Chapter LX. Of what befell Don Quixote on the way to Barcelona

The morning was cool, and the day gave signs of being so too, on which Don Quixote left the inn, first inquiring which was the most direct road to Barcelona without touching Zaragoza: such was his desire to prove that new historian a liar, who, they said, so abused him.

It happened, then, that for more than six days nothing happened to him worth putting in writing, at the end of which, as he was going off the road, night overtook him among some thick oaks or cork trees; for on this point Cide Hamete does not keep the exactness he usually keeps in other things.

Master and man got down from their beasts, and, settling themselves against the trunks of the trees, Sancho, who had had a good meal that day, let himself go headlong in at the gates of sleep; but Don Quixote, who was kept awake by his fancies far more than by hunger, could not close his eyes; rather, he went to and fro in thought through a thousand kinds of places. Now he seemed to be in the cave of Montesinos; now to see Dulcinea, turned into a village girl, leaping up onto her she-ass; now the words of the sage Merlin rang in his ears, setting out the conditions and the steps to be taken and observed in the disenchantment of Dulcinea. He despaired at seeing the slackness and scant charity of Sancho his squire, for, as he believed, he had given himself only five lashes, a number unequal and small against the countless ones still wanting; and at this he felt such sorrow and vexation that he made this argument:

“If Alexander the Great cut the Gordian knot, saying, ‘Cutting is as good as untying,’ and did not for that cease to be universal lord of all Asia, neither more nor less might happen now in the disenchantment of Dulcinea if I were to whip Sancho in spite of himself; for if the condition of this remedy lies in Sancho’s receiving the three thousand and some lashes, what does it matter to me whether he gives them to himself or someone else gives them to him, since the substance lies in his receiving them, come from where they may?”

With this notion he went up to Sancho, having first taken Rocinante’s reins and arranged them so that he could whip him with them, and began to undo his points, of which it is believed he had only the front one, by which his breeches were held up; but scarcely had he come near when Sancho woke up wide awake and said:

“What’s this? Who’s touching me and untying my points?”

“It is I,” answered Don Quixote, “who come to make good your shortcomings and to remedy my troubles: I have come to whip you, Sancho, and to discharge, in part, the debt to which you bound yourself. Dulcinea is perishing; you live carefree; I am dying of longing; and so untruss yourself of your own will, for mine is to give you, here in this solitude, at least two thousand lashes.”

“Not that,” said Sancho; “your grace keep still; if not, by the true God, the deaf are going to hear us. The lashes I bound myself to have to be voluntary, and not by force, and right now I have no wish to whip myself; let it be enough that I give your grace my word to vapulate and fly-swat myself when I feel like it.”

“There is no leaving it to your courtesy, Sancho,” said Don Quixote, “because you are hard of heart and, though a peasant, soft of flesh.”

And so he tried and struggled to unlace him. Seeing which, Sancho Panza got to his feet, and, rushing at his master, grappled him bodily, and, tripping him, brought him down on the ground on his back; he put his right knee on his chest, and with his hands held his hands, so that he could neither turn over nor draw breath. Don Quixote said to him:

“What, traitor? Do you rise against your master and natural lord? Do you dare to lay hands on the one who gives you his bread?”

“I neither unmake kings nor make kings,” answered Sancho, “but help myself, for I am my own lord. Let your grace promise me to keep still and not try to whip me for now, and I’ll let you go free and unhindered; otherwise,

Here you shall die, you traitor,
enemy of Doña Sancha.”

Don Quixote promised it, and swore by the life of his thoughts that he would not lay a finger on so much as the nap of his clothing, and to leave the whipping entirely to his will and pleasure, whenever he chose.

Sancho got up and went off a good way from that spot; and as he went to lean against another tree, he felt something touch his head, and, raising his hands, he came upon two human feet, with shoes and stockings. He trembled with fear; he went to another tree, and the same thing happened to him. He shouted, calling on Don Quixote to help him. Don Quixote did so, and, asking him what had happened to him and what he was afraid of, Sancho answered that all those trees were full of human feet and legs. Don Quixote felt them, and at once realized what it could be, and said to Sancho:

“You have nothing to be afraid of, because these feet and legs you feel and do not see are no doubt those of some outlaws and bandits who are hanged on these trees; for around here the law usually hangs them when it catches them, by twenties and by thirties; from which I gather that I must be near Barcelona.”

