Chapter LIX. In which is told the extraordinary event, which may be taken for an adventure, that befell Don Quixote

The dust and weariness that Don Quixote and Sancho carried away from the bulls’ discourtesy found relief at a clear, clean spring they came upon in a cool grove, on whose bank, leaving the gray and Rocinante loose, without halter or bridle, the two much-harried travelers, master and man, sat down. Sancho went to the larder of his saddlebags and took out of them some of what he used to call his grub; he rinsed his mouth, Don Quixote washed his face, and with this refreshment their flagging spirits revived. Don Quixote did not eat, out of pure sorrow, nor did Sancho dare to touch the food before him, out of pure good manners, and he waited for his master to make the first taste; but seeing that, carried away by his fancies, he did not remember to raise the bread to his mouth, Sancho did not open his own, and, trampling over every kind of good breeding, he began to stow away in his stomach the bread and cheese that offered itself.

“Eat, Sancho my friend,” said Don Quixote, “sustain your life, which matters more to you than to me, and let me die at the hands of my thoughts and by the force of my misfortunes. I, Sancho, was born to live dying, and you to die eating; and so that you may see that I am telling you the truth in this, consider me printed in histories, famous in arms, courteous in my actions, respected by princes, sought after by damsels; and in the end, in the very end, when I was expecting palms, triumphs, and crowns, earned and deserved by my valiant deeds, I have seen myself this morning trodden on and kicked and battered by the feet of unclean and filthy animals. This reflection sets my teeth on edge, numbs my molars, and stiffens my hands, and takes away entirely the desire to eat, so that I mean to let myself die of hunger: the cruelest of deaths.”

“In that case,” said Sancho, without leaving off his quick chewing, “your grace won’t approve of that proverb that says: ‘Let Marta die, but die full.’ I, at least, don’t mean to kill myself; rather, I mean to do like the shoemaker, who pulls the leather with his teeth till he gets it to reach as far as he likes; I’ll pull my life out by eating till it gets to the end heaven has set for it; and know, sir, that there’s no greater madness than the kind that goes in for despairing, as your grace does, and believe me, and after you’ve eaten, lie down to sleep a while on the green mattresses of this grass, and you’ll see how when you wake you’ll find yourself somewhat relieved.”

Don Quixote did so, for it seemed to him that Sancho’s words were more those of a philosopher than of a fool, and he said to him:

“If you, O Sancho, would do for me what I will now tell you, my relief would be more certain and my sorrows not so great; and it is that, while I sleep, following your advice, you should go off a little way from here, and with Rocinante’s reins, laying your flesh bare to the air, give yourself three or four hundred lashes on account of the three thousand and some you are to give yourself for the disenchantment of Dulcinea; for it is no small pity that that poor lady should remain enchanted through your carelessness and negligence.”

“There’s much to be said on that,” said Sancho. “Let’s both sleep for now, and afterward, God has said what will be. Your grace should know that this business of a man whipping himself in cold blood is a hard thing, and more so if the lashes fall on a body poorly fed and worse nourished: let my lady Dulcinea have patience, for when she least expects it she’ll see me made into a sieve of lashes; and until death, it’s all life; I mean that I still have mine, along with the wish to do what I’ve promised.”

Don Quixote thanked him for it, and ate something, and Sancho a great deal, and they both lay down to sleep, leaving the two constant companions and friends, Rocinante and the gray, to graze at their own will and without any order on the abundant grass of which that meadow was full. They woke rather late, mounted again, and went on their way, hurrying to reach an inn that could be seen, by the look of it, a league from there. I say it was an inn because Don Quixote called it so, contrary to his custom of calling all inns castles.

They reached it, then; they asked the innkeeper if there was lodging. They were told yes, with all the comfort and good cheer they could find in Zaragoza. They dismounted, and Sancho stowed his larder in a room of which the innkeeper gave him the key; he took the beasts to the stable, gave them their feed, and came out to see what Don Quixote, who was sitting on a stone bench, wanted of him, giving particular thanks to heaven that the inn had not looked like a castle to his master.

The supper hour came; they withdrew to their room; Sancho asked the innkeeper what he had to give them for supper. To which the innkeeper answered that his mouth should be the measure; and so he might ask for whatever he liked: for that inn was provided with the little birds of the air, the fowls of the earth, and the fish of the sea.

“There’s no need for so much,” answered Sancho, “for with a couple of chickens roasted for us we’ll have enough, because my master is delicate and eats little, and I’m not too much of a glutton.”

The innkeeper answered that he had no chickens, because the kites had wiped them out.

“Then let master host,” said Sancho, “have a pullet roasted, a tender one.”

“A pullet? Good heavens!” answered the innkeeper. “Truly, truly, I sent more than fifty to the city to sell yesterday; but, apart from pullets, ask your grace for whatever you like.”

