Chapter LV. Of things that happened to Sancho on the road, and others that are simply worth seeing

Sancho’s having lingered with Ricote did not allow him to reach the duke’s castle that day, though he got to within half a league of it, where night overtook him, somewhat dark and overcast; but since it was summer, this did not trouble him much; and so he went off the road, meaning to wait for morning; and his scant and luckless fortune would have it that, as he looked for a place where he could best settle himself, he and the gray fell into a deep and very dark pit that lay among some very ancient buildings, and as he fell he commended himself to God with all his heart, thinking he would not stop until he reached the bottom of the abyss. And it was not so, because at little more than three times a man’s height the gray touched bottom, and Sancho found himself on top of him without having received any hurt or harm.

He felt himself all over and caught his breath, to see whether he was sound or holed somewhere; and finding himself well, whole, and in Catholic health, he could not have his fill of giving thanks to God our Lord for the mercy he had shown him, because he had surely thought he was broken into a thousand pieces. He likewise felt with his hands along the walls of the pit, to see whether it would be possible to get out of it without anyone’s help; but he found them all smooth and without any handhold, at which Sancho was greatly distressed, especially when he heard the gray moaning tenderly and piteously; and it was no wonder, nor was he complaining out of mere habit, for, in truth, he was not in very good shape.

“Ah,” said Sancho Panza then, “and what unthought-of happenings keep happening, at every step, to us who live in this miserable world! Who would have said that the man who yesterday saw himself enthroned governor of an isle, giving orders to his servants and his vassals, would today find himself buried in a pit, with no one at all to help him, nor servant nor vassal to come to his aid? Here my donkey and I will have to perish of hunger, unless we die first, he of being battered and broken, and I of grief. At least I won’t be as lucky as my master Don Quixote of La Mancha was when he went down and descended into the cave of that enchanted Montesinos, where he found someone to treat him better than in his own house, for it seems nothing less than that he went to a table laid and a bed made. There he saw beautiful and pleasant visions, and here I’ll see, as I believe, toads and snakes. Unhappy me, and what my follies and fancies have come to! From here they’ll take out my bones, when heaven is pleased to let them be found, bare, white, and scraped, and those of my good gray with them, by which perhaps it will be seen who we are, at least by those who know that Sancho Panza never left his ass, nor his ass Sancho Panza. Again I say: wretched us, for our scant luck hasn’t seen fit to have us die in our homeland with our own folk around us, where, even if our misfortune found no remedy, there would be no lack of someone to grieve for it, and to close our eyes in the last hour of our passing! O my companion and my friend, what a poor reward I’ve given you for your good services! Forgive me, and ask fortune, in the best way you know, to get us out of this miserable trouble the two of us have been put in; and I promise to set a crown of laurel on your head, so that you’ll look nothing less than a poet laureate, and to give you double feed.”

In this way Sancho Panza lamented, and his donkey listened to him without answering him a single word: such was the straits and anguish the poor beast was in. At last, after spending that whole night in miserable complaints and lamentations, the day came, by whose clearness and brightness Sancho saw that it was impossible, of all impossibility, to get out of that well without being helped, and he began to lament and shout, to see whether anyone could hear him; but all his shouts were shouted in the wilderness, for in all those parts there was no one who could hear him, and then he gave himself up for dead altogether.

The gray was lying on his back, and Sancho Panza worked him around so that he set him on his feet, though he could hardly stand; and, taking out of the saddlebags, which had also shared the same fortune of the fall, a piece of bread, he gave it to his donkey, who did not find it bad, and Sancho said to him, as if he understood:

“With bread, all griefs are good.”

At this point he found on one side of the pit a hole big enough for a person to get through if he stooped and crouched. Sancho Panza went to it, and, squatting down, he went in through it and saw that on the inside it was roomy and long, and he could see it, because through what could be called the roof came a ray of sunlight that showed it all. He saw too that it widened and stretched away into another roomy hollow; seeing which, he went back out to where the donkey was, and with a stone he began to break away the earth of the hole, so that in a short while he made room enough for the ass to get in easily, as he did; and, taking him by the halter, he began to walk on along that grotto, to see whether he could find some way out on the other side. Sometimes he went in the dark, and sometimes without light, but never once without fear.