And the truth was as he had imagined it.

It seems they raised their eyes and saw the clusters on those trees, which were the bodies of bandits. By now it was dawning, and if the dead had frightened them, they were no less dismayed by more than forty living bandits who suddenly surrounded them, telling them in the Catalan tongue to keep still and stay where they were until their captain arrived.

Don Quixote found himself on foot, his horse unbridled, his lance propped against a tree, and, in short, with no defense at all; and so he thought it best to cross his hands and bow his head, saving himself for a better season and juncture.

The bandits fell to picking the gray over and leaving him nothing of all he carried in the saddlebags and the valise; and it went well for Sancho that the duke’s escudos, and those they had brought from home, were in a money belt he had girded about him, and even so, those good people would have weeded him and searched him down to whatever he might have hidden between his skin and his flesh, had their captain not arrived at that moment, who proved to be about thirty-four years of age, robust, more than middling tall, of grave look and dark complexion. He came on a powerful horse, wearing a steel coat of mail, and with four pistols—which in that country are called pedreñales—at his sides. He saw that his squires, for that is what they call those who follow that trade, were about to strip Sancho Panza; he ordered them not to, and was obeyed at once; and so the money belt escaped. He was amazed to see a lance propped against the tree, a shield on the ground, and Don Quixote in armor and pensive, with the saddest and most melancholy figure that sadness itself could have made. He went up to him, saying:

“Do not be so sad, good man, for you have not fallen into the hands of some cruel Osiris, but into those of Roque Guinart, which are more compassionate than harsh.”

“My sadness,” answered Don Quixote, “is not for having fallen into your power, O valiant Roque, whose fame has no bounds on earth to contain it, but for my carelessness having been such that your soldiers caught me with my horse unbridled, when I am bound, by the order of knight-errantry that I profess, to live continually on the alert, being at all hours my own sentinel; for I would have you know, O great Roque, that had they found me on my horse, with my lance and with my shield, it would not have been very easy for them to make me yield, because I am Don Quixote of La Mancha, he who has filled the whole globe with his exploits.”

Roque Guinart saw at once that Don Quixote’s infirmity bordered more on madness than on valor, and though he had heard him named a few times, he had never taken his deeds for truth, nor could he persuade himself that such a humor could reign in a man’s heart; and he was extremely glad to have met him, so as to touch at close range what he had heard of him from afar; and so he said to him:

“Valiant knight, do not despair, or take this situation you find yourself in for ill fortune, for it might be that through these stumbles your crooked luck will straighten out; for heaven, by strange and never-seen roundabout ways, unimagined by men, is apt to raise up the fallen and enrich the poor.”

Don Quixote was on the point of thanking him when at their backs they heard what sounded like a troop of horses, and it was only a single one, on which a youth came riding at full fury, by the look of him about twenty years old, dressed in green damask with gold braid, loose breeches and a short jacket, a hat cocked Walloon fashion, close-fitting waxed boots, spurs, dagger, and sword gilded, a small musket in his hands and two pistols at his sides. At the noise Roque turned his head and saw this handsome figure, which, on reaching him, said:

“I came in search of you, O valiant Roque, to find in you, if not a remedy, at least relief in my misfortune; and so as not to keep you in suspense, for I know you have not recognized me, I will tell you who I am: I am Claudia Jerónima, daughter of Simón Forte, your singular friend and the particular enemy of Clauquel Torrellas, who is likewise yours, being one of the opposing faction; and you know that this Torrellas has a son who is called Don Vicente Torrellas, or at least was called so less than two hours ago. He, then, to cut short the tale of my misfortune, I will tell you in a few words what he has caused me. He saw me, he courted me, I listened to him, I fell in love, behind my father’s back; for there is no woman, however secluded she may be and however modest, who does not have time and to spare to put her headlong desires into execution and effect. At last he promised to be my husband, and I gave him my word to be his, without our going any further in deeds. Yesterday I learned that, forgetful of what he owed me, he was marrying another, and that this morning he was going to be betrothed, news that unsettled my senses and put an end to my patience; and since my father was not in the town, I took it on myself to put on the clothes you see, and, spurring this horse on, I overtook Don Vicente about a league from here; and without stopping to make complaints or hear excuses, I fired these muskets at him, and, for good measure, these two pistols; and, as I believe, I must have shut more than two balls in his body, opening doors through which my honor might come out, wrapped in his blood. There I leave him among his servants, who neither dared nor were able to defend him. I come in search of you so that you may get me across into France, where I have relatives to live with, and likewise to beg you to defend my father, so that Don Vicente’s many kinsmen may not dare to take outrageous vengeance on him.”