“In that case,” said Sancho, “there’ll be no lack of veal or kid.”

“In the house just now,” answered the innkeeper, “there’s none, because it’s run out; but next week there’ll be plenty and to spare.”

“A fine lot of good that does us!” answered Sancho. “I’ll wager all these shortages come down in the end to a surplus of bacon and eggs.”

“By God,” answered the innkeeper, “what a fine cheek my guest has! I’ve told him there are no pullets here and no hens, and he expects me to have eggs? Run your mind, if you like, over other dainties, and leave off asking for hens.”

“Let’s settle it, body of me,” said Sancho, “and tell me at last what you do have, and leave off your runnings, master host.”

The innkeeper said:

“What I really and truly have is a pair of cow-heels that look like calves’ feet, or a pair of calves’ feet that look like cow-heels; they’re stewed with their chickpeas, onions, and bacon, and at this very minute they’re saying: ‘Eat me! Eat me!’”

“I mark them as mine from here,” said Sancho, “and let no one touch them, for I’ll pay for them better than anyone, because I couldn’t hope for anything more to my taste, and it would be all one to me whether they were feet, so long as they were heels.”

“No one will touch them,” said the innkeeper, “because some other guests I have, being such grand people, bring their own cook, steward, and larder with them.”

“If it comes to grandness,” said Sancho, “nobody grander than my master; but the trade he follows doesn’t allow for pantries or wine cellars: there we stretch out in the middle of a meadow and fill ourselves up with acorns or medlars.”

This was the talk Sancho had with the innkeeper, Sancho not caring to go further in answering him; for he had already asked him what trade or occupation his master followed.

The supper hour came, then; Don Quixote withdrew to his room; the innkeeper brought the stew just as it was, and Don Quixote sat down to sup in all earnest. It seems that in another room next to Don Quixote’s, which was divided from it by nothing but a thin partition, Don Quixote heard someone say:

“On your grace’s life, Señor Don Jerónimo, while they bring the supper let us read another chapter of the Second Part of Don Quixote of La Mancha.”

Scarcely had Don Quixote heard his name when he got to his feet, and with an alert ear listened to what they were saying about him, and he heard the said Don Jerónimo answer:

“Why does your grace want us to read this nonsense, Señor Don Juan? Whoever has read the first part of the history of Don Quixote of La Mancha cannot possibly take any pleasure in reading this second one.”

“For all that,” said Don Juan, “it will be well to read it, for there is no book so bad that it has nothing good in it. What displeases me most in this one is that it paints Don Quixote as no longer in love with Dulcinea del Toboso.”

Hearing which, Don Quixote, full of wrath and indignation, raised his voice and said:

“Whoever says that Dulcinea del Toboso has been forgotten, or can be, by Don Quixote of La Mancha, I will make him understand with equal arms that he is very far from the truth; for the peerless Dulcinea del Toboso cannot be forgotten, nor is forgetting possible in Don Quixote: his blazon is constancy, and his profession to keep it gently and without forcing himself in any way.”

“Who is it that answers us?” came the reply from the other room.

“Who should it be,” answered Sancho, “but the very Don Quixote of La Mancha, who’ll back up everything he’s said, and everything he may say besides? For a good payer is not pained by pledges.”

Scarcely had Sancho said this when two gentlemen came in through the door of their room, for such they seemed, and one of them, throwing his arms around Don Quixote’s neck, said to him:

“Neither can your presence belie your name, nor can your name fail to vouch for your presence: without a doubt, you, sir, are the true Don Quixote of La Mancha, north star and morning star of knight-errantry, in spite and despite of the one who has tried to usurp your name and bring your deeds to nothing, as the author of this book I here deliver to you has done.”

And, putting into his hands a book his companion was carrying, Don Quixote took it, and without answering a word began to leaf through it, and shortly afterward handed it back, saying:

“In this little I have seen I have found three things in this author deserving reproof. The first is some words I have read in the prologue; the next, that the language is Aragonese, for at times he writes without articles; and the third, which most confirms him as ignorant, is that he errs and strays from the truth in the most essential point of the history; for here he says that the wife of my squire Sancho Panza is called Mari Gutiérrez, and she is not called that, but Teresa Panza; and whoever errs in so essential a point may well be feared to err in all the rest of the history.”

To this Sancho said:

“A pretty kind of historian! He must be well up in the story of our doings, to be sure, when he calls my wife Teresa Panza Mari Gutiérrez! Take the book again, sir, and see if I go about in it and if he’s changed my name.”

“From what I have heard you say, friend,” said Don Jerónimo, “you must doubtless be Sancho Panza, Señor Don Quixote’s squire.”