“God almighty help me!” he said to himself. “This, which for me is a misadventure, would be better as an adventure for my master Don Quixote. He’d certainly take these depths and dungeons for flowering gardens and palaces of Galiana, and expect to come out of this darkness and narrowness into some flowering meadow; but I, luckless, short of counsel and shrunken of courage, at every step think that under my feet, all of a sudden, another pit deeper than the last is going to open and finish swallowing me. Welcome, misfortune, if you come alone!”

In this way and with these thoughts it seemed to him that he must have walked a little more than half a league, at the end of which he made out a dim light, which seemed to be daylight already, coming in somewhere, which gave a sign that the road, for him a road to the other life, had an open end.

Here Cide Hamete Benengeli leaves him, and turns again to deal with Don Quixote, who, gleeful and content, was waiting for the appointed day of the battle he was to fight with the robber of the honor of Doña Rodríguez’s daughter, for whom he meant to right the wrong, the foul wrong, that had been wickedly done her.

It happened, then, that, going out one morning to practice and rehearse what he would have to do in the encounter in which he expected to find himself the next day, he gave Rocinante a short dash or charge, and brought his feet so close to a cave that, had he not pulled hard on the reins, it would have been impossible for him not to fall into it. At last he stopped him and did not fall, and, going a little closer, without dismounting, he looked down into that depth; and as he was looking into it, he heard loud shouts inside; and, listening attentively, he was able to make out and understand that the one shouting was saying:

“Hello up there! Is there any Christian who hears me, or any charitable knight who will take pity on a sinner buried alive, an unhappy ungoverned governor?”

It seemed to Don Quixote that he was hearing Sancho Panza’s voice, at which he was left astounded and amazed, and, raising his voice as loud as he could, he said:

“Who is down there? Who is it that complains?”

“Who can be here, or who should be complaining,” came the answer, “but the much-harried Sancho Panza, governor, for his sins and his ill fortune, of the isle of Barataria, formerly squire to the famous knight Don Quixote of La Mancha?”

On hearing this, Don Quixote’s wonder was doubled and his amazement grew, for it came into his mind that Sancho Panza must be dead, and that his soul was there doing its penance, and carried away by this fancy he said:

“I conjure you by everything by which I can conjure you as a Catholic Christian to tell me who you are; and if you are a soul in torment, tell me what you would have me do for you; for since it is my profession to favor and succor the needy of this world, I will be the same in succoring and helping the needy of the other world, who cannot help themselves.”

“In that case,” came the answer, “your grace who is speaking to me must be my master Don Quixote of La Mancha, and even by the organ of the voice it can be no one else, no doubt of it.”

“Don Quixote I am,” replied Don Quixote, “he who professes to succor and help the living and the dead in their needs. So tell me who you are, for you have me astounded; because if you are my squire Sancho Panza, and have died, provided the devils have not carried you off and you are, by the mercy of God, in purgatory, our Holy Mother the Roman Catholic Church has suffrages enough to bring you out of the pains you are in, and I for my part will solicit them from her with as much as my estate will run to; so finish declaring yourself, and tell me who you are.”

“I swear,” came the answer, “and by the birth of whoever your grace pleases, I swear, Señor Don Quixote of La Mancha, that I am your squire Sancho Panza, and that I’ve never died in all the days of my life; but that, having left my government for things and causes that need more room to be told, last night I fell into this pit where I lie, and the gray with me, who won’t let me lie, for, to give you a further sign, he’s here with me.”

And there is more: for it seems nothing less than that the donkey understood what Sancho said, because then and there he started braying, and so loud that it echoed through the whole cave.

“A famous witness!” said Don Quixote. “I know that bray as if I had given birth to it, and I hear your voice, my Sancho. Wait for me; I will go to the duke’s castle, which is near here, and bring someone to get you out of this pit, where your sins must have put you.”

“Go, your grace,” said Sancho, “and come back soon, for the one God’s sake, for I can’t bear being buried alive here any longer, and I’m dying of fear.”