Roque, amazed at the gallantry, the spirit, the fine bearing, and the deed of the beautiful Claudia, said to her:

“Come, lady, and let us go and see whether your enemy is dead, for afterward we will see what else concerns you.”

Don Quixote, who had been listening attentively to what Claudia had said and what Roque Guinart answered, said:

“There is no need for anyone to take the trouble of defending this lady, for I take that charge on myself: let my horse and my arms be given me, and wait for me here, for I will go and seek that knight, and, dead or alive, I will make him keep the word he promised to such beauty.”

“Let no one doubt it,” said Sancho, “because my master has a very good hand as a matchmaker, for not many days ago he made another man marry who was also denying a maiden his word; and if it weren’t that the enchanters who persecute him changed his true shape into that of a lackey, by this time the said maiden would be a maiden no longer.”

Roque, who was paying more attention to the fate of the beautiful Claudia than to the words of master and man, did not understand them; and ordering his squires to give back to Sancho everything they had taken from him off the gray, and likewise ordering them to withdraw to the place where they had been quartered that night, he then set off with Claudia in all haste to look for the wounded, or dead, Don Vicente. They came to the place where Claudia had met him, and found nothing in it but freshly spilled blood; but, casting their eyes about on every side, they made out some people up a slope, and they concluded, as was the truth, that it must be Don Vicente, whom his servants, either dead or alive, were carrying, either to treat him or to bury him; they hurried to overtake them, and, since they were going slowly, they did so easily.

They found Don Vicente in the arms of his servants, whom he was begging in a tired and weakened voice to let him die there, because the pain of his wounds would not allow him to go any farther.

Claudia and Roque threw themselves off their horses and went up to him; the servants were afraid at the sight of Roque, and Claudia was troubled at the sight of Don Vicente; and so, between tenderness and sternness, she went up to him, and, taking him by the hands, said to him:

“If you had given me these, as we agreed, you would never have come to this pass.”

The wounded gentleman opened his almost closed eyes, and, recognizing Claudia, said to her:

“I see well, beautiful and deceived lady, that you are the one who has killed me: a penalty neither deserved nor owed to my desires, with which, nor with my deeds, did I ever wish or know how to offend you.”

“Then is it not true,” said Claudia, “that you were going this morning to be betrothed to Leonora, the daughter of the rich Balvastro?”

“No, indeed,” answered Don Vicente; “my ill fortune must have brought you this news, so that, jealous, you would take my life, which, since I leave it in your hands and in your arms, I count my lot a happy one. And to assure you of this truth, press my hand and take me as your husband, if you will, for I have no greater satisfaction to give you for the wrong you think you have received from me.”

Claudia pressed his hand, and her heart was pressed so tight that she fell in a faint on Don Vicente’s blood and breast, and a mortal seizure took him. Roque was bewildered, and did not know what to do. The servants ran to look for water to throw in their faces, and brought it, and bathed their faces with it. Claudia came back from her faint, but Don Vicente did not come back from his seizure, for his life came to an end. When Claudia saw this, and understood that her sweet husband was no longer living, she rent the air with sighs, smote the heavens with complaints, ill-used her hair, giving it to the wind, and disfigured her face with her own hands, with every sign of grief and sorrow that could be imagined from a stricken breast.

“O cruel and thoughtless woman,” she said, “how easily you were moved to put so evil a thought into execution! O raging force of jealousy, to what desperate end you lead those who give you shelter in their breast! O my husband, whose unhappy lot, for being my pledge, has carried you from the bridal bed to the grave!”

Such and so sad were Claudia’s laments that they drew tears from Roque’s eyes, unused to shedding them on any occasion. The servants wept, Claudia fainted at every step, and that whole ring of ground seemed a field of sadness and a place of misfortune. At last Roque Guinart ordered Don Vicente’s servants to carry his body to his father’s town, which was near by, so that they might give it burial. Claudia told Roque that she wished to go to a convent where an aunt of hers was abbess, in which she meant to end her life, accompanied by another and more eternal husband. Roque praised her good purpose, offered to accompany her wherever she wished, and to defend her father from the kinsmen and from the whole world, if they should seek to harm him. Claudia would by no means have his company, and, thanking him for his offers with the best words she knew, she took leave of him in tears. Don Vicente’s servants carried away his body, and Roque went back to his men, and this was the end of the love of Claudia Jerónima. But what wonder, if the weft of her pitiful history was woven by the invincible and cruel forces of jealousy?