“That I am,” answered Sancho, “and proud of it.”

“Well, on my faith,” said the gentleman, “this modern author does not treat you with the decency your person shows: he paints you as a glutton, and simple, and not the least bit droll, and quite another man from the Sancho whom the first part of your master’s history describes.”

“God forgive him,” said Sancho. “He should have left me in my corner, without remembering me, for let him play the tunes who knows them, and Saint Peter is fine in Rome.”

The two gentlemen asked Don Quixote to come over to their room and sup with them, for they well knew that in that inn there was nothing fit for his person. Don Quixote, who was always courteous, granted what they asked and had supper with them; Sancho was left with the stew in pure and mixed sovereignty; he sat at the head of the table, and with him the innkeeper, who was no less fond than Sancho of his feet and his heels.

In the course of supper Don Juan asked Don Quixote what news he had of the lady Dulcinea del Toboso: whether she had married, whether she had given birth or was with child, or whether, still in her maidenhood, she remembered—keeping her modesty and good decorum—the loving thoughts of Señor Don Quixote. To which he answered:

“Dulcinea remains a maiden, and my thoughts firmer than ever; our dealings, in their old dryness; her beauty, transformed into that of a coarse village girl.”

And then he went on to tell them, point by point, of the enchantment of the lady Dulcinea, and of what had befallen him in the cave of Montesinos, with the order the sage Merlin had given him for disenchanting her, which was that of Sancho’s lashes.

Very great was the pleasure the two gentlemen took in hearing Don Quixote tell the strange events of his history, and they were as amazed at his absurdities as at the elegant manner in which he told them. At one moment they took him for sensible, and at the next he slipped from their grasp as a fool, and they could not decide what degree to give him between good sense and madness.

Sancho finished his supper, and, leaving the innkeeper as crooked in the legs as an X, went over to his master’s room; and on coming in, he said:

“May they kill me, gentlemen, if the author of this book your graces have isn’t set on the two of us never sharing good crumbs together; I’d like it, since he calls me a glutton, as your graces say, if he didn’t call me a drunkard too.”

“He does,” said Don Jerónimo, “but I do not remember in what way, though I know the words are ill-sounding, and false besides, as I can see from the face of the good Sancho here present.”

“Believe me, your graces,” said Sancho, “the Sancho and the Don Quixote of that history must be different from the ones who go about in the one Cide Hamete Benengeli composed, who are us: my master, valiant, sensible, and in love; and I, a droll simpleton, and no glutton or drunkard.”

“So I believe,” said Don Juan; “and if it were possible, it ought to be ordered that no one should dare to deal with the doings of the great Don Quixote except Cide Hamete, his first author, just as Alexander ordered that no one should dare to paint his portrait except Apelles.”

“Let whoever likes portray me,” said Don Quixote, “but let him not mistreat me; for patience often gives way when it is loaded with insults.”

“None,” said Don Juan, “can be done to Señor Don Quixote that he cannot avenge, unless he parries it with the shield of his patience, which, in my opinion, is strong and great.”

In this and other talk a great part of the night passed; and though Don Juan would have liked Don Quixote to read more of the book, to see what he would make of it, they could not get him to do it, for he said that he took it as read and confirmed it as foolish in every way, and that he did not want its author, if by chance it came to his notice that he had held it in his hands, to rejoice at the thought that he had read it; since from obscene and filthy things one’s thoughts must turn away, and much more one’s eyes. They asked him where he had decided to direct his journey. He answered that it was to Zaragoza, to take part in the jousts for the suit of armor that are usually held in that city every year. Don Juan told him that that new history related how Don Quixote, whoever he might be, had taken part there in a ring-tilting, lacking in invention, poor in its mottoes, poorest in its liveries, though rich in simplicities.

“For that very reason,” answered Don Quixote, “I will not set foot in Zaragoza, and so I will bring out into the public square of the world the lie of this modern historian, and people will see that I am not the Don Quixote he says.”

“You will do very well,” said Don Jerónimo; “and there are other jousts in Barcelona, where Señor Don Quixote will be able to show his valor.”

“So I mean to do,” said Don Quixote; “and may your graces give me leave, for it is now time for me to go to bed, and count and place me among the number of your greatest friends and servants.”

“And me too,” said Sancho; “maybe I’ll be good for something.”

With this they took their leave, and Don Quixote and Sancho withdrew to their room, leaving Don Juan and Don Jerónimo amazed to see the mixture he had made of his good sense and his madness; and they truly believed that these were the true Don Quixote and Sancho, and not the ones their Aragonese author described.

Don Quixote rose early, and, knocking on the partition of the other room, took his leave of his hosts. Sancho paid the innkeeper magnificently, and advised him to praise the provisions of his inn less, or to keep it better provided.