying his entrails had been run clean through. My husband’s courtesy was spread abroad so much that the boys ran after him in the streets, and for this, and because he was somewhat shortsighted, my lady the duchess dismissed him, and from the grief of it, I hold beyond any doubt, his mortal illness was brought on. I was left a widow and unprotected, and with a daughter on my back, who kept growing in beauty like the foam of the sea. At last, since I had a name as a great needlewoman, my lady the duchess, who was newly married to the duke my lord, wanted to bring me with her to this kingdom of Aragon, and my daughter no more and no less, where, with days going and days coming, my daughter grew up, and with her all the grace in the world: she sings like a lark, steps a court dance as swift as thought, dances country dances like a wild thing, reads and writes like a schoolmaster, and reckons like a miser. Of her cleanliness I say nothing: running water is no cleaner; and she must be now, if I remember rightly, sixteen years, five months, and three days old, one more or less. In short: this girl of mine won the heart of the son of a very rich farmer who lives in one of the duke my lord’s villages, not very far from here. In effect, I do not know how or how not, they came together, and under the promise of being her husband he deceived my daughter, and he will not keep it; and though the duke my lord knows of it, because I have complained to him, not once, but many times, and begged him to order this farmer to marry my daughter, he turns a merchant’s ear and will hardly listen to me; and the reason is that since the deceiver’s father is so rich and lends him money and stands surety for his debts every other minute, he does not want to displease him or give him any trouble in any way.’ I would like, then, my good sir, for your grace to take on yourself the undoing of this wrong, either by entreaties or by arms, since, according to what everybody says, your grace was born into the world to undo them and to right wrongs and protect the wretched; and let your grace set before yourself my daughter’s orphanhood, her grace, her youth, with all the good qualities I have said she has; for by God and on my conscience, of all the damsels my lady has, there is not one that comes up to the sole of her shoe, and one they call Altisidora, who is the one they consider the most forward and gallant, if you set her beside my daughter, falls two leagues short of her. Because I want your grace to know, my good sir, that all that glitters isn’t gold; for this little Altisidora has more of presumption than of beauty, and more of the forward than of the modest, besides which she is not very healthy: she has a certain stale breath about her, so that there is no bearing to be near her for a moment. And even my lady the duchess… I want to keep quiet, for it is commonly said that walls have ears.”

“What is the matter with my lady the duchess, upon my life, Señora Doña Rodríguez?” asked Don Quixote.

“With that conjuring,” answered the duenna, “I cannot help answering what I am asked, with all truth. Does your grace see, Señor Don Quixote, the beauty of my lady the duchess, that complexion of her face, which looks like nothing so much as a burnished and polished sword, those two cheeks of milk and carmine, with the sun in one and the moon in the other, and that gallantry with which she goes treading and even scorning the ground, so that it seems she goes scattering health wherever she passes? Well, let your grace know that she can thank for it, first, God, and then two fountains she has in her two legs, through which all the bad humor drains away, which the physicians say she is full of.”

“Holy Mary!” said Don Quixote. “And is it possible that my lady the duchess has such drains? I would not believe it if barefoot friars told me so; but since Señora Doña Rodríguez says it, it must be so. But such fountains, and in such places, must flow not with humor but with liquid amber. Truly, now I am at last convinced that this business of having fountains made must be an important thing for health.”

Scarcely had Don Quixote finished saying this when the doors of the room were flung open with a great bang, and at the start the bang gave her, the candle fell from Doña Rodríguez’s hand, and the room was left, as they say, as black as a wolf’s mouth. Then the poor duenna felt herself seized by the throat with two hands, so tightly that she could not so much as squeal, and felt another person, very swiftly, without saying a word, lift her skirts, and with what seemed to be a slipper begin to give her so many lashes that it was pitiful; and though Don Quixote felt for her, he did not stir from the bed, and he did not know what this could be, and he lay still and silent, and even afraid that the round of lashing and thrashing might come to him. And his fear was not in vain, because the silent executioners, having left the duenna well pounded (and she dared not complain), came at Don Quixote, and, unwrapping him from the sheet and the coverlet, they pinched him so often and so hard that he could not help defending himself with his fists, and all this in a wondrous silence. The battle lasted almost half an hour; the phantoms went out, Doña Rodríguez gathered up her skirts, and, bewailing her misfortune, went out through the door without saying a word to Don Quixote, who, sore and pinched, bewildered and thoughtful, was left alone, where we will leave him, eager to know who had been the perverse enchanter who had put him in such a state. But that will be told in its time, for Sancho Panza is calling us, and the good order of the history requires it.