Roque Guinart found his squires in the place where he had ordered them, and Don Quixote among them, on Rocinante, making them a speech in which he urged them to give up that way of life, so dangerous to the soul as well as to the body; but since most of them were Gascons, a rough and unruly people, Don Quixote’s speech did not go down well with them. When Roque had arrived, he asked Sancho Panza whether they had given back and restored to him the trinkets and valuables his men had taken from him off the gray. Sancho answered yes, except that three kerchiefs were missing, which were worth three cities.

“What are you saying, man?” said one of those present. “For I have them, and they aren’t worth three reales.”

“That is so,” said Don Quixote, “but my squire values them at what he has said, because of who gave them to me.”

Roque Guinart ordered them to be returned at once, and, ordering his men to draw up in a line, he had brought before them there all the clothes, jewels, and money, and everything they had stolen since the last distribution; and, making a quick reckoning, setting aside what could not be divided and turning it into money, he shared it out among his whole company, with such fairness and prudence that he did not go a hair beyond, or cheat in anything, the bounds of distributive justice. This done, and all being left content, satisfied, and paid by it, Roque said to Don Quixote:

“If this exactness were not kept with these men, there would be no living with them.”

To which Sancho said:

“From what I’ve seen here, justice is so good a thing that it has to be used even among thieves themselves.”

One of the squires heard it, and raised the butt of a harquebus, with which he would no doubt have split Sancho’s head open if Roque Guinart had not shouted to him to stop. Sancho was stunned, and resolved not to unstitch his lips as long as he was among those people.

At this point one, or some, of those squires who had been posted as sentinels along the roads to watch for people coming along them and give word to their chief of what was happening came up, and he said:

“Sir, not far from here, on the road that goes to Barcelona, a great crowd of people is coming.”

To which Roque answered:

“Have you made out whether they are of those who are looking for us, or of those we are looking for?”

“No, but of those we are looking for,” answered the squire.

“Then go out, all of you,” replied Roque, “and bring them here to me at once, without letting a single one escape you.”

They did so, and Don Quixote, Sancho, and Roque, being left alone, waited to see what the squires would bring; and meanwhile Roque said to Don Quixote:

“Our way of life must seem a new one to Señor Don Quixote, new adventures, new happenings, and all of them dangerous; and I do not wonder that it seems so to you, because I truly confess to you that there is no way of life more restless or more full of alarms than ours. I was put into it by I know not what desires for vengeance, which have the power to trouble the calmest hearts; I am by nature compassionate and well-meaning; but, as I have said, the wish to avenge a wrong that was done me so throws all my good inclinations to the ground that I persevere in this state, in spite and despite of what I know; and as one abyss calls to another and one sin to another sin, the acts of vengeance have been linked together in such a way that I take upon myself not only my own but other people’s; but God is pleased that, though I see myself in the middle of the labyrinth of my confusions, I do not lose hope of coming out of it to a safe harbor.”

Don Quixote was amazed to hear Roque speak such good and well-ordered words, because he had thought that among those of such trades as robbing, killing, and waylaying there could be no one who had good judgment, and he answered him:

“Señor Roque, the beginning of health lies in knowing the illness and in the sick man’s being willing to take the medicines the doctor prescribes for him: your grace is sick, you know your ailment, and heaven, or God, to put it better, who is our physician, will apply medicines that will heal you, which are apt to heal little by little and not all at once and by miracle; and besides, sensible sinners are nearer to amendment than simple ones; and since your grace has shown your prudence in your words, there is nothing for it but to take good heart and hope for improvement in the sickness of your conscience; and if your grace wants to save time and set yourself easily on the road to your salvation, come with me, and I will teach you to be a knight-errant, a life in which one goes through so many toils and misadventures that, taken as penance, they will put you in heaven in two shakes.”

Roque laughed at Don Quixote’s advice, and, changing the subject, told him the tragic fate of Claudia Jerónima, which grieved Sancho extremely, for the girl’s beauty, boldness, and spirit had not seemed bad to him.