Don Quixote left him, and went off to the castle to give the duke and duchess an account of Sancho Panza’s mishap, at which they marveled not a little, though they well understood that he must have fallen in through the passage that led from that grotto, which had been made there from time immemorial; but they could not think how he had left the government without their having had notice of his coming. At last, as they say, they took ropes and cables; and, at the cost of many people and much toil, they brought the gray and Sancho Panza out of that darkness into the light of the sun. A student saw him and said:

“This is how all bad governors ought to come out of their governments, as this sinner is coming out of the depths of the abyss: starved, pale, and without a blanca, as I believe.”

Sancho heard him, and said:

“It’s eight or ten days ago, brother backbiter, that I went in to govern the isle they gave me, in which I never once had my fill of bread, not for a single hour; in them doctors have persecuted me and enemies have trampled my bones; nor have I had a chance to take bribes or to collect fees; and this being so, as it is, I didn’t deserve, in my opinion, to come out like this; but man proposes and God disposes, and God knows what’s best and what suits each one; and as the times, so the touch; and let no one say ‘of this water I will not drink,’ for where you think there’s bacon, there isn’t even a peg to hang it on; and God understands me, and that’s enough, and I say no more, though I could.”

“Don’t be angry, Sancho, or take it to heart, whatever you hear, for that would be never to finish: come you with a clear conscience, and let them say what they will; and as for tying the tongues of slanderers, who can put gates on the open country? If the governor comes out of his government rich, they say of him that he was a thief, and if he comes out poor, that he was a good-for-nothing and a fool.”

“For certain,” answered Sancho, “this time they’ll sooner take me for a fool than for a thief.”

With this talk they arrived, surrounded by boys and many other people, at the castle, where in some galleries the duke and duchess were already waiting for Don Quixote and Sancho, who refused to go up and see the duke before he had settled the gray in the stable, because he said he had spent a very bad night at his lodging; and then he went up to see his lord and lady, before whom, on his knees, he said:

“My lords, because your greatness so willed it, with no merit of mine, I went to govern your isle of Barataria, into which I went naked, and naked I am now: I neither lose nor gain. Whether I’ve governed well or badly, I’ve had witnesses before me, who will say what they like. I’ve cleared up doubts and sentenced lawsuits, always starving, because Doctor Pedro Recio, native of Tirteafuera, physician isle-ish and governorish, would have it so. Enemies attacked us by night, and after putting us in a great fix, the people of the isle say they came out free and victorious through the valor of my arm, and God grant them health in the same measure as they’re telling the truth. In short, in this time I’ve sized up the burdens and the obligations that governing brings with it, and I’ve found by my own reckoning that my shoulders won’t be able to carry them, nor are they a weight for my ribs, nor arrows from my quiver; and so, before the government could run me aground, I chose to run the government aground, and yesterday morning I left the isle the way I found it: its streets, houses, and roofs the same as on the day I went into it. I haven’t borrowed from anyone, or gone in for moneymaking; and though I meant to make some profitable ordinances, I made none, for fear they wouldn’t be kept: for making them or not making them comes to the same. I left the isle, as I say, with no other retinue than my gray; I fell into a pit, I went on along it, until this morning I caught sight of the way out by the sunlight, but not so easy that, if heaven hadn’t sent me my master Don Quixote, I wouldn’t have stayed there till the end of the world. So, my lords duke and duchess, here is your governor Sancho Panza, who in the mere ten days he’s held the government has earned the knowledge that he wouldn’t give a thing to be governor, not of one isle, but of the whole world; and with this understood, kissing your graces’ feet, and imitating the boys’ game in which they say ‘You jump, and you hand it to me,’ I take a jump out of the government and pass over to the service of my master Don Quixote; for after all, with him, though I eat my bread in a fright, at least I get my fill, and for me, so long as I’m full, it’s all one whether it’s carrots or partridges.”

With this Sancho brought his long speech to an end, Don Quixote fearing all the while that he would say thousands of absurdities in it; and when he saw him finish with so few, he gave thanks to heaven in his heart, and the duke embraced Sancho and told him he was sorry to the soul that he had left the government so soon; but that he would see to it that he was given another office on his estate, of less burden and more profit. The duchess likewise embraced him, and ordered that he be well looked after, because he showed signs of having come back badly battered and in worse shape.