At this point the squires came up with their catch, bringing with them two gentlemen on horseback, and two pilgrims on foot, and a coach of women with about six servants, who accompanied them on foot and on horseback, with two more mule boys whom the gentlemen had with them. The squires surrounded them, conquered and conquerors keeping a great silence, waiting for the great Roque Guinart to speak, and he asked the gentlemen who they were and where they were going, and what money they were carrying. One of them answered him:

“Sir, we are two captains of Spanish infantry; we have our companies in Naples and are going to take ship in four galleys which, they say, are at Barcelona with orders to cross to Sicily; we are carrying some two or three hundred escudos, with which, in our opinion, we go rich and content, for the ordinary straits of soldiers do not allow greater treasures.”

Roque asked the pilgrims the same as the captains; he was answered that they were going to take ship to cross to Rome, and that between the two of them they might be carrying some sixty reales. He wanted to know also who was in the coach, and where they were going, and the money they had; and one of those on horseback said:

“My lady Doña Guiomar de Quiñones, wife of the regent of the Vicaría of Naples, with a little daughter, a maid, and a duenna, are the ones in the coach; six of us servants accompany her, and the money is six hundred escudos.”

“So,” said Roque Guinart, “we already have here nine hundred escudos and sixty reales; my soldiers must be about sixty; see how much falls to each, for I am a poor reckoner.”

Hearing this, the highwaymen raised their voices, saying:

“Long live Roque Guinart, in spite of the lladres, the thieves, who seek his ruin!”

The captains showed their distress, the lady regent grew sad, and the pilgrims were not a bit pleased, seeing the confiscation of their goods. Roque kept them in suspense like this for a while, but he did not want their sadness, which could be seen a harquebus shot away, to go any further, and, turning to the captains, he said:

“Let your graces, lord captains, be pleased, out of courtesy, to lend me sixty escudos, and the lady regent eighty, to satisfy this band that goes with me, for the abbot dines from what he sings, and then you may go your way freely and unhindered, with a safe-conduct I will give you, so that if you meet others of some bands of mine that I have spread about these parts, they will do you no harm; for it is not my intention to wrong soldiers or any woman, especially those of rank.”

Countless and well spoken were the words with which the captains thanked Roque for his courtesy and liberality, for so they took it, in leaving them their own money. The lady Doña Guiomar de Quiñones tried to throw herself out of the coach to kiss the great Roque’s feet and hands, but he would by no means allow it; rather, he begged her pardon for the wrong he was doing her, forced to comply with the strict obligations of his evil trade. The lady regent ordered a servant of hers to give at once the eighty escudos that had been assessed on her, and the captains had already paid out their sixty. The pilgrims were about to give up all their pittance, but Roque told them to keep still, and, turning to his men, he said to them:

“Of these escudos two fall to each man, and twenty are left over: let these pilgrims have ten, and this good squire the other ten, so that he may speak well of this adventure.”

And, having writing materials brought to him, with which he always went provided, Roque gave them in writing a safe-conduct to the chiefs of his bands, and, taking leave of them, let them go free, and amazed at his nobility, his gallant bearing, and his strange conduct, taking him for an Alexander the Great rather than a known thief. One of the squires said in his Gascon and Catalan tongue:

“This captain of ours is more fit to be a frade, a friar, than a bandit: if from now on he wants to show himself liberal, let him be so with his own property and not with ours.”

The wretch did not say it so softly that Roque failed to hear it, and he, laying hand on his sword, split his head almost in two, saying to him:

“This is how I punish the loose-tongued and the insolent.”

They were all stunned, and not one dared say a word to him: so great was the obedience they bore him.

Roque withdrew to one side and wrote to a friend of his in Barcelona, letting him know that the famous Don Quixote of La Mancha was with him, that knight-errant of whom so many things were told; and that he would have him know that he was the wittiest and most intelligent man in the world, and that four days from then, which was Saint John the Baptist’s day, he would set him down in the middle of the city’s beach, armed at all points, on Rocinante, his horse, and his squire Sancho on an ass, and that he should give notice of this to his friends the Niarros, so that they might amuse themselves with him; that he would have liked the Cadells, their opponents, to be denied this pleasure, but that this was impossible, because the madnesses and good sense of Don Quixote and the drolleries of his squire Sancho Panza could not fail to give general pleasure to the whole world. He dispatched these letters with one of his squires, who, changing his bandit’s dress for that of a farmer, entered Barcelona and gave it to the one it was